The Chick and the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  I guess my expression must have said it all because the next thing I knew, Ella was giving me that motherly look.

  "I know exactly what you're thinking," she said. "What are you going to do to fill all those empty hours? But you know, I do have a few new tours in mind. You could get a jump on the research."

  "I could."

  My words sounded like agreement (which they weren't) instead of desperation (which they were). Ella patted me on the shoulder and headed out of the office. "That's my Pepper! Jim was worried that you'd be upset, but I told him he was wrong. I knew you'd take the news well. Don't worry; nothing's going to happen anytime soon. Merilee isn't expected in town for a few more days. And isn't it just like you, wanting to get a head start on the research, working even when you don't have to? You're a credit to young women everywhere, Pepper. Why, I only wish my girls…"

  Ella walked down the hallway, and her words faded. It was just as well, I knew what she was going to say. She only wished her girls would turn out as well as me.

  Really?

  I wondered if she'd feel the same way if she knew I'd turned out to be a broke cemetery tour guide whose job had just been whisked out from under her feet.

  Oh yeah, and I talked to dead people, too.

  No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I could have sworn I smelled cigarette smoke.

  Something told me it was pink.

  Chapter 3

  Maybe it was the cigarette smoke that kick-started my brain and got me to thinking.

  Maybe it was the fact that I didn't sleep a wink that night. After the day I had, I should have. Like a log. But every time I closed my eyes, everything I'd heard from Ella kept getting jumbled with everything I remembered about my visit from Didi.

  Good news and bad news.

  Pink chiffon and peach lipstick.

  No work.

  No money.

  Oh yeah, and the Gift.

  Was it any wonder that by the time I got back to Garden View the next morning, my nerves were on edge and my head felt as if it was going to explode?

  But like I said, maybe it all worked in my favor. All that tossing and turning left me with lots of time to think, and think is exactly what I did. Even before I dragged myself to my desk and put away the Cool Whip container full of salad I'd brought for lunch, I had a plan.

  It was simple, really. And brilliant.

  I'd tell Didi that I'd changed my mind and that I would investigate her murder after all.

  If, like Gus, she could pay for my services.

  There was only one problem. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that there were two. Number one: Though I waited in my office all morning (and actually got some work done while I was at it), Didi never showed her ghostly face. And number two: I couldn't go looking for Didi on my own because she had neglected to mention her last name.

  Not to worry. My stint as personal private detective to the city's most notorious mob boss had taught me a thing or two about investigating.

  Unfortunately, a search of the cemetery's database didn't turn up even one Didi (though it did earn me some high praise from Ella, who thought I was doing something that was actually related to my job). Even then, I wasn't about to give up.

  I did a little more thinking, dug a little deeper, and uncovered (figuratively, not literally—always important to make that clear in a cemetery) three Dionnes in our files along with six Deirdres and any number of Dees. I figured that any of them could have been nicknamed Didi, but, except for one who was a member of the Order of St. Francis (I was pretty certain Didi wasn't a nun) and another whose computer record mentioned that she was the granddaughter of slaves (that didn't sound like my blond, blue-eyed ghost, either), none of their birth or death dates meshed with what I remembered from my latest close encounter of the supernatural kind.

  Didi had never come right out and said when she lived or when she died, but I was no slouch when it came to culture. I'd seen John Travolta in Grease. I knew the fifties when I saw them.

  What it all boiled down to, of course, is that all that thinking and all that research led me absolutely nowhere.

  Too bad, too. Because right then, a potential paying detective gig was looking like the best solution to my monetary problems, not to mention the only thing standing between me and those creditors who would start getting antsy when the bills from White House Black Market, Vickie's, and BCBG hit.

  Damn.

  At least if I had to be shackled with this Gift thing, it would be nice to be able to do something useful with it.

  Like know how to contact Didi.

  As it was, I didn't have a clue how—or where—to find her.

