It was a long day, and I sleepwalked through it like a woman … well, I was going to say a woman possessed, but honestly, it was too horrible to even think about. I dragged through an early morning meeting about customer service. I hauled myself out into the cemetery when some folks from the Western Reserve Historical Society showed up to check out the grave of the first woman from Ohio to ever be elected to Congress. The fresh air should have done me some good. Instead, the day’s sunshine only left me feeling like a balloon with a slow leak.
Which explains why I wasn’t fast enough on my feet to dodge Ella when she met me in the hallway as I was making my way back to my office.
‘I’ve got the best idea!’ She herself was a sunbeam that day in a bright yellow dress with orange accents. It actually hurt my eyes. ‘I’ve been thinking, about that idea you suggested for an article for the next newsletter. The one about how changing tastes in architecture have affected the look of the cemetery over the years.’
I, of course, hadn’t suggested the article at all. The idea had come from Chet Houston and, when he proposed it, I thought it was a little lah-di-dah sounding. Chet liked nothing better than to get down and dirty with his stories, and the ones he’d written for me in the past were more in the way of human interest: the burlesque dancer buried in section seventeen, the disgraced politician in an unmarked grave near the front gates, the bank robber buried beneath the spreading limbs of a pine tree not far from the administration building.
Chet, though, wanted to spread his journalistic wings and at least to him, a more in-depth article sounded like a good way to do it. As I’d told him at the time, ‘Knock yourself out,’ and since I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of his ectoplasmic self since, maybe that’s exactly what he was doing.
‘Architecture, sure.’ It wasn’t much of a response, but hey, the way I was feeling, I figured Ella was lucky to get even that out of me.
She shuffled into my office behind me, so full of energy and so enthusiastic about the article, she could barely stand still. ‘I’m thinking front page,’ she said.
I would be sure to let Chet know.
I flopped into my desk chair. ‘I’ll get to work on it,’ I told her.
‘Good. That’s great. I’m anxious for you to get started.’
I stared at her through blurry eyes.
‘I mean, right now,’ she said.
‘Right—’
‘Get crackin’!’ Ella laughed. ‘The light is perfect this afternoon. You can start getting some pictures and with the sky being so blue and the daffodils in bloom … well, you couldn’t ask for a better day. While you’re at it and out on the grounds, you can start making a list of the various architectural styles you’ll see. But you know that, don’t you?’ Like she hadn’t meant to say it in the first place, she waved her hands in front of her like that could get rid of the suggestion. ‘I’m sorry, sometimes I know I sound like I did back when the girls were in high school and I was trying to help them out with their term papers. You know, suggesting that first they take notes then make an outline and, oh, how many times I reminded them that they needed to focus on the most important aspects of a subject rather than try to write about every little facet because that’s too overwhelming! You don’t need that kind of advice from me. Not anymore. The newsletters you’ve been producing are wonderful, Pepper. I’m just as proud of you as I can be!’
Even the smile I had to fight to give her wasn’t enough. Urging me on, Ella motioned toward the door. ‘I’m thinking of a two-part article,’ she said. ‘Or maybe it should be three. You could do gravestones in one, statues in another. But let’s start with mausoleums. Those are the most spectacular, and there are so many different styles. Come on, Pepper!’ When I didn’t move fast enough (actually, I didn’t move at all), she zipped over, grabbed my hand and dragged me out of my chair. For a short, round woman, Ella can be pretty tough.
She put a hand to the small of my back and pushed me to the door. ‘Get going while the sun is still bright! And don’t come back until you have pictures. Lots of pictures. You’ll need a couple dozen at least and make sure you get some of each kind of architecture – classical revival and baroque and Egyptian and Gothic and …’
I can’t say for sure, but I think she was still talking long after I left the office.
So here’s the thing – any other day I would have been happy to get out of administration building. I mean, there’s always something I can find to do that has nothing to do with cemetery work, right? Sometimes it’s investigating. Sometimes it’s a long lunch. Sometimes it’s a quick shopping trip that, more often than not, ends up eating up more time than I expect but gives me a much-needed breather from the humdrum of Garden View.
That day, a little humdrum would have been welcomed.
At least humdrum would have helped take my mind off the worries that ate away at my composure and tap-tap-tapped inside my brain like the woodpecker I heard knocking against a tree when I schlepped into the parking lot.
If I was thinking straight – if being the operative word – I would have meandered around near the administration building; there are plenty of mausoleums nearby. But my brain wasn’t working and my body was on autopilot. I got into my car and headed to the other side of the cemetery where I knew I’d find plenty of what Ella was looking for.
I took pictures of Egyptian-inspired mausoleums, and classical revival ones, too, and in spite of Ella’s advice, I didn’t bother with notes because let’s face it, anything I needed to know about the mausoleums and who was buried in them, she could tell me and I could tell Chet. Done with my first stop, I got back in my car and made three others, hoping the whole time that the warm spring breeze and bright sunshine would take my mind off my dark thoughts.
It didn’t, and after an hour of picture taking and another hour of sitting on a bench and brooding near an especially grand mausoleum erected in honor of some train magnate from more than one hundred years ago, I knew there was only one place in the cemetery that matched my mood. I headed for a section where I knew I’d find many of the examples of mausoleum architecture Ella had mentioned along with silence, emptiness, and plenty of gloom.
Garden View is a privately owned cemetery and we do plenty of fund-raising to make sure we have enough money for things like grounds maintenance. As such, the roads inside the cemetery’s walls are in good shape. Still, maneuvering around gentle curves and down a little-used road that led to a wide, grassy expanse that was on a lower level than the rest of the cemetery is hard enough when I’m alert and paying attention. What with the way my head throbbed, the narrowness of the road, and the fact that the trees that overhung it meant moving into deep shadow one second and out of it the next into bright sunlight, it was more of a challenge that day than ever.
