“And the car?”
I thought back to the moment I hopped out the window. “I only saw it from the back. It wasn’t new. I could tell that. It was gray. Or maybe white. It was getting dark, and it was hard to tell.”
“Did anybody think to get the license plate number?”
I shrugged. After the first detective on the scene interviewed me, a nice uniformed officer sat me down in the patrol car, got a blanket out of the trunk, and draped it over my shoulders. The blanket sagged. Quinn didn’t adjust it. “I didn’t see much,” I told him. “I was looking at Sammi, and it all happened so fast.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about the way the shooter escaped or the way a person can be living one second and gone the next. Since my eyes filled with tears and my nose clogged, I don’t think I was talking about the shooter.
“It’s OK,” Quinn said. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”
I was, and it didn’t make me feel one bit better. When he made a move to get out of the car, I plucked at his sleeve. “How did you know I was here?”
“I heard the call on the radio. The dispatcher mentioned the Lake View.” His expression was dead serious. “I remembered that file you asked for, so I figured you were here. They said there was a victim, a woman. I thought-” He didn’t finish the sentence, just slid out of the car.
Before he could walk away, I leaned over to see him better. “Did you call Virgil?”
“I’ll leave that up to the patrol guys,” he said. He stooped down to look me in the eye. “We’re done talking to you for now, though somebody will probably be by tomorrow to interview you again. You want me to follow you home?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Fresh tears welled, and I didn’t even bother to brush them away. “I’m a little confused.”
He nodded. “It’s the shock. I loaded your coffee with sugar. That ought to help.” He looked toward the Mustang. “You stay put for a few minutes, and when I can break away, we’ll get you out of here.”
He’d already walked away before I had a chance to tell him that would be fine. I had a million questions that demanded answers, and not enough energy to move a muscle. I sat in the back of the patrol car, and after a while, though I don’t remember drinking it, I saw that my coffee cup was empty. Quinn was right about the sugar helping; I wasn’t as shaky. I didn’t know where he got the coffee in the first place, but I dragged myself out of the police car to look for more.
I guess my relationship with Quinn was what had earned me the luxury of sitting in that patrol car in the first place. When I found them, Absalom, Jake, Reggie, and Delmar were herded to one side of the building, shuffling their feet and waiting for the official go-ahead to leave. They looked as miserable as I felt.
“You OK?” The blanket was still hanging from my shoulders, and Absalom straightened it. “You look awful.”
“I just can’t believe it.” Like I needed to tell them that? “I don’t suppose any of the cops said anything. About anything they’ve found? Or who could have done this?”
“Seems to me, you’re the best one who could answer that.” Absalom was right, but he didn’t press the point, and I don’t think it was because he was willing to cut me any slack. He looked tired. “All they did was ask us what we were doing here.”
“And you told them…?”
Reggie’s shrug said it all. “Told them we was following you. And that you was doing research. For the restoration at the cemetery.”
As far as it went, it was true, but it wasn’t the whole story, and it was about time they knew it. I sighed. “What I’ve really been doing is wasting time,” I said. “I think I know who buried that coin at Jefferson Lamar’s grave. He’s a man named Dale Morgan, and I should have talked to him long ago. I would have, if I wasn’t too scared to do what I knew I had to do.”
Delmar’s eyes were red, like he’d been crying. Because he didn’t want me to see, he hung his head. “You ain’t scared of nothin’,” he said. “You ran out of that room, just like the rest of us did.”
“But maybe I wouldn’t have been here in the first place. Not if I talked to Dale Morgan first. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe if I found out what he knows, maybe Sammi wouldn’t be-”
A noise from behind us stopped me, and I turned just in time to see a couple paramedics lift Sammi’s body onto a stretcher and put it in an ambulance.
I don’t know what it was about watching the scene that knocked the shock out of me. I do know that when it was gone, the only thing left behind was exhaustion.
My knees were weak and my shoulders sagged. I barely heard Absalom when he asked, “What you going to do?”
“I dunno.” It was the truth. My eyes filled with fresh tears. “I know I can’t just stand here, not when Sammi’s dead and…” I sobbed. “It’s not the kind of place where women should get killed. It’s a stupid little motel with flamingoes on the bathroom walls.”
I listened to my own words wash back at me, and a chill like the touch of a dead hand tingled up my legs and into my body. My veins filled with ice water.
I stood there thinking for so long, Absalom figured something was wrong. He waved a hand in front of my face. “Pepper? You OK?”
If only he knew. I was as far from OK as it was possible to get.
I threw off the blanket, and I was in my car and out of the parking lot before any of them could ask where I was going.
At Garden View, there’s a gate that employees use when they come into work early or leave late. It’s in an out-of-the-way place, and not many people know it’s there. Those of us who do have access to the code that unlocks it.
There is no such entrance at Monroe Street. The cemetery isn’t as big, for one thing, and since the only people on the payroll are city maintenance workers who come and go in daylight hours, there’s really no need for anything but the main gate.
Which means that gate gets locked every evening.
Which is a shame since by the time I drove across town and parked in front of the cemetery, it was long past sunset.
Which explains why I had to climb over the iron fence.
I am not by nature an athletic person. Besides a sweat (never a pretty thing), I broke a couple fingernails. And ripped my jeans. I got to the top of the head-high fence and held my breath, panicking at the height and the possibilities that spread out in front of me in a litany of disasters: broken bones, concussions, mussed hair.
None of that was anything I wanted to think about, and rather than dwell and panic some more, I closed my eyes, let go, and dropped. It would be nice to say I landed gracefully, but truth be told, I ended up on my butt.
No way I was going to let any of it stop me.
I was hobbling a bit, but my steps were fueled by the anger that had been building since the Lake View. Limp or no limp, I headed straight for Jefferson Lamar’s grave.
“You get over here, and you get here right now!” I didn’t care who heard me, so I didn’t even try to keep my voice down. Besides, who knows how loud you have to scream to be heard on the Other Side. “Lamar!” I tried again. “I need to talk to you, and I need to talk to you now!”
There was a shimmer in the air about ten feet away, and the next thing I knew, Jefferson Lamar was adjusting his big honkin’ glasses on the bridge of his nose. “It’s late,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be-”
In three steps, I closed the distance between us, and I guess I’d learned something from Sammi after all (besides how not to dress). If I wasn’t sure my hands would swish right through him, I would have shoved him hard enough to knock him down, just like I’d seen her do to Virgil. With no more substantial way to demonstrate my anger, I pointed a finger at his nose. “You lied to me. And now somebody’s trying to kill me. And somebody did kill Sammi. Are you listening?” I don’t know how he couldn’t be, since by this time, I was screaming at the top of my lungs. “Did you hear me? I said Sammi’s dead. Just like Vera. And her death is all your fault. Just like Vera’s.”