  No one could ever accuse Ella of letting grass grow under her Earth Shoes. Just the day before, she'd dropped the bombshell about my forced hiatus, and already she'd put together a handy-dandy to-do list for me.

  I glanced down at the yellow notepad that she'd given me right after lunch. Take your pick, it said at the top of the page in her characteristic curlicue handwriting and her trademark pink marker. This will give you an opportunity to design a tour from start to finish and—bit plus!—once you've decided which of our residents to include on your tour, you can do all your research at home! ©

  I noticed that big was spelled wrong, but I didn't hold it against her. After everything she'd told me about So Far the Dawn, her involvement with the fan club, and the impending visit of über-author Merilee Bowman, I knew Ella was distracted. And I knew it was only going to get worse. Already that day, two of the local TV stations, a community newspaper, and the "Where Are They Now?" reporter from a celebrity gossip magazine had called the office. Needless to say, each and every one of them asked about Merilee.

  With all the commotion, I couldn't think straight. And if I couldn't think straight, how was I ever going to be able to come up with a plan to shake Didi loose from whatever plane ghosts went to when they weren't haunting me?

  Peace and quiet, that's what I needed, and I'll say this for my job: It isn't much in the chic and trendy department, it doesn't pay very well, and it sure never gives me the opportunity for much of a social life (not with the living, anyway), but peace and quiet are never far away.

  As soon as I had the opportunity, I left the office. It was a warm spring afternoon, and the sun was shining, so in the great scheme of things, it wasn't much of a hardship to pretend I was going to scout the areas Ella thought would be good for new tours.

  As I headed out the door and across the road, I made sure I read over the note on my clipboard one more time. Just in case anyone from the office happened to be looking out the window.

  Here are some ideas for tours that I think would be terrific!

  In the daylight, it was hard to read the pink marker against the yellow paper, and I squinted at the rest of Ella's message.

  Sports figures.

  I thought not. The only thing I knew about sports was that I didn't like them.

  I crossed off the first suggestion.

  Cops and robbers.

  Another topic I didn't want to consider. After all, every time I thought about cops, I naturally thought about Quinn. And when I thought about Quinn…

  Maybe I'd better explain. Quinn Harrison, Cleveland Homicide detective. The kind of guy who makes words like hot and hunk and hunka-hunka burning love pale in comparison to his hot, hunky, hunka-hunka burning love reality. I met him when I visited the Cleveland Police Historical Society Museum looking for information about Gus. And Quinn and I…

  Well, how can I say this delicately?

  Quinn and I had this thing. This instant-attraction, sort-of-soul-mate, karma thing.

  That is to say, he was hot for me. And I was just as hot for him. Like majorly. Except that the one and only time we'd had a chance to actually do something about all that heat, Gus had popped up right there in the living room of my apartment. Live and in color, as they say. Except that he wasn't. Live, that is.

  Let me make this perfectly clear—
I was not going to jump into bed with Quinn when I knew there was even the tiniest chance that Gus was watching.

  And Quinn, well, he didn't understand why the woman who was good to go only seconds before had suddenly put on the brakes.

  How could I expect him to? I couldn't tell him about Gus. I couldn't tell anyone about Gus, at least not without looking like a full-blown nutcase. So I kept my mouth shut, and my relationship with Quinn (such as it was) fizzled in an instant. One painful, awful, terrible, will-regret-it-until-the-day-I-die instant.

  I put a big X through Cops and robbers and pretended that the sigh I heard ripple the afternoon air didn't come from me.

  I had been walking as I thought about all this, and I stopped in a pool of sunshine along the side of the road to get my bearings. Over on my right near the high stone wall that separated Garden View from the city neighborhood that surrounded it, a woman was visiting a grave. Her back was to me, but I didn't need to see her face to know what she was feeling. She was wearing a black dress and one of those old-fashioned hats with the big brims and a black veil that covered her face. Her head was bent, and she was staring at the grave at her feet.

