The Gravedigger's Ball

by Solomon Jones

  “I guess I have more to learn, too,” Lenore said. “Based on your facts, I live a pretty pitiful life.”

  “No, you live a life that a lot of women would kill to have. It’s just that…” He let the sentence trail off.

  “If you’re trying to find a nice way to talk about John, don’t bother. You’ve already said what you thought.”

  “So am I wrong to think that?”

  Lenore rolled her eyes. “You can’t judge him based on one phone call.”

  Mann laughed. “It’s not just the phone call. He should be here right now.”

  “How could he be here when he doesn’t know where I am?”

  “He would find you if he really wanted to,” Mann said, getting up and walking over to the window. “A man who really cares enough doesn’t let his woman go if he can help it.”

  * * *

  Sandy pulled up in her black Dodge Charger and stopped at the yellow barricades that stretched across the entrance to Fairgrounds Cemetery. One of the cops who was posted there leaned into her open window with a flirty smile. His demeanor changed immediately when she flashed her badge.

  “Go ahead, LT,” he said in reference to her rank as he moved one of the barricades aside for her.

  She smiled her thanks and drove up to the tarmac that had earlier been occupied by dozens of police cars. Now there were only two. Their dome lights flashed in the late-afternoon light. Sandy parked behind one of the cars and waved a greeting at the cop inside.

  As she got out of the car and walked toward the spot where Clarissa’s body had been found, she felt relieved to be in the place where it had all started. In a strange way, it helped her to deal with the fact that her friend Smitty was gone. If following orders meant helping to find the murderer who’d taken him far too soon, she was anxious to fall in line.

  To that end, she’d called the Philadelphia Zoo as she drove to the cemetery from North Philly. She was trying to find out what she could about nesting locations for ravens. The zookeeper told her that the zoo hadn’t kept ravens in 150 years. He did, however, tell her that ravens nest in cliff ledges, in cavities, or in trees, and he warned her that ravens are extremely territorial and secretive about their nests.

  “Whatever you do, don’t get too close,” he’d said.

  Sandy had thanked him and hung up before placing a call to the cemetery manager. He was all too anxious to be helpful after the debacle that morning. They had arranged to meet at Fairgrounds in twenty minutes. Sandy had made it there in ten. She took the opportunity to look around on her own.

  She walked slowly along the grounds, watching as the afternoon sun glowed orange on the gray stone monuments. She looked up at the trees and down at the grass and watched as colorful leaves blew in circles. She watched the trees bend with a stiff breeze and felt goosebumps rise up on her skin.

  She walked above the graves of the cemetery’s long-dead residents and wondered if they knew their eternal home was now the center of attention. She looked at the hand-chiseled names on the mausoleums and the likenesses of the dead that had been carved into headstones. She tried to compare them to the makeshift memorials that lined too many Philadelphia streets, but it was more contrast than comparison. In a city where a quarter of the people lived in poverty, having one’s life memorialized in anything more expensive than spray paint was unimaginable, and the opulence of a Fairgrounds burial was out of reach for most.

  Sandy didn’t want to resent the display of wealth, but she couldn’t help thinking that some of those who were buried there had built their fortunes on war and slavery, pestilence and misery. But they were dead now. They deserved to rest in peace, and as Sandy strolled along, she kept that thought in mind.

  But Sandy wasn’t there for the dead. She was there for the living, and as she walked up the graveyard’s incline while looking down on Kelly Drive below, she observed every detail of her surroundings. She watched as shadows crept over the headstones. She observed the trees growing from the rock face at the graveyard’s west end, their exposed roots clinging to earth and stone while their trunks pointed across Kelly Drive.

  She turned from the gate and walked up and over the hills that were dotted with every kind of grave marker imaginable. As she did so, she thought of the pigeons in North Philly and how they’d repeatedly come back to the same place for their daily bread. She hoped to learn if anyone had observed the raven doing the same.

