The Haunted Heist

by Angie Fox

  Frankie grinned. “Aww… Look at that. He needs some joy before he realizes they took out the gold in 1946.”

  “You okay?” Ellis asked, his hair coated in white dust.

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  We pulled out our flashlights and I shone mine down into the hole. Jagged, blackened concrete lay at the bottom, mixed with shards of the floor and Lord knew what else. I hoped we could make it all the way out. Parts of the tunnel might be sealed up or caved in by now, but it was a start.

  Ellis squeezed my arm. “I’m going to check it out,” he said, dropping down into the tunnel.

  Suds cursed at the empty vault. “What are we gonna say to the Chicago guys?”

  “It don’t matter! The good news is they’re dead,” Frankie explained happily.

  Ellis shone a light down the passageway. “Verity!” he called from below. “Quick as you can. We’ve got to get out of here before this tunnel caves in.”

  “Oh boy.” I dropped down onto the largest piece of concrete I could find. Ellis grabbed me when I stumbled and helped me down. It smelled like sulfur and gunpowder down here. That and dust. At least this section of the tunnel walls had been bolstered with wood planks.

  “How far is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, pressing forward in front of me.

  I could barely stand. The remains of shovels and axes littered the ground. I shone my light forward and it hit Ellis several yards down.

  “Keep quiet and keep moving,” he said, pointing to his left, where part of the wall had caved in. Dirt and rocks rained down from above.

  “We’re officially crazy,” I said, hurrying after him through the rickety old tunnel.

  “He’s got it reinforced pretty good, but these boards have been down here for generations. And that explosion didn’t help.”

  Ellis’s light hit another partial cave-in about ten feet ahead. At least it looked old. The air grew more stale with each step, and I wondered if we were trading one grisly death for another. My brain swam and I forced my legs to keep moving. We’d find out soon enough if this place would hold, if we had enough air, and exactly what lay beyond.

  Frankie’s urn clanked inside my bag. He’d be following us as well. The gangster didn’t have a choice.

  The tunnel went on for way too long. It made me nervous, the feeling of being closed off from the world, ever since Ellis and I had almost been buried alive at the distillery.

  We saw nothing but inky blackness, both ahead and behind.

  Keep moving. It wouldn’t do any good to panic now, even if the earth was closing in above us.

  I about wept when Ellis’s light caught an old wood door at the end of the tunnel.

  “Beautiful,” he said, hopeful. Ellis tried the handle and it broke off in his hand. “Damn it.” He tried to reattach it, but the neglected metal had actually snapped with age. He flung it to the ground. “We gotta catch a break that doesn’t involve ghosts with dynamite.”

  “Let me try,” I said, winding my fingers into the door mechanism, trying to get a grip on a latch. We couldn’t make it this far only to be cornered at the end.

  Nothing.

  “Help!” I beat on the door. “Anyone! We’re trapped back here.”

  “Be careful!” Ellis hissed. “Noise could set off a cave-in. Besides, we don’t know who’s on the other side of that door.”

  We should have asked Suds when we had the chance. Of course, he only knew what was there ninety years ago. “If we don’t make noise, we might never get out.” It wasn’t like the door was going to open on its own.

  “Give me a second,” he said.

  We had to get out. Jeb would not get away with murder so long as I had breath in my body.

  I dug out my cell phone again. Still no signal. I fought the urge to smash it on the floor along with the broken knob. It was about as useful.

  Ellis shoved his shoulder against the door and we heard a loud crack. I didn’t know if it came from the door or if he broke something. He rushed the door again.

  Crack.

  “Shoot it,” I told him.

  He hit the door again. “That only works in the movies.”

  He was going to kill himself. “Ellis!”

  He rushed the door a fourth time. Crack! This time, it flew open.

  On the other side, a ghostly couple kissed like the ship was going down. With a start, I realized that I recognized one of them. That meant I knew the other, too.

  “Matthew,” I said, a little harsher than I intended. He had to forgive me. I was surprised. He spun around, and sure enough there was Josephine with him.

