Don of the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  "I did. You see… " I drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "I'm trying to find out who killed him."

  Father Anthony sat quietly for so long, I thought maybe he'd fallen asleep. I was about to get up and walk away when he passed a hand over his eyes.

  "I was eighteen years old when my father was killed," he said. "Seems like a lifetime ago. And though I was young and pretty naive… well, I was never stupid. I heard the way the kids talked behind my back at school. I saw what went on at our house. Even my brother, Rudy, never said much and by then, he was in the family business. But I knew. I'd figured it out a few years earlier. I knew exactly what my father did for a living."

  "Did it scare you?"

  "I never let myself think about it." He gave me a sidelong look, gauging my reaction. "That way, I had nothing to feel guilty about."

  "I'm not in the mob, if that's what you're thinking."

  "I didn't think you were. You should pardon the sexist comment but even these days, they wouldn't let a girl in the club."

  "Then how—"

  "I've been praying for years," Anthony said. "I knew that sooner or later, you'd show up to set things straight."

  "Oh, no!" I jumped off the bench. "You're not going to lay that on me. I'm not some sort of engine of divine vengeance."

  "I didn't say you were."

  "But you said—"

  "That I've been praying. For Pop. And for myself. Now you show up out of the blue. And you say you're here to find out what really happened. Are you sure you want to know?"

  I walked to the place where the path intersected the one that led back to the rectory. If I'd been smart, I would have kept right on walking. Instead, I turned around and stalked back to where Anthony waited. "All I'm looking for is the truth."

  "Then it's all I'll give you." This time, he didn't pat the bench. I sat down, anyway. "It's funny, isn't it, that he waited all this time to ask for anyone's help?" he said.

  I didn't ask who be was. I didn't have to. At the same time I wondered if Father Anthony shouldn't be in Dan's crazy person study, I shifted uncomfortably on the bench. "It's because I hit my head," I said.

  "Oh, I'm sure. I mean, I'm sure that's what precipitated things. But think about it. Why now?"

  I shrugged. "Because there wasn't anybody he could ask before."

  "Why else?"

  "I've never been very good at this sort of philosophical bullsh—" I caught myself and had the good sense to blush. "Sorry, Father."

  "No need." Father Anthony grinned, but the expression didn't last long. The next second, his eyes clouded with memory. "Let me tell you a story. When I was teenager, all I cared about were cars. I lived and breathed cars and I had a honey of a Firebird. Used to love to spend my Saturdays out in the garage working on it. That's where I was one day when I heard some men in the yard talking. I was a pretty quiet kid. They didn't realize I was there. I was just going to step out of the garage and say hello when I realized what they were talking about."

  Even though he was sitting in the sunlight, Father Anthony chafed his hands over his arms. He looked at the dome of blue sky over our heads. "They were planning a murder. They never came out and said it in so many words, of course, but by that time, I was pretty good at reading between the lines. They were discussing a hit. And I was too embarrassed and too ashamed and, yes, too afraid, to tell anyone what I'd heard. That's because I didn't realize whose hit they were planning."

  "Gus's murder?" I digested the enormity of the information. "But who—"

  "That, I couldn't tell you." Anthony held up one hand. He must have known I was going to protest. "I'm not keeping secrets. I just can't tell you. I heard their voices, but I was too scared to look and see who was talking. If I'd said something to my father… "

  "So you blame yourself for his death."

  Anthony didn't confirm or deny this. He drew in a deep, labored breath and when he let it out again, it staggered on the edge of powerful emotion. "I've prayed for his soul. I've prayed for his salvation. I've prayed for my own forgiveness. Now you show up and maybe if you can find out who killed him… "

  "Shit."

  Father Anthony didn't seem to mind my profanity. He chuckled. "Shit as in—"

  "Shit as in now I can't walk away." I folded my arms over my chest and plunked back against the wooden slats of the bench.

  "You think that's all there is to it?"

