Yes, I admit this all sounds a little over the top and (dare I say it?) crazy, too. Actually, I had good reason.
See, as if I didn’t have enough to deal with earlier in the summer when I was working on that cemetery restoration project and solving a twenty-five-year-old murder, I found out something really creepy—I had a stalker. And not just any stalker, one with bad taste in flowers, candy, and all-wrong-for-my-coloring lipstick. He’d been lying low since I’d wrapped up that last case, and always up for a good game of denial, I’d convinced myself that maybe I’d gotten lucky and he’d fallen off the face of the earth. It would have been nice to go right on believing it, too—if not for this bunch of flowers.
I scraped my suddenly damp palms against my shirtdress and poked the bouquet with one finger. Nothing happened.
Realizing just how nutsy it was to think something might, I wasn’t sure who I was angrier at—the stalker, who’d gotten to me so badly I was poking flowers to see if they’d blow up or something, or myself, for giving in to the fear. There was one thing I was sure of, though. I wasn’t going to take it anymore.
The thought burning in my brain, I grabbed the bouquet and marched out to the reception area with it.
“Jennine.” I don’t think I could have possibly surprised her since I was flaming mad and my peep-toe sandals banged against the floor, but she was scribbling a note on a message pad decorated with kittens, and she jumped a mile when I called her name. I stood in the doorway between the hallway and the reception area and waved the bouquet of flowers. “I’ve had it with this. I mean, really. I. Have. Had. It. And you’re going to help me put a stop to this horse hockey. I need to know who brought these flowers and I need to know it right now.”
In her job as receptionist, Jennine sees plenty of people, but they are not routinely five-foot-eleven redheads in full anger mode. Her eyes wide, she stared at me like I was making a scene (which I was, but since it was justified, that didn’t count). Then she simply blinked, and pointed a finger behind me.
I turned and saw what I’d been too hopped up to see when I stomped through the hallway—a man standing over on my right, his arms crossed over his chipped-from-granite chest, his shoulders resting casually against the wall.
“Quinn!” My voice was much too breathy and I cursed myself for giving in to the surprise and him for having the nerve to show up out of nowhere and pull the rug out from under me. At the same time I thanked the fashion gods for watching over me and making sure I looked as good as I did that day; I wondered if Quinn didn’t have a direct line to the same deities. He was wearing a charcoal suit and a shirt so white, it nearly blinded me. His tie was colorful in an I-am-a-detective-with-excellent-taste-and-I-don’t-need-to-prove-it-to-anyone way, a refined swirl of black, gray, and white with just enough red splashed in for good measure.
Delectability aside, this was the same man who’d walked out on me not three weeks earlier. I told myself not to forget it (as if I could), narrowed my eyes, and it was a good thing I had that bouquet of flowers. Hanging on to it prevented me from digging my nails into the palms of my hands. Quinn was taller than President James A. Garfield. I looked him in the eye. “What do you want?”
He shot Jennine a thousand-watt smile by way of excusing us, then took me by the elbow. “A little privacy would be nice,” he said.
I yanked my arm out of his reach. “Why?”
“If I wanted to stand here in the hallway and tell you, we wouldn’t need the privacy.” He knew where my office was; he led the way.
I made sure I closed my office door behind me, then crossed my arms over my chest. “Well?”
He’d already taken a seat in the chair behind my desk and he looked up at me, as unruffled at the center of personal drama as I’d seen him at the scene of a homicide. “I missed you, too. Why don’t you sit down.”
“I don’t need to be invited to sit down in my own office.” I took a couple steps closer to my desk, the better to glare at him when I asked, “What do you want?”
“I thought we should talk.”
“If you wanted to talk, you shouldn’t have walked out on me. Then we could have talked.”
“You’re angry.”
I tossed my head. “No wonder you’re a detective. You’re a real whizbang when it comes to getting to the heart of things.”
“Which is how I know you wouldn’t be angry if you still didn’t care.”