  I made sure to keep my distance. A few months of working at Garden View had taught me that some mourners wanted to be left alone. But more of them wanted to talk. About their lives. About the loved one they'd lost. About their pain. Honest, I'm not insensitive to all that angst, I just had enough of my own problems to deal with. I knew better than to get too close.

  I skirted the section where the woman stood and checked the clipboard again.

  Famous faces.

  That didn't sound too bad. I flipped to the next sheet on the pad and read over the list of residents (Ella's word for the people buried at Garden View) she suggested for the tour. The first one was a bandleader from back in the 1940s, and I checked the section and grave number she'd listed against where I was, turned, and started out in the other direction.

  The man's grave was in what we in administration called the "new" section of Garden View. Considering that the graves there dated from as far back as the 1930s, it wasn't all that new, but, of course, new is a relative term. A lot of the cemetery's three hundred or so perfectly landscaped acres were filled before the turn of the twentieth century. Back then, death was a big business, and the pomp with which a person was buried said a lot about that person's life. Since many of the people buried at Garden View were from the upper echelons of Cleveland society, pomp was the name of the game. The oldest part of the cemetery was a maze of artsy obelisks, gaudy mausoleums, and headstones taller than me.

  By the thirties, though, death was viewed differently, and the poor folks who had to cut the grass by hand around all those obelisks, mausoleums, and headstones had learned a valuable lesson. In the new section, most of the gravestones were flat-to-the-ground and far easier to maneuver around on a riding mower.

  I stepped over one headstone after another, checking against Ella's list for the number markers sunk into the ground as signposts. I only got turned around once, which isn't bad considering I was pretty new at this. As soon as I realized I was headed the wrong way, I swung to my right.

  The first thing I saw was the woman in the black dress and the hat with the veil.

  She was standing thirty feet or so in front of me, still with her back to me, still with her head down, and for a second, I thought I'd really screwed up and ended up right back where I'd started.

  But I knew there was no way.

  I glanced over my shoulder, back the way I'd come.

  I looked toward the woman in black.

  Only she wasn't there anymore.

  "Damn." Not exactly the right thing to say in a cemetery, where everyone is supposed to be quiet and respectful, but hey, I figured if anyone had a good reason to swear, it was me. Something told me the whole Gift mojo had reared its ugly head again, and I didn't like it. Not one bit. I didn't need some other ghost meddling with my psychic what-ever-it-was-that-made-this-Gift-thing-work. I had to leave my brain waves open for Didi.

  I decided to do just that, forcing any thoughts of the woman in black out of my mind and dutifully looking for the bandleader's grave. Before I could determine if this was an effective strategy, I turned at one of the few tall, standing monuments in the section. It was a granite pillar nearly six feet high, and no sooner was I on the other side of it than I realized I wasn't alone.

  My instincts told me to ignore the flutter of black I saw out of the corner of my eye. My brain advised against it. But I knew the drill. Ignore them and they'll just bug you more. It could have been my new mantra.

  Fully prepared to tell this ghost to get lost, I spun around.

  The woman in black had moved. She was draped artfully against the granite pillar, one arm behind her, the other pressed to her brow. Her hat was off, and sunshine glinted against her cropped, wavy blond hair.

  "Didi!" I was so happy to see that it was her and not another somebody who was dead but not gone, I could have hugged her. I restrained myself. There was that whole chilled-to-the-bone thing to consider, not to mention another important thing I'd learned from Gus—the value of bargaining chips.

  I told myself not to forget it and kept the boy-am-I-glad-to-see-you to myself. No use tipping my hand. "Didi, where the hell have you been?" I looked at the black satin sheath that skimmed her hips and thighs. "And how—?"

  "Is this a blast or what?" Didi saw that I was examining her outfit. She touched a hand to her dress. "One of the few advantages of being dead. All the clothes I never could afford when I was living. It's like crazy, man."