  "Isn't that enough?" Still, I wasn't satisfied. I chewed over everything he'd told me. "Maybe you know more than you think you know," I suggested.

  I don't think it was what Father Anthony wanted to talk about, but he gave in with grace. "I've thought of that," he said. "Believe me. I've spent years trying to analyze every second of that day."

  "They must have been your father's friends. Otherwise they wouldn't have been at the house."

  "That's true." Anthony nodded. "It made me question every single person who came to the funeral to offer their condolences."

  "And it made you feel guilty."

  "Guilty as hell."

  "I can't offer absolution. Not for that."

  "You still don't get it yet, do you?"

  I guess my blank expression was all the answer he needed.

  Father Anthony patted my hand. "I'm sick," he said. "But I guess you might have noticed. The doctors say I've got three months. Tops. Something tells me the fact that my father is suddenly looking for closure isn't a coincidence."

  I felt as if I'd been sucker punched, and I guess I had. "He knew all along. And he never mentioned it. He didn't want me to know what a soft touch he is."

  "He didn't want you to know how scared he is." Slowly, Anthony stood. He looked down at me. "Do you understand now? About the absolution?"

  I understood, all right.

  Damn it.

  And I knew exactly what I had to do. I said my thanks and goodbyes to Father Anthony and headed back to the cemetery. I had to make a pickup and stop at the bank before it closed.

  I had eight thousand dollars to put back into my account.

  Chapter 13

  I suppose I should have been relieved. I knew more than I knew when I left Garden View that morning. Way more than I'd known throughout my investigation. Okay, so I still didn't know who killed Gus. But I had insight into why, after all these years, he suddenly cared so much.

  If what I suspected was true…

  Well, if it was, I hated to admit it, but it broke my heart.

  I couldn't stand waiting until the next day to find Gus and confront him. Not with the thought of Father Anthony's impending death weighing on me until I felt as if I had a rock in my stomach. After I dashed into the office for the brown lunch bag, then over to the bank just as they were getting ready to lock up for the evening, I went back to the cemetery.

  It was nearly dark.

  I drove over to Gus's mausoleum, but just like it had been early that morning, it was empty. I tried the angel statue again. And the office. There wasn't a soul around.

  Not even a disembodied one.

  Was I going to let that stop me?

  I left my car outside the office and decided to do a quick turn around the sections that were closest to where I'd parked. Maybe if Gus didn't see my car, he wouldn't know I was coming.

  Maybe not.

  By the time I'd walked for what seemed like forever and was probably only a half hour or so, I still hadn't seen any sign of him.

  And the sick, empty feeling inside of me just wouldn't go away.

  I gave up somewhere between the section where the famous cookbook author was buried and the plot devoted to veterans of the Civil War, and I'd just turned to head back to the office when I was nearly blinded by a bright light.

  Supernatural mumbo jumbo?

  Only if Gus had developed a flair for the dramatic.

  I put a hand in front of my eyes to help ward off the glare and squinted. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I was staring into the headlights of a car. It stopped ten feet or so in fro
nt of me and I tensed, not sure if I should stay or run.

  The driver's door popped open.

  "Pepper?"

  I recognized Dan's voice, which was the only thing that kept me from ducking for cover behind the nearest headstone.

  "Pepper? I've been looking all over for you."

  He got out of the car, but he didn't turn off the engine or the headlights. Against the bright light, Dan looked like a silhouette cut from black paper.

  I guess I didn't know I had tears in my eyes until I realized I didn't want Dan to see them. I dashed my hand over my cheeks and coughed away the tightness that had built in my throat back at Blessed Rosary. "I'm here," I told Dan. I stepped closer to the two shafts of light. "How did you find me?"

  Dan looked over his shoulder. Back toward the office. "I saw your car. The main gate is closed but I figured there had to be an entrance the staff uses after hours. I looked around until I found it. I tried the office but you weren't there. That's when I decided to drive around and find you."

  "That's a lot of trouble to go through." I took another step toward the light. "What's up?"

