“I…I didn’t think it was important,” Zoe said, avoiding his eyes. “She just showed me the page with his picture—that’s all. I didn’t know it was his passport.”
Dad looked unconvinced. “For heaven’s sake, Zoe, do you expect us to believe that? What’s gotten into you?”
“Why don’t you believe me?” Zoe burst out. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
Chapter Sixteen
Zoe laid awake for what seemed an eternity, going over and over in her mind about how her dad didn’t believe her about Grace’s book, and how he had said someone else had already written it years ago. Zoe hated him—hated him for his betrayal. Hot tears of anger ran down her cheeks. Why was she the only one who believed in Aunt Grace? Grace would never have treated her so meanly.
Wiping her eyes on her pajama sleeve, she thought back to when she was younger and Aunt Grace would sit on the edge of her bed and read to her. Like the Goosebumps books they had read together. Suddenly it occurred to Zoe that all the Goosebumps books had the same name—or at least the same first name—but they were all different books. And there were also those Star War movies Billy had. So it was possible Grace’s book was just part of a series. Maybe the full title of her book was Crime and Punishment II.
Zoe stared at the ceiling. Except, she pondered, it did not explain why Grace’s publisher said he had never heard of her. Unless 1) Dad called the wrong publisher, or 2) it was the right publisher and Detective Tasca had gotten to him first. With that thought in mind, Zoe fell asleep—a sleep filled with dreams of haunted houses and ghosts and bad cops.
She awoke in the morning to the loud honking of Canada geese flying over the house. She was about to put her pillow over her head when she became aware of another sound—the phone ringing downstairs. She sat up. Maybe it was Detective Tasca calling back about the passport.
Then she remembered there was a phone in the guest room. Aunt Grace had disconnected it because she had her own cell phone.
The phone downstairs rang again.
Zoe jumped out of bed and dashed down the hall into the guest room. The bed had been stripped and the room was bare—except for the furniture. The scent of Grace’s lily of the valley fragrance had been replaced by the smell of Lysol.
The ringing stopped.
Zoe frantically searched the closet for the phone. There it was—on the top shelf in the closet. She grabbed the Princess phone, plugged it into the jack beside the night table, and very carefully lifted the phone from its cradle.
“She probably just forgot she had his passport on her,” she heard her dad saying. “You know what grief can do to people.”
“That’s possible,” a woman’s voice replied—no doubt Detective Tasca’s. However, she didn’t sound convinced. Detective Tasca paused a few seconds, then said, “There’s been a new development.”
“Oh?” Dad’s voice answered.
“A potential witness has turned up—a tourist from Britain—an elderly woman who just heard about the story in a local tabloid. She thinks she may have seen something from the cable car that crosses over the monastery from the side of the mountain.”
Zoe felt a rush of relief. She wondered if the police had found a witness who saw the gypsies murder Luke.
“Well, let’s hope this clears Grace once and for all,” Dad replied, echoing Zoe’s very thoughts.
“Not exactly,” Detective Tasca said. “And there’s the matter of that letter.”
“Zoe?” Mom called from downstairs. “Are you up? I thought I heard you.”
Zoe quickly hung up the phone, thrust it back into the closet, and ran into the bathroom across the hall between her bedroom and Grace’s. She quickly flushed the toilet then stepped back into the doorway and called out, “I just got up. I’ll be down soon.”
“Take your time,” Mom replied.
Zoe returned to her room and dressed, all the while going over the phone conversation in her mind. What had Detective Tasca meant about a witness at the monastery in Spain where Luke was murdered?
Her curiosity getting the best of her, Zoe pulled the journal out from between her mattresses and skimmed through it. There were several more entries as well as more news clippings that Grace was probably collecting for her novel. Zoe skipped ahead to September. The first few entries were about the wedding and honeymoon, how happy Grace was, and the wonderful time she and Luke were having cruising the Mediterranean, basking in the warm sun, and visiting the Coliseum in Rome and the casinos of Monte Carlo.