  “Lieutenant Jackson?” a voice called from behind her.

  Sandy turned to find the cemetery manager walking across the graveyard. He looked frail, nervous, and small. She could tell he was anxious about something, but he tried to put on a happy face. It didn’t work.

  “I’m Mr. Vickers,” he said, reaching out to shake her hand. “We spoke a few minutes ago. I understand you’re working with Detective Coletti.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Did he get the e-mail I forwarded to him earlier today?”

  “Yes, that was very helpful,” Sandy said pleasantly. “We were hoping you could help us with something else as well.”

  “Yes, I meant to ask you about that before you hung up. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard you right. Just so I’m clear on what you were asking, you wanted to know about a raven?”

  “Yes, we think there are ravens nesting nearby. Have you ever seen anything like that here?”

  Vickers smiled nervously. “Are there ravens connected to the murder investigation now?”

  “We don’t know, Mr. Vickers. That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  He looked away, and his face turned beet-red as he began to breathe faster. “Well, as you can imagine, we see a lot of strange things here. It’s a cemetery, so nothing surprises us.”

  “Does that mean you’ve seen ravens here?” Sandy asked.

  Vickers had an answer, but clearly he wasn’t sure if he should say it. His nose started to twitch, and his eyes danced back and forth. He appeared to be weighing the benefits of answering honestly.

  “It’s a yes-or-no question, Mr. Vickers,” Sandy said, her facial expression rapidly changing from cordial to menacing. “Before you decide how to answer, you need to know that this is a murder investigation. A police officer who was a friend of mine was killed today, and I’m upset about it. You can play with me if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Now, let’s start again. Are there ravens nesting nearby or not?”

  He licked his lips nervously and looked in her eyes. He could tell that she was serious. It was time for him to get serious, too. “There used to be two of them, right over there in that rock,” he said, pointing to a cliff on the far end of the cemetery. “They lived in a crevice where they could look out, but it was very hard to see in. The female died about a year ago, and the male looked like he was on his way, too. But a young man who volunteered here stepped in and nursed the raven back to health. The raven still roosts in that rock.”

  “Do you remember that volunteer’s name?”

  “No. He was only with us for a few weeks—tending the grounds, helping with tours, that sort of thing.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Young white guy, kinda tall. He had blond hair, I think.”

  “How do we get in touch with him?”

  Vickers began to look nervous again. “I’d really rather not get involved in this. The guy was referred to us by one of our major donors, and—”

  “Would you rather get involved in obstruction of justice?”

  The manager hesitated.

  “Who’s the donor, Mr. Vickers?” Sandy said forcefully.

  He looked around like a trapped animal. When finally he looked Sandy in the eye, he had no choice but to answer the question. “His name is Irving Workman. He’s a professor at Penn.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The doorbell rang at the safe house. Mann looked out the blinds at the officers who were posted outside in the car. One of them nodded, and Mann opened the door.

  Coletti, looking disheveled a
nd worn, rushed inside. “Where is she?”

  Mann pointed to the living room. “She’s in there. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing yet. I just need to talk to her.”

  Coletti hurried into the living room and stopped cold when he saw Lenore sitting in front of the television. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her facial expression was sad. Coletti looked back at Mann, who was walking into the living room behind him.

  “I see you’ve broken our witness’s heart already,” Coletti deadpanned. “You work fast.”

  “She doesn’t need me to break her heart,” Mann said. “She’s got a husband who’s pretty good at it.”

  Coletti turned to her as the news droned on in the background. “So you’ve talked to your husband? Is he on his way?”

  “Not exactly. We had an argument earlier, and I hung up on him.”

  “Well, you might want to call him back,” Coletti said, sitting down and looking at her with a grave expression. “He’ll want to know what this is about, and there are things you’ll want to tell him.”

  “If you’re talking about the vision Poe supposedly wrote about in ‘The Raven,’ we heard about it when we went to the Poe house.”

