“Maybe we should take our shoes off,” I whispered.
“In the middle of Cottonmouth Central? Not me, brother!”
My mind flashed on Rita. Could she have been bitten by a poisonous snake? Or some other weird southern animal? No, I thought, she’d be dead by now. Rita will be fine, concentrate on the problem at hand.
The crypt door was firmly in place. Locked tight, of course.
Katie kept craning nervously over her shoulder; I could see she was trembling.
“I should have left you in the car!” I whispered, hissing.
“Yeah, well, I should have left you in Austin!” She kept searching. “I don’t see anyone out there, Elliot—“
“That doesn’t mean someone isn’t. Watching us.”
“—come on, open the damn door before I shit or go blind!”
I fit the key in the lock.
Turned it.
Pushed.
Nothing happened. I leaned into it. Nothing.
“Think you could stop standing guard long enough to help me!” I growled.
“Sorry!” She unslung her bag, put her shoulder to the rich, dark wood. We shoved together on three.
The door eased open…
Outside moonlight spilled across cold gray stone. My eyes flew to the corner ceiling reflexively, but the trapdoor was closed, the rope ladder still withdrawn, coiled and hidden from view up on the roof. The crypt looked exactly as before.
Except for Dean Robichou lying face down on the stone floor.
“Damn,” Katie breathed softly.
And whipped around at a sound behind us.
I spun, heart whacking, saw nothing. We both stood stock still, like one of those silent statues out there among the graves. Nothing moved in the cemetery but the shifting shadows of clouds through the moon. I touched her shoulder lightly. “Come on, it was just a bird or something!”
“Then why are you whispering? Elliot, I don’t think I can go in there again!”
“The trap door’s there, we can get out!”
“Unless someone else has discovered it!”
I stood there breathing in cool limestone and marble. “Okay. You stay here then.”
“Screw that!”
I sighed. “Katie, what do you want me to do?”
She was clutching my shoulder so hard I could feel her nails through the material. “Didn’t bring along any of that Old Granddad, did you--?”
“When we get back to the motel.”
“If we get back to the—“
“Katie! Goddamnit, we’ve been nearly eaten by alligators, threatened by a witch woman, my fiancée’s in that rundown clinic with Dr. Kevorkian, and we’re finally about that close to solving Amy’s murder! This is what you do! Be professional!” I looked at her. “What--?
“That’s the first time you ever used the word murder.”
“Is it?” I turned to the stone interior, the still body on the floor. “Well, it’s clearly not the first time a Robichou suffered one.”
Katie clutched my shoulder. “Katie, please, you’re cutting off my circulation!”
She was staring past me into the crypt. “Look! Above him! Is it the light or is that vault drawer partly open?”
I pulled her clawing hand away. “We’ll know in a second.” And I entered the crypt.
I didn’t think she was coming at first, but finally I heard Katie’s footsteps sound hollowly behind me.
We approached the body, Katie’s claws back in my shoulder.
“He looks almost asleep,” she whispered.
I bent down to examine Dean Robichou’s back--almost jumped out of my skin when Katie yelped. “Elliot!”
I snapped around, found her pointing at the wall above Dean. “It’s Amy’s vault that’s partly open!”
We came round the body to the partially-opened steel drawer.
“We already looked,” I said, “there’s no money in there.”
Katie seemed abruptly calm as she approached the drawer. She got hold of the handle and pulled hard with both hands. I took one edge in my fingers and we got it open full length.
There was enough light to see every empty corner. “Told you.”
Katie, not trembling the least now, stood firm, chin thrust. “It has to be here. Dean was the only one who knew about it, other than whoever it was that killed him. And he wouldn’t have killed him unless it was for the money!”
She reached inside the smooth-walled vault and felt around with her hand.
“Katie. It’s empty.”
Now she felt with both hands.
Now she bent closer, stretched and rapped her knuckles on the vault’s grey metal bottom. There was a hollow sound.
