“Somebody stole it!” I said, before I realized Lamar had no idea what I was talking about. I filled him in. “Do you know who buried the box? Do you know who took it?”
His lips thinned. “You are working with the criminal element.”
“Oh, come on. That’s my team. They wouldn’t-” Only I remembered how Reggie and Delmar had fought over the box, and how Sammi had commented that if the coin inside it was valuable, she wanted a share in the profits. I thought about how busy we’d all been in the last couple hours, and how in that time, anyone could have taken the box out of the weeds. It was small enough to hide, and with Greer bossing us around and moving us like chess pieces through the section, nobody would have noticed.
My shoulders sagged. “You didn’t see-”
Lamar shook his head.
“Great.” I dropped onto a low headstone next to Lamar’s. “We had something that made us look good, and now it’s gone. And maybe that box had something to do with your case.” I was hoping this would spark a response from Lamar, but he simply shrugged.
“There was a coin in it.”
“Really?” His eyes lit. “I used to collect coins.”
Now we were getting somewhere. I sat up. “This one was silver, with the head of a lady on it.”
“Sounds like a silver dollar. But as to who would bury it at my grave or why…” Another shrug.
“Well, things aren’t looking good,” I told him. “Maybe that silver dollar was a clue of some sort, but it doesn’t matter now that it’s gone. And as far as that file Quinn got for me… it’s no wonder you were convicted. They had enough evidence to bury you.”
I hadn’t meant it as a pun; even I winced.
Lamar was as stone-faced as ever. “I told you I was framed. Otherwise, the evidence wouldn’t have been that perfect. Not if it wasn’t planted.”
“Then we’re right back where we started.” I threw my hands in the air. “Who did it?”
“A warden makes a lot of enemies.”
“Yeah. Right.” Too restless to sit still, I got up and walked over to his grave. It was the first time I was able to take a closer look. The headstone was gray granite. LAMAR was prominently carved at the top with JEFFERSON in smaller letters below it and to the left, as well as the dates 1933-1985. To the right, it said HELEN, along with the birth date of 1936. There was no death date listed.
“Helen? She’s your wife?”
Lamar nodded.
“And she’s not-”
“No, she hasn’t passed.”
“And does she think you’re guilty?”
He flinched as if he’d been slapped.
“All right then.” My mind made up, I brushed my hands together and headed out for lunch. “A warden makes a lot of enemies, huh? Then we won’t waste our time going down that road. Not yet. We’ll start with the one person who
5
My restoration plan (such as it was) called for us to spend the rest of that week documenting who was buried where in our section. Yes, I know that sounds easy, but believe me, this was one plan that looked better on paper than it did in real life.
For one thing, there were massive problems with Monroe Street itself. (I mean, in addition to the fact that it was a cemetery and that in the best of all possible worlds, I wouldn’t have been anywhere near there in the first place.) Headstones were toppled, names were misspelled in the cemetery records, and while the old, hand-drawn maps we’d been given showed graves where none existed, they didn’t show a bunch of the gravesites we found.
And then there was the garbage.
Through it all, I did my best to rally my troops. It didn’t work, and by the time Friday rolled around, all the weeds that had been pulled, chopped, and hacked down had been pulled and chopped and hacked down by little ol’ me. By that time, I was sunburned, and that meant the freckles on my nose and cheeks were more visible than ever. Three of my fingernails were broken, and I hadn’t had the time-much less the energy-to file them. I had blisters on my hands and a couple dozen scratches on my arms and legs. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, thanks to a wallop of summer heat and the humidity that descended like a wet blanket over Cleveland, my hair was frizzy.
Good thing we were done filming for the week. Even public television viewers shouldn’t have to see me like that. It was even better that Quinn had been assigned to a new high-profile case. (A city councilman, a dead stripper… need I say more?) He was going to be plenty busy for a while, and that meant we wouldn’t be seeing each other any time soon. I was too exhausted for seduction.
Which didn’t mean I was going to sit back and do nothing. I promised myself a deep conditioning when I got home, and on Saturday afternoon, I headed out to talk to Helen Lamar.
Within twenty minutes of leaving my apartment, I was in the city’s Tremont neighborhood. It was the area I’d mentioned to Sammi earlier that week, and as I cruised around looking for the address listed in the phone book, I saw some of the boutiques I’d talked about and she’d ignored. Not that I was taking that personally or anything. If the girl wanted to turn her back on a career in fashion and be a batterer on house arrest for the rest of her life, that was her business.
Mine was getting to the bottom of Jefferson Lamar’s mystery, and with that in mind, I concentrated on my driving. Tremont is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, and every once in a while, somebody gets it into their head to revitalize it. This was one of those times. Great boutiques stood side by side with trendy restaurants and bars, abandoned buildings, brand-spanking-new condos, and hundred-year-old homes that ranged from Victorian mansions to workers’ cottages.
Helen Lamar lived not far from Lincoln Park, the couple blocks’ worth of greenery that is the center of the neighborhood. Her house was one of those blue-collar cottages, small and neat, with steps that led up to a porch that ran along the side of the house. The yard was tiny and immaculate. It was surrounded by a cyclone fence that had been recently painted. The shiny silver made my eyes hurt. Squinting, I pushed open the gate and stepped onto a slate walk bordered by red roses and white petunias.
I’d already decided what I was going to say to Helen, so when a tiny woman with cropped gray hair and wearing white shorts, an orange T-shirt, and yellow flip flops opened the door, I was ready for her. I’d brought along one of the five hundred business cards Ella had made for me when I started my job at Garden View. Since I didn’t usually want anyone to know where I worked, I had plenty, so I didn’t mind giving one away. Besides, I was hoping the card made me look official. I handed one to Helen. Her eyes were a soft blue, and she looked from the card to me a little uncertainly. “I’m not interested in a burial plot, if that’s what you’re selling. I’ve already got my plot. At-”
“Monroe Street. Yes, I know.”
The uncertainty in her eyes shifted to wariness. As if she thought I’d brought along an army of thugs and was planning a home invasion, she looked beyond me.
“I work at Garden View. As a tour guide.” I brought her attention back to the matter at hand by tapping one broken fingernail to the words printed on my card. “This summer, we’re participating in a restoration project at Monroe Street. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m doing research, see, and the section I’m working in-”
“Is where Jeff is buried.” She might be elderly, but Helen was obviously as sharp as a tack. She followed my long-winded explanation to its logical conclusion, weighing the card in one hand while she gave me another once- over. “If you’re looking for information so you can sensationalize the whole thing-” “It’s nothing like that.”
She thought about it for a moment before she gestured toward the white wicker couch and rocker on the porch. “Then have a seat. I’ll get iced tea.”
