Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4)

by Vincent Zandri

  I find one in the bottom, right-hand drawer.

  Turning, I toss it to the Professor who fumbles the catch but manages to hang on.

  “Was never one for sports,” he mumbles. “Intellectual pursuits are my game.”

  “You don’t say.”

  In the far corner of the room are a spade and a crowbar. I grab both and take them with me to the backhoe. Climbing into the cockpit, I insert the key and fire her up. The entire open room explodes with the roar from the old engine.

  “The door please, Professor!” I bark over the engine noise.

  He turns to eye the two large buttons mounted to the wall beside the entry door and the roll up door. One green button and one red. He chooses green. Thumbing the controls, the ceiling-mounted motor grumbles to life as the heavy duty chain begins to lift the large metal door. When it’s fully opened, I shift the backhoe into gear and drive it out of the garage.

  Depressing the brake, I call out for the Professor.

  “You coming?”

  Smoothing out his thick John Wilkes Booth mustache, he offers a nervous nod.

  “Naturally I want to be there for the resurrection of the Lincoln dress.”

  I bet you do…Problem is, what happens if it is indeed buried where I think it’s buried? What have you got up your sleeve, Professor?

  “Wait,” I say. “Shut the light off and close the door. We’re taking a chance as it is.”

  He does it. Kills the light and depresses the red button, lowering the door. Stepping over to the vehicle, he hops onto the runner, steadying himself by gripping the cockpit door.

  “Hold tight,” I say.

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Baker.”

  24

  I can practically hear Balkis’ over-stressed ticker pounding all the way up the hill to the old part of the cemetery where Clara’s tomb is located. I can’t decide if he’s afraid of getting caught robbing a grave or afraid of getting caught and being pinned with the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Girvin. But I can’t be concerned with that right now. Right now, I want to find that dress and get it safely away from this place. When that’s done, I can call Miller back in and let him in on the truth about the Girvins: that I’m no closer to finding out where they disappeared to now than I was yesterday afternoon. I owe him that much. In the meantime, if Balkis tries anything once the dress is revealed, I’ll be ready for him.

  When we come upon the old Rathbone plots, I stop the backhoe and Balkis hops off.

  “Stand aside,” I warn, turning the machine around and backing it into place, the big back wheels pressed up against the short wrought iron fence.

  Balkis shifts himself over.

  “Flashlight,” I say. “Point it at Clara’s plot. The headlamps on this backhoe aren’t very bright.”

  He does as instructed, the overgrown green grass now illuminated by the white flashlight and the headlamps. Placing my naked hands on the controls, I feel the heat and the vibration from the idling engine. In my head, I see my dad, hear his voice.

  “Gently touch the controls with your fingertips, kid. Don’t force them. Let the machine do the work. You just be the brains.”

  I finger the first lever. The thick, black, hydraulic hoses fill like blood to the vein, and the bucket comes alive extending out and away from the machine like a mechanical arm. Aiming the bucket teeth for what would be considered the head of the plot, or about a foot inwards from where the headstone is planted (anything closer and the already unsteady piece of marble will come crashing down), I plunge the bucket into the grass and cut down through the earth, scooping up my first full load of soil. Touching the other levers as if they were toggles on a video game controller, I dump the load of earth to the side and continue on with the dig.

  With Balkis holding the flashlight on the ever expanding rectangular plot, I keep digging until I hit something other than soft earth.

  A casket.

  That’s when I exit the cockpit, grab the chains hanging off the side of the machine.

  “Jump down into that hole, Professor,” I say, setting one end of the chain onto the backhoe bucket, and the opposite four ends onto the grass beside the open grave.

  “Me?” he says, startled.

  “One of us has to operate the machine and it sure as hell can’t be you.”

  “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Hook the ends of the chains onto the casket corners so that we can pull her up.”

  “What if there’s nothing to hang the hooks on?”

  “Legitimate question,” I say. “Then that means we work together down in that hole to open the casket up.”