Katie jerked her eyes at me. “This isn’t steel—it’s wood! Look!
I looked.
“Wood, Elliot! Painted gray like steel!”
It took nearly five minutes to find the hidden lever that released the false bottom.
There was no money under it, just another empty box there, but there had been, you could smell it.
When I looked up, Katie wasn’t there.
I spun around, heart kicking.
I found her kneeling over Dean’s face-down body.
“Not a mark on him,” Katie breathed. “It must have been a heart attack.”
I bent closer, ran my eyes over the corpse: jeans, topsider shoes, flannel shirt. Not a bruise or spot of blood anywhere. Just to be sure I pressed his wrist for a pulse. He was cold.
I stood, hands in my pockets. My fingers brushed against cool metal. I pulled out the old-fashioned brass key, turned it over in my fingers. “I don’t get it. If we’ve got the key, how’d Dean get in here?”
Katie was at the corpse’s other hand, extracting something from his tightly closed fingers. “Obviously he had a >uh< spare at home. Probably what he’s still clutching here in his han—“
“Shit!” we gasped in tandem as the corpse’s fingers at last unclenched, pale palm open like a morning flower.
Amy’s shiny gold locket lying within it.
TWENTY-NINE
Katie lifted the gleaming necklace gently from the dead man’s hand.
Gave me a quick, plaintive look.
“Don’t even start!” I warned.
She held up the familiar locket until the outside sun caught it, turned it slowly in her fingers. Her tone was smooth. “I’m not starting. ‘Start’ what?”
“About how Amy’s restless spirit put the locket in her father’s palm just so we’d find it.”
She gazed at the lustrous alloy. “Is that what you think, Elliot?”
“No, that’s what you think. Or would like to.”
“I’d like to think Dean grabbed it from his pocket during the heart attack, knew he was dying, wanted to feel closer to Amy, maybe…” She ran a fingertip along one smooth edge as if seeking imperfections. “Looks like it should open, doesn’t it? But I don’t see any—“
She started, neck craning high like an egret on alert. She clamped the little case tight in her fist.
“What is i--“
“Listen! Do you hear that…?”
Speaking of birds and craning. I listened. Finally waved it off. “It’s a loon. Out on the swamp.”
Katie rose slowly. “No it isn’t…”
Then I heard it too. Sirens.
Now louder. Closing fast.
Katie was all ready to the open crypt door, gripping either side urgently, eyes straining past moss-festooned markers, the rim of the cemetery hill. “Maybe it’s just an accident or speeder…”
I listened another second. “No. It isn’t.”
I saw Katie’s back muscles flex, her head turn in the direction of the parked T-Bird. It was ensconced beneath the deeper shadows of a big shade tree but not parked that far off the road. Even at night, even half-hidden, someone coming in our direction might see a glint of moonlight on window or chassis. Or they might not. Luck would play a big part.
She spun to me, �
��Come on!”
“Katie, wait!”
I caught her elbow before she entered the moonlight, pulled her back. “Look!”
The flashing glow of red rack lights were just becoming visible in north sky, masked only by the dark crest of the hill, maybe half-a-mile off. I yanked her back inside. “We’ll never make it to the car. Hurry, we have to shut the door!”
She gaped at me, eyes brimming dread. “Are you craz—Elliot, I can’t do that!”
I calculated we had about five seconds before we were visible to approaching vehicles. “You’ll have to!” And I caught the heavy handle and strained backward with everything I had.
“No!”
She was almost to it when the big door slammed shut in her face with a thunder of finality.
“NO!”
I grabbed her wrist, pulled her back inside. “Sh! Just stay calm. Try not to make any noise. They can’t get in without the key, remember?”
“No, because we’ve got it! Which won’t help us get out again!”
I pulled her toward the body behind us. “No, we don’t have it! We don’t have it and we never came in here tonight!” I gestured at the crumpled figure on the floor. “He has it! That’s what they’re going to discover on him!” I bent to the sprawled figure.