  She startled and quickly drew up a hand to cover the hickey forming on her pale, translucent neck. “This isn’t what it looks like,” she stammered.

  For their sakes, I hoped it was exactly what it looked like. But I didn’t have the time or the inclination to explore the details. “I’m so relieved to see you two. We need help.”

  Chapter 21

  “Verity!” Matthew stepped aside, and we rushed into what appeared to be an old coal room in the basement of the library. Tall brick walls stretched up to an iron chute.

  Josephine fidgeted, her hands fluttering at her neck. “I was just visiting,” she stammered, “to see if there was any news on the preacher.”

  They’d get no judgment from me.

  I located the door to the stacks. “This way,” I said, opening it and beckoning Ellis to follow. “We’re working on getting you kids a preacher, I promise,” I called to the ghosts as we hurried through the stacks.

  The library above stood silent as a grave. “It must be late,” Ellis said, taking the stairs two at a time. I rushed to keep up. We’d lost all sense of time down in that vault. I was anxious to see what had happened above ground while we’d been trapped.

  My flashlight beam cut through the darkened hallway above. “It’s well past closing time.”

  “Keep your guard up,” Ellis warned, pushing out through the door that opened up to the main reading room. “Jeb might have heard us escape.”

  “He’d have to know where the tunnel led to find us here,” I said, keeping my focus on the main doors and away from the moans of the ghosts who occupied the field hospital in the main reading room.

  Ellis pressed ahead as we made our way for the doors at the front. “Jeb’s already tried to kill us once. I don’t want to take any more chances.”

  “Wait,” I said to Ellis as he threw the bolt on the main doors. The library had installed new security since the tragedy we endured a few months ago. I went to the key panel next to the door and typed in the code 1-2-1-2.

  “That’s a terrible password.”

  “Even worse is that I know it,” I said, hitting Enter. I’d learned from watching Melody one morning.

  The system gave a beep of recognition and the alarm switched off.

  “First thing tomorrow, I’m holding a security meeting with the library staff,” Ellis vowed as we slipped out the front.

  Alarms blared at the bank. “Flashlights off,” he cautioned as we hurried down the stairs. “Jeb may be long gone, but I want to get the jump on him if he’s not.”

  He drew his gun and held it low as we ran across the square to the bank. Lights blazed inside. Ellis’s squad car sat out front. His was the only car in the square.

  “Stay here,” Ellis ordered. “I’m going down for a look.”

  He had to be crazy. I wasn’t standing all by myself in the dark in front of a haunted bank that might or might not be stalked by a live killer.

  “I’m not separating,” I said, following him down the stairs. Not with Jeb on the loose. Lucky for me, there was zero time to argue.

  Ellis made it to the bottom of the stairs first and stopped dead in his tracks.

  “What?” I asked, joining him.

  Jeb Kemper lay on the floor of the bank in a pool of blood, eyes open and glassy. He’d been shot through the heart. Blood oozed from an X slashed into his right cheek.<
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  Ellis attempted to open the glass door separating us from the guard, but it was locked. The bank was as secure as it had been when Jeb locked us all in with Henry.

  “Holy hell.” Ellis shoved off the door. “It might actually be a ghost.”

  “Henry might have locked us in and then killed Jeb.” He’d certainly been angry enough. “But Henry said he had changed. He promised his mother he’d go straight.”

  “And gangsters always tell the truth,” Ellis said, letting the words linger between us. Ellis stared down at the body. “You said he was mad enough to kill.” He turned to me. “Now how do we stop him from doing it again?”

  “Rosie can help us find him.” I still wasn’t convinced he’d done it, but he’d seen something right before that vault door closed. “With any luck, she’s still at her grave.”

  We made a break for the car and sped back to the cemetery. “The police are going to need us for questioning at the bank,” Ellis said, lights blazing as we raced away from the scene.

  “There’s no way the police could know we were there,” I said, breathless. Jeb was dead. The back stairs camera couldn’t see us and the main camera had been blown. “Besides, what are we going to say? That a ghost gangster locked us in the vault, but two more ghost gangsters were kind enough to blow up the vault and lend us their secret passageway to the library?”

  “This is my life,” he mused, hitting the gas hard around a turn.

  “Believe me, I feel that way a lot,” I told him.

  The hour was late and there was hardly any traffic. We made it across town in record time.

  I braced a hand on the door as he made a sharp corner at Pearlman’s gas station. “Are we breaking the rules by doing this first?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he asked, his eyes on the road. “As it so happens, this is part of the investigation,” he reasoned as we passed Fitzer’s Memorial Monuments. “It’s just not one I can ever talk about.”

  “You can always tell me,” I said, earning a smirk as we pulled into the graveyard.

  “We left the gates open.” Ellis winced.

  “We were chasing a homicidal ghost.” We needed to cut ourselves some slack.

  The fog had thickened in this part of town, and I could barely see the road as we made our way past the timeworn graves at the front and into the section that held the family vaults.

  We were the only ones who could confront the hit man. We couldn’t leave this part to the police.

  Ellis pulled over next to the white marble obelisk. Thick fog obscured the weeping angel at its base. The fog felt unnatural. Wrong. As if something had created it in order to hide.

  The Baker mausoleum hunkered near the back, past the broken Celtic cross.

  “Lights off,” Ellis said as we exited the car. It was the wisest course of action, but it didn’t feel so good in the middle of a dark cemetery.

  I didn’t even have the gray light of Frankie to lead the way.

  No doubt the ghost had used up his energy down in the tunnel with Suds. I’d seen him go from half a body to only a head. Then a whole new worry hit me—what would happen if my share of Frankie’s power suddenly ran out? I hoped my ghost friend had enough energy left to let me deal with Handsome Henry.

  Old stone tombs loomed on both sides, surrounding us. The temperature plummeted as we neared the Thompson mausoleum. “You feel that?” I asked Ellis.

  “No,” he murmured, “but somebody’s back there.”

  He paused behind a vault with matching Greek-style urns at the top. I drew up next to him and heard a rough strike, like a shovel hitting dirt.

  We waited. I held my breath.

  Scraaape.

  Crunch.

  A figure in a heavy black coat bent in the doorway of the Thompson family vault. A metal clip light shone down into the corner. Henry hovered close, glowing red, his pistol aimed inches from the figure’s skull. “What do you say I try something new and blow your brains out?”

  Oblivious, the figure kept digging.

  Henry cocked his ghostly revolver. Oh my God. The hit man appeared perfectly willing to kill.

  And he certainly wasn’t thinking of his mamma.

  I dug my elbow into Ellis’s side. “Do you see the figure in black?” I prodded.

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  That meant the person was in the land of the living. Henry shouldn’t be able to touch the intruder. Unless the ghost got angry enough to go poltergeist.

  “Stay back,” Ellis urged, heading to the left as if to flank them.

  I zigzagged forward and slipped behind a large headstone.

  The iron door with its crisscrossed bars lay open, and I knew what had set Henry off. The gangster didn’t even like me taking flowers back and this person was trying to open his grave. He glared at the hooded figure with a hate that reached down to his soul.

  Henry aimed his revolver at the figure’s head and squeezed the trigger.

  His gun clicked, out of bullets.

  Handsome Henry, ace hit man of the South Town Gang, had died with an empty revolver.

  Henry threw the gun down to the ground and bellowed his outrage.

  The grave robber kept digging.

  “Stop,” Ellis said, stepping from the left and taking the intruder by surprise. I drew my Maglite and shone it on the person’s face.

  “Carla,” I gasped, my beam catching her as she pointed a black revolver at Ellis’s chest and fired.

  He staggered back a step.

  “Ellis!” I cried. Thank God he wore his duty vest. Please let it work. My heart stopped as I saw him clutch his chest where the bullet hit.

  “Stay where you are,” Carla ordered, aiming her gun at Ellis’s head as he cursed and struggled to remain upright.

