Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

“It’s for the competition,” I said. I scooted back to the couch and sat down again. “Each team has to find out the most about the famous people buried in the section it’s working on. Team One has all these old early settlers buried in their section. It’s going to be a cinch for them, seeing as half of them are probably related to the early settlers and they probably have their portraits hanging in their ballrooms. So far, Lamar is the only person in our section who’s got any sort of interesting background. Like I said, he was a prison warden. And then someone framed him for murder.”

“Framed? What makes you think that?”

Have I mentioned that Quinn doesn’t know I talk to the dead? I mean, honestly, could I tell him? Ever? So far, I’d been pretty good at throwing him off the ghostly scent, mostly because of that whole bit about us never really getting too close to each other. In a purely non-physical way, of course.

I wasn’t about to blow it now.

“I found out a little bit about Lamar from his cemetery files,” I said, lying again for all I was worth. “There was a notation in it. The information must have come from someone who knew him well. This note in his file, it said that even when he was arrested and convicted, he still said he was innocent. He said he’d been framed, but he didn’t know who did it, so he could never prove it.”

“It certainly is interesting.” I could tell he hated to admit it. “But, hey…” Quinn put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. “You know plenty already. You can put that stuff about how he might have been framed in your report. That will help with the competition, right?”

“I could… It might…” Another thing I might not have mentioned is that I can be just as devious as Quinn. Since I was already sitting next to him, I figured I might as well take advantage of the situation. I tickled my fingers over his thigh. “But I was thinking it might be even better if I could get my hands on some of the original information. You know, like the police files.”

“From back in the eighties?” He was about to drop the whole idea, and I knew it. That’s why I tickled a little more, a little higher. Quinn sucked in a breath.

I moved a little closer. “Those files, they must be somewhere, right? A storage facility? Or maybe they’ve all been put on microfiche or something. You know, like they do with old newspapers at the library. But the information has to exist. It isn’t all that long ago.”

“No, but…” Quinn was done playing games. He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and yanked me closer. His eyes locked with mine and his mouth was only a fraction of an inch away when he asked, “If I get you that file, what do I get in return?”

“What do you want in return?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take, but I knew one thing for sure: Quinn Harrison is a man of his word. I was going to get that file. And a little something extra, in the meantime.

The way I remember it, I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Maybe that’s why the next morning, I wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I got to Monroe Street.

I had decided to make Jefferson Lamar’s gravesite our unofficial headquarters. Pretty smart, huh? Something told me I’d be spending a lot of time there, anyway, and this saved me the trip back and forth. With that in mind, I stopped at the tent/office and collected everything I figured we were going to need for the day and sent my team on ahead. When I found them, Sammi was sitting on a low headstone polishing her nails a garish orange that didn’t match her red shorts or the purple T-shirt emblazoned with the picture of some saint. His halo sparkled in the sunlight. Reggie and Delmar each had a shovel, and though they were supposed to wait for further instruction, they’d already started poking around. There were a couple divots of dry earth and brown grass sitting on top of Lamar’s gravestone.

Crazy Jake ignored me completely. Then again, he was a little busy talking to himself while he snapped shot after shot with one of those cardboard disposable cameras.

Absalom was-

I stopped in my tracks and stared. Absalom was standing in front of a headstone nearly as tall as him. It was a solid piece of granite shaped into a hulking rectangle. There was a foot-high figure on top of it made from wire and white fabric. It had a head of fuzzy hair that looked like cotton candy. The figure was wearing beads that reminded me of Ella’s. Absalom was pouring it a glass of rum.

“Is… that… I mean… Did you…?” Yes, I stammered. It is so unlike me, but remember, I hadn’t gotten my beauty sleep (though I had gotten a whole lot more). I choked back my surprise and pointed a finger at the thing. “Is that a voodoo doll?”

“You want to make something of it?” Absalom’s voice was a lot like Absalom himself, big and heavy, so no, I didn’t want to make something of it. Instead, I watched as he lit a candle in a yellow votive glass and placed it in front of the doll.

The way I figured it, it was as good a time as any to get down to business.

“OK, people!” I sounded as perky as a phys ed teacher and reminded myself that was not like me, either. It certainly wasn’t the image I wanted to portray, for my team or for the TV cameras. Before Greer showed her gnomey little face, I knew I had to get my act together.

I found a right-height tombstone that was nice and flat, and sat down on it. “We need to come up with a plan,” I said.

Sammi rolled her eyes.

Delmar and Reggie kept digging.

Crazy Jake put his camera three inches from my nose and snapped.

When the light show stopped flashing in my eyes and I could almost see again, I realized Absalom was standing right in front of me, his massive arms folded over his even more massive chest. “You’re not serious, are you?” he asked.

I guess there was something about that booming voice of his (not to mention the whole menacing presence thing) that made his fellow teammates sit up and take notice. One by one, they drifted closer, and suddenly, I was surrounded. There wasn’t room for me to stand, not without getting too close to Crazy Jake. With no choice, I kept my seat and looked up at the felons… er… parolees (or was it probationers?) around me.

“Look, I could throw you a line of bull,” I told them. “But something tells me you’ve all been lied to before, so I’m just going to lay this on the line. You don’t want to be here? Well, I don’t want to be here, either.”

I was trying to be flexible, so I ignored it when Sammie mumbled a curse. I continued.

“None of us have any choice. I’m here because my boss says I have to be here. You’re here…” With Reggie glaring, Absalom staring, and Sammi sneering, this did not seem to be the time to bring up their criminal pasts.

“I’ve never done a cemetery restoration before,” I said instead, and big points for me for being so honest. “So I’m not really sure how this is supposed to work. I do know that those TV cameras will be over here in a little while, and when they are, we should at least try to look like we know what we’re doing.”

“Won’t make no difference.” Delmar scuffed the toe of one sneaker against the bare ground. “You know what’s gonna happen. That TV show is going to make us look like losers. That producer…” He gave the word an acid twist, and I decided right then and there that Delmar was a good judge of character. “She’s gonna make those rich ladies look better than us. No matter what we do.”

“Then I guess we’re going to have to do what we do so well, she won’t be able to do that.”

It was a convoluted answer on my part, and to cover up my inadequacies and try and look in control, I stood. None of my teammates gave an inch. In fact, Reggie took a step closer, his eyes narrowed. Crazy Jake stuck the camera under my nose. “I’m taking pictures,” he said. Lucky for my retinas, he didn’t demonstrate. “Then we’ll know what it looked like. You know, before and after.”