Dead Man Talking

by Casey Daniels

  “So where do you suppose all these people came from?”

  I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around some more. There were a few people hanging around on the sidewalk outside Team One’s section. They were polite

  “You’re not telling me these people actually . . . ?” It was too weird, even for my brain to wrap itself around. I glanced from the lookers-on to Ella’s sparkling presence. “People watched? They . . . they actually care?”

  She grinned from ear to ear. At the same time, she looped an arm through mine and piloted me toward my section. “It’s amazing how fast word travels. But don’t get carried away, there’s good news and bad news,” she said, in that motherly way of hers. “The bad news is that the judges awarded the first ten points of the competition to Team One. They said they were more organized and got more accomplished last week.”

  I swallowed this bitter pill because it was, after all, the absolute truth.

  “And the good news?”

  “Well, the good news!” Ella beamed. “According to the station, they got hundreds of calls for more information before the show ever aired. And they’ve gotten even more calls this morning. So many people are interested, they’ve scheduled a repeat of the show in prime time on Thursday night. Isn’t it fabulous?”

  “It’s unbelievable.”

  I meant this just the way I said it. It was improbable that anyone would have wasted their Sunday night with the likes of Cemetery Survivor. It was pretty pathetic, too. Ella took my unbelievable to mean something more like cool. Which would explain why her smile never wilted.

  “The publicity is priceless,” she said, nearly swooning. “If we’ve got this sort of a following after only one episode, imagine what’s going to happen next week.”

  I was still trying to work my way through the weirdness of the whole thing. “It’s a fluke,” I said, convinced.

  I heard the commotion before I was close enough to see what was going on, and the noise brought me up short. I turned, all set to ask Ella what was up, but she marched me right along, and like the little engine that could, she didn’t stop, not until we ducked under the branches of an overhanging tree and stepped into the section assigned to my team.

  I took one look around and nearly keeled over. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Ella giggled. “Does it look like I’m kidding you?”

  “No. But . . .” Feeling a whole lot like Dorothy when she walked out of that black-and-white house and into a technicolor Oz, I stepped closer to the scene. There were bigger crowds here where my team would be working, mostly women, and they held signs that said things like DELMAR, WILL YOU MARRY ME? andREALLY ANY WONDER THAT

  EVERY OTHER

  GUY

  GETS

  INCREDIBLY

  ENVIOUS?

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Ella didn’t know which sign I was looking at, but she didn’t care. She laughed. “Don’t you get it? You’ve got groupies!”

  It had to be someone’s sick idea of a joke.

  But it wasn’t. The closer I got, the more I realized that the people on the other side of the fence were there because of us. A couple people clapped when we walked by. An elderly woman brought cupcakes and insisted I chicas who were hanging on their every word. Jake was taking pictures. Absalom was over near his voodoo altar eyeballing the crowd with suspicion. And Sammi . . .

  I looked around, but I didn’t see her anywhere.

  At least not until I heard her scream, “Son of a . . .”

  I scrambled over in the direction the voice was coming from, pushed through a couple shaggy evergreens, and found Sammi near the fence. There was a man on the other side of it. He was taller than her, as thin as a Dolce & Gabbana belt, and he was wearing a black Metallica T-shirt. He had a thick chain hanging from one pocket of his low-slung jeans and a tattoo on his left arm. It was a red she-devil in a short, short mini-skirt and a revealing low-cut blouse. The name “Sammi” was written over it.

  “Oh no!” I dropped the cupcakes on the closest headstone and hurried forward. “It’s her boyfriend,” I told Ella, who came huffing and puffing behind me. “If he’s going to cause trouble—”

  Maybe he was. We never had a chance to find out. Before we got close enough to intervene, Sammi reached a hand through the fence, wrapped her fingers around the man’s throat, and squeezed so hard, her knuckles turned as white as skeleton bones.

  Ella’s gasp of horror was overshadowed by Sammi’s shout. “You seein’ her again?” She was loud enough to attract attention, and remember, we already had an audience. Even the girls with Delmar and Reggie abandoned them to see what the excitement was all about.