“Elliot, what are you doing?”
I dragged the key from my pocket. “Planting this on Dean.”
I reached for the closest pocket.
“Wait! What if he’s already carrying a key—a spare? Then the police will find two keys on him! How is that going to look?”
“Better than if they find even one key on us!” I began patting down the body for a duplicate key.
Katie bent to the other side of the corpse, looked across at me at eye level. “Don’t tell me you’re not thinking what I’m thinking, Elliot! Haven’t been thinking it all along!”
There was nothing in Robichou’s back pockets. “Which is--?”
“That Dean got into the crypt the same way we got out last time! Through the roof!”
I hesitated, turned and looked behind me at the high ceiling where the two walls met. “The rope ladder would still be hanging there.”
“Not if someone else followed him in! Snuck up behind, killed him, took the money and exited again, pulling the ladder up after him!”
I looked at her. “You just said Dean died of a heart attack!”
“I said it looks like a heart attack! It could be murder.”
My mind was on overload. “There’s no mark on him, Katie!”
“That we can find!”
I hated when she did that, had a plausible answer to all my doubts.
I looked back down at the body, pulse beating a timpani at my temple. “We’ve got to find that spare key if he’s really got one! Here, help me turn him over! I’ll pull, you push!”
We got our hands under the corpse, tugged. But Dean Robichou was a big man, and literally dead weight. “Jesus!”
“Push harder!”
Sirens buffeted the crypt walls outside, along with the shriek of brakes.
“They’re here!” Katie hissed.
I froze, listening: muffled sounds of car doors slamming, footfalls running toward the crypt.
I yanked again at the body. “Hurry!”
But Dean wouldn’t roll over.
“Jesus, he weighs a ton—“
“It’s his head, Elliot, look!”
The body’s forehead was sticking tight to the stone floor under a smear of dried blood; maybe from falling from the heart attack, maybe from something else. Turning the body further would tear the skin from the forehead, leave some of it behind.
I started to dig in again, then thought about whose prints forensics might lift from Dean’s clothing, and whose fibers might they find on our persons later.
We both jumped at an outer pounding on the thick door.
I watched it a moment, then turned to the body again. “There isn’t time for this, Katie! Come on!”
I slipped the key back into my pocket. “We’ll get out through the roof again while we can—just have to hope they don’t look up and see us.”
“It won’t matter once we’re off the roof—we’ll make up some story.”
“If we get off the roof! What if we’re spotted? Red-handed! And even if we do get down, if they catch us trying to run they’re going to question us, ask what the hell we’re doing out here in the cemetery! Somebody obviously put in a prowler call or they wouldn’t be here.”
My mind was on complete overdrive now, brow dripping freely there within the cool mausoleum.
“Elliot, what if they pat you down? Just to be sure! What if they find the key on you?”
I looked into her eyes. “That’s just a chance we’ll have to take!”
Katie sat back, shot me an un-mollified look. She knit her brows thoughtfully, then stuck out her hand. “Give the key to me!”
“Why?”
She shoved her hand in my pocket and dragged it out. “If they get suspicious, they’ll be less inclined to pat down a woman!”
She snapped open her handbag. I grabbed her wrist. “The hell they will! They’ll check us both! All over!”
She hesitated, studied the key uncertainly.
A basso voice crackled mechanically through a bullhorn. “Person in the crypt! This is the police! The mausoleum is surrounded! You can’t get out unless we open it! Place your hands behind your head and put any weapons ten feet on the floor in front of you! Knock hard on the door if you understand!”
There was a grinding sound at the door. Like a huge dental drill.
“They’re destroying the lock.” I said.
I approached the door quickly with soft, exaggerated steps, leaned against it.