  "You mean like a heavenly Internet shopping site? Pick your clothes and click to select?" I liked the thought of that even if I didn't agree with Didi's choices. Her dress was nipped at the waist and snugged tight with a belt. It was pencil-thin, with above-the-elbow sleeves and a hemline that hit right below her knees. No wonder there was a fashion revolution of sorts in the sixties (if the kinds of clothes Ella still wore could be considered fashion). Dresses of the fifties were confining. Not to mention frumpy.

  I reminded myself that I'd be looking pretty frumpy one of these days, too, if I didn't find a way to make some money to keep up with my excellent taste in clothing. "I was waiting for you to stop by the office today," I told Didi. "I wanted to talk to you."

  She shivered like she was cold. "Too crazy over there for me," she said, which made me think that even though I hadn't seen her, maybe she had visited the office after all. "And besides, you looked pretty busy. I figured you didn't want company." She leaned forward and took a peek at the legal pad in my hand. "Famous faces, huh? You gonna include me?"

  Call me skeptical. Or maybe I'm just pragmatic. I slanted her a look. "Are you famous?"

  Didi tried for modest, but her grin spoiled the effect. "Only if you count being in the movies as famous," she said. "After all, I did appear in a picture with Kurt Benjamin."

  "The Palmer guy?"

  "That's right. He played Palmer in that other movie." She raised her chin and did a little primping. "It wasn't a huge part, of course, and I never really pursued my career. Hollywood…" She wrinkled her nose. "It wasn't exactly what I expected."

  "So you came back here. And died."

  Her smile faded. Her shoulders drooped. "That's right. And if you didn't know about my movie career, and you weren't going to put me on your tour, why would you want to talk to me? You made it pretty clear that you weren't going to help me."

  "You're right, of course." I smiled in a way that I hoped looked apologetic. "But I've been thinking about it. Thinking about you and about how you asked for my help."

  "You'll do it?" Didi's smile was as bright as the sunshine that spilled over us. "You'll help? I knew you would."

  She was so enthusiastic, I hated to burst her bubble. But not nearly as much as I hated the thought of sleeping in the street.

  "I'll help on one condition," I told Didi. "Gus may have mentioned it. About paying me for my ser
vices? If you want me to solve your murder—"

  "Hold it right there! You've got it all wrong." Didi shook her head, and I could tell that she was trying to figure out the best way to explain things. She finally gave up and waved me closer. "Come on," she said, and she turned and walked away from the street and closer to the stone wall that marked the border of the cemetery. "I've got something to show you."

  I followed along. All the way to a spot in the farthest corner. There was a tree a few feet away from where we finally stopped, and the sun didn't penetrate the sprinkling of leaves just opening on its branches. There where the northern section of the wall met with the eastern edge of the cemetery, the air was chilly and the shadows were deep. Moss blanketed one side of the tree, and it was obvious the grounds crew hadn't made their way over there for spring cleanup yet. The gravestones I stepped around were overgrown with grass and weeds.

  "You're buried here?" I don't know why the thought bothered me, but it did. Maybe it was because Didi's cheery smile and vibrant personality didn't exactly jibe with this sad and forgotten corner of Garden View.

  Maybe because I was way shallower than even I liked to admit.

  My shoulders slumped. "You're telling me you weren't wealthy. You can't afford to pay me to find out who killed you."

  Didi gave me a look, and in the dim light, I couldn't tell if it was one of understanding or disgust. I decided on understanding, simply because it was easier to deal with.

  "It's not that I don't want to help you go to the light or wherever it is you're headed," I told her before she could contradict me and I was forced to deal with her disgust. "It's just that I've got some serious money problems, and my hours have been cut here at the cemetery thanks to that Merilee What's-Her-Name, and even if I wanted to, I won't be able to concentrate on finding out who murdered you if I've got to spend the next six weeks wearing an apron and asking folks if they want ketchup with their fries."

  Didi made a face, and I realized she wasn't feeling disgust or understanding. Just confusion. "You're jumping way ahead of yourself, kid," she said. "Back up and take a deep breath. Who said anything about finding out who murdered me?"