Zoe turned the page. A picture of an old stone monastery on a mountainside was taped on the page opposite the entry. The entry read:
The more I think about what had happened this morning at the hotel, the angrier I get. Saying he loves me, that I mean the world to him and he’ll protect me. And then today shoving that damn locket in my face (really—he had no business searching through my makeup bag like he did) and accusing me of—well, need I say more? And here he was prattling on about turning me in—his own wife! Then he brings up that Tasca woman—says he’s going to “talk to her.ˮ Right. Well, I’ve just about had it with him.
Zoe closed the journal and took a deep breath. So her suspicions about Detective Tasca had been correct all along. But how was she going to let the police know Tasca was a crooked cop? She certainly could not tell her parents now—not after last night. Her own father was so mean right now he would probably turn her in to the police for stealing the journal in the first place.
When Zoe finally came downstairs for breakfast, Dad was sitting at the desk in the family room going over some papers. Mom was peering over his shoulder. Yoda was hunkered down in front of the glass doors, watching a pair of squirrels scampering from tree to tree.
Dad looked up. “Morning, Zoe,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry if I was harsh with you last night. I overreacted.”
Mom came over and put her arm around Zoe’s shoulder. “I thought we could do a little shopping this morning,” she said. “Get you a nice dress—maybe a pretty sweater—for the service and the funeral.”
Zoe gave a noncommittal shrug.
“You can pick out some new outfits for school too,” Mom said, doing her best to sound enthusiastic about the shopping trip. “Then maybe we can go to lunch afterward at Dave and Busters at Providence Place.”
“Can I invite Jen?” Zoe asked.
“Sure, sweetie, whatever you want.”
Jen, it turned out, couldn’t come to the mall with them because she had to babysit for her younger sister, but they agreed to meet at Hera’s Country Store near the Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery later that afternoon.
Chapter Seventeen
Jen was standing in front of Hera’s Country Store reading the hand-printed signs in the window announcing the most recent Keno winners when Zoe arrived on her Schwinn cruiser.
After purchasing two cans of Sprite, they sat on the curb outside the vacant video store next door. They watched in silence as a funeral procession snaked its way along South County Trail toward the veterans’ cemetery just up the road.
“Uncle Luke is buried in the veterans’ cemetery,” Zoe said as the last of the cars disappeared out of sight.
Jen nodded sympathetically.
Zoe took a deep breath then continued. “You know, Aunt Grace was murdered too—just like her husband Luke.”
Jen stared at her, wide-eyed. “No way!”
“It’s true,” Zoe replied. “The police say she died from a brain bleed that started when this thug pushed her into a wall in Providence last winter.”
“That’s terrible. Is he in prison?”
Zoe shook her head. “They’re looking for him right now.ˮ She paused. “And there’s something else. The morning Aunt Grace died, I heard someone banging around in her room.”
Jen shuddered. “Creepy.”
Zoe nodded. “Tell me about it. Yoda really freaked out.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Yeah, but…” Zoe frowne
d and set her can of Sprite down on the curb beside her.
“But what?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking and I think Luke’s kids are paying off this lady detective—the one who’s supposed to be finding Aunt Grace’s real murderer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Uncle Luke was rich, you know. And if this Detective Tasca can somehow make it look like Aunt Grace murdered him…”
“No way!” Jen interrupted. “Your aunt a murderer? No one in their right mind would believe that.”
“I’m serious. Mom said that if this Detective Tasca and Luke’s kids can pull it off then all of Uncle Luke’s money goes to them instead of Aunt Grace, his wife and rightful heir, and after her on to us, her rightful family. That’s the law. Mom said so.”
Jen shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why would a police detective do such an awful thing?”
Zoe sighed. Really, Jen could be so naïve at times. “Because,” Zoe explained, “Detective Tasca was in love with Uncle Luke, and she got all upset because he married Aunt Grace instead of her. So having them killed off was her way of getting even.”
“But I thought your uncle was pushed over a cliff in Spain by some gypsies.”