I could hear muffled, indistinguishable voices out there, the clanking of some kind of equipment. I bent, pressed my ear hard to the door. Suddenly the wood hummed violently against my temple, a strident whining hammering my skull. As I jerked back, the corkscrew head of an ugly, inch-thick drill emerged spinning beside the inner brass plate, spraying splinters.
I ran back to Katie, took her hand. “We’ve got to get out of here! Where’s the key?”
She held up the handbag.
The tomb rocked with the deafening thud of a sledge hammer against heavy German mahogany.
I grabbed her hand, raced the width of the crypt to the back corner below the trap door.
I put my back to the wall, bent my legs just as someone gave the lock another deafening whack with the sledge. “Up on my shoulders, quick!”
Katie adjusted her purse, stepped up with one shoe, braced herself against the wall for support, brought up the other shoe gingerly. The heels were like daggers in my neck muscles.
Hurry up, I wanted to shout, but with calm, tremulous voice said: “Slowly…get your balance before you try to reach up…”
She steadied herself carefully, and I felt my shoulders give an inch as she raised her arms to the ceiling, searched again for the trap door.
She cried out sharply, but I think it was drowned by the echoing whack at the door, a bigger shower of splinters and now a thin shaft of light racing toward us from the partly open lintel.
“Hurry!” I hissed.
The pressure left my shoulders abruptly.
A moment later my heart leapt relief as the rope ladder dropped down in front of my face to whack the floor.
By the time I started up, Katie was already on the roof, swathed in sunlight, reaching down with one hand through the narrow opening to help me out. I got my butt parked up there on the rough tiles, and began hauling up the rope quickly, hand over hand.
I got the trap door shut again behind us within seconds of an echoing explosion below us: the big mahogany door burst inward, ripped off its hinges. Excited voices poured through the opening, but we were to the drain pipe by then and starting our descent down the outside wall, me in the lead.
I hit the ground first, looked up and motioned Katie
to stay in place a moment on the pipe. I knew there were no exits from the mausoleum other than the big front door but I crept around carefully to both sides of the building, peered around the edges just to be sure they hadn’t assigned guards to surround the place. Then I checked the back.
I came back around, nodded affirmatively to Katie, grabbed her waist as she slid the rest of the way, helped her down to the weeds surrounding the crypt. Then I slipped over the side, hung there by the tiles a moment, said a prayer and let myself drop the remaining twelve or so feet.
I hit hard on heels and ass but got up quickly with Katie’s help.
We stood there unmoving at the back of the crypt a moment, heads cocked, ears straining; the only muffled sounds coming from within the tomb. I nodded at Katie, took her arm and started for the thick woods behind the mausoleum. A few yards into the thicket and I paused again, took Katie’s arm and looked behind us.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered fiercely, “we’re free!”
I stared at the mausoleum. “No. No, we’re not. At least we can’t be sure. What if they saw my T-Bird parked under that tree? It’s a pretty hard car to miss, even in deep shade.”
“Well…maybe they didn’t!”
“And maybe they did.”
On the verge of relief only to have it snatched from her, Katie was not a patient camper. “What are you suggesting, Elliot?”
“We have to go back.”
“We—“
“You said yourself someone must have put in a prowler call. They’ll be checking the grounds. So let’s save them time and give them a prowler. Two prowlers.”
She was against it. “Walk right into their hands?”
“Hide in plain sight, sweetie! It’s the only way to be sure we’ve cleared ourselves--by claiming innocent surprise. The only way to get around the chance they spotted our car—admit to it.”
“I don’t like it!”
“I don’t either. But I can’t think of a better plan. Better we stumble onto them than visa versa.”
She opened her mouth to argue…slowly closed it again. “Fine. How do we do this, just waltz out there under the rack lights like Hansel and Gretel?”
I smiled. “Maybe they brought along Mamma Grace—she could be the old witch!”
“Hysterical.”
I gave her a quick hug, we both took a deep breath, reached far back into thespian high school days and put on our best innocently casual faces, and started around the side of the building toward the bright, whirling police lights.
FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 29