The president snorted his outrage. He turned and stomped to the table, his footsteps muffled by the thick Oriental carpet at our feet. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see his expression, but I could hear the anger simmering in his voice. “You know, this Guiteau fellow once stole into a presidential reception and actually managed to insinuate himself close to the First Lady. My poor Lucretia! If I had sensed she might be in any danger, I would have pummeled this Guiteau fellow myself, right then and there.” His face purple, he whirled around and slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand.
I think it was the first time he remembered that I was there watching. He blinked, and his eyes cleared. “You must pardon my anger,” he said. “It is a fact that, in my younger days, I was a minister. Apparently I listened when I gave my flock advice, for aside from moments such as these when I allow my emotions to get the best of my nature, I have long ago forgiven Guiteau. He was unbalanced, after all. I do believe that these days, you would call him a stalker.”
Stalker.
The word settled somewhere between my heart and my stomach and sent a cold wave through me that left me shaky. It was one of the times I was actually grateful to be a detective because, well . . . I wasn’t very content with unanswered questions. As disturbing as it was to watch President Garfield suffer when he stepped outside the memorial, thinking about that strange incident sure beat thinking about the doughy-faced man who’d showed up at the office the day before.
“You haven’t explained,” I said, and because I knew he was going to pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about, I stood my ground and refused to let him change the subject. “I want to know what happened outside the front door, and why.”
“Ah, the why of it. That is what I have been trying to elucidate for you. You see, I did not have my chance to be president here on this earth—”
“So you’re president here! Inside the memorial!” The bits and pieces of everything he’d said and everything I’d seen in the rotunda that wasn’t the rotunda when he was with me suddenly made sense. So did the reason why, after all these years, his ghost was still hanging around. All of the ghosts I’d met since I’d discovered my Gift had unfinished business, but not this one. The president’s assassin had been punished. Justice was done, and that should have been the end of that. Yet he was still haunting the memorial. Note: I said memorial. In fact, I’d never seen him anywhere else in the cemetery. In light of everything he said, that made sense. “So what you’re telling me is that you’re making up for lost time.”
He nodded. “I was offered a trade, you see. My time on the Other Side for time here. As president. I was denied so many productive years by my untimely death. Now, as long as I stay within the boundaries of my memorial, I continue to exist in this form. If I leave—”
“You go up in a puff of smoke.”
“Not exactly the way I would have worded it, but yes. That is exactly what would happen should I leave the confines of this tomb for too long. I would cease to exist, in this world or in the next. I have no regrets about making the decision to stay on here. Here . . .” He spread his arms, taking in the elegant room. “Here I am president. I continue the work I started all those years ago. I make decisions. I meet with my cabinet. There is a great deal that needs to be done. So you can see why it is of the utmost importance for me to be left undisturbed. With all the ruckus of late—”
“Well, I’m guessing we’re still going to have the commemoration, with Marjorie or without her. So there’s no way you’re going to get away from that. And no way to avoid the tourists who keep showing up to check out the spot where she bit the big one, either. That will die down, I’m sure. And the commemoration won’t last forever. You’ll get your peace and quiet eventually.”
“Yes, yes. Of course those things will come to an end, and it is all for the better. But really, that is not at all what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the comings and goings at all hours.”
I must have looked as baffled as I felt because he shook his head, disgusted. “Really, I have been attempting to tell you about these disturbances since the day we met. I cannot believe you are not aware of—”
“What?” I closed in on the president. “You said all hours. Are you telling me—”
“That there are people coming and going when there shouldn’t be. Yes, yes. Exactly. There are people in parts of the memorial where they have no business.”
“Like?”
“The ballroom, certainly.”
A memory sparked inside my brain and I hurried out of the rotunda and hung a right in the entryway. Good thing I was wearing my sneakers, I made it up to the roped-off doorway outside the stairway that led up to the ballroom in record time. President Garfield was already there waiting for me.
I poked a finger at the printed sign, the one that said CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC. That day, it was exactly where it was supposed to be, and right side up, too. “A couple times when I’ve been up here, this sign has been upside down. I thought maybe someone on the cleaning crew was just being careless. Or some visitor was being a smart-ass. But if you’ve seen people going into the ballroom . . .”
“It may be a signal of sorts,” the president said. His brain and mine were working on the same track, which was kind of scary, but helpful, too, since we didn’t have to fill each other in about what we were thinking. “Perhaps the inverted sign tells these intruders when they should go in. Or that they should stay away.”
I looked beyond the rope to the closed ballroom door. “But why?”
I don’t think he had the answer, so it was just as well that Jeremiah Stone popped up out of nowhere. He cleared his throat. “Mr. President, there is work to be done,” he said. He pointed to the ever-present bundle of papers he carried in one hand and backed away. “And papers to be signed, sir. It is really quite important.”
“Yes, of course.”
When the president moved to follow him, I stopped him. “Wait! What about the ballroom? What about the people who are hanging around who shouldn’t be hanging around? What’s going on?”
