Tomb With a View

Never go to bed with a guy who might be a murderer.

And never even think about having sex with a guy who uses a phony credit card to pay for dinner.

Disappointing, sure, but the evening wasn’t a total bust. I’d learned something else about Jack: he was up to no good, all right, but something told me it wasn’t the no good I thought he was up to.

I smiled when he pulled out my chair. I chatted and laughed when he walked me back to my car and we talked about how he’d come from Hammond, Indiana, some weekend soon so we could see each other again.

When we got to the Mustang, I stopped dead and the bag with my leftover filet in it slipped from my hands and splatted on the pavement.

The light of a nearby streetlamp glared against the message scrawled on my windshield in garish pink lipstick.

Pepper, it said, you have to love ME.

“You would be wise to exert an extreme amount of caution. As I have mentioned to you previously, the man who shot me—”

“Was a stalker. Yeah, yeah. I remember.” When I got to the memorial the next Monday, I made the mistake of mentioning the Saturday night incident with my car and the cheap lipstick to the president. Now, I waved away his words of warning, and it was no wonder why.

After finding that message on the windshield of my car, I covered for the terror that snaked through me by making up a story to convince Jack it was nothing but a silly joke. That was all well and good until we said our good-byes and my overactive imagination spent the rest of the weekend constructing one frightening scenario after another. Hey, a single woman spends a lot of evenings at home, and a lot of those evenings, I’d spend watching old movies. Oh yeah, I’d seen them all: Play Misty for Me, Misery, (gulp!) Fatal Attraction . . .

My stalker-induced hysteria ranged from kidnapping to murder—and everything in between. I was on edge. I was twitchy. I was so strung out from not sleeping I’d nearly forgotten to put on my mascara that morning.

Where had it all gotten me? Nowhere but Anxiety City, and I was more than ready for a break. “I’m being careful,” I told the president and reminded myself.

“I trust you are locking your doors?”

It was a silly question so I didn’t bother to answer. Besides, I was tired of being a marshmallow. With that in mind, I’d gotten to work early that morning and stopped at the administration building first thing. I was armed with a computer printout that listed the addresses and phone numbers of all the Ryan Kubiliks I could find. There were only three of them, but that was OK. That meant I had few phone calls to make.

“You know, that Guiteau fellow, the one who shot me . . .”

The president droned on, but I was so not in the mood for stalker talk. I picked up the phone on the desk in the memorial office and made my calls. As it turned out, the first Ryan I asked for was one-and-a-half and at day care. Not a likely candidate for a MasterCard account. With the second call, I hit pay dirt.

Feeling pretty smug, I thanked the lady on the other end of the line and hung up the phone. “He’s dead,” I said.

“Guiteau? Most certainly he’s dead. He was hanged as a punishment for my murder.”

“I’m not talking about Guiteau. I’m talking about the guy whose name was on Jack’s credit card.” I’d told the president about that when I got to the memorial that morning, too, and never let it be said that it’s easy to explain credit cards to a man from the nineteenth century.

His brows dropped low over his eyes. “I once led an investigation of a gold scandal during the Grant Administration,” he rumbled. “That was back in ’69, and I am well aware that to you, that must seem a very long while ago. Still . . .” His blue eyes sparkled and his shoulders shot back. “When it comes to matters financial, I am sure I am still able to provide some sound advice. Shall we investigate?”

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He was already floating up the spiral staircase. I followed in a more conventional way.

It helped that while I was in the administration building that morning, I’d scooped up Ella’s extra set of keys, the ones that included the key to the ballroom. I unlocked the door, pulled it open, and stepped inside. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for, but then, the people who hid it up there in the first place thought they never had to worry about someone discovering their secret.

Not until Marjorie, who had to know everything there was to know about President Garfield, his life, his family, and his memorial did some snooping in places she never should have been.

I was down on my knees, peering into the box I’d found tucked behind a marble column in the farthest, darkest corner of the ballroom, when the president leaned over my shoulder. “Explain this to me again. What are these things? And how do they work? What in the world are they for?”

I reached into the box and ran my hands through the dozens of credit cards in there. The names on every one of them, I was sure, belonged to dead people whose identities had been stolen. It was no wonder why. Phony credit cards were big business, and I didn’t mean just for the people who would eventually get their hands on them and use them for shopping sprees they never had to pay for. My theory was that the people who manufactured the cards, then distributed and sold them—the people who were using the memorial as a drop-off and pickup point— were making the really big bucks.

I sat back on my heels and shook my head. “I guess Marjorie was right when she said she was on to a get- rich-quick scheme,” I told the president. “Too bad she didn’t know it was going to end up costing her life.”

16

The first thing I did was tuck those bogus credit cards back where I’d found them. The second thing?

That was a no-brainer.

Murder or no murder, investigation or not, I was out of my league and I knew it. As soon as I got back downstairs, I called law enforcement.

It says something about those magic words stolen identities and the credit cards to go with them that the good guys arrived way sooner than should have been humanly possible. But then, I had a feeling some poor schlub flying from Chicago to Cleveland was bumped off the plane that morning.

Just so FBI Special Agent Scott Baskins could have that seat.

Surprised? Come on! I would have sooner shopped for my entire fall wardrobe at the local Goodwill than call Quinn, and Scott was the only other cop type I knew.

He arrived in a dark-colored Crown Victoria and brought along a team from the local office. They were all clean-cut, grim-faced guys wearing navy blue suits, white shirts, and striped ties. I felt like I’d stepped into an alternative universe adaptation of The Stepford Wives.

“Pepper, it’s good to see you again.” Scott had a hand out to shake mine as soon as he was through the front door of the memorial. The gesture was friendly enough to make it clear that I was the one who’d contacted him and set the investigation in motion, but not so friendly that his fellow G-men would ever have suspected that after I was shot back in Chicago, Scott sent showy bouquets of flowers in all my favorite colors. Though we’d spoken on the phone a couple times since and talked about getting together, his busy schedule always prevented it and I didn’t mind so much since I had been busy in my own way with Quinn at the time. I hadn’t seen Scott since he was working undercover as a street person while he investigated the goings-on at the Windy City clinic, which snatched the homeless off the streets and used them as guinea pigs in psychic experiments. He made a better impression in his suit and tie than he ever had in his beat-up Army jacket and dirty sneakers.

He wasn’t flashy by any means, but Scott wasn’t a bad-looking guy. A little older than me, and a hair taller, he had eyes that were as brown and as warm as a teddy bear. Aside from that cordial first hello, he was as serious as a heart attack, but then, I suppose that went along with his job description. He walked around the memorial long enough to get the lay of the land and directed the other agents and a couple techie types upstairs to the ballroom so they could begin their work. That taken care of and one hand gently at the small of my back, he ushered me into the memorial office, where Ella and Jim were already