Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

“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, flowering shrubs. There was a bench in a clearing that was now empty, a small trickling fountain beside it. I glanced from the picture to my team. “What in the world…? Where…?”

“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 tipped 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 matter of minutes. Though I found a stash of hash in Delmar’s bag, a half-eaten Egg McMuffin in the sack, and more lipstick than even I carried (none of it especially suited to her complexion) in Sammi’s purse, there was no sign of the wooden box or the coin.

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 don’t make noise, do they? And something told me there were plenty of worms down here.

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?”