Dead Man Talking (22 page)

I thought it best not to answer.

“As a matter of fact, though . . .” He took another drag on his cigarette. “I talked to her that morning. You know, the morning of the day she got killed. Told the cops about it, too. Me and Vera, we were thinking about getting back together again.”

I gave him a level look. “What, so you could beat her up again?”

He stabbed out his cigarette. “Don’t know who’s been telling you that. Ain’t true.”

“Is it true you talked?”

“That morning?” He grinned. “Gospel.”

“And she wanted to see you the next day? She didn’t mention she was coming to Cleveland that evening?”

“Said she was busy. Couldn’t see me that night. That she had a prior commitment.” The way he accentuated the words made me believe he was quoting Vera.

“Do you think she was in town to see a man?”

He sloughed off the thought. “I figured she was seeing somebody else. Otherwise, why would she break up with me? But like I said, we talked. She said she’d had a change of heart. I swear to God, that’s the exact words she used.”

“Did she explain what that meant?”

“Not a clue.” He swirled the ice cubes in his glass. “I figured she was thinking of breaking up with the guy she was seeing. Figured she realized she was missing out on a good thing. So you see . . .” Ganley added another inch of scotch to his glass and downed it in one gulp. “I didn’t have any reason to kill Vera.”

“Not even because you were jealous of the other guy?”

He shrugged like it was no big deal, and I wondered if he was that nonchalant about the whole thing twenty-five years earlier. “She obviously came to her senses. Too bad she got offed before I got her back in the sack.”

“That’s very romantic.” I hoped he realized I didn’t mean it, but the way his eyes glittered in the reflected glow of the stage lights, it was hard to tell. The dancer made her way around the audience so she could collect tips in her G-string, and Ganley watched her. I had to keep him on task, or he’d start tallying up the total so he’d be sure to get his percentage. “You’re telling me your ironclad alibi is that you loved Vera?”

He swiveled his gaze to me. Or more precisely, to the front of my purple top. When he laughed, it made my
skin crawl. “Hell with love! I couldn’t have killed Vera because not three hours after I got off the phone with her, I got nabbed on a drunk and disorderly. I was a little down on my luck at the time and I couldn’t afford bail. So you see, the night Vera was killed, I was in the county jail, locked up good and tight.” He picked up the scotch bottle and offered it in my direction, and when I declined, he poured himself a little more. “Satisfied?” he asked.

I was. In a disappointed sort of way.

I’d already gotten up and turned toward the door when he called after me.

“You’d bring ’em in by the hundreds, honey. If you change your mind about that audition, give me a call.”

In my sweetest voice, I told him I would.

Yeah, right.

When hell froze over, I joined a convent, or I was dumb enough to step out in public again in another Sammi Santiago original.

13

A
ccording to the coin dealer I went to see the next day, the silver dollar we found at Jefferson Lamar’s grave wasn’t in the greatest shape. It wasn’t especially rare. It wasn’t famous for some weird minting error like an upside-down date or anything. It was worth exactly thirty-seven dollars.

Not exactly a fortune.

Which made it not exactly worth mugging me for.

That pretty much sealed the deal. With that piece of the puzzle in place, I was convinced the coin had nothing to do with the attack outside my apartment building, and since the attack—and what it meant in terms of my investigation—was what I was supposed to be thinking about, I was grateful to eliminate it as a possibility. I was sitting on my couch holding the coin, with my legal pad in my lap. I ripped off page three with its question about the coin, wadded the sheet into a ball, and tossed it onto
my coffee table, officially eliminating it as an avenue of investigation.

It wasn’t the most exciting way for a girl to spend a Sunday evening. But believe me when I say that being home alone thinking about clues and murder and a mugging gone (thankfully) wrong wasn’t the worst thing in the world. If I was deep in thought about my investigation, I could avoid answering my phone when it started to ring.

And it was going to start ringing soon.

How did I know?

Well, for one thing, the latest episode of
Cemetery Survivor
was scheduled to start in about five minutes, and when it did, I knew Ella would call immediately to tell me how cute/smart/hard-working I looked. My two aunts would wait a little longer. But then, they’d be busy throughout the show on a three-way call with my mom, giving her the play-by-play. Once the show was over, I was fair game. For all three of them.

As for me watching the show . . .

I’d already thrown out the khakis and the emerald green shirt I’d worn to work on Friday. No way I was going to relive the whole ugly experience by watching myself go down in the mud.

So there I sat with time on my hands and questions spinning through my head. I wondered why anyone would bother to bury a pretty ordinary coin at Jefferson Lamar’s grave. And yes, I couldn’t help it. I wondered, too, if the coin meant anything in terms of Vera Blaine’s murder.

Maybe it was the sitting there thinking and the staring thing. Or maybe I was just getting better at the whole Gift that kept on giving. In the empty spot next to me on the couch, I actually saw a little ripple that reminded me
of the shiver of air around a candle flame—right before Jefferson Lamar showed up.

That explains why I didn’t screech when he said, “That’s a Morgan silver dollar you’re holding. George T. Morgan was the man who designed the art on it, what we collectors call the obverse and the reverse of the coin. The coins were produced between 1878 and 1904, then again in 1921, and the silver they’re made out of came from the Comstock Lode—you know, that big silver strike out in Nevada in the 1850s.”

The only thing I knew about Nevada was that Las Vegas and Reno were in it. The only thing I knew about the 1850s was that I was glad I didn’t live then, I mean, what with the no running water and the lack of fashion choices and—

None of this seemed relevant, so I simply held out my hand so Lamar could see the coin better. “It’s hardly worth anything. I mean, not like some coins are. So why would anyone bother to bury it next to your grave? Maybe somebody owed you money? Or maybe it’s the silver that means something. Or this whole Compost Lode thing.”

“Comstock.” He pushed his big plastic glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Like I said, I used to collect coins. Plenty of people knew about my hobby. We even had a group that met at Central State. You know, prisoners, a few guards, me. It gave the inmates something to look forward to, and something to read about and study between our meetings. I also belonged to a coin group through the church Helen and I attended. I was president for a couple years. But if anyone from the numismatic community left that coin as a sort of gift, I can’t see why. You’d think they would have chosen something more unusual.”

“Or more valuable.” I tossed the coin in the air and
caught it again. “So why take the time and trouble to dig a hole next to your grave and leave it there?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever know.” Lamar sighed. “And I doubt it has anything to do with Vera. How could it?”

He was right, and I was wasting my time on a mystery that wasn’t the mystery I should have been thinking about. With that in mind, I told myself to focus, and reached for the fabric we’d found with the coin so I could wrap it and put it away.

“What’s that?” Lamar pointed at the orange cloth.

I sniffed delicately. “Nasty old fabric. The coin was wrapped in it.”

He scooted forward, and if he could have plucked that piece of cloth from my hands, he would have. Instead, he stopped just short and bent nearer for a better look. “That’s not just old fabric,” he said. “It’s a piece of a Central State prison uniform.”

“You think?” I had never paid any attention to the eight-by-eight square of cloth, and I smoothed it open on the couch between us. If I looked really hard, I could just make out faded black numbers against the orange.

Behind his big-as-boats glasses, Lamar’s eyes gleamed. “It’s a Morgan silver dollar, and Dale Morgan . . . he was an inmate at Central State. He was in the coin group.”

“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.

 

 

 

 

T
he 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.