  “Can’t we just do that now?”

  “Not if we can bring her up. It’ll be easier and neater opening her up this way. Now go.”

  Tentatively, he approaches the open plot. Then, sitting himself down on the edge of the grave, he slides off and drops himself down inside. I estimate Balkis to be about five feet ten or eleven inches, which means his head and shoulders rise above the grass line.

  Flashing the light onto the casket, he says, “There’re some metal ringlets mounted to each corner of the casket.”

  “That’s what we’re looking for,” I say. Then, “How’s the general condition of the box? You think it will come up without crumbling all to hell?”

  He stomps his foot on top of the lid, then jumps up and down.

  “Seems pretty solid to me,” he says.

  “Lucks on our side. Box must be lined with metal. Something that was new for the time. There was probably a glass sealer too, which might still be intact. Also, there’s not a body inside it to rot the wood from the inside out. No worm food.”

  “I get it,” he says.

  “Attach the chains and let’s do this, Professor.”

  He attaches the hooked ends of the four chains to the black metal ringlets. Then, he lifts himself out of the grave, his genuine 1865 John Wilkes Booth outfit now covered in dirt, mud, and grass stains.

  Slipping back into the cockpit, I sit myself down and set my hands on the controls. The bucket begins to slowly raise while the four ends of chain go taught. After a second or two, the bucket and its arm begin to strain as the metal and wood casket is lifted from its resting place for the first time since it was laid in the ground well over a century ago.

  Slowly, the dark brown, almost black, casket is revealed as I shift the bucket so that the rectangular box can be set down on the grass. When the job is done, I take hold of the crowbar and jump off the machine.

  “I need more of that flashlight, Professor.”

  He follows me to the casket, flashlight in hand, the white light bouncing off the mud-covered box. Initially, I inspect the closer, which has rusted over the years. I then check the hinges which, too, are rusted.

  “Well, here goes nothing and everything,” I say, sticking the crowbar into the thin linear space between the lid and the box. I press down on the metal bar with all my strength.

  It takes maybe three shoves against the bar before the dark cemetery fills with the sound of a pop and the lid releases.

  I take a step back.

  “Care to do the honors, Professor?”

  That’s when I feel the metal gun barrel pressed against the back of my head.

  “Whaddaya say we do the honors, bitch,” comes the voice of an old man.

  25

  I shoot the Professor a look, his big trembling body now lit up in the backhoe headlamps.

  “Don’t look at me,” he says. “I had nothing to do with them following us here.”

  I’m not sure if I should believe him, or if it even matters at this point.

  Looks like I won’t have to apologize to Miller after all…

  “Down on your fuckin’ knees, jerkoff,” insists the man I take for old man Girvin.

  He and his wife step in between myself and the casket. They might be as old as the hills, but their movements are that of much younger people. Spry and athletic. The old man’s go
t a filthy mouth. And what’s this nonsense about his wife and Alzheimer’s?

  “How long you been watching us?” I ask, lowering myself to my knees.

  “Since you broke into my goddamned house yesterday morning,” Girvin says. “Ain’t that right, Mother?”

  She nods. Then, pointing her own pistol at Balkis.

  “You too, fatso,” she says. “Down on your knees, where you spend most of your time anyway.” She laughs at her own quip.

  “Betty,” the professor pleads. “After all we’ve been through together. You can’t make me succumb to such a heinous idea. Betty and Bill, what’s happened to your humanity for God’s sakes?”

  She raises up the old Colt six shooter, fires off a round that practically singes Balkis’ hair. He shrieks and drops down to his knees, dead weight.

  Balkis was right about one thing. The Girvins are into their weapons.

  “Any more questions, Liberace?” she says.

  Me…holding back a chuckle.

