Tomb With a View

something was), I just couldn’t imagine a nice old guy like him tossing Marjorie over that balcony. Believe me, I was in the right place to try to picture it. The following Monday, I was standing in the rotunda of the memorial doing my best to look like the expert-in-residence. The why is no mystery: without Marjorie there to be the Garfield know-it- all, Ella needed someone to handle the day-to-day duties over at the memorial. Naturally—at least to Ella’s way of thinking—she turned to me.

Back in the day, I wouldn’t have minded. At least not too much, anyway. But then, back in the day, James A. Garfield wasn’t exactly a tourist magnet. The memorial had a couple visitors now and then, but for the most part, the place was quiet and empty. Quiet and empty I could deal with. In fact, it would have suited me just fine. Then maybe I would have had a chance to sort through what I knew about my case. But it’s funny, isn’t it? And not in a ha-ha sort of way. Murder adds notoriety to a place, and the memorial was no exception. What with the publicity Marjorie’s murder had generated in the media—local, national, and sensational tabloid—it was no wonder that there was a line waiting to get inside the memorial even before I unlocked the door.

“So this is where it happened, right?” A woman twice my age and half my height had the nerve to step into my path. “Where was the body? Was she beaten and battered? Was there . . .” The woman shuddered. “Was there a lot of blood?”

“No hablo ingles,” I told her, and left her to figure out why if that were the case, I was wearing the standard-issue khakis and the yellow polo shirt with GARDEN VIEW embroidered over my heart. Before she could question me, I backed away from her and sidestepped a group of teenagers who were wondering if the memorial was haunted. If they only knew!

I slipped into the office, but even there I found no peace. There was a man standing near the desk with his back to the doorway. He was middle-sized and average height, and even when he turned around, I couldn’t see his face clearly. That was because he was wearing a baseball cap tugged low over his eyes. Something told me I wasn’t missing anything. He was fifty, maybe, and as bland as an outfit right off the rack at WalMart.

As much as I didn’t feel like it, I put on my cemetery employee face. “May I help you?”

“Pepper!” The man’s cheeks were pale and doughy. His chin was weak, his hands were plump. He fingered the unpatterned gold tie he wore with a blue shirt and faded black pants, and even though his eyes were shaded by the brim of his ball cap, I could feel his stare. Everywhere it touched me, I felt a chill. “I saw you,” he said, and I swear, he must have run up every single one of the couple dozen steps that led to the monument’s front doors. He was breathing that hard. “On TV.”

I’d hoped Cemetery Survivor had been forgotten by everyone who’d ever bothered to watch the reality show based on the cemetery restoration we’d done earlier in the summer. It was that bad. Still, it was kind of a kick to be recognized. I sidled past him and slipped behind the desk, and no, I didn’t feel like it. I mean, I was stuck in the memorial and I had all those ghoulish people out in the rotunda who kept asking me about Marjorie, and I had a murder to solve. I gave the man a smile, anyway. “You want an autograph or something?”

“I want . . .” His fingers worked over his tie, faster and faster. He licked his lips. He shuffled his feet. “I want . . .”

I am nothing if not a good sport, but being stared and stammered at has a way of making even the most self-assured woman lose her legendary cool. Still, I managed to keep smiling. And waiting.

He, however, couldn’t get out of the “I want” loop.

Still standing, I tapped my fingers against the desktop.

He shuffled forward. He scuffled back.

I tapped some more.

“I saw you on TV,” he mumbled. “I watched. Every week.”

“That’s terrific. Really. But if you want to talk about Cemetery Survivor—”

“Talk? No. I want . . .” He shuffled another step closer to the desk.

By this time, I’d pretty much had it. I mean, it was one thing being a TV sensation. It was another thing to have my time wasted by someone who probably just didn’t have the nerve to ask what it was really like to find Marjorie’s brains sprinkled all over the rotunda.

I pointed at the desk. “Work,” I said. It might have been a far more effective strategy if there was actually something on the desk, but since the guy was so busy staring at me, I don’t think he noticed so I went right on. “I’ve got a whole bunch of work to take care of. So if you really don’t want anything . . .”

He jumped like he’d been slapped. His tongue flicked over his lips. “I want . . .” He shambled to the door, and the closer he got to it, the faster he moved. “I want . . .” I heard him say one last time, before he rocketed into the entryway and out the front door.

“Well, that was weird.” I dismissed the thought—and the guy—with a toss of my head, and I was all set to plop down in the chair behind the desk and pretend I was actually working, the better to avoid the crowds outside the office.

It was then that I noticed the single red rose on the desk chair.

OK, call me slow on the uptake. I’d been so busy dealing with his weirdness, I never even thought that Ball Cap Guy and my stalker might be one and the same person.

My knees turned to rubber, and before they gave way completely, I swept the rose from the chair with shaking hands and plunked down. I lectured myself about letting my imagination run away with me. I reminded myself that just because someone was a little . . . well . . . a lot odd . . . that didn’t mean that same someone was dangerous. Or threatening.

“He was just a tourist,” I told myself. “And this is a public place, and anyone can come in, and sometimes, people are just a little strange, and that doesn’t mean he’s your stalker or anything. Does it?”

Brave words. They actually might have made me feel better if I didn’t keep remembering the way his eyes had been glued to me.

When I reached for the phone to call cemetery security, my hands trembled. I guess that’s why it took me a couple tries and I still couldn’t punch in the right numbers. Before I had a chance to give it another go, I heard the front door of the memorial creak open, and yeah, my head told me it was probably just another harmless visitor come to ooh and ahh over the murder scene. My instincts weren’t so sure.

My heart pumping a mile a minute, my stomach somewhere up in my throat, I watched a thin stream of sunlight sneak through the front door and pool on the floor of the entryway. It was followed by a shadow that paused for a moment, then pivoted toward the office.

He was back!

I swallowed down the sour taste in my mouth and reminded myself that Pepper Martin is no namby-pamby wallflower. Just to prove I was listening, I braced my hands against the desktop and pushed myself to my feet at the same time I tried to issue a warning. My mouth was filled with sand; the words wouldn’t form. I gulped and tried again. “Get lost!”

“Wow, I’d heard people in Cleveland were tough, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

He came around the corner.

Not doughy Ball Cap Guy.

No way. No how.

This guy was tall. Blond. Gorgeous.

Really. I mean it. Absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous.

Strong, square jaw dusted with golden stubble. Eyes the exact color of the robin egg’s blue in the golf shirt he wore with dark, tight jeans. Loose-limbed, rangy body. The greatest smile I’d seen in a long time.

Oh yeah, he was the total package.

And I felt like a complete idiot.

“I am so sorry.” I was moving toward him even before I realized it. “I don’t usually tell visitors to beat it. Honest. It’s just that—”

“No apologies necessary.” He stuck out his hand and it took me an instant to realize he meant me to shake it. “Jackson McArthur,” he said. “My friends call me Jack.”

When our fingers made contact, my heart thumped, and my words whooshed out of me. “Mr. McArthur, I —”

“Jack.”

“Jack.” It wasn’t intimate. It wasn’t anything but a name, an introduction. Which didn’t explain why my