I finally made it and parked my car near a monument where candles twinkled in glass holders and visitors had left old vinyl record albums. As always when I was nearby, I stopped to say hello to Damon Curtis, rock star legend who also happened to be a ghost I’d met – and fell in love with – in the course of one of my first investigations.
‘Wish you could help me now,’ I whispered, but Damon didn’t answer back. After years of yearning for eternal rest, I’d helped him find it, and he’d left me feeling lost and alone.
Pretty much like I was feeling right now.
If only I could turn off the worry center in my brain!
Because I couldn’t – because I knew I never would until I did something to help Quinn – I glanced around the little valley. There were a dozen mausoleums down there, and many of them were more than one hundred and fifty years old, as old as Garden View itself. I tramped from one to the other, snapping pictures from all angles. Most people don’t live and breathe cemeteries – I mean, not like Ella does – so most people don’t realize that mausoleums are really burial chambers. They’re free-standing structures and, inside, their residents (it’s an Ella word and I’d heard it so often, that’s how I thought of them now, too) are either interred in niches along the wall or, in some cases, on a lower level with a stairway leading below ground.
Then and now, mausoleums cost a bundle, and only the wealthiest could afford them, but the ones here in the valley were so old, no one had been buried in them for many years, and anyone who’d ever come to visit was long dead, too. Some of them had metal gates across their doorways, and they were rusted shut. Stone steps were cracked, and two of the stained glass windows that graced a couple of the mausoleums had been broken.
It was sad, and if I wasn’t so darned tired, I would have made a list to give to maintenance so they could get down here and get to work making repairs.
Tired.
Maintenance.
Something about those two words penetrated the fog in my brain, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it was. I moved away from one Gothic-inspired mausoleum to one with a flat roof and sphinxes on either side of the door.
Tired.
Maintenance.
As real as if they’d been whispered on the wind, the words tickled my brain again.
Automatically, I glanced around, half expecting and more than half hoping that Damon had somehow shown up, but I was the only one down in the little valley.
And I was so, so tired.
Tired. Like Wally said he was from working so hard.
With a kick like a double espresso, the thought hit and I was suddenly wide awake.
Wally took naps in an unused mausoleum. Everybody who worked at Garden View knew it.
‘Wally took naps in an unused mausoleum!’ I called up to the blue sky, and to Damon, too, wherever he was, and I hotfooted it over to the road and started with the mausoleum closest to it.
Locked.
So was the next mausoleum. And the next. And the one after that.
But the next one …
When the mausoleum door moved at my touch, I let out a breath of amazement.
‘Wally took naps in an unused mausoleum,’ I told myself one last time, and with one breath for courage and another so that I could get a lungful of fresh air before I stepped into the land of the dead, I went inside.
After all the time and all the worry and all the wracking of my brain, it ended up taking no time at all to find Eliot Ness’s ashes. They were still in the little mahogany box Dean McClure had made for them, tucked into a corner between where the remains of someone named Isaac Chamberline (1820–1877) were resting in a niche and the stained glass window that tinted the entire inside of his mausoleum a color that reminded me of blood.
I grabbed the box and hugged it to my chest, realizing as I did that it all made perfect sense. Wally was possessed when he killed Dean McClure and took the ashes. He wasn’t when he stashed the ashes in the most logical of places – the place he often came to hide out from his job responsibilities. If I needed proof, it was there in the sleeping bag Wally had left on the floor, the stack of magazines next to it, and the coffee cup, too, the one that said Wally is the Man! across it in big green letters. The way I remembered it, Ella had given Wally the cup the Christmas before. I wondered how she’d feel if she knew he was using it while he loafed on the clock.
I stepped out of the mausoleum and took a deep breath of fresh air. I’d like to say I did a little happy dance on the way back to my car, but let’s face it, just because the ashes were in my hot little hands didn’t mean I was carefree.
I still had to figure out if I was going to sprinkle the ashes at the lake so that Eliot Ness could finally enjoy the eternal rest he’d earned.
Or use them to ransom Quinn’s soul.
I hadn’t realized how long I’d been out on the grounds; by the time I got back to the administration building, the shadows were long and most of the cars in the parking lot were gone. I grabbed the ashes and, even though there was no one around, I wasn’t taking any chances, I held them close to my chest when I went inside to get my purse.
Where was I headed after that?
Honestly, at that point, I wasn’t sure. I only knew that I needed to do some serious thinking and, while I was at it, I wanted to call Quinn. And my mother. I wanted to see who was and who wasn’t possessed. Whoever wasn’t … well, maybe that person could help me think my way to a solution to the problem that was Al Capone.
Jennine was gone for the day, most of the lights in the building were off and, though I didn’t remember closing my office door when I left, it was closed when I got to it and the light inside the office was off.
I pushed open the door and sucked in a breath of astonishment and horror when every light in the room came on.
And who could blame me?
The light spilled over the pink and white bunting that had been hung across my bookcase. It glistened against the bunches of pink and white balloons tied to my desk chair and my guest chairs and to the table that had been dragged into the room where a sheet cake with pink and white frosting shared center stage with a variety of packages wrapped in colorful paper.
Ella’s three daughters, Rachel, Sarah, and Ariel stood behind my desk and they gave me half-hearted waves and the kind of smiles people offer when they’re not sure if their friends are going to love them or hate them or ever forgive them for what’s about to happen.
I guess I couldn’t blame them, because what was about to happen was that Ella and my mother jumped in front of me, paper party hats on their heads and balloons in their hands, and yelled, ‘Surprise!’