Death & the Gravedigger's Angel

by Loretta Ross

  Death laughed, lighthearted again. “I understand that. But honey, you only have one bedroom. Unless you want to build me a kennel in the back yard?”

  She giggled at him, her voice warm and soothing over the phone. “I’ve got another idea, but I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to push you into anything before you’re ready.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath, the rush of air coming across the phone line. “I think we should sell my house and find one that’s big enough for both of us.”

  Death sat back and blinked, because that wasn’t at all what he’d thought she was going to say. “You want to buy a house together?”

  “I know it’s a big commitment! That’s why I was afraid to say anything. I don’t want you to feel like I’m rushing you. And we don’t have to buy one if you don’t want to. We could always just rent for the time being.”

  “Sweetheart … didn’t your godmother leave you that house?”

  “Oh, honey. Nana would understand.” The warmth of her reply reached him across the phone line. “People are always more important than things. And to me, you’re more important than anyone.”

  thirteen

  Wren was in the parlor, in the center of Hadleigh House, when she heard a knock on the door. None of the Keystones would knock, and neither would either of the Bogart brothers, so she steeled herself for another visit from Jones and stormed into the entryway with a chip on her shoulder.

  It was not the religious zealot standing on the other side of the door, though. It was a massive man in a tan Sheriff’s Department uniform. His shoulders filled the window and her eyes only came up to the middle of his chest. Wren relaxed and opened the door with a grin.

  Sheriff Casey Salvadore ducked his head below the top of the doorframe and beamed at her. “Got any chips?”

  “I just might have.” She pulled the door all the way open and waved an invitation for him to enter. Salvy was a huge black man, a giant teddy bear with a perpetual, infectious smile and a spirit so great that even his six foot five frame seemed too small to contain it. The potato chips were an old joke between them.

  Salvy, then a deputy, had been the first officer to ever pull her over. She’d been sixteen. It was only a week after she got her license and she was on her way home after a high school drama club picnic. Driving down Third Street, where there were no streetlights or lane markings and the parking lots came down to the road on both sides, she’d gotten onto the wrong side of the road.

  When she saw the police lights behind her, she’d been terrified. Salvy had asked her a few questions about where she’d been and where she was going (and why she was on the wrong side of the road), and then he’d wanted to know what was in the paper bag on the back seat.

  “Potato chips!” she’d shrieked, grabbing the bag and shoving it in his face. “Do you wanna see?”

  Because she was so young, and because they were potato chips and not, say, cheap booze, the kindhearted officer had let her off with a warning. Now, years later, he still teased her about it.

  “Did you really want potato chips?” she asked.

  “Do you really have any?”

  She had a stash of snacks and a small cooler of soda pop sitting beside the stairs, and she fetched him a little bag of chips. He took it but then hesitated.

  “I’m not eating your lunch?”

  Wren waved away his concern. “Those are left over from yesterday. Help yourself.”

  “How does anyone have leftover potato chips?” he asked rhetorically, tearing open the bag and digging in.

  She let him eat a couple of handfuls before she spoke again. “You didn’t really come all the way out here just to bum day-old potato chips?”

  “Mmm. No.” He sighed. “Tyler Jones has been making himself unpleasant. I understand his concerns, but he’s meddling in an unsolved murder case. He’s demanding to know what’s going on with his son’s missing cell phone, and he wants the police to make you let him search here for it. The detective up in the city asked me to see if I could get him out of his hair.”

  “I don’t want him in here!” Wren objected. “He called me a broom!”

  Salvy blinked and thought about it. “Okay, I’m not going to ask. Anyway, you don’t need to worry. I’ve already explained to him that him searching anything isn’t going to happen and that, if he doesn’t stop pestering you, there will be consequences.”

  “Consequences?”

  “Consequences. Like trespassing charges and restraining orders. I did tell him that I would see if you would allow me to look around. I don’t have a warrant, but would you mind?”

  “Of course not. I think you’re wasting your time, but go ahead and look all you like.”

  Salvy finished his potato chips and Wren added the empty package to her collection of trash. He brushed his greasy fingers off against his uniform pants and looked around.

  “This place is huge. Want to give me the tour?”

  She shrugged. “The house is mostly just a big two-story rectangle with a one-story kitchen added onto the back, but there’s a little, not a wing exactly, but a bit of an extension on the south end. See, the entry hall with the main staircase is right in the middle. It divides the north and south ends of the house and there’s also a hallway running down the middle, north and south, that divides the east and west sides.” She led him to the back of the entry hall. There was a door in the middle of the back wall and long hallways opening both left and right.

  “This door is the downstairs bathroom. There are three more upstairs. If you take this hall, to the north, there’s a morning room and then a game room on the left and a study and then a smoking room on the right. The smoking room has another door leading into the parlor and you can go through there into the kitchen, but we haven’t gone through that yet.”

  “Did it look like anyone else had gone through there?”

  “No. You can look if you want to. No one’s been in there in decades and the whole room is coated with thick, greasy gray dust. Leona said to leave it for now. If Matthew gets into trouble, she’ll make him clean it.”