  In the light of the backhoe headlamps, I can see that Betty, or Mrs. Girvin, is dressed in a wide, brown skirt that must have a hoop under it. Her black shirt is long-sleeved, fits tight to her torso while her white hair is pulled back and held in place with a thick leather barrette. Old Man Bill Girvin is dressed in the blue uniform of the Union Civil War Officer. Judging by his mostly bald scalp, thin, almost fragile limbs, and sunken face, he looks old enough to have served in the uniform back in the day. But with his own Colt six-shooter in hand, he more than makes up for age and frailty.

  “Mother,” he says, his bloodshot eyes going from me to Balkis to me again, “you’ve waited long enough. Open the box and see if the dress truly does reside inside the casket.”

  “So how’d you get away with this, Girvin?” I say, my hands locked together at the fingers, palms pressed flat on top of my head. “You fake your own disappearance and even spice it up by leaving behind a Derringer just like the one Booth shot Lincoln with? You draw a little blood, leave enough behind to make the scene look believable? Taken altogether, all evidence would point to Professor Balkis, who I must admit is a bit of a nut case, as the number one suspect.”

  “You got a big fat smart mouth for a whippersnapper,” Girvin says.

  “Whippersnapper,” I say. “Now there’s an old one you don’t hear very often anymore.” Then, “How long you been looking for the dress?”

  “Depends on how you define looking? That dress is cursed. At first we weren’t bothered by it because we didn’t really believe in it. But that doesn’t mean we were about to test the theory out by disturbing it. Maybe we’re crazy, but not that bat crazy. As the years went on, we began to take notice of strange things happening. We’d hear voices, screams, things falling off the shelves. Once, back in the fall of ’72 or ‘73, Mother was woken up in the morning by the sound of a woman calling out her name. She went to the window, climbed out of it, and dropped down to the front lawn, breaking her leg. That’s when we knew the curse was real and that the dress had to exist somewhere inside the house or close by.

  “When we heard through the grapevine that you was coming to rebury your father, we knew we had to somehow get you to the house. Balkis’ job was to convince Detective Miller to bring you in. Man of your expertise would be able to sniff out Clara’s dress if it existed. Turns out, you were able to sniff out a lot more. You know what, Mr. Baker? We lived in that house nearly seventy years and had no idea Clara and Henry were still living in that second basement…So to speak.”

  “So to speak,” I say. “So when the police asked me to assist in looking for you two, you knew that I would turn my attention to the Lincoln Dress.”

  “From what I hear, you can’t resist two things: fresh pussy and a treasure hunt.”

  “Father!” Betty barks.

  “Sorry, Mother,” he says, nodding her way. Then, eyes back on me. “Mother don’t like it when I use the P word.”

  “Call me an antiquities slut,” I say, “but I should have seen through your charade a lot sooner than this. I must be losing my edge. But answer me this? Why not cut through the floor and break through the brick wall yourself? You might have ended this mystery decades ago.”

  “Not on your life,” old lady Girvin chimes in. “Only reason I agreed to this here little operation is because Father and I are getting on in years and might not have us another shot. What you must keep in mind, Mr. Baker, is this: He who finds the dress will be recipient of a curse so awful his skin will eventually melt off his bones and he will never know a good night’s sleep again because the ghosts of Abe Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, Clara Harris, and Henry Rathbone will be shouting in your ears.”

  “Jeeze,” I say. “Will I have chronic bad gas, too?”

  “Hey look on the bright side, Baker,” Bill Girvin says. “Looks to me like you’ve finally located the dress. Seems like you still got it even if the job ain’t gonna get you laid. ‘Less, of course, you think Balkis here is cute. And don’t you worry none about that God awful curse, ‘cause we’re gonna have to bury you and Balkis along with Clara’s empty coffin when this thing is done.” The old man glances over his shoulder. “How you doing, Mother?”

  Locking eyes on her, I watch her lift the casket lid just a few inches. But, just like Dad’s casket, the hinges are so rusted, they snap in two under the weight of the metal and wood lid, and it drops down into the open grave. She turns back to her husband.

  “There’s a box,” she says. “A metal strongbox. It’s locked with a padlock.”

  “Don’t you go near it!” he shouts. “You let the boys here do the dangerous work.”

