Krewe of Hunters, Volume 2: The Unseen ; The Unholy ; The Unspoken ; The Uninvited

by Heather Graham

  “You’re late.”

  “You’re damned lucky I’m here!”

  “You’re damned lucky I just don’t tell them you did it.”

  “What? I’d accuse you. You’re the one who did it.”

  “You made it possible!” Vengeance reminded her.

  She looked away. “I’m not going into the tunnels. I already went into those damned tunnels for you, and I’m not doing it again.”

  “You don’t have to go into the tunnels. Not now.”

  “Well, you said I have to help clean up. What the hell did you want me to do, then?” she asked irritably.

  “Die!” Vengeance said quietly. “Just die.”

  Her eyes widened.

  When she opened her mouth to scream, it was too late.

  14

  When Madison woke up the next morning, Sean was no longer beside her. She found a note on the pillow telling her that he’d had an idea and she should join Logan Raintree and the others in the suite.

  A glance at the bedside clock showed her that he must have risen extremely early, since it was just past six. But then, she was learning particulars about his personality. If he had an idea, he wasn’t going to fall back asleep; he was going to explore it.

  In the suite, she discovered that coffee was made and there were bagels, fruit and pitchers of juice and water on the table.

  “Help yourself,” Logan told her, “and then you and I will head over to the studio with Tyler and Kelsey. I’ll meet up with Sean there, and he and I will go to the police station. We’ve decided that we’ll bring in Helena LaRoux at ten. Kat and Jane have already gone back to the station.”

  “Thank you,” Madison said. “Do you know where Sean is now?”

  “He’s at the studio, following a hunch.” Logan was standing at the board, writing, drawing lines. Madison studied it. On one side, the name Pete Krakowski was written, and on the other, Eddie Archer. Names were listed beneath, along with the connections between any of those names. Separately, to the far right, he’d listed theories, thoughts, hunches, questions.

  Possibly more than one killer.

  Benita has a family tie to Krakowski.

  Oliver has a family tie to Claymore Illusions.

  Madison fixed a plate of food and sat down, watching Logan as he continued to write.

  Two killers. Both with knowledge of the studio, one with greater access.

  Killing not random.

  Motives: Oliver Marshall—related to original studio owner, Claymore.

  Helena LaRoux, current wife—stands to gain if Alistair convicted? How? There was a prenup, and she is taken care of in the will. So is Benita.

  Alistair—to inherit studios.

  Mike Greenwood—knows the studio better than most.

  Andy Simons—Eddie’s partner.

  Colin Bailey—on duty at the time of the murder.

  Winston Nash—knows the studio, knows how to work the security footage.

  “You really think it’s down to one of these people?” Madison asked.

  Logan sat down across from her. “Can you suggest anyone else? Anyone we should interview again? We’ll bring in Oliver Marshall, discreetly, of course. But other than Oliver?”

  She hesitated, surprised by what she was going to say. “I don’t know if this is important or not. My assistant, Alfie, has been acting a bit strange. He always acts a bit strange, but I mean more than usual. He’s a wonderful assistant and very talented. But he was the first to call me about the murder, and he’s almost eager to see what’s going on.”

  Logan rose and added the name of Madison’s assistant to the list. Tyler entered the suite, pouring himself a coffee and greeting the two of them.

  “Where are our resident ghosts?” he asked.

  “Bogie has taken it upon himself to shelter Jenny. He’s trying to teach her what ghosts can and can’t do. I think he’s gone off to show her more of ‘old Hollywood,’” Logan said. “We should get going. I’ll collect Kelsey. She’s been on the computer looking for any more connections to the studio or the movie.” He studied Madison, and she sensed that he was perplexed, suspecting that she knew—somewhere inside—a piece of information that might help them.

  “Honestly,” she said. “I can’t think of anything else.”

  “You will,” he told her. “I’m not sure what it is or when we’ll get to it, but I have a gut hunch that you do know something.” He smiled. “Now let’s get out there.”