  “That was a bad move, Carla,” he grunted out.

  She smirked.

  I couldn’t believe how callously she’d shot him. We were looking at our murderer. I had no doubt of it.

  “I have a better idea,” she said. “Toss your weapon.”

  Ellis hesitated briefly, then did as she asked.

  “You,” she called out to me. “Place your light on the ground and step out here now.”

  I had no choice but to follow her crisp, efficient orders. I placed my light so I could see her and the tomb.

  “Against the vault,” she said. I shared a glance with Ellis as I planted my back to the cold stone grave. She huffed out a breath, as if she couldn’t quite believe we’d interrupted her. “You Sugarland people are nuts.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” I told her.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” She aimed the gun squarely at my chest. “I’m having trouble digging through the seal,” she said. “Break open the door for me,” she ordered Ellis. “You try anything and I shoot her.”

  A pickaxe leaned blade-down near the corner of the door. She’d bashed in a solid foot of the seal near the bottom.

  He glared at her, breathing heavy, a bullet hole torn in his shirt.

  With grim determination, Ellis hefted the pickaxe. He swung hard and hit the seal, opening up the entire left side of the door.

  Sweet heaven. Ellis was too strong for his own good—and mine. It would take him no time at all to break through. And then Carla would have no reason to keep us alive.

  We needed help. Now.

  I turned to a fuming Henry. “She wants to destroy your grave,” I murmured.

  Ellis struck the seal once more. Henry roared as the portion over the door fell away.

  Ellis and I couldn’t fight back, but if there was ever a time for the ghost to get angry and go poltergeist on Carla, this would be it.

  He’d been mad enough to shoot. We needed him furious now. The gangster’s chest heaved, the bullet wounds stark against his pale, gray skin. “She thinks you’re weak, standing there in your underwear.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Carla barked. “Shut up,” she ordered me, her attention on Ellis.r />
  The red aura around the gangster intensified.

  “Let’s not even talk about how she tried to peg you for murder,” I hissed. “She doesn’t care about your mamma. She could even go after mamma’s grave next.”

  “Not my mamma!” His image expanded, his face hollowed into a skull. A cold wind whipped through the cemetery and I felt the harsh thrumming of negative energy. Almost there.

  “Wait a second. Babe!” Rosie shimmered into view next to Henry. She placed an arm on his shoulder, and I watched in horror as he exhaled some of his anger.

  The wind calmed. The thrumming lessened.

  She rubbed his arm and he shrank back down to normal size. “Whatever it is, let’s talk about it. It’s gonna be all right.”

  No. “It’s not!” I whispered hotly. “He’s got a grave robber! Right there!” Maybe Rosie could at least get mad for him.

  “Enough!” Carla shoved the barrel of the gun against my chest, and I knew she wanted to shoot. Badly. I could tell by the way her finger tightened on the trigger. Ellis had stopped working and was watching us, probably wondering if he had time to take out Carla with the pickaxe before she blew me away.

  “Dig,” she said to him.

  Ellis shot her a look as he swung the axe again. His blade hit true, breaking off a large chunk of the seal.

  “Hey!” Rosie barked. “That dame’s wearing my earrings.” She zoomed straight for Carla and reached to snatch her jewelry back, but her hand passed straight through. “You little thief!”

  Carla flinched and tugged at her hood, briefly exposing a flash of silver art deco earrings with glittering green gems.

  Rosie looked ready to girl fight. Maybe we didn’t need Henry’s anger after all.

  “She took what’s yours,” I said to the ghost under my breath, risking Carla’s wrath, trying to stoke Rosie’s rage. Carla couldn’t shoot me until she got that door open. I might have enough time to push Rosie over the edge. “Are you going to let her get away with it?”

  Rosie’s eyes hardened.

  “Faster,” Carla warned Ellis. One more good hit and he’d break through.

  Rosie grew in size. Her image strengthened and I could see her rage building. This was it. This was what we needed.