“Everyone will be fine,” Jon Skye assured him. “It won’t be that long, and we all know places where we can fill in for a day or so for friends, pick up extra shifts. Not to worry.” He grinned. “Mr. Frampton, if you have some kind of cool old place, trust me, we’ll all find a way to hang out with you at one point or another.”
“Cool? I’m not so sure. But no mortgage, and in the family, mine—all mine. For taxes each year, of course,” Gary said.
Alice came striding into the bar with Liza and Lacey.
She stopped dead, sighing softly as she saw her father.
“Oh, dear,” she said.
“Alice, baby, we’re going to get out of town!” her father told her.
Alice looked at Griffin, arching a brow. “Dad,” she said quietly. “I don’t think that we’re supposed to leave town right now.”
“We’re going to leave town without leaving town!” Gary announced, waving his shot glass. He reached for the bottle to refill it.
Alice grabbed the bottle first.
“Dad, I think you need some coffee. And a long nap.”
“Baby, we have to go.” He grinned and started laughing. “No, not out of town. Well, kind of out of town. To the border land!”
Alice sighed deeply, shook her head again and looked at Griffin. “We have an old family house just down in Glen Burnie. It’s always been a nice hideaway for Dad. He loves the old place, although it’s old. Needs work. But we do a little when we go. And...it’s still within easy reach of Baltimore.”
“I’ll check with Detective Morris, but I’m sure it’s all right if you go out there,” Griffin said.
From the bar stool where he had been sitting silently, engrossed in his book, Alistair Malcolm suddenly looked up. “Frampton Manor! Interesting history to it!” he said. “Feel free to invite me out for dinner while you’re there!” he told Alice.
“Certainly, sir,” Alice said politely.
“Can we go home now?” Liza asked. “I’ve had a very traumatic day, raising the dead! I need some rest!”
“Yes, you can all go home,” Griffin told them. “In fact, Gary, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get all of you out—including you and your daughter—and see that the place is sealed up tight. The police will want to come back tomorrow for a fresh look at the place.”
“Sure. Alice, sweetheart, Daddy will get the car,” Gary said.
“God, no! I’ll get the car, and you’ll behave, and—”
“I can have an officer drive you both home,” Griffin told her.
Alice shook her head. “No, I’m fine. I just need to get him to the car.”
“I’ll help you,” Vickie said. She glanced at Griffin and then Alice. “Please—I’m feeling a little bit responsible. He asked us to join him at the bar, and...”
“We’ll all get him out!” Jon Skye said cheerfully. He grinned at Vickie. “Go figure! You two in here just the other night when all this happened. Just customers. And now...wow. You’re one with all of us.” He broke off suddenly. “And men are dead. I am so sorry. Come on, let’s get Gary to the car.”
“I can help,” Griffin said.
“We’re fine,” Vickie assured him, and, he realized quickly, they were. Jon Skye was tall and fairly lean, but appeared to be well built and in good shape. He was in his mid-twenties to thirty, perhaps, and he could easily support Gary’s weight while Vickie did the guiding.
They left the restaurant. Lacey and Liza followed them toward the door, but apparently felt the need to stop and talk to Griffin.
“I’m going home—and you know where to find me. I might well be of more use, you know. We can try again to reach the other side,” Liza said.
“I’m also going home,” Lacey said, “and while you probably know where to find me, too, no offense, but please don’t. I don’t want you at my house, so don’t come for me unless you need me!”
She went on out.
Liza let out a grunt of air and looked steadily at Griffin again. “I repeat, Special Agent Pryce, I am available if you need me.”
Griffin forced a grim smile. “Thank you so much,” he told her.
When they were out, Alistair Malcolm spoke from the bar. “I’ve been reading and it’s quite extraordinary. Of course, any of us in just about any Poe society knows about the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death and how there never was any kind of decent investigation! Now I’m thinking that our killer is a player—but not an excessively good player, as one might expect. He knows about Poe—I mean, doesn’t everyone? But he’s not an expert. Not in the least. Take ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’ The narrator claims that he’s not mad or insane. But he’s obsessed. The old man’s eye. He stalks his prey, and then snuffs the life out of him with a mattress. But in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ the narrator dismembers his victim. Thank the good Lord that we didn’t find Brent Whaley dismembered!”
Griffin had to agree with that, but still—dead was dead. He doubted if being dismembered would have mattered a great deal to Brent Whaley once his life had been taken.
“I guess I’ll have to brush up on my Poe,” Griffin said.
Jon Skye opened the door and held it so he and Vickie could re-enter.
“Quite a day. I mean, quite horrible.” He paused, shuddering slightly. “And to think! I was rather touched and honored to be part of that séance. That one old bird—Liza—well, to say that she is a bit of a snob would be quite the understatement. And now, of course, I wish I’d never been invited.”
“I’m sorry,” Vickie murmured.
“Not your fault!” Jon said. He looked at Griffin. “Now what?”