  "I've got news." When Dan waved something in the air, it was the first I realized he was carrying a file folder. Call me psychic; I was pretty sure it had my name on it. "I got some results back from those tests we did this afternoon."

  "And they couldn't wait until tomorrow?"

  I saw the quick flash of his smile. "I thought you'd like to know."

  I suppose I did.

  Which didn't explain why the rock in my stomach suddenly turned into a block of ice.

  "What kind of results?"

  I saw Dan look around. "Are you sure you want to discuss it here?"

  "Who's going to hear us?" I didn't bother to point out that one somebody could. If he wasn't busy playing hide-and-seek. "If it's that important—"

  "Well, I think it is." Dan hurried over to where I stood. He grabbed my arm and tugged me closer to the car so that we were standing full in the light. "Look. Right here." He flipped open the file and pointed to a scan of my brain. "I can't believe I didn't notice this the first time you came into the ER but then, I guess I didn't think it was possible."

  To me, it looked like an oval with white glop in it. I told Dan as much.

  "Yeah. Sure. I mean, it is a brain." He pointed. "But the occipital lobe—"

  "Not that again." I sighed. I'd pretty much had it with his whole aberrant-behavior theory. I shrugged out of his grasp and started back toward the office and my car. "If that's the only thing you have to talk about, we could have done it some other time."

  "But it's not."

  Dan's words stopped me in my tracks.

  "What I'm seeing here, Pepper, is a very high propensity for hallucinatory imaging."

  I turned back to him, but I didn't budge from my spot near a headstone where a giant, crepe-draped urn sat atop a granite column. "And what exactly does that mean in English?"

  "It means I think you're hallucinating."

  "Yeah. I must be." I turned back around and kept walking. Better that than letting him see the way his words slammed into me like a fist. I tossed my parting shot. "I must be hallucinating. Because this goofy conversation can't possibly be happening."

  I heard Dan scramble to catch up to me. "Don't you see what this means?"

  "Nope." I didn't. I didn't want to. Call me crazy, but—

  But nothing. That's exactly what Dan was doing.

  I stopped so fast he was already ahead of me before he realized I wasn't at his side. He turned to find me with my fists on my hips.

  "Is that what you think? That I'm some sort of nutcase?"

  "I didn't say that." Dan hurried back to me. "I just said—"

  "That I see things. That I hear things."

  "I didn't say you did. I said you had the propensity. That means you could."

  And wasn't it exactly what I'd been hoping to hear all this time?

  I might as well have gotten clunked by that granite urn on the monument behind me. That's how bowled over I was.

  I thought back to the day when Gus had first appeared outside his mausoleum. Then, all I wanted was to blow off his presence and convince myself that he was nothing more than a brain blip.

  I remembered the times I'd told him that this investigation was bogus and that he was, too. And I wanted to believe it. More than anything.

  After all, there was no such thing as ghosts and so, there could be no Gus.

  Was that such a hard concept to get through my head?

  Except then I found out about the birthmark on Gus's hip. Then I had the conversation with Father Anthony.

  I'm not a soft touch. But on the off chance that what I suspected was true, there was no way I could write Gus off as a brain blip now.

  No way in hell.

  "I'm not crazy," I told Dan. "And I'm not listening. I do not, did not, and will not ever hallucinate."

  "But you said—"

  "No, I didn't say anything." I knew that was true. I'd been trying my best not to say anything—to anyone—for a long, long time. "I never said I was hallucinating because I'm not hallucinating. I never—"

  "What about you talking to yourself?"

  I was so shocked, it wouldn't have taken that urn to knock me over. A feather could have done the job. I stared at Dan in amazement. "And you're talking about what, exactly?" I asked him.

  He glanced away and I swear, if the light was better, I would have seen a look somewhere between regret and anger wash over his face.

  Dan? Angry?

  I didn't think it was possible, but I reminded myself of the old saying about still waters running deep. And the bit my grandmother always added to the end of it: The devil lies at the bottom of them.

  Instinctively, I took a step back. "What makes you think I talk to myself?"

  He ran a hand through his hair. I'd always thought of the gesture as cute. Now I knew he was stalling.

  "I've got to be honest with you." Dan stepped closer. "There's a mirror in my office. You might have noticed it. It hangs next to the bookcase. It's a… it's a two-way mirror."

  The ice in my stomach melted, shooting frigid water through my body. The cold lasted only as long as it took me to process what he was saying. It heated up in a nanosecond and the ice turned to steam.

  "You were watching me? While I was in your office filling out that questionnaire?" I thought of that night and remembered that Gus had been with me. "You son of a bitch."

  "Now, Pepper… " Dan reached for me but I batted his hand away. "You weren't supposed to know. I shouldn't have even said anything but… well… I like you. And I don't think it's fair to start a relationship unless we can be completely honest with each other." He tried for that cute puppy dog look that always had a way of twisting around my heart.

  Maybe it was the dark. Or maybe I'd finally seen the light. I wasn't buying it. When I glared at him, Dan backed off.

  "It's part of the study," he said, the puppy dog cute replaced by sterile facts delivered just as clinically. "It provides me with a chance to observe my subjects without them knowing. A sort of check and balance."

  "Check and balance, what? Check to see if you've found the right crazy person? Balance my sanity against what you think it should be?" I didn't exactly scream, but I did give a little shriek of exasperation. It reverberated against the headstones, echoing back at us like a spectral voice. "How dare you? How dare you spy on me?"

  "I wasn't spying. I was observing."

  "Oh, that makes me feel better." I turned and started back to the office.

  "Pepper… " This time when Dan called to me, I didn't stop and I didn't look at him.

  "Forget it, buster." I made a rude and unmistakable gesture over my shoulder. My footsteps slapped the pavement. My arms pumped at my sides. "And forget your stupid study. I'm out. Over. Finished. Don't call and don't write and don't think you're going to get a chance to look at my occipital lobe again because you're not."


  When I heard him get into his car and close the door, I knew he was going to follow me. I left the road, darting onto the grass and between two tall headstones. From there, I headed off toward the center of the nearest section. By the time Dan turned the car around and cruised the road back to the office, I knew that like Gus, I'd be nowhere to be found.

  I stood very still next to the statue of a grieving woman, refusing to move until he was long gone.

  "Son of a bitch!" I tossed the word into the night and right about then, I wasn't sure which son of a bitch I was talking about. The one who tried to kill me. The one who walked out on me the night before. The one who thought I was a certifiable nutcase. Or the one whose presence pretty much confirmed the fact.

  Then again, maybe it was the one who had broken our engagement.

  Or the one sitting in federal lockup, the one whose greed and dishonesty had sent my life reeling out of control in the first place.

  It all came down on top of me like a couple tons of bricks. I was pissed. And overwhelmed. I was exasperated. And so tired of trying to make sense of everything that was happening, I couldn't hold it together any longer. I plunked down on the grass and had a good cry.

  My shoulders shook and my tears blinded me. I wanted to lash out, but I couldn't decide how or at whom, so I latched onto a clump of grass and pulled. I ended up with a divot in my fist, and I tossed it as hard as I could at the nearest tree.

  Instantly, guilt filled me, head to toe. The grounds crew would find the destruction in the morning and think they had groundhogs to worry about.

  "Like that's my problem?" I asked myself, and just to prove it wasn't, I pulled up another clump.

  "How could I have been stupid enough to let all this happen in the first place?"

  "Nobody ever said you was stupid."

  I jumped to my feet and swigged back my tears. "Where the hell have you been?" I asked, swiveling to look all around me to find the ghost who belonged to the voice. Instead, all I saw was tombstones. "And what the hell do you think you're doing, scaring me like this?"

  "Didn't mean to scare you." Gus stepped out from between two headstones. His white shirt glowed with reflected moonlight. He leaned forward and gave me a careful look. "What are you crying about?"