  “Is she expecting Matthew to get into trouble?”

  “Well … he’s Matthew.”

  “True. What about that door at the end of the hallway? I understand this place was still closed up the night of the murder. Could someone have gotten in there?”

  She shook her head. “That was the door out into the carport, but the carport roof has collapsed and the door isn’t just locked, it’s actually nailed shut.”

  “What about the other end of the house?”

  They went across the room and stood at the entrance to the other hallway.

  “On the right, at the front of the house, there’s a parlor and a sewing room. The left side just has one big room, the dining room. You can get to it from the kitchen. There’s also a music room in the extension that you can only get to by going through the dining room. It’s beside the kitchen, but there’s no door between them. The upstairs is all bedrooms and dressing rooms, except for three bathrooms and a library. We’ve pretty much cleared out the upstairs except for a few pieces of heavy furniture and the library. I’m going to be working in there today.”

  “And I’m guessing you haven’t found a cell phone anywhere?”

  “We’d tell you if we did,” she said. “You know we would.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Salvy walked through the house with Wren trailing after, asking questions about the house and contents and about the sale and making observations about the architecture. When they were back at the front hall, he turned to her.

  “Is there anywhere I haven’t seen yet?”

  “There’s a storm cellar, but you have to go outside to get to it.”

  “Show me?”

  “Sure.”

  They went out the back door, into the garden, and she led him to a mound of earth in the corner beyond the clotheslines. It had a metal pipe coming out
of the top of it and a slanting door set in concrete on the side nearest the house. It wasn’t locked and Salvy leaned down and easily dragged it open, with the screee of old hinges. It revealed a set of stone steps leading down to another door.

  The space between the doors was completely filled with cobwebs.

  Wren poked Salvy in the shoulder. “Well? What are you waiting for? Go search the cellar.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s been down here.”

  “They could have dropped the phone down the vent pipe.”

  He gave her a baleful glare. “You had to think of that.” He straightened up, took a flashlight from his belt, and climbed up on the mound.

  “Salvy? What are you doing? Are you sure that’s safe? That cellar’s really old. It could collapse with you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Ignoring her, he lay down on the mound, shone his light through the vent pipe, and peered down into the cellar.

  “Oh my God!”

  “What?” she demanded. “What? What is it? What do you see?”

  Salvy looked up and pierced her with a dark stare. Then, he grinned.

  “I think I just found Waldo!”

  _____

  “Dag nabbit, Roy! I swear!”

  Wren was back at the Hadleigh House, working in the library, on the second floor at the opposite end of the hall from the room where she’d found the sketch pad. It was a glorious fall morning, and she had the window open to a warm breeze that tossed the curtains. Raised voices reached her again, a discordant babble, and she went over to look out and see if she could see what was going on.

  The Keystone men, with the Robinsons’ help, were attempting to put a new bridge over the ravine. Leaves had begun to drop and she could just make out a blur of activity beyond the thinning foliage. They’d gotten their hands on the top deck of an old automobile carrier and were trying to maneuver it into place across the gully with the help of Sam Keystone’s brother-in-law’s tractor and a block-and-tackle that Nichelle Robinson had rigged up.

  Sam’s voice reached her again. “I swear! There was a reason Mom said I was the smart one.”

  “Oh yeah?” Roy shot back. “Well, you might be smart, but I’m pretty. So there!”

  Wren laughed, shook her head, and returned to her work. She was packing the books into boxes, but she was being more careful than usual about labelling them and she was reading the titles, publishing information, and condition for each book off into the recorder on her phone. Some of these were going to be rare volumes, and it would be a shame to let them go to someone who didn’t know what they were. It would also be bad business.

  There was no order that she could find to the library. It hadn’t just been for show, she could tell that. These books had been read; some of them had been well-read, with dog-eared pages and broken spines. The sun coming in the window made her drowsy, and she breathed in the heady scent of old paper and printer’s ink and daydreamed.

  This would be a nice place to live, if it wasn’t so ridiculously huge. It had a nice feeling to it. She and Death could have adjoining rooms and they could put a door between them. She could fill these shelves with her own books and have room for as many more as she wanted. Death could have the study for an office, and she could use the music room for her sewing and crafts.

  She took another stack of books off the shelf, set them on the desk beside her, and read off the names as she put them, one by one, into the next crate.

  Little Benji could stay over with them sometimes, and when he did he could sleep in the nursery. There’d even be enough room that they could just let Randy have the other end of the house to live in.

  “Shepherd of the Hills by Harold Bell Wright,” she read. “Fifties edition, excellent condition. Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein, paperback, poor condition.”

  For that matter, they could let just about anyone they knew live there, as big as the Hadleigh House was. Wren smiled to herself. Madeline and Eric could stay in the cellar. If they could get the cellar door open. If not, they could have the crawlspace.

  She considered the idea a bit more and shuddered. “Getting a little creepy there,” she admonished herself.