  * * *

  There simply weren’t enough hours in the day, Sean thought ruefully, staring across the expanse of Peace Cemetery. It was aptly named; it seemed to stretch on forever, and beautiful oaks had grown up over the years to shade the winding trails, benches, gravestones and monuments. The funerary art ranged from the contemporary back to the flowery detail of the late-Victorian era. Fences separated the cemetery from the studio and the Black Box Cinema, but Sean wasn’t concerned with the fences; he was still certain there had to be an entry to the underground catacombs. He just had to figure out where that entry might be.

  It was a daunting task.

  Benny Knox, impressed by the hours the Krewe seemed to keep, had done his part, bringing the original plan for the cemetery and the roster that noted the burials.

  “It’s like any other old cemetery, or so says the current manager—who was not pleased to be called at 7:00 a.m.,” Knox had said. “Graves have shifted over the years, and before there was greater security, vandals broke stones. Some are almost pulverized by tree roots. Things happen—and the dead are forgotten.” Knox sighed. “I was informed that the original Claymore owned the land but donated some of it to the church. At first this place was a graveyard before it became a public cemetery. Yeah, apparently graveyards are attached to churches, and cemeteries don’t have to be. In the flux of that turnover, a lot of records went missing. But there are vaults all over—as you can see—and lots of people were buried in pine boxes…sometimes on top of one another. There was a rumor that the poor could be buried here when they didn’t have money for fancy coffins or grave sites.”

  “So…Claymore worked with the church, to help the poor?” Sean had asked. That would explain the catacombs attached to the studio and the Black Box.

  “There are over fifty thousand known burials and entombments in the cemetery. Just going through the records is like working your way through a giant maze,” Knox had told him.

  Now Sean studied the paperwork and tried to get his bearings. So, it seemed Claymore, father of Lucas, had been involved, apparently for the most generous of reasons. But Sean had gone to the vault, expecting he’d have to wait for one of the cemetery workers before he could enter the small family mausoleum. That hadn’t been true; the vault was open, like a larger, multifamily mausoleum might be. Beautiful iron gates led to a little sanctuary with a bench. There was an altar, and a memorial plaque stated that the earthly remains of Lucas Claymore rested beneath the altar in the middle of various other Claymores, including, of course, his father, who’d been such a benefactor to the church.

  Sean was looking over the cemetery when his cell phone rang. He answered it to hear Eddie Archer, sounding frantic.

  At first Sean couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

  “She’s not here. She’s not here,” Eddie finally managed. “The police called. They wanted Helena to come in and talk to them, to help establish timelines, talk about my friends—enemies. Actually, they said you and Logan wanted to talk to her.”

  “That’s true, Eddie.”

  “But she’s not here! I sent Pierce to get her after I spoke to that Knox fellow. She wasn’t in her room.”

  “Eddie, it’s morning. She might have gone out somewhere,” Sean said. But he felt uncomfortable. Maybe it was the panic in Eddie’s voice. Maybe it was just that dreaded gut feeling, the premonition you felt when something really was wrong.

  “Did you tell Knox you couldn’t find Helena?” Sean asked.

  “No, no, not yet. I
just said I’d get her up. We need to file a missing-person report,” Eddie said.

  “It’s too soon. We don’t know that she’s really missing?”

  “But Pierce—”

  “Let me speak to him, Eddie.”

  A moment later, Pierce was on the phone. “I’ve been trying to tell Eddie not to panic—that just because she isn’t here this minute doesn’t mean she’s missing.”

  “Pierce, when did you last see her?”

  “She retired about an hour before Eddie yesterday evening,” he said.

  “Was her bed made this morning—had she slept in it?”

  Pierce was silent; Sean could imagine Eddie staring at him, stricken.

  “No.”

  “Is her car there?”

  “Wait a minute.”

  He set the phone down and came back. “No, it’s not in the drive, and it’s not in the garage. You think she just went somewhere?”

  “Maybe. I take it Eddie tried to call her?”

  “Her cell phone goes straight to voice mail.”