  “Yes, but you’re at the center of it: there are people who would kill for whatever the secret is, and we don’t know who those people are,” Coletti said. “If I were your husband, I’d want to know that.”

  “Then I guess I should’ve married you,” Lenore said.

  Coletti looked in her eyes and saw the heartbreak. For an awkward moment he considered asking about it. He didn’t think it would help, though, so he asked her about something that might.

  “We’ve been trying to reach your father,” Coletti said. “We have reason to believe Clarissa Bailey might’ve been in touch with him.”

  Lenore looked confused, even worried, but it passed quickly. “Good luck finding my father,” she said bitterly. “I haven’t talked to him in years.”

  For a moment, neither said anything. Mann jumped in to fill the silence.

  “So I’m assuming you found out what this is all about when you went to Penn,” he said, looking at Coletti expectantly.

  “Yeah,” Coletti said, tearing his eyes away from Lenore. “It all stems from Professor Irving Workman’s theory that Poe’s hidden message could unlock the power of the mind. Apparently there are others who believe the theory, too, but Workman says he doesn’t know who they are.”

  “I can see a few crazy conspiracy theorists believing something like that,” said a bewildered Mann. “But why would someone like Clarissa Bailey believe it?”

  “That’s the same question Clarissa’s husband had. But it’s not like they got this off the Internet. Workman is an established academic at an Ivy League institution. He’s an authority on Poe, and for someone like Clarissa Bailey, who was a huge supporter of the arts and writing especially, Workman would be a voice worth listening to. And she wasn’t alone. She was in a group called the Daughters of Independence. The rest of the group embraced Workman’s theories, too.”

  “What kind of group is it?” Lenore asked as she glanced at the television.

  Coletti checked his notes again. “They’re involved in historic preservation. They were working on bringing the Gravedigger’s Ball to an eighteenth-century mansion they maintain in the park. The two other ladies in the group were Violet Grant and Lily Thompkins. I’ve got calls into both of them, but I wanted to stop here first to tell you what I’d learned from Workman.”

  Mann looked at Coletti. “So did you think Workman was credible?”

  Coletti’s mind went through all the cases he’d seen over the course of his thirty-one-year career. The people he’d interviewed, the witnesses he’d talked to, the suspects he’d encountered. He settled on the one case he knew Mann would understand, and he started his answer there.

  “We’ve both seen people commit murder because they believed in something or someone they shouldn’t have. This is different. Workman didn’t come off like a guy trying to get disciples. He just seemed like a harmless old nerd who was excited about his work. I will say this, though. Ellison Bailey didn’t like the things Workman was telling his wife, and even though I wouldn’t trust Ellison as far as I could throw him, I think Workman was holding something back.”

  “So what does your gut tell you?” Mann asked.

  Coletti opened his mouth to answer, but it was Lenore whose gut spoke first.

  “Whoever did this is looking for the kind of peace he couldn’t find on his own,” she said in a faraway voice. “He’s lost something he can never get back, but he thinks he can replace it if he can find what Poe discovered at Fairgrounds.”

  She looked at Mann and then Coletti. “The man who killed Clarissa understands this whole thing in a way that not even Workman has figured out. The raven isn’t just a poem for this guy. The raven is real and—”

  Lenore wanted to go on, but she stopped when a familiar image popped up on the television screen. Surrounded by cameras and microphones, he was as dashing as always. His wavy brown hair was accented by a touch of gray at each temple. His eyes were an icy shade of blue, and his clean-shaven face was fixed in an intense expression. In his tailored suit and handmade shoes, John Wilkinson was a man who was accustomed to attention, and as he walked through New York’s JFK International airport with his lawyer at his side, attention was what he received.

  “Mr. Wilkinson, is it true that your wife witnessed the murder of Clarissa Bailey in Philadelphia this morning?” a reporter shouted.

  “Do you know if she’s cooperating with the police?” yelled another.

