Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

“So you think he may have left the coin for you?”

Lamar rubbed his chin. “It’s possible, I suppose. Dale was a small-time gambler who got in over his head and got in plenty of trouble because of it. That’s how he ended up at Central State. But inside, he had a good heart. I was certain he could be rehabilitated. Maybe once he got out of prison and turned his life around, he left the coin because he was grateful I had such faith in him.”

“It’s possible.” Thinking, I tossed the coin. “Any idea what happened to this Dale guy?”

He shook his head. “None.”

“Is there a way I could check? I mean, if he wasn’t rehabilitated? If he’s still in the system?”

Lamar didn’t look pleased at the thought. “What about that Inter-thing I’ve heard people talking about? Interweb? Interweave?”

“Internet. Perfect!” I hopped off the couch and grabbed my purse. I don’t have a computer at home, but I do have a key to the administration building at Garden View and the code to get me into the side gate that employees use when they’re leaving late and the main gates are closed.

While I was at it, heading out on a Sunday night gave me the perfect excuse for not answering phone calls. I was busy, I’d tell Ella, my mom, and my aunts when they finally did track me down, and as if the Universe heard me, my phone rang at that exact moment.

It was Ella, but I didn’t answer.

After all, I was busy.

The good news was that thanks to the Internet, Dale Morgan was easy to find.

The bad news was that Jefferson Lamar’s faith in the possibility of his rehabilitation had not been justified.

Morgan was incarcerated at a prison facility not far from Cleveland, but when I called him the next day, he refused to come to the phone.

The good news was that I kept trying, and the third time, he agreed to take my call.

And the bad news?

“I never get any visitors,” Morgan whined. “You want to talk to me, lady, you’re going to have to come here and do it.”

I told him I would.

Then I found a thousand ways to avoid it, and is it any wonder? How could I visit Dale Morgan in prison when I’d never even been out to visit my dad? And how could I do that? Ever? If I did, I’d have to face what he’d done to our family. I’d spent too much time learning the fine art of denial to let that happen.

Fortunately, I had lots of things to keep me from thinking about it. One of those was obsessing about our Cemetery Survivor score. We were ahead by ten points one week, fell back the next, and though I told myself time and again that it didn’t really matter, it really did. I was tired of being short-changed by the Greers of the world. I was tired of being snubbed by the Mrs. Lambs. I wanted to win, and I wanted to win bad.

I also kept busy dealing with the ever-growing groups of fans around the cemetery. And fielding the gifts that kept arriving. This time, it wasn’t flowers. It was a box of cheap candy one day, a bottle of off-brand perfume the next, then a tube of flashy-and all wrong for my skin tone-pink lipstick. If I had the time, I might have been appalled at my secret admirer’s taste. The way it was, I tossed each gift in the nearest cemetery trash container and got on with my life. That included spending countless hours at Monroe Street working on the restoration. We finished ordering headstones from the government for those veterans who were entitled to them. We planted grass. In between hauling and loading, designing flower beds (we left that up to Delmar), and watering, we worked on the art show fundraiser.

I oohed and ahhed at the appropriate times when Sammi showed off the god-awful outfits she was planning to exhibit at the show. I praised the voodoo dolls Absalom crafted (they really were kind of cute), and encouraged Delmar’s drawings. I sat, glassy-eyed and brain-dead, as Crazy Jake bored me with thousands of his photographs. Reggie and I went over ideas for displaying the art, and with Ella’s help, we secured a venue that was sure to knock the socks off Team One.

Our art show was going to be held at the Garfield Memorial at Garden View.

That’s Garfield. Like President James A. Garfield, and don’t worry about not knowing anything about him. I didn’t, either, until I went to work at Garden View. Then I found out that he was the twentieth president of the United States. He was assassinated back in 1881, and he and his wife are entombed in a crypt in a big honkin’ memorial that sits smack in the center of Garden View. A crypt? Oh, that means they aren’t buried; their caskets are out in the open for everyone to see.

Yes, it’s creepy.

The memorial itself is a huge building filled with stained glass, mosaics, and bas-reliefs of the president’s life (no worries about knowing what those are, either, because they’re basically just sculptures that project out of walls). Since the building itself is so elaborate, we decided to keep our exhibit simple. In each quadrant of the rotunda on the first floor of the monument, one of our artists would display whatever he (or she) wanted on the six-foot-tall, four-foot-wide panels Reggie was building. Jake insisted he needed twenty panels for his photos, but we convinced him that minimalism was all the rage, and he finally agreed to stick with five like everyone else.

It was perfect, and enough of a coup to put Team One’s knickers in a twist. The moment our fundraiser was announced on Cemetery Survivor , calls started coming in to the station and tickets to the event were selling like hotcakes. We were going to make a bundle for the Monroe Street volunteers, and make Team One look like losers in the process.

Because I didn’t want to act all superior, I was trying not to think about that on the Saturday afternoon I arrived at Mae Tannager’s Shaker Heights home for Team One’s fundraising tea.

I said home , right? Silly me. I should have said mansion .

The Tannagers live in a monstrosity of a house built in the early 1900s. It has tastefully decorated rooms, high ceilings, and a maid’s quarters on the third floor. I would bet any money they’re still in use. The pink walls, white furniture, and gold bric-a-brac are so not my taste, but I was plenty impressed, anyway. So were my team members.

“Sweet mother of pearl!” Wearing freshly pressed black pants and an ivory-colored silk camp shirt that emphasized the impressive breadth of his shoulders, Absalom stepped inside the front door and whistled below his breath. “This ain’t a house. It’s a-”

“Palace.” In honor of the occasion, Sammi had designed a summery strapless dress out of Wonder Bread bags. When she sighed and looked around in… well, in wonder… the yellow, blue, and red dots jiggled.

Our fans-many of them already inside sipping tea and nibbling tiny sandwiches-cheered our arrival.

“Pepper, you’re looking fabulous, girl!” a lady called to me, and it’s not like I’m vain or anything, but I knew she was right. For our fundraiser, I was planning on pulling out all the stops. For Team One’s, I’d toned things down a bit, but honestly, that didn’t mean I had to look like a frump. After all, I was planning on seeing Bianca that day, so I’d chosen my outfit wisely. I was wearing a taffeta dress decorated with huge orange red poppies with gold centers. The dress had a V neckline, a low back, and a gathered skirt that swished and twirled when I walked.

I twirled to wave to our groupies.

My skirt twirled, too.

“But, Pepper…” There was a group of fans around us, and I didn’t see the person who started talking, but I heard the voice. It belonged to a man, and I saw his hand shoot out of the crowd, reaching in my direction. “Pepper, what about the-”