  “All right, we don’t want to make Eddie worse,” Sean said. “Yes and no answers will do. Does she ever make her own bed? Couldn’t she have straightened up before she left this morning?”

  “No,” Pierce said.

  “Thanks. Tell Eddie that I’ll take care of calling Knox, and that we’ll get an APB out on her and her car.”

  “Eddie is extremely agitated, Sean.”

  “Try to get him to calm down—”

  Sean didn’t finish his sentence because Eddie had grabbed the phone. “Don’t tell me to calm down! I have to do something. Helena is not here!”

  “Eddie, you saw her last night. And she obviously drove from your house, since her car is gone. She might have gone out for doughnuts.”

  “She never eats doughnuts.”

  “Then she might have gone out to buy a new kind of diet granola—I don’t know. But calm down, please, or you’ll end up having a heart attack.”

  “You can’t tell me everything’s going to be all right!”

  “No, I won’t tell you that,” Sean said. “I’m just telling you not to panic, and that even if something is wrong, the FBI and the police are working on the case. Other than trying to think of anywhere she might have gone, there’s nothing you can do. Working yourself into a frenzy isn’t going to help anyone.”

  “All right, all right—I’m calm,” Eddie said. He obviously wasn’t, but at least he was listening. “Sean, first Alistair—and now Helena. I’m just ill. I don’t understand this. Why is someone hurting everyone around me?”

  “Eddie, we’ll find out,” Sean promised him. “We’re getting close.”

  “Helena’s dead, isn’t she, Sean?”

  “You don’t know that, Eddie. You don’t know that.” Sean’s voice sounded hollow, even to himself.

  He felt a twist in his stomach; Eddie might well be right.

  He might be wrong.

  No.

  Why did he feel that Eddie was right, and Helena was dead? They’d only just discovered that she wasn’t in the house.

  “I will work with every resource I can summon, Eddie, I promise you. I won’t stop until we find her,” Sean said.

  “Thank you, Sean. Thank you. What do I do now?” Eddie asked hoarsely.

  “Go and see Alistair. Be with your son, Eddie. You can support each other.”

  He hung up, then called Knox and explained. After that, he called Logan, put him on the alert regarding Helena. He’d phone back when he was finished at the cemetery to see if Eddie had gone to see Alistair and if the two were doing all right. With an APB on Helena’s car, there wasn’t much reason for him to drive blindly around L.A. trying to find her himself.

  He returned to his task.

  Where the hell is it? Where’s the entry? It’s got to be here somewhere. The dead in those catacombs didn’t get there by themselves.

  He cursed and looked across the rows and twisting paths, over winged angels and weeping cherubs.

  Neither the original blueprint nor any of the plots and ownership lists had mentioned anything at all about the underground burials.

  He started to walk, remembering the cemetery plans, and trying to envision just how far the basement of the studio reached.

  * * *

  “Helena is missing,” Logan said. They’d just arrived at the studio. It was still early, barely 8:00 a.m.

  Kelsey and Tyler had gone on to check with the guard and the police officers who’d been on duty throughout the night.

  “Missing?” Madison echoed.

  “Eddie was going to tell her we wanted to speak with her, and she was gone. According to Pierce, she was seen going up to bed last night, but not since. Her bed hasn’t been slept in, and her car is gone.”

  “So do you think she’s another victim, or that she’s somehow involved and on the run?”

  “I think she may blithely drive back home after having gone to the drugstore. Or that she might have skipped town. Or that she might be a victim,” Logan said. “I just don’t know.”

  They walked into the studio. “Can you remember anything? Anything at all that might have to do with any of this?” he asked urgently.

  “I swear, if I could think of anything else, Logan, I’d tell you,” Madison said. And then, as she approached the front door to the studio, she paused and turned back to him.

  “There is something I hadn’t thought of,” she said slowly.

  “What?”

  “Lucas Claymore.”

  “The previous owner of the studio?”