Griffin smiled. “Now I say thank you. And then I ask you and Mr. Malcolm to leave.”
“What?” Alistair asked.
“I need you all to leave. Everyone needs to be out now. The Baltimore crime lab has fantastic people working there, and they’re going to go through the whole place. So...”
“Yes, well, Mr. Skye is a waiter. An excellent waiter! No offense, Jon.”
“None taken, Alistair,” Jon assured him, grinning.
“But I’m vice president of the Blackbirds!”
The man was truly indignant; as if he had somehow become one of Poe’s detectives himself and therefore deserved to stay.
“Sir, we’ll keep you informed every step of the way, and we’ll come to you for any and all help that has to do with Poe,” Griffin assured him politely. “But for now...”
“Well! Well. Well, of course. I’m not an officer. Of any kind,” Alistair said, as if realizing that fact himself. “But... Oh, dear. I’m just like Liza. You know where I live. I do sincerely hope that you’ll call on me if you need my help in any way. Liza is... Well, Liza is, quite frankly, a flake. Her and her belief that she can summon ghosts! Anyway, if you want facts and educated theories and not hocus-pocus, well, as I said, I am your man, at your disposal.”
“And if you need a good waiter, give me a call!” Jon said, grinning. He slipped an arm around Alistair Malcolm’s shoulders. “Come, good sir, I will see you to your car!”
He winked at Vickie and Griffin, and led Alistair on out.
“Are we leaving, too?” Vickie asked.
“Morris and the crime-scene guys are still here,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Poe is here—or was here!” she added very softly.
“Perhaps,” Griffin said, “if I can manage to be around here until the end, we’ll see him again. Although...”
“Although he doesn’t seem to have any answers,” Vickie said. “But I do have a few answers—or questions—for him. And you never know. Seriously, solving that murder from the past really might lead to solving these in the present.”
“It might...”
“Or?”
“It cou
ld just lead us to more dead,” Griffin said quietly.
8
They weren’t going to have the restaurant to themselves.
Not for hours and hours.
The forensic crew was going to go through the entire place bit by bit. And it was going to take all day—and go into the night.
For a while, Griffin and Vickie sat quietly at a table together, going over what had happened and who they thought might have committed the murders.
At first, the list of possible suspects seemed immense. The link between the two murdered men seemed to be that they were both writers. Baltimore was a big city; there were many published and unpublished authors who might have felt bitterness or hatred toward Franklin Verne and Brent Whaley.
“But not really,” Vickie argued. “They weren’t at the same place in the writing world. Franklin Verne was huge—up there with Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, James Patterson and Nora Roberts. Brent Whaley was doing well, but he wasn’t a megastar. It doesn’t make any sense that they’d be killed because of their writing. Or, if it does, I can’t figure out why.”
“So, you’re thinking the Poe-fanatic angle—which puts us back to there being dozens of Poe societies of one kind or another in Baltimore,” Griffin said.
“And then there’s the fact that both were found in the restaurant.”
“Which brings us back to someone involved with the restaurant. Okay, two shifts, ten waitstaff and two bartenders per shift. Five maintenance employees, two chefs and four sous chefs. So far, we’ve concentrated on the Blackbirds. Maybe we need to start looking at staff.”
“I guess Gary Frampton was very lax,” Vickie agreed.
They could spin in circles forever, Griffin thought. He stood suddenly.
“Actually, let’s leave the investigation here to Morris,” he said. “I want to head to city hall.”
“City hall?” Vickie asked.
He nodded. “The design in that private room is really quite bizarre, a floor built over a floor. The killer knew about it. I’d like to talk to someone in records and find out who might have known.”
“Okay,” Vickie agreed. “So...”
“I’ll go tell Morris,” Griffin said.
He smiled, leaving her at the table, hurrying back toward the area where Morris was now sitting and going through his own notes while sipping on a cola.
“Got a hunch—we’re heading to city hall. I want to get all the specs on this place, all the info on renovations. Whoever has committed these murders knows the place backward and forward. You don’t just happen on a crawlspace like that,” Griffin told him.
Morris nodded. “I’ve got a theory going,” he said.
“Oh? Anything you want to share?”
“Soon,” Morris told him. “I’m working it out in my own head.”
Griffin hesitated. “Maybe I can help.”
“It’s just the way I work—I’ve got to get this straight in my head. I’ll bounce it off you then first thing. I promise. Go ahead—your idea is a damned good one,” Morris told him.
Griffin almost pressed him, and then decided not to. At the moment, he was still working on the case only with the cop’s direct permission—he wasn’t there officially.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he told Morris.
“I’ll wait for you here. We’ll head to the autopsy together.”
“Sure thing,” Griffin promised.
Five minutes later, he and Vickie were on their way to city hall.
“Morris has an idea—but he didn’t share it with you?” Vickie asked. “If you had some kind of an idea, wouldn’t you want to put it out there in front of colleagues?”