  “I’m gonna kick your ass, Virgil,” Sammi yelled.

  “Sammi!” I stepped closer, but with her free hand, she swatted me away, and she might have been small, but Sammie had punch. I staggered back and would have gone down in a heap if I didn’t slam into the brick wall that was Absalom. I steadied myself, doing my best to sound calm and reasonable when I felt anything but. “This is not a good thing, Sammi,” I said. “Let him go.”

  “Oh, I’m gonna let him go, all right.” Just like that, she released Virgil and gave him a shove all at the same time. He flew back, lost his footing, and went down on the sidewalk.

  “Right where you belong,” Sammi screamed. “In the dirt.”

  It didn’t take long for our groupies to take sides. They applauded Sammi and yelled at Virgil. It did nothing for his mood.

  “You think you can do that to me?” Virgil pulled himself to his feet. “You think I ain’t gonna tell your probation officer what you just done?”

  “Yeah? Right, go ahead!” She tossed her head. “And don’t forget to tell her that if I ever see you with Carmela again, you gonna be sorry you was ever born.”

  “Uh, Pepper . . .” At my right shoulder, Ella’s voice was small and tentative. I guess she didn’t want me to be the last one to know that Greer had arrived with cameraman in tow. Oh yeah, they’d gotten the whole thing on film. I could tell because Greer was drooling. I dropped my head into my hands.

  “Oh, dear.” Ella’s face paled. “Do you think this will hurt our ratings?”

  I didn’t have the heart to see her suffer, so I patted her shoulder. “Drama is what makes people watch TV shows, right? We’re just giving them what they want. Next week, I bet we get twice as many fans.”

  And because I was afraid I was right and didn’t want to think about it, I stepped between Sammi and the fence, the better to get her mind off Virgil. I gestured to my team and they gathered around, and since I had their attention for once, I pounced on the opportunity and handed out their assignments for the day. Greer liked this. I could tell, because after she told her cameraman to make sure he got a shot of Virgil climbing into his car and peeling rubber down the street, she had him follow me around.

  “Sammi and Reggie over there,” I said. Along with a map of our section, I handed them a spray bottle full of water. “We’ve got to figure out a way to decipher some of those worn headstones and if we spray them with water, the carving will show more clearly.” Ella had called on Saturday night to offer this friendly advice, and seeing that I was actually following it, she was all smiles again.

  “Absalom . . .” I turned his way. “Why don’t you and Delmar . . .” Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted them to do. Ella’s suggestions had stopped at the water bottle. “Maybe you could—” With no particular plan in mind, I reached for a sketchbook lying nearby. It flipped open, and I was surprised to find a gorgeous watercolor drawing of our section.

  Only it wasn’t.

  Our section, I mean.

  The drawing showed neat paths, beautiful plantings,

  “You like it?” Delmar shifted from foot to foot, his cheeks as red as the geraniums in the drawing.

  It was the first time I realized he took some pride in the picture. “Did you . . . ?” I checked out the picture again and tip
ped it so that the members of my team—and the camera—could see it, too. “Delmar, did you draw this?”

  You’d think a kid who had the guts to sign his name to graffiti on a school wall would be less shy. Delmar tried to control a smile. “It’s not perfect,” he said. “I was just messing around, you know, over the weekend, and I was thinking about this place and what it looked like and how maybe we could change it.”

  “It’s wonderful.” I wasn’t kidding. The drawing was nicely done, the colors were perfect, the detail . . .

  I took another look. “If we could make our section look like this—”

  “We’d win for sure.” Absalom’s comment came on the end of a sigh of admiration.

  “You’re good, dude!” Reggie slapped Delmar on the back. “Now you draw me on that park bench with that little number back there . . .” He poked a thumb over his shoulder to where the two girls were still watching. “Now that, brother, would be a picture I’d want to see!”

  Even Crazy Jake laughed. Sammi, it should be noted, did not. Still steamed from her encounter with Virgil, she was breathing hard and shooting death-ray looks in the direction where she’d last seen him.

