Thank goodness for that box we’d snarfed out of the Team One picnic basket. It was nice and hard, and the one side that wasn’t rotted away had a pointy corner. The guy was wearing a ski mask so there was no way I could see his face. I could, however, watch his eyes spin when I hit him in the side of the head.
He grunted a curse, and I took off like a ballerina bat out of hell. I wasn’t dumb enough to stop and try to unlock the door into my apartment building. Instead, I raced straight ahead to the corner where my street intersected with Mayfield Road, the heart of Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood. It was a beautiful Thursday evening in the middle of the summer, and I knew the restaurants and bars up and down the street would be busy with tourists and diners. There was safety in numbers, and feeling safer in an area where bistro tables lined the sidewalks and people all around me chatted and sipped wine, I stopped long enough to look over my shoulder.
There was no sign of the man with the knife.
That was the coda of my little performance.
Mademoiselle Adrienne would have been proud.
The next morning I had a meeting with Ella at Garden View to discuss the art show set up, and I got there early. I sat at my desk, thinking about what I’d been thinking about all night: Who had I offended? I pulled out a yellow legal pad and wrote down my theories while I fingered the tiny round bandage I’d stuck on my neck to hide the nick from the attacker’s knife. Between him and Sammi, my neck looked like I worked the women’s wrestling circuit.
Did Bad Dog Raphael send the guy with the knife?
I wrote that at the top of page one.
Or was it Reno Bob, feeling a little nervous thanks to all the questions I’d asked?
That was the heading I scribbled on page two.
Did the attack outside my apartment have something to do with the box and the coin I took out of my purse the minute I got home and hid under my bed?
I wrote that on page three, then crossed out the line about where the box was hidden, just in case somebody who might be after the coin got a look at my legal pad.
Maybe Team One has a hit man on staff and the nerve to send him to snuff me out because we raided their precious picnic baskets?
Maybe not.
I tore page four from the pad, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it in the wastebasket. At the same time, I stifled a yarn.
In spite of the heroic (not to mention artistic) stand I’d taken against that knife-wielding creep, I’d spent most of the night too wired to sleep and feeling like a victim. Believe me, I didn’t like it one bit. Helpless and frightened does not look good on me. But facts are facts, and the fact is, once I was safely home, I checked three times to make sure my door was locked. I pushed my couch up against it so nobody could kick it down and get to me. I slept with one eye open. And the lights on. And the blinds shut. And the curtains closed.
The good news is that, apparently, even feeling like a victim has its upside. It made me think like a victim, and thinking like a victim, I just naturally thought about Vera Blaine.
What if Vera’s death didn’t have anything to do with Jefferson Lamar?
I wrote this at the top of a new page.
What if Lamar was just the unlucky sucker who got blamed? What if no one wanted to frame him? What if…
I chewed on the end of my pen, thinking about the right way to word my question so that it would stay clear in my head.
What if someone really just wanted Vera Blaine to die?
This was not a new thought. It had first occurred to me during the long, restless night. When I finally gave up even trying to fall asleep, I went into my kitchen, grabbed a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia (it was Quinn’s favorite, but since it didn’t look like he was going to be around to eat it any time soon, I figured I might as well), and went through the police file about Vera’s death one more time.
This time, I read her obituary carefully and found out she was the daughter of George and Natalie Blaine, that she didn’t have any siblings, that she had once been a Girl Scout, and-most important-that she was buried right there at Garden View.
Which explains why I was at the cemetery a full hour and a half before I was supposed to meet with Ella.
I flicked on my computer and looked up Vera’s burial information, found the section and grave number, printed it out so I wouldn’t forget, and headed outside. That early on a Friday morning, there weren’t any visitors around, but I heard the hum of the motors as the grounds crew cut the grass.
They were working in the oldest sections of the cemetery. I headed in the other direction and found Vera’s grave tucked between a row of evergreens and a bank of rhododendrons long past blooming. It was marked by a simple blush-colored slab of granite with the inscription: OUR DAUGHTER, VERA BLAINE. 1962-1984. There was no mention of murder.
As ready as I’d ever be, I rubbed my hands together, drew in a breath, closed my eyes, and whispered, “Vera?” Yeah, I’ll admit it, I felt goofy standing there trying to communicate with the dead. Until I reminded myself that if anyone has the right, it’s me. I carry the burden of this stupid Gift. The dead bug me all the time. The least they can do is show up when I need them.
Only Vera didn’t.
I swallowed down my irritation and tried again. “Vera, it’s me, Pepper Martin. You might have heard about me over on the Other Side. I need to talk to you.”
No answer.
Before I could even stop to think about what I was doing, I found myself wishing Dan Callahan was around.
Right before I told myself to get a grip.
What? I’ve never mentioned Dan? Well, that’s hardly surprising. Dan’s basically the reason I got shot back in Chicago, so I’m justified having issues when it comes to him. Dan’s also…
Honestly, I can’t say what Dan is. He’s a friend. He was almost a lover. He’s been a pain ever since I met him because he lied to me about who-and what-he really is.
Try as I might to think logically, when I thought about Dan, logic flew out the window.
At one time, I thought he liked me, then I figured he was just following me around because he suspected I could commune with the dear ol’ not-so-departed, then I found out he really did like me, a whole lot. Only by that time it wasn’t really me he really liked, it was someone he thought was me, and-
Anyway, the whole thing is pretty complicated. What mattered at this point, though, was that Dan knew a lot about the way the woo-woo world works. If he were there with me, he might have been able to help me scare up Vera. But he wasn’t. That’s because after all that ugly stuff went down in Chicago and I finally confessed about my Gift, I thought Dan would be all over me, ready to tap into it and use my special talents.
Only he didn’t.
In fact, he told me he understood that I needed some space, and some time to recover from everything I’d been through-right before he left the country.
And I’m supposed to stay mad at a guy as sensitive as that?