I swear, there was actually a twinkle in the president’s eyes when he answered. “Remember, young lady,” he said right before he vanished. “Things don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up. You’re the detective!”
It wasn’t very encouraging. Especially since now, I was more confused than ever about what the hell was going on. Before I had a chance to think about it, though, a couple things happened. The front door opened and three middle-aged women walked in and started oohing and aahing. I didn’t know if they were gushing over the monument or the murder scene, but either way, I had to get down there and play hostess. Just as I got to the stairway, my cell rang and I fished it out of my pocket, saw it was the guy who’d gone to take care of my flat tires, and figured I’d better talk to him before he did something that was too expensive for a cemetery tour guide’s wallet.
“Hey, did you take a close look at those tires of yours?” he asked. Obviously, though he’d done some repairs and maintenance on the Mustang, he didn’t know me well. Tires are just about the last thing I’d waste brain cells thinking about. “Those tires of yours weren’t just flat, Miss Martin. They were slashed.”
I was on the winding staircase and I paused, one hand on the railing and one foot dangling above the next step. “Slashed? What on earth are you talking about? Why would anybody—?”
“Don’t ask me, honey. All I can say is that it was no accident. Either some punk was out getting his kicks with a little vandalizing, or . . .”
It wasn’t what he said, it was the way he said it. That one little or and suddenly I felt like I’d gone one-on-one with one of my ghostly contacts. My stomach turned to a block of ice. Goose bumps shot up my arms.
“Or?” I asked.
He clicked his tongue. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’ll tell you what, sweetie. There’s somebody out there somewhere who doesn’t like you a whole, big bunch.”
Every time I heard the front door of the memorial open, I thought about Ball Cap Guy, and every time I thought about Ball Cap Guy, my heartbeat sped up at an impossible rate and my imagination raced right along with it.
There’s somebody out there somewhere who doesn’t like you a whole, big bunch.
The words of the auto mechanic swirled inside my brain and left me lightheaded. Oh yeah, there’s nothing like thinking about a stalker with a knife sharp enough to slash tires to make a girl jumpy.
Preoccupied, I twitched my way through the early morning, and a dozen or so visitors. Joy of joys, Ball Cap Guy never showed his doughy face. It wasn’t much consolation. Not with the words not yet echoing in my head.
The good news in all this was that apparently it was a slow day around Garden View. Doris showed up at the administration building to do whatever it is volunteers do, and since Ella couldn’t find anything to keep her busy, she sent the little old lady over to the memorial. Not that I thought Doris would be much help in a fight, but I had to admit, it was nice to have someone else around. At least if my stalker showed, I had some backup.
With no emergencies in sight, Doris was busy with a group of four ladies who were asking more questions about Marjorie than they were about the president. After watching her kick dirt on Marjorie’s grave, I was itching to know how much—exactly—Doris knew about Marjorie (and more important, Marjorie’s murder), but unfortunately, I was stuck dealing with a visitor who was actually there to tour the memorial. He was a half a foot shorter than me, a pudgy guy wearing a suit that was too dark and too wooly for a sticky summer day. He had an impenetrable Eastern European accent and a scraggly beard that was the same salt-and-pepper color as his hair. No matter how hard I tried to avoid him, he dogged my steps, and once he had me cornered, there was no getting away from him. Even when I finally gave up being polite and just blatantly tried to eavesdrop on what Doris was saying, he kept pestering me with questions.
“This president of yours, this James Abram Garfield . . .” He carefully read the name from the brochure he’d picked up outside the office. “He must have been your bestest of presidents, to have a place in which he is buried such as this. I am thinking he must have done many big great things, yes?”
I half expected the president to show up and start listing them, and when he didn’t, I was on my own. “There was something about the Post Office,” I mumbled. “And the Civil War and—”
“Murder.”
I heard Doris say the word, and in hopes of catching more, I quickly stepped closer to where she and the four other women were standing.
The little man had other things on his mind. “These mosaic tile pictures, they are very marvelous.” He looked up to the dome high above our heads and the head of the statue of the president. Since Doris and the ladies she was talking to turned around and headed in the other direction and the only way I was going to hear any more from her was to take off after them, I gave up with a sigh and I looked up, too. The last time I’d been in the rotunda, it was so full of that swirling, sparkly fog, I couldn’t even see the dome.
The entire inside of the dome is decorated with a background of gleaming gold mosaic where mosaic angels with wicked big wings and wearing flowing white robes mark the directions: north, south, east, and west. Between each angel are more mosaic pictures, swirling scrolls that burst into blooms of pink stylized flowers. The whole shebang is bordered at the bottom with red and white stripes and glistening golden wreaths. It’s all pretty spectacular, and I would have allowed myself to be impressed if the wreaths didn’t make me think of wheels, and wheels didn’t make me think of tires, and tires didn’t make me think of—
Never mind.
“I am inquiring is all what I am doing.” I snapped out of my thoughts to find the little man with one finger pointed straight up. “How do you say this? I am asking yourself as the representative of the cemetery in which all this is possessed, if it is possible to get a more better look?”
Since I only speak English, it took me a bit to work this through. “Oh, you want to go up there? Upstairs?”
He nodded, and relieved to finally be getting rid of him, I showed him the way to the stairs.
Unfortunately by that time, Doris and the four visitors she was working with were up on the balcony, too. I went back into the rotunda, but from where I was standing, I couldn’t catch a word of what she was telling them. I could, however, see them, and I watched Doris (all sweet-faced and as fluffy as one of those mosaic angels) gesture wildly toward the balcony railing.
The ladies looked appropriately horrified.
All three of them.
I’d been a little busy wondering when and if Ball Cap Guy was going to jump out from some shadowy corner and attack me, but believe me, even that wasn’t enough to make me forget what I’d learned from the president earlier that morning. He said there was commotion in the memorial. At all hours. He said he’d seen people near the ballroom door, people who weren’t employees or volunteers. And I remembered that CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC sign that seemed to have a way of getting turned upside down when no one was looking and how the president had suggested that it might be some sort of signal to the intruders who were disturbing his peace.
Intruders like the woman who was suddenly and suspiciously missing from Doris’s group?
I backed up a step, the better to take a closer look at the balcony above my head. The little man with the beard was up there snapping pictures with a digital camera. And Doris was still talking away to the three women who were hanging on her every word. But there was no sign of their friend.
Curious, yes? And being curious, too, I scampered up the corkscrew stairway to the floor above the memorial hall. The balcony up there loops around the rotunda, and from where I was standing, I couldn’t see any sign of the bearded man, or Doris and her tour group. I scooted around to the blocked stairway that led into the ballroom. That CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC sign was exactly where it should have been, and not upside down, and I was about to chalk up the whole silly thing about the sign as a signal to an imagination that was running way too wild when I thought I heard a noise from inside the ballroom.
“Hey!” I reached for the door. “If there’s somebody in there, you’re not supposed to be. The ballroom isn’t open for tours, so why don’t you just—”
“Aha! There you are.”
At the same time I heard the voice behind me, someone touched my shoulder and I jumped about a mile. One hand pressed to my heart, I whirled around.
“Jack!” My blood kept right on rushing a mile a minute, and believe me, it had everything to do with being surprised and not with Jack’s hotness (though in jeans and a faded blue T-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on the front of it, he looked plenty hot). I thought about my own outfit and the absolute unhotness of khakis and a polo shirt, and the blood drained from my face. “It’s not . . . it can’t be . . .” I gulped down my mortification. “Lunchtime already?”
“Looks like you’re busy today. I saw some people just leaving as I was coming in. I guess your morning must have flown by. That’s why you didn’t realize what time it was.” He glanced around the balcony. “I heard voices up here, too. You’re not giving someone a tour, are you? Am I interrupting?”
I thought about that sweet little kiwi-colored dress down in the carry bag in the office. And I thought about the noise I thought I’d just heard from inside the ballroom. I glanced at the door at the top of the stairway, beyond that CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC sign. As always, it was shut, and I could tell it was locked. When it wasn’t (which wasn’t very often, only when a cleaning crew went in or the maintenance guys had to visit), it had a way of sagging so that a strip of light showed all along the side of the door.
“Interrupting? No.” I looked back at Jack. “It’s just that—”
“I brought sandwiches.” He held up a paper takeaway bag and I recognized the name of the place printed on the side of it. It was from Presti’s,
one of the restaurants in the Little Italy neighborhood where I lived, just down the hill from the cemetery. Good food, great prices. Leave it to a history teacher to find quality and thriftiness in a strange town.
“Hungry?” Jack asked.
I was. But there were more important matters than my hunger pangs. I made a face. “I wanted to change before you got here. I have this really cute summer dress, and—”
“You look fine.” He gave me a careful once-over that made my heart start thumping madly again. “Better than fine. You look—”
“What was that?” Another noise made me spin around. “Did you hear something?” I glanced at him over my shoulder. “From up there?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say I did.”
I knew he was probably right. The door was locked, after all; there could be no one inside the ballroom. Not someone alive, anyway. I didn’t have a key, and it was just as well. If I went in there to check things out, Jack would follow me, and if my imagination was playing tricks on me and there was nothing and no one there, I’d just end up looking jumpy and paranoid. On the other hand, if there was a ghost prowling around, he wouldn’t see it and I would, and I’d just end up looking jumpy and paranoid. Believe me when I say I did not want to look jumpy and paranoid in front of Jack.
I made a move for the door, anyway. At least I could jiggle the handle and satisfy myself that all was well and the door was locked tight.
I probably would have gotten there if Jack hadn’t grabbed me, whirled me around, and kissed me.
Just like that.
He was holding the paper bag in one hand, and he still managed to pull me close. The bag scrunched between his body and mine, and the unmistakable smell of pizza sauce filled the air. His other hand was free, and he slipped it from my wrist to where the short sleeve of my polo shirt ringed my arm. His fingers were cool against my skin. His mouth was hot. He slanted it over mine, and even if I cared that one of our visitors might see us . . . well, let’s face it, at that moment, I didn’t care. Not one little bit.
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