“Oh, no!” I backed off and backed away. It was better than daring to get too close and catching a whiff of the expensive aftershave he always wore. That stuff made my knees weak, and Quinn knew it. Rather than dissolve into a puddle of mush, I sat in my guest chair. “You’re not going to pull that on me.”
“What?” Quinn had a way of shrugging that emphasized his broad shoulders. His eyes were the exact color of my emerald dress and they glittered at me across my desk. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Me?” I was out of that chair in a flash. “You haven’t seen unreasonable, buddy, not from me. I’m the one who was always up front with you, and you’re the one—”
“Who’s had three weeks to think about everything we said to each other last time we were together.” He stood, too, and came around to the other side of the desk. A stronger woman might have backed away, or at least taken a swing at him in an effort to wipe that sexy smile off his face. But I am not a strong woman, not when it comes to Quinn, and I didn’t move a muscle, not even when he settled his hands on my shoulders.
“I am about to prove just how very reasonable I am,” he said, his voice honey. “I’ve done a lot of thinking in the past three weeks, Pepper.”
I swallowed hard. I knew what he was talking about, because I’d done a lot of thinking in that time, too, and somewhere between the anger and the misery, I’d decided the only way I would ever take Quinn back was if he came crawling. He wasn’t on his knees, not yet anyway, but I could afford to curb my temper and bide my time. I felt an apology of epic proportions coming on. Oh, how I was going to enjoy hearing it!
He leaned a little nearer, and I knew that if I gave in the slightest bit and moved a fraction of an inch closer, he would have kissed me. As much as I wanted it, it was too soon to surrender. I kept my place, just like I kept my mouth shut.
He skimmed both thumbs over my collarbone and said, “I’ve decided to forgive you.”
Even I didn’t know I could move that fast. I had his hands batted away and the desk between us before Quinn knew what had happened. And believe me, I wasn’t at a loss for words, even though I was just about choking on my anger. “You? Forgive me?”
Maybe he looked a little uncertain because he’d never seen steam coming out of a woman’s ears before. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it, and I realize when you told me all those crazy things you told me—”
“About talking to dead people.”
“Well, yeah.” He scraped a hand through his inky hair.
“Me walking out on you, it was a knee-jerk reaction, and it’s not like anyone could blame me. I had every right to ask what was going on with you, and when you made up that nonsense about ghosts—”
“Get out.” The bouquet of flowers was the perfect prop, but I motioned toward the door with it a little too forcefully. A shower of rose petals rained down on my desk. “Get out of my office, and get out of my life, and if you ever think of forgiving me again, get that out of your head, too. I don’t need your forgiveness, Quinn, and I don’t need you.”
“I thought you’d be happy.”
“Oh, I’m going to be happy, all right. As soon as you’re out of here and you close the door behind you.”
He did, and guess what? I didn’t feel any happier. Just to prove it, after he was gone, I winged the bouquet of flowers at my closed office door. The ribbon around the stems of the flowers came loose and unrolled, and I saw that there were gold foil letters glued to the ribbon.
Dearest Grandmother, it said in loopy letters.
“Oh, you forgive me all
right,” I mumbled to myself, giving the bouquet a kick across my office just for good measure. “And you proved it by bringing me a bunch of flowers you swiped off a grave!”
4
Never let it be said I don’t have a social life.
There were plenty of things I could have been doing the next evening. Honest. For instance, I usually call my dad in prison out in Colorado on Thursdays, and when I’m done talking to him, I call my mom to fill her in. That particular Thursday, I also could have gone to a car show with none other than Absalom Sykes, one of the guys I’d worked with on the cemetery restoration project. Sure, Absalom is a car thief, and yes, I suspected he was going to the show mostly to case the joint, but that was beside the point. Even though he’s big, and gruff, and scary looking (and he practices voodoo, too), I like Absalom. We would have had a good time.