  “Do you have any idea who the Gravedigger might be?” a third reporter asked.

  The cameras flashed and the questions intensified, and John Wilkinson continued through the airport, his eyes straight ahead and his mouth set in a thin, determined line. When he’d had enough of the questions, he stopped in mid-stride, tightened the knot on his silk tie, and turned to his attorney.

  Lenore watched along with millions as her husband allowed another man to state what he should have said for himself.

  “Mr. Wilkinson is very concerned for his wife,” the lawyer said, speaking quickly and with a distinct New York accent. “While he certainly offers his condolences to the families affected by this morning’s events in Philadelphia, his wife’s well-being is extremely important. For that reason, Mr. Wilkinson will have no further comment on the investigation. He’s traveling to Philadelphia as a concerned husband, and he asks that his privacy be respected.”

  As cameras trailed John Wilkinson and his lawyer until they disappeared from sight, Mann looked at Lenore, who turned away from the TV looking troubled.

  “You look like you don’t want to see him,” Coletti said.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to see him,” she said, looking back at the television screen. “It’s just that he wants me to leave Philadelphia, and John can be rather convincing when he wants to be.”

  “If you don’t want to leave, then don’t,” Mann said.

  “It’s not that simple,” Lenore said.

  She looked at the television screen as her husband’s image was replaced by that of a host who promised ongoing coverage of the Gravedigger murders. Then the newscast went to a commercial.

  As an actor blathered on about the latest miracle product, Lenore’s mind ran through a series of images: her husband at the airport, the ranger at the Poe house, the raven at the cemetery, the poem in Clarissa Bailey’s hand.

  “I can’t leave,” she said, almost to herself. “Not until I find out why.”

  “Why what?” Mann asked as Coletti looked on.

  “Out of all the Lenores in the world,” she said, her face filled with wonder, “why would Clarissa Bailey choose me?”

  Coletti’s cell phone vibrated as he contemplated that question. He saw the number and connected the call immediately, then listened as Sandy Jackson gave him news that promised to get them closer to an answe
r.

  “I was right about Workman holding something back,” he told Mann and Lenore after hanging up. “He knew a man who worked with a raven at Fairgrounds. In fact, Workman was the one who brought the guy to the cemetery.”

  * * *

  It was three thirty when Mann, Lenore, and Coletti left the safe house. Mann took two officers with him as he transported Lenore back to headquarters, and Coletti traveled alone as he raced to Penn in the hopes of finding the professor.

  His engine hummed and his siren pulsed as he traversed the bumpy cobblestones of Germantown with his mind moving as quickly as the car. He thought of the theory the professor had espoused, the cryptogram they needed to solve, and the killer they had to catch. Workman was the key to all of it, and Coletti needed to get to him if he was to have any hope of piecing together the puzzle.

  Coletti dove in and out of traffic, his dome lights splashing red and blue against the late afternoon as he turned onto the always-crowded expressway and sped along the shoulder. He fumbled with his cell phone, swerving once or twice while trying to dial Workman’s office. The phone just rang, and by the third time Coletti pushed redial, it was clear that the professor wasn’t in.

  He dialed the main number and asked for the registrar’s office, praying that they’d handled his request to pull the names and pictures of the students Workman had taught over the past year.

  By the time the phone rang for the fifth time, Coletti was on the exit ramp at Grays Ferry Avenue, barreling through traffic as he headed for the university. He was about to disconnect the call when a young woman picked up.

  “University of Pennsylvania registrar’s office,” she said, sounding annoyed.

  “This is Detective Mike Coletti,” he yelled over his blaring sirens. “I requested some records from Professor Workman’s class a couple hours ago. I was told I’d have them by the end of the day.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, sounding rushed. “I don’t see anything like that in the office, and—”

  “Please check again,” Coletti said as he pulled up at Thirty-fourth and Walnut. “I’m on my way in.”