  “A Tear and a Smile by Kahlil Gibran.” This book had a slip of paper just peeking from between its pages and she stopped and carefully opened it to see what was there. It was a letter, written on tissue-thin paper and stamped with a 1920s international airmail stamp that was valuable in its own right.

  As Wren drew the paper out, she glanced at the pages it was between. It was a poem titled “The Beauty of Death,” and the name rang a distant bell. She stopped and thought about it and eventually retrieved a faded memory of a long-ago ghost story. There’d been a young woman, a tragic young woman with a romantic temperament and an interest in Spiritualism and reincarnation. After she’d killed herself, her brother remembered that she’d been obsessed with this poem.

  Wren’s thoughts went to Aramis Defoe and the pill bottle on his nightstand. She set the book down and opened the letter gently and was not surprised to see his name in the salutation.

  Douaumont sur Meuse

  24 April 1923

  Aramis, my dear, dear friend,

  I am so very sorry to report that I have found no trace of the young woman you told me about. I have checked with the authorities in Verdun and all of the local churches in the belief that a displaced refugee would go to one of those establishments in search of aid. Indeed, there have been thousands upon thousands of civilians in distress, but records are rare and, even when they exist, incomplete. No one remembers her, but that does not necessarily signify anything.

  I would tell you, in hopes of cheering you, that I also have not found a grave nor any record of her death, but I know that you know as well as I that this does not mean much. We both remember, I am sure, how brutally the war tore through this once lovely land. Montfaucon is completely destroyed and they have no plans to try to rebuild it. Indeed, even the hill upon which it stood has been rent asunder. Agathe’s farm, which you directed me to, is gone without a trace. It is cratered with shell holes. The buildings, the trees, even the well have disappeared. Only the grass and the wildflowers have made so bold as to return.

  I will continue to make inquiries of anyone I meet who may, by even the slightest chance, have knowledge of her whereabouts. I think, though, my dear friend, that it would be well to prepare yourself for the probability that you and she are not destined to meet again this side of the veil. I have no doubt that, hopefully many years in the future, when the time has come for you to shed your mortal coil, you shall find her awaiting you in that more beautiful and peaceful countryside beyond.

  Forever your friend,

  Henri

  Wren turned the letter over. On the back, penciled in lightly, was a very rough sketch of a woman standing beside a well holding out a ladle.

  _____

  “A Mexican restaurant? Really?”

  Death gave his brother a sideways glance. “You act like you think I made this up.”

  Randy shrugged. “Part of me thinks you did.”

  “I didn’t.” He held the door and let the younger man enter before him.

  A large young man in a blue T-shirt and white apron met them holding two menus. He was dark-haired and dark-complected, but when he spoke his accent was Middle Eastern rather than Hispanic. “Two?”

  Death started to say that they weren’t there to eat, but Randy had gotten a whiff of what was cooking and spoke before he could. “Yeah! I’m starving!”

  “Two,” Death agreed. He followed the server to a booth near a window. “How can you be starving? You just ate!”

  “This is lunch.”

  “It isn’t even eleven yet.”

  “Then it’s brunch.”

  “You’ve already eaten twice today.”

  “That was breakfast and second breakfast. What are you? The food police?”

  “Your metabolism is insane.” Death glanced at the menu, the
n looked up as the server returned with water and chips and salsa.

  “My name is Sammy and I’ll be your server today. Can I start you off with something to drink?”

  “I’d like a coffee, please,” Death said. “Hey, I was hoping to talk to Ali. Is he here?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s my cousin. He’s back in the office. I’ll get him for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Randy asked for a soda and Sammy returned a minute later with their drinks. He was accompanied by a slender, dark-complected man in his mid-thirties.

  “Hi, I’m Ali. Sammy said you wanted to speak with me?”

  Death rose to meet him. “Hi. I’m Death Bogart. I’m a private investigator. I’m investigating the murder of August Jones. I understand he spent some time at your mosque and I was hoping you could tell me about him.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that whole situation was just terrible.” Ali pulled a chair around from a neighboring table and sat down with them. Unlike his younger cousin, he had only the faintest accent. “I don’t know what happened, but I swear to Allah, Tony Dozier is not a man who’d kill anyone.”

  “What do you know about August Jones?” Death asked. “What was he like? I’m trying to get some sense of him. Did you have any inkling that he wasn’t what he said he was?”

  Ali was shaking his head before Death finished speaking. “No. No, absolutely not. Gus introduced himself as a journalist, said he was doing a story about religion in America. When he first showed up, I think we all knew he was coming in with a bias against us. But by the time Zahra died, he’d really seemed to warm up to us. He was—or he seemed—honestly friendly. He went to a baseball game with some of us. He came to a birthday party for one of the kids. I thought he was a nice guy. I mean it. I really thought he was a nice guy.”

  “What did you think when you found out who he really was and why he was there?”

  “That the world is a really screwed-up place. And it sucks that he got killed the way he did. Partly because of Tony being a suspect, but also because we never had a chance to talk to Gus about it.”