Unfortunately, by the time Absalom called to invite me along, I’d already given in and given up to Ella’s pleading about how much she needed my help with the whole goofy commemoration, and what a team player I was, and how much she admired my willingness to pitch in, and blah, blah, blah. As much as I didn’t want to—and believe me when I say that was a whole lot—I agreed to go to Marjorie’s that evening.
None of which means I was particularly happy about it.
Marjorie lived in a nondescript house in a nondescript neighborhood, and I stood on her front porch, rang the bell, and braced myself. Not even that was enough to prepare me. When she answered the door in her cheap jeans and her white T-shirt with a picture of President Garfield on the front of it, I couldn’t contain myself. Everything I felt for Marjorie bubbled out of me, and the words just came pouring out of my mouth. “I’m here exactly why?” I asked. Marjorie was not put off. For one thing, she was wearing a pair of shoes with the highest heels I have ever seen except for the girls on stage at The Thundering Stallion (trust me, I was there in connection with an investigation even though the owner tried to get me to audition). This was a pair of sandals untastefully done in black and white patent leather with an ankle strap, a two-inch alligator green platform, and heels in a color to match. Just to make sure I noticed she was taller than me, Marjorie raised her head and pulled back her shoulders. She was on her home turf, and if I thought she was condescending, annoying, and just plain nasty back at the cemetery, she was twice as condescending, annoying, and just plain nasty in her home sweet home.
“I’m happy to see you’ve come to your senses in regard to the commemoration.” Happy, huh? She didn’t look happy. She didn’t sound it, either, when she added, “I have to admit, it probably would have been simpler and far less irritating for me to just handle the entire thing on my own. But since you’re here, I suppose we should try to make the best of it.” When she sighed, the president on the front of her shirt jiggled. She ushered me inside with a sweep of one arm and finally got around to answering my question. “You’re here to see my collection, of course.”
And see her collection I did.
The second I was in her living room, I found myself inundated, surrounded by, and totally swamped with James A. Garfield. There was a portrait of him hanging above the phony, electric-log fireplace. There were glass figurines of him on the mantel. There were books piled on the pine coffee table that featured his stern, unsmiling face on their covers, and there were all sorts of Garfield-y things framed and hung on the walls, such as an invitation to his inauguration, and an eleven-by-twenty photograph of Lawnfield, his house. Like I’d seen Absalom do with one of his juju dolls, Marjorie touched a finger reverently to a framed item that caught my eye. “Ah, you noticed this, did you? Maybe you’re not a lost cause after all.”
I think that was supposed to be a compliment. I leaned closer for a better look. The item in question looked like an old, battered floor tile. There was a little brass plaque mounted underneath it that said it was—
“A piece of the floor from the railway station where James A. Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau?” I read the words on the plaque, only there was no question mark except in my voice. “You have a piece of the floor of the railway station?”
Marjorie puffed with pride, so much, in fact, that she wobbled on her high shoes. “It’s not just any piece of the tile. The presidential collector who sold it to me assured me that this tile was taken from the actual waiting room of the Baltimore and Potomac Railway Station where the president was shot. If you look really closely . . .” She did. I didn’t. “It could be my imagination, of course, though I doubt it. After all, those who are related often feel an uncanny attachment to each other. I think . . . no, I’m sure there’s the tiniest bit of his blood on that tile.”
I backed away like . . . well, like somebody told me I was looking at something that had blood on it. “Let me guess,” I said, and I wasn’t really guessing. Unfortunately, I’d known Marjorie long enough to know the answer. “That’s one of the things you’d like to put on display for the commemoration.”
“Oh, that, and a number of other wonderful things. One especially. It’s going to cause quite a sensation!” She said this in the singsongy way people do when they think they know some big secret, but since I really didn’t care, I didn’t take the bait, and Marjorie gave up with a sigh. She wobbled her way around the room, stopping now and then to admire some piece of Garfield memorabilia. “I’ve decided that we’ll do a sort of revolving exhibit. There will be one main display inside the rotunda, and that will remain the same throughout the commemoration. After all, it will have some very important things in it!” There was that tone of voice again. Her eyes shone. When I didn’t bite, she kept right on.