Zoe shook her head. “The police let the gypsies go—lack of evidence, Mom said.”
“No kidding.”
“And something else. I found this newspaper article in Aunt Grace’s room. It said there was another person there—an unknown accomplice it said.”
“How do they know that?” Jen asked.
“Because Uncle Luke’s passport was missing, and the gypsies didn’t have it.ˮ She paused a moment for dramatic effect then added, “If you ask me, I think the person who killed Uncle Luke and stole his passport is the very same one who murdered Aunt Grace.”
“But how? I mean, he was murdered way over on the other side of the world, not here in Rhode Island.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Zoe said. “But somehow Uncle Luke’s passport ended up in Aunt Grace’s room.”
“How’d it get there?”
“Well, I figured the person who stole it must have murdered Aunt Grace and planted it in her room to make it look like she had killed Luke,” Zoe explained as though it was all quite obvious.
Jen stared at her in admiration. “Wow! You’ve been doing some real neat detective work.”
Zoe flushed slightly and looked away as she recalled how angry her parents had been when Mrs. Worthen had found the passport in her room. She unfolded her legs and stretched them out in front of her. They were starting to cramp up.
“What about that man who pushed her into the wall last winter?” Jen asked.
“What about him?”
“I mean it could be the same guy,” Jen said. “Think about it—how many hired killers are there living here in Rhode Island?”
Zoe considered this. She could not imagine there could be more than a few of them, but who knew with all the Mafia stuff going on here. “Detective Tasca could have cut a deal with him,” Zoe finally said, “after she saw that Luke was more interested in Aunt Grace than her—let him off easy if he’d agree to murdering both Luke and Aunt Grace. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
They sat in silence for a few moments.
A cardinal red Toyota pickup pulled up not far from where they sat. The two girls waited in silence as a wiry young man in torn jeans and a denim jacket got out and went into the store, then reappeared in less than a minute carrying a carton of Marlboros.
“Have the police checked the passport for fingerprints?” Jen asked, once the man had driven off.
Zoe winced and looked down at her hands. “I don’t know.ˮ It hadn’t occurred to her that the police would fingerprint the passport. Hers were probably all over it. She pushed herself to a standing position and tossed her empty soda can into a nearby trash container.
“What else did you find out in your investigation?” Jen asked eagerly.
Zoe pushed her hair back from her eyes and tucked it behind her ears. Should she tell Jen about the journal? She had never kept a secret from her best friend before. But if she told Jen it would make her an accomplice to stealing evidence from a crime scene. And that wouldn’t be right.
Suddenly Jen jumped up and began waving her arms.
Zoe glanced past her at the small brick post office on the other side of the parking lot.
“Hello, Mrs. McKenna!” Jen called out.
A woman whom Zoe recognized as the mother of Adam, the heartthrob of the girls in their class at school, was just coming out.
“Hello, girls. Beautiful day,” the woman called back to them as she fished through her oversized pocketbook.
“Yes, it sure is,” Jen said, smiling brightly.
Zoe let out a deep breath, relieved she had not tried mailing the journal from the Exeter post office—not that she had actually given it any serious consideration. She would have been caught for sure. She rubbed the back of her neck. Just the thought of the journal back in her room made her neck tighten like an over-stretched rubber band. She felt pretty sure her parents wouldn’t check under her mattress, but you never knew.
“Well, I’ll be off,” Mrs. McKenna announced, producing her keys.
Jen turned to Zoe. “Wanna bike around the cemetery?”
“Okay.ˮ Zoe brushed off her jeans and fetched her bike. Maybe her Uncle Luke’s ghost—if he was still hanging around the cemetery—could tell her something about who had murdered him and Aunt Grace. Not that Zoe exactly believed in ghosts. Still—like Grace used to say—anything was possible.
“You remember what your mother said the other day about dead people still being around?” Zoe asked as they pushed their bikes across the parking lot.
“What about it?” Jen asked.
“Did she mean we really can talk to the dead—like you and I are talking right now?”
Jen sighed. “I don’t know. She says she talks to her grