Dead Man Talking

Just thinking about drinking it made me feel like I was going to throw up.

I looked up from the coffee cup, and maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t surprised to find Qui

I’d like to say I sniffed, but the noise I made was way less polite than that. I swigged, and when he handed me a handkerchief, I grabbed it gratefully and wiped my nose and eyes.

“We were just doing research,” I said, telling Qui

“And this Sammi Santiago…” He consulted a small, leather-bound notebook. “She ran out of the room?”

“You know Sammi!” I felt I could get away with this explanation because Qui

“And the car?”

I thought back to the moment I hopped out the window. “I only saw it from the back. It wasn’t new. I could tell that. It was gray. Or maybe white. It was getting dark, and it was hard to tell.”

“Did anybody think to get the license plate number?”

I shrugged. After the first detective on the scene interviewed me, a nice uniformed officer sat me down in the patrol car, got a blanket out of the trunk, and draped it over my shoulders. The blanket sagged. Qui

“It’s OK,” Qui

I was, and it didn’t make me feel one bit better. When he made a move to get out of the car, I plucked at his sleeve. “How did you know I was here?”

“I heard the call on the radio. The dispatcher mentioned the Lake View.” His expression was dead serious. “I remembered that file you asked for, so I figured you were here. They said there was a victim, a woman. I thought-” He didn’t finish the sentence, just slid out of the car.

Before he could walk away, I leaned over to see him better. “Did you call Virgil?”

“I’ll leave that up to the patrol guys,” he said. He stooped down to look me in the eye. “We’re done talking to you for now, though somebody will probably be by tomorrow to interview you again. You want me to follow you home?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Fresh tears welled, and I didn’t even bother to brush them away. “I’m a little confused.”

He nodded. “It’s the shock. I loaded your coffee with sugar. That ought to help.” He looked toward the Mustang. “You stay put for a few minutes, and when I can break away, we’ll get you out of here.”

He’d already walked away before I had a chance to tell him that would be fine. I had a million questions that demanded answers, and not enough energy to move a muscle. I sat in the back of the patrol car, and after a while, though I don’t remember drinking it, I saw that my coffee cup was empty. Qui

I guess my relationship with Qui

“You OK?” The blanket was still hanging from my shoulders, and Absalom straightened it. “You look awful.”

“I just can’t believe it.” Like I needed to tell them that? “I don’t suppose any of the cops said anything. About anything they’ve found? Or who could have done this?”

“Seems to me, you’re the best one who could answer that.” Absalom was right, but he didn’t press the point, and I don’t think it was because he was willing to cut me any slack. He looked tired. “All they did was ask us what we were doing here.”

“And you told them…?”

Reggie’s shrug said it all. “Told them we was following you. And that you was doing research. For the restoration at the cemetery.”

As far as it went, it was true, but it wasn’t the whole story, and it was about time they knew it. I sighed. “What I’ve really been doing is wasting time,” I said. “I think I know who buried that coin at Jefferson Lamar’s grave. He’s a man named Dale Morgan, and I should have talked to him long ago. I would have, if I wasn’t too scared to do what I knew I had to do.”

Delmar’s eyes were red, like he’d been crying. Because he didn’t want me to see, he hung his head. “You ain’t scared of nothin’,” he said. “You ran out of that room, just like the rest of us did.”

“But maybe I wouldn’t have been here in the first place. Not if I talked to Dale Morgan first. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe if I found out what he knows, maybe Sammi wouldn’t be-”

A noise from behind us stopped me, and I turned just in time to see a couple paramedics lift Sammi’s body onto a stretcher and put it in an ambulance.

I don’t know what it was about watching the scene that knocked the shock out of me. I do know that when it was gone, the only thing left behind was exhaustion.

My knees were weak and my shoulders sagged. I barely heard Absalom when he asked, “What you going to do?”

“I du

I listened to my own words wash back at me, and a chill like the touch of a dead hand tingled up my legs and into my body. My veins filled with ice water.

I stood there thinking for so long, Absalom figured something was wrong. He waved a hand in front of my face. “Pepper? You OK?”

If only he knew. I was as far from OK as it was possible to get.

I threw off the blanket, and I was in my car and out of the parking lot before any of them could ask where I was going.

At Garden View, there’s a gate that employees use when they come into work early or leave late. It’s in an out-of-the-way place, and not many people know it’s there. Those of us who do have access to the code that unlocks it.

There is no such entrance at Monroe Street. The cemetery isn’t as big, for one thing, and since the only people on the payroll are city maintenance workers who come and go in daylight hours, there’s really no need for anything but the main gate.

Which means that gate gets locked every evening.

Which is a shame since by the time I drove across town and parked in front of the cemetery, it was long past sunset.

Which explains why I had to climb over the iron fence.

I am not by nature an athletic person. Besides a sweat (never a pretty thing), I broke a couple fingernails. And ripped my jeans. I got to the top of the head-high fence and held my breath, panicking at the height and the possibilities that spread out in front of me in a litany of disasters: broken bones, concussions, mussed hair.