“We’ll also have a display downstairs outside the crypt. That’s the one we’ll change each month. Of course, just the idea that there will be new and interesting things to look at each month will keep people flocking back to the memorial. And since I have so much I can share that has never been on exhibit before, it would seem . . . well . . . un-American to keep all these wonderful things away from the public eye. We can do inaugural items one month, then the next, something like national bank currency that features the dear president’s picture. We could even do a display of modern items that honor him.”
“Except I doubt there are any.”
I should have known better. A weird sort of half-smile on her face, Marjorie led me through the dining room, where there was a vinyl tablecloth decorated with American flags on the table, and into a back room that she used as a den. She paused just inside the doorway and glanced at the items displayed all around the room.
“Garfield pen and pencil sets, Garfield salt and pepper shakers, Garfield teacups,” she said, and believe me, she was not talking about that fat and sassy orange cat. The entire room was crammed with things like commemorative plates, and ashtrays, and bookmarks and napkin rings and keychains, all with the image of the president on them. There was even a President Garfield mousepad on the desk next to a computer. There was a credit card on it, covering the top of the president’s head and his face, but I’d know that beard anywhere.
“Hey, look at this!” A photo hanging nearby caught my eye. It showed the president standing at the head of a table where eight men were seated. They looked awfully familiar. “Who are these guys?”
“Those guys”—Marjorie spit out the word as if it tasted bad—“are the president’s cabinet.” She pointed to the men I’d seen around the table in the rotunda. “Here’s Chester Arthur, who was Mr. Garfield’s vice president and became president after his death. And this is James Blaine and William Windom, and Robert Todd Lincoln. Yes,” she added quickly, though I wasn’t going to say a thing. “That other president’s son. Then there’s Wayne MacVeagh, Thomas James, William Hunt, and Samuel Kirkwood. Unsung heroes. Every single one of them. Then again, our dearest president wouldn’t have chosen them for his cabinet if he didn’t think of them as honorable, hardworking men.”
“Where’s Jeremiah Stone?”
“Well, it looks like I may have underestimated y
ou after all, Ms. Martin. You’ve done your homework!” Marjorie practically smiled at me. It was kind of disturbing. “Mr. Stone was the president’s personal aide and not a member of the cabinet so he, of course, isn’t in this photograph. I may have one of him around here somewhere.”
“That’s OK,” I told her because I didn’t have the time or the patience to wait while she went off and looked for it. “I have a pretty good idea what he looked like.”
She didn’t ask how, which was OK, because I wouldn’t have told her, anyway. “Mr. Stone, now there was a dedicated young man!” Her voice warmed to the subject. “Even after the awful incident at the Baltimore and Potomac Railway Station, Mr. Stone was always at the president’s side. You see, though the president was shot on July second, he didn’t die until September. He suffered the entire time, poor man, enduring the pain of the bullet and the ineptitude of the doctors who were supposed to be healing him, but really only made things worse. And the entire time, Mr. Stone took care of the day-to-day details the president needed to know about, made sure he was kept apprised of political news, handled correspondence. You know, the things that needed to be done to keep the ship of state afloat. I doubt there are many men these days who are as devoted or as trustworthy or—”
Marjorie’s doorbell rang. It was clear she wasn’t expecting anyone else, and she smoothed a hand over her T-shirt then tottered back into the living room and toward the front door. Rather than be left in the den with James A. Garfield staring at me from bowls and pencil toppers and the covers of old, framed magazines, I followed along, and got to the living room just in time to see her peek through the peephole in the door and step back, suddenly looking as gooey as a tweenager at a Jonas Brothers concert. There was a basket on a table near the front door filled with those goofy filmy head scarves of hers, and she whisked off the one she was wearing (apparently it was an everyday head scarf and not suitable for company, which told me exactly where I stood) and grabbed one with giant yellow mums on it. She tied it under her chin, checked her reflection in a mirror that hung nearby, and pasted a smile to her face before she opened the door.
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