  “Sammi?” I dared to touch a hand to her arm. “Why don’t you go along with Delmar,” I said. “You two can—”

  “Don’t need you to tell me what to do.” Sammi spun around and stalked away. “Don’t need nobody to tell me what to do.”

  When I made to go after her, Absalom put a hand out to stop me. “She knows she screwed up. She don’t need you reminding her. Let her be.”

  It was a better plan than mine, which was to read her the riot act.

  I backed off, and big surprise, my teammates actually went off in all directions, their assignments in their hands. I seriously doubted they’d make any headway—on anything—but for now, with the cameras rolling, at least they put on a good show. When Greer took off after them, I saw my opportunity. I told Ella I’d talk to her later and left her to worry if violence would help or hurt our ratings while I went off to do a little sleuthing. This time, I wasn’t going to interview anyone or even think about Jefferson Lamar. Not directly, anyway. Instead, I was on the lookout for the missing coin.

  I saw a backpack I recognized as Delmar’s tucked just inside the open door of the moldy mausoleum, and I headed that way. There was no one around when I slipped inside and found that, somehow, my team had gotten their acts together enough to realize that the mausoleum was the perfect place to leave their belongings. No, it wasn’t anywhere near as snazzy as the tent the ladies of Team One had pitched (not by themselves, I was sure), but the mausoleum was cooler than outside and nice and shady in the corners farthest from the partially caved-in roof. In addition to the backpack, I found one of those personal-sized coolers with a photograph of Jake duct taped to the top of it, a bag from McDonald’s, and a purse made out of a vinyl tablecloth with blue butterflies and orange daisies on it. No mystery about who that belonged to.

  I worked quickly and looked through everything in a

  Really, did I expect there to be?

  I grumbled my annoyance and took the opportunity for a bit of a break. This particular mausoleum was older than most of the ones at Garden View, and in very bad shape. There had once been a window across from the door. It was long gone, and the opening was boarded up. There were burials on either side of me. Three in the wall to my left, another three on my right. Directly in front of me was a wooden platform about six inches from the ground.

  Could someone have stashed the coin box under it?

  I shuffled closer, leaned over, and pressed my palms against the platform.

  That was when I heard the crack.

  The platform gave way, and I fell headfirst into pitch darkness.

  When I finally opened my eyes, the only thing I saw was a whole lot of darkness pocked with what little sunshine made its way through the tumble-down roof and the jagged pieces of broken platform. I was in a hole, and from extending my arms and feeling around, I could tell it was maybe eight feet deep and four wide.

  A grave.

  As if that wasn’t creepy enough, it was damp, slimy, and nasty. Fortunately, I didn’t feel anything like a coffin under my feet or hear the crunching of bones. But worms

  Still shaky from my tumble, I pulled myself to my feet, a move that would have been easier if not for the whole damp-slimy-nasty thing.

  I slipped, slid, and went down on my knees.

  This time when I got up, I took it nice and easy. While I was at it, I brushed off my jeans and my shirt. Just so one of those worms didn’t get the wrong idea and decide to hitch a ride.

  Standing, I could almost reach the lip of the hole. Almost. I jumped and tried to catch hold of it, but though I’m tall, I wasn’t tall enough. The dirt I grabbed onto crumbled in my hands, and a piece of wood from the platform scraped my arm.

  Were there blood-sucking worms?

  With no options, I made another effort to jump and pull myself out of the hole.

  This time, I ended up on my butt.

  Panic closed in, as real as the dirt walls that surrounded me. Hoping to steady the sudden, frantic beating of my heart, I sucked in a gulp of air, but it was moist and smelled like decay. I gagged and sputtered and did my best to talk myself down from the edge of a full-blown case of the screaming meemies.

  “You could just wait for Crazy Jake to come looking for his lunch,” I reminded myself, my words calm and reassuring, though my voice bubbled on the edge of paralyzing fear. “Or you could just relax and wait for Delmar to decide it’s time for a hit on a joint and come to get one out of his backpack. They’ll hear you down here. And they’ll help you. They’re your teammates. They wouldn’t leave you.”

