Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

“It’s always good to get all that messy stuff out of the way right up front.” He offered me his arm, and I took it. “I suppose you’ve got to stick around, right? Meet and greet, that sort of thing?”

“I do.” We did a turn around the lawn, and I smiled and nodded to the fans around us. “I suppose you want to know more about what happened to our art show.”

“You realize this is serious, don’t you? Ella says she can’t imagine who could have done it. But she’s worried. She says she thinks you might have a stalker and-”

“I knew that’s why you were here.” I couldn’t help it; disappointment seeped into my every word. “Or does your showing up have something to do with Bad Dog Raphael being here?”

He looked over his shoulder, found Raphael in the crowd, and took a careful look. “It does seem odd. One day, you’re asking way too many questions about him, the next, here he is, live and in person.”

“Maybe he’s a Cemetery Survivor fan, just like you.”

“Maybe.” In one smooth maneuver, Quinn dropped my arm and stepped in front of me so that we were face-to-face. His voice dipped. So did his gaze. When he was done looking me over, he looked me in the eye. “Maybe I wanted to see you. Maybe I really did miss you.”

It was (almost) a remarkably straightforward comment from a man who was usually anything but. Is it any wonder I wasn’t willing to accept it at face value?

“You wanted to know more about the gifts I’ve been finding at the cemetery.” I could have kicked myself for letting that slip.

Especially when Quinn’s eyes lit. Once a cop, always a cop, even at a fundraiser. I could practically see him turn from mildly interested to plenty worried. “Gifts? Ella didn’t tell me.”

“Ella doesn’t know.”

“You’re being careful?”

I laughed. “I’m carrying a voodoo doll with me everywhere I go. Does that count?”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Neither am I.” My purse was inside the memorial so I couldn’t prove it by getting the doll for him to see. “I didn’t realize I had a problem until tonight. I’ll be careful.”

“Good.” He nodded. “Look, if you’re not busy later…”

We were on surer footing now. Or at least we would have been if I knew where I stood with Quinn. “I hope you don’t think that’s what you bid on,” I said.

He was not so easily put off. “Three thousand dollars is a lot of money,” he reminded me.

“And I’m worth every penny.”

Quinn backed away. “I bet you have people you’re supposed to be talking to.”

“And you? What are you going to do?”

He pursed his lips. “Oh, I think I’ll wander over and chat up Bad Dog. And while I’m at it, I might as well talk to some people and see what I can find out about the vandalism inside the memorial.” He looked in the direction of the long drive that loops around that part of the cemetery. “My car’s parked over there. I’ll meet you later.”

It wasn’t a question.

But then, he didn’t need an answer.

That night gave me a better appreciation for why Sammi had been so mellow ever since Virgil was back in the picture. Not that I knew the details about what happened between Sammi and Virgil. Believe me, the almost-too-up-close-and-personal encounter I’d had with their love life at Team One’s tea was as close as I ever wanted to get. But I did know that by the time Quinn left my apartment the next morning, things were looking up.

I was in a good mood, and it sure didn’t hurt that we’d raised a whole bunch of money at our auction. Five thousand six hundred and twenty-five dollars to be exact, enough for us to earn the twenty-five bonus points we so desperately needed. Who said sex doesn’t sell better than tea?

I also heard from Ella that the Garden View trustees weren’t as mad about the auction as they were thrilled by the publicity we’d garnered at the event, including a front-page picture (Reggie front and center with Ella racing up to claim him) in the next day’s Plain Dealer. Greer got some terrific footage, too. She even admitted it. With any luck, the next episode of Cemetery Survivor would show me and my teammates looking like the soon-to-be winners I knew we were.

The best part of the whole thing (well, not counting the Quinn part of the equation) was that plowing our way through the art show disaster and pulling off the auction made my team more of a team than ever. Suddenly, we were working together seamlessly, and by the middle of the next week, we finished the leveling and grass planting, got a trickling fountain up and going just as the judges came by for a look-see, and convinced the city that the tree-lined lane into our section needed re-paving.

Life was good. Quinn and I planned to see each other on both the following Friday and Saturday, and with all that taken care of, I was in a good place to take time for some serious sleuthing.

Did that mean I was going to see Dale Morgan, the guy in prison who might be able to tell me something about the coin buried at Lamar’s grave?

Not a chance! Instead I decided it was time to pay a visit to the scene of the crime.

The next Thursday, I had plans to get out of Monroe Street early, but we ran into a problem with a broken water line. If we let the water run all night, it would ruin our newly planted grass, so though I volunteered to stay there on my own, my team waited with me for the Water Department to arrive. By the time they took care of the leak, it was nearly seven, and that was later than I’d hoped to get started. But it was summer, and that meant it would stay light until around nine. If I was quick, I could use the time wisely. I left the cemetery and got onto the freeway that snakes along Cleveland’s water-front, headed for the Lake View Motel.

I’m an upper-middle class suburban girl, born and bred, but even I know there are parts of the city that used to be decent and have now been swallowed whole by poverty and decay. That’s where I was headed. Sure enough, when I followed my MapQuest directions to the Lake View, I found myself in a part of town where I was surrounded by empty lots, boarded-up houses, and small factories that looked like they had been locked and shuttered before I was born.

The Lake View stood on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie. The view alone was worth a million bucks: blue water, puffy clouds, a couple sailboats. They say that from some places on the lake’s shoreline, you can actually see all the way to Canada, but here in Cleveland, the only thing visible when you look to the north is water. At that time of the evening, the sun was just slipping in the western sky, and its blinding light added stripes the color of my hair to the water.

Too bad that sunshine wasn’t blinding enough to block out the ugliness that was all that was left of the vacant motel.

I slowed the car and pulled into the pocked parking lot. The Lake View was a long, low building that extended out like an L from a center door with the faded words FRONT DESK over it. Once upon a time, it had been painted white with green trim. These days, the paint was faded, chipped, and cracked. Most of the picture windows that looked out at the parking lot were boarded. A few of the boards were missing, and in this light, the gaping holes left by broken windows looked like eye sockets.

“And you are being way too dramatic.” I reminded myself of this as I parked near the center of the building and grabbed the file I’d gotten from Quinn. According to the photos in the file, Vera had been killed in room 12. I glanced around to get the lay of the land, and then headed off to my left.

The door to room 12 was either locked or rusted shut, but fortunately, it was one of the rooms that had a broken window and only a few scrappy pieces of board covering the hole. Luckier still, the window frame was no more than a foot up from the brick base of the building. Careful to keep clear of the sharp teeth of glass along the lower edge of the window, I stepped through the hole and into the room where, twenty-five years earlier, Vera Blaine had been beaten and shot to death.