  Girvin is torn between paying attention to her and then to me and Balkis. Also, the arm that supports the pistol seems to be getting tired. That’s when I slowly shift my gaze to Balkis.

  “On…my…count,” I mouth.

  His eyes light up like a high wattage bulb. He might be a trans-geographic whacko, but he understands perfectly well what I’ve got cooked up in my head.

  “One…two…three…”

  I lunge for the old man, wrapping my arms around his legs like I’m taking down an injury-plagued, way-beyond-his-prime quarterback.

  Balkis goes after Betty, thrusting his bulbous head into her stomach.

  “That’s for making fun of me!” he shouts.

  She drops the pistol, goes down hard on her back. But the old man has, by some miracle, still managed to hold onto his. He’s trying to aim it at my head so that he can make jelly filling out of my brains.

  I grip his shooting wrist and jam my thumb in the sensitive space between his arm and wrist. The pistol drops and he releases a scream that sounds like a rabid dog that’s been run over by a stagecoach.

  “You wouldn’t dare harm a frail old man,” he says from down on his knees.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, bitch.”

  Making a tight fist, I bury it in his face.

  26

  Ten minutes later, the Girvin threat has been officially neutralized now that Balkis and I have hogtied the two of them with black electrical tape from a roll we found in the backhoe cockpit. Off on the eastern horizon, over the blue mountains of Massachusetts, the dawn is breaking.

  “We don’t have much time,” Balkis says. “The maintenance crew will be back soon.”

  I glance at my watch. Six fifteen in the morning. Time flies when your life is on the line. Coming from out of the distance, the crack of gunfire. Then a series of thunderous booms that resonates across the valley and that can only come from cannon fire. It’s all followed by screams and a collective roar of voices.

  “That’s the Rebel yell,” Balkis says, his eyes aglow like he’s been touched by an angel. “They’ve started without me.”

  Pulse picks up. “They’ve begun their reenactment down in the valley. It must begin at dawn. Just like the real thing.”

  “Yes,” Balkis slowly nods. “A dawn charge. Oh, how I wish I were with my boys.” Then, “Let’s open that box, Baker.”r />
  “Roger that,” I say. “And get this place cleaned up.”

  The crowbar back in hand, I approach the open casket and take a knee. The strongbox is made of metal and the padlock that secures it looks formidable enough. But what I’m banking on is that the non-alloy metal has weakened over the decades, making it possible for me to snap the clasp in two. Shoving the straight end of the bar into the U-shaped clasp, I grip the bar with both hands and heave upwards.

  The clasp snaps in two like a stale pretzel.

  Removing the padlock, I then place my hands on the strongbox cover. With Balkis watching wide-eyed over my shoulder, I open it. What we both discover steals our breath away.

  27

  They’re neatly placed on top of the dress. The true Derringer and fighting knife that were used to kill Lincoln and wound Major Rathbone. As for the dress itself, it’s tightly folded like a funeral flag, like it was placed inside the box only yesterday by Clara Harris’s son. The blood stains have darkened over the years. They appear almost black, rather than red or auburn. The cloth is a fine smooth linen with satin frills that are visible even in its folded state.

  Balkis reaches in. But I grab hold of his hand.

  “Not now,” I say. “Bad enough we’ve exposed these relics to the air. But to unfold that dress out here in the elements will immediately begin the process of its rapid disintegration. These artifacts need to be examined in a laboratory.”

  I release his hand and he pulls it back.

  Closing the box, I lift it out of the casket and set it aside. Pressing both hands against the casket, shove it into the open grave. That’s also when Balkis presses his hands against my back and pushes me into the hole along with it.

  28

  The back of my head bounces off the old coffin, knocking me silly for maybe a full minute before I realize what’s happened. Another round of cannon fire reverberates throughout the cemetery followed by a cavalcade of small arms fire. More screams follow that. I also make out the sound of the backhoe engine. My blurred vision focuses on something hovering over the open grave.