  Or would they?

  “Help!” My panic got the best of me, and I screamed as loud as I could. “I’m here. In the mausoleum. Help!”

  There was no answer to my plea, and I waited for what felt like a lifetime but was probably closer to a couple seconds before I tried again.

  “Help! Somebody, help me!”

  Was that a voice I heard in response?

  “Help! Is somebody out there?”

  “Pepper?” I recognized Absalom’s booming voice. It was close, but muffled, like he was outside the mausoleum. “Where you at, girl?”

  “I’m in the mausoleum. There’s a hole in the floor. I fell in and I can’t get out.”

  “In there? In that mausoleum?”

  Honestly, if I wasn’t so incredibly relieved that someone knew where I was, I would have taken the time to get pissed. I controlled the impatience in my voice, but only with effort, and only because I had a sneaky suspicion that if I gave him any excuse at all, Absalom would pretend the whole thing never happened.

  “Get in here,” I told him. “I can’t get out.” As if to prove it, I made another jump for the rim and missed. “I can’t get out by myself. If you could just give me a hand up . . .”

  “In there?” Absalom’s voice sounded closer now, like he was right outside the door. “You want me to come inside?”

  “Of course I want you to come inside. What the—”

  And then it hit me. Absalom’s reluctance. Absalom’s voodoo doll. Absalom’s chilly personality.

  I’d assumed it was all because he was a hardened criminal.

  I never even bothered to think that he might be scared to death to be in a cemetery.

  “Absalom?” I called out, reminding him I was still in trouble so he wouldn’t hightail it out of there. “It’s just a mausoleum. Just a room. Like a small chapel.”

  “Dead people buried in there.”

  “Yeah, there are.” There was no use denying it. He was bound to see the names carved into the walls. “But they’ve been here a long, long time, and there’s never been a problem. I mean, no ghosts or anything.” I crossed my fingers as I said this, just in case one of those pesky spirits who’d greeted me my first day at Monroe Street actually was buried there. “There’s de
finitely no ghosts down here where I am.” I could say this with some authority. “There are worms, though. And spiders!” I felt one skitter up my arm and squealed. “If you could help me out, I’d really appreciate it.”

  For what seemed like forever, there was no reply. Then I saw him peek over the edge of the hole. “You scared of spiders?” Absalom asked.

  “Terrified.” I didn’t have to pretend. I stretched my arms. “If you could just—”

  I never had time to finish. Before I could, Absalom latched onto my hands and pulled. One second I was sailing through the air, seemingly as light as a feather thanks to Absalom’s muscles. The next, I was standing on solid ground.

  “Thank you.” I held a hand to my heart, fighting to keep it from bursting through my ribs, and I was all set to give him a hug to show him how grateful I was.

  Only by that time, Absalom was already out the door.

  I followed him outside, grateful for a lungful of non-moldy air. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

  Rather than answer, he looked around slowly and carefully, as if he expected something dead to pop out from behind the nearest headstone.

  Of course, I knew dead things could pop out from behind headstones. But this did not seem like the right time to mention that.

  Instead, I brushed off my jeans and my shirt again, which didn’t do much good, seeing as I was coated with icky mud. My knees were trembling, my arm was bleeding, my hair hung in my eyes. I plunked down in the dry, prickly grass.

  Doesn’t it figure, that was precisely the moment that Greer showed up. Of course Bianca was with her.

  The supermodel took one look at me, shook her head sadly, and left. Greer, though, quivered with anticipation. “Thought I heard a commotion,” she said. “Not as good as that Sammi beating up on her boyfriend. That was priceless!” She gave me a once-over, and I don’t think it was my imagination. She really did smile when she saw that I looked awful.

  “Looks like you’ve had an accident of some kind.” Greer called her cameraman over. “Get this,” she ordered him. “Let’s have Ms. Martin here tell us what happened.”