  “Yes. And his father owned the land, inherited from his father, and founded the studio. I believe the family gave the cemetery to the church for its burial ground, and then, of course, it was outgrown, and a new church was built. But once, when I was going through the cemetery, I met up with the younger Lucas Claymore. He was old, kind, very pleasant. I know that ghosts don’t show up on demand, but if we walked through the cemetery, he might appear to one of us. I doubt it’ll be as easy as saying, ‘Hey, Lucas, did you happen to be around when Jenny Henderson was killed in the tunnel?’ But he could tell us something that might help—don’t you think?”

  “I do, indeed,” Logan agreed. “In fact, Sean is crawling around somewhere in the cemetery right now. That was his hunch. If he could find the entry to the catacombs in the cemetery, he could follow the killer’s path.”

  “The cemetery gate is on the street,” Madison said. “Unless you want to jump the wall?”

  “Oh, let’s go in properly,” Logan said. “I only jump walls when I absolutely have to.”

  She smiled; she knew that either Colin Bailey or Winston Nash was on duty at the guard stand, and that Kelsey and Tyler had gone to the studio. She wondered if any of them were watching as she and Logan turned away, and started back down to the sidewalk and the cemetery entrance.

  The arched iron gate stood at a break in the high stone wall. The letters that spelled out Peace Cemetery were curlicued and ornate, late-Victorian vintage. Actually, the cemetery might have fit an old town in New England better than it did the contemporary bustle of L.A. It was a reminder that while the movie business wasn’t old in the history of man, Los Angeles had been around, with hundreds of thousands seeking the American dream, even before the dawn of celluloid fever.

  They entered the cemetery. Logan paused for a minute.

  “It’s huge.”

  “There’s a hell of a big population living—and dying—in these parts,” she said wryly.

  Logan nodded. “Where do we begin?”

  She gestured at a little rise. “That vault there—it’s one of the smaller individual vaults. Very pretty, all in marble. The Claymore vault.”

  “How many times have you seen Lucas Claymore?” Logan asked.

  “Just once. I thought he was an elderly gentleman, alive and well and breathing, the first time I saw him,” Madison said. “I think that’s when Eddie figured I was either crazy…or co
mmunicated with ghosts. I didn’t realize Lucas was dead until I understood that Eddie couldn’t see him. Eddie and I were here studying gravestones and monuments. You have to make the not-real look real—if you want movie magic.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, let’s see if he’ll come out today and talk to us.”

  The kept walking, heading up one of the winding paths that led toward the vault. It was a lovely day, with the sun shining brilliantly. The temperature might go as high as the mid-seventies, since spring was waning and summer was on the way. They passed new burials and memorials interspersed between old stones, other vaults and fenced-in family plots. Fresh flowers had been placed at some of the newer graves. Other stones were chipped and weatherworn, and the great oaks seemed to dip low, as if weeping sadly for those who had gone on.

  They reached the Claymore vault. The iron gate was open.

  Logan looked at Madison. “Is this customary?”

  She nodded. “There’s a little bench and an altar inside. Lucas is under the altar.”

  “Shouldn’t it be locked at night?”

  “I don’t think they worry about it too much. The walls surrounding the cemetery are high, and the gates are pretty solid. They don’t have much trouble out here. In fact, we never had trouble out here—until Jenny was killed.”

  They walked in and Madison sat on the bench. The vault was beautiful, with a circular stained-glass window above the altar, and two more on either side. Each depicted a scene from the New Testament. Above the altar and the coffin beneath, the central window showed Christ with a peaceful look, folding his hands. To one side, the window had Christ surrounded by lambs, and the third window represented the wedding at Cana.

  Logan took a seat beside her. “Anything?” he asked softly.

  Disappointed, she shook her head. “Did you see him in here the first time you visited?” Logan asked.

  “No. I just met him when we were looking for unusual headstones.”

  “Do you remember where?”

  “Beyond the vault, there’s another little rise, and something of a potter’s field. The burials were for those who died indigent, but the coffins and services were paid for by an actor’s fund—those who made it paying for those who didn’t. There are a number of really pretty and interesting stones. Some, I suppose, because people were really kind, and some because they didn’t want their good deed to go unnoticed.”