“Maybe he doesn’t consider us colleagues,” Griffin said. “He called in to his lieutenant—perhaps he was even told to keep his ideas to himself. You never know. There is the possibility that someone out there is an obsessed Poe fan and has nothing to do with anyone at the restaurant—none of this would have been impossible. Gary Frampton was careless with anything that had to do with security. There were a number of employees who might have even said the wrong thing at the wrong time with a very wrong person within hearing distance.”
“But you don’t believe that. You think that someone directly involved with either the Blackbirds as a society or the Black Bird as a restaurant is involved.”
“I do.”
“Who?”
“I haven’t the least idea right now.”
Vickie was silent for a moment, but he knew her. “What?” he asked.
“I don’t think it is Liza.”
“Because she’s small and because she’s a woman?”
“I have no doubt that women can be every bit as spiteful, jealous, mean and conniving as men,” she assured him.
“But she is tiny.”
“Yes, but that has nothing to do with it.”
“So, what does?” he asked, glancing her way, curious.
“Here’s the thing. We don’t particularly like her. She is more or less a snob, an elitist. She enjoys that she has money. She likes that she can use her privilege to enjoy the society of bright and renowned men. But...”
“But?”
“I think she does have a talent.”
He looked at her and groaned. “Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. She doesn’t see the dead. If she actually saw the dead, she would have said so by now.”
“I don’t think she has what we have, what members of the Krewe have, Griffin. But she is one of those people who can feel them. It’s true. She was leading a séance. And then we started to hear the thump-thump, thump-thump—as in the tell-tale heart.”
“Alistair Malcolm is right. The killer isn’t getting these at all right, at all exact to Poe,” he grumbled irritably.
Was Vickie right? Did Liza Harcourt have something?
It was true that he really didn’t like the woman. And so maybe he didn’t want to share something that unique with her.
“Maybe we should let her have another séance,” Vickie pressed.
Griffin groaned aloud again. “Oh, please. I don’t think that any of us is up to finding another body at that restaurant.”
“There isn’t another body at the restaurant,” Vickie said.
“And you know this because...?”
“A hunch. Everyone else is present and accounted for—I mean, as far as we know.”
“I beg to differ. I’m sure a great deal of the population of the city is out and about and no one knows just where they might be!”
She made a face at him. “Griffin, I’m serious. I think that if anyone else is in danger of winding up dead—it’s going to be someone we have met in the course of this. The restaurant is closed indefinitely now. Gary and his daughter are heading to their place on the edge of town, and Alistair wants to be invited there. Liza will be at her place... Jon Skye was with us today, and Lacey. I’m really afraid one of them will wind up dead.”
“And at the hands of one of the others,” Griffin murmured.
“Yes.”
“A séance wouldn’t hurt. You heard the heartbeats. I heard the heartbeats. Poe heard the heartbeats!”
“He’s just a wonderfully helpful ghost, right?” Griffin asked. He glanced at her.
“I have a real feeling that I need to help him. And once I help him, I think that somehow he’ll manage to help us. You doubt that, don’t you?” she asked him quietly.
He reached over and squeezed her hand.
“I know that you feel you have to help him. So, yes, let’s hope that Poe will become a master sleuth for us as well!”
* * *
The first gentleman they encountered in the offices of public records seemed harried and not much in the mood to help. If they were only capable and knew what they wer
e doing, he implied, they could find anything they wanted online.
Not so, Griffin told him; they wouldn’t know if local residents had actually been into the offices, if they’d asked to see original blueprints or if anyone had got an impression that someone was doing research for the wrong reasons.
They weren’t after frivolous information; they were working murder investigations, and any attempt to waylay their investigation could be met with criminal obstruction of justice charges.
Vickie had noticed now through several situations, Griffin was always nice.
Until being nice didn’t work.
Then he pulled out his government ID and asked to speak with a supervisor in a manner that somehow made people instantly regret that they hadn’t helped to begin with. He never raised his voice, she decided.
It just became harder and deeper.
Something good to remember—icy-cold stares and precise language were far better tools than a voice screaming at high-octane level brought on by frustration.
The blustering young man immediately saw they were brought to a woman—his supervisor—who was very helpful.
She was, in fact, pleased to meet them. Her name was Mrs. Hermione Warren. She knew Gary Frampton and had known his parents, and had been very enthused about the opening of the Black Bird.
“I do love the idea of a restaurant with a library,” she told them. “But I’ve never joined one of those Poe societies. Are you a fan?”
“Love the man’s work!” Vickie assured her.
“Of course,” Griffin agreed, smiling. It was time to be nice again.
“Gary Frampton was down here quite often while he was planning the restaurant,” Mrs. Warren told them. “He and his daughter and, of course, a number of the workmen involved. You see, Gary and Brent Whaley were friends. Shocking, horrible—we’ve just gotten the news. Anyway, I’m delighted to help you in any way that I can. Well, this is over murders. Delighted is not a good word. Horrible, horrible—of course! If we can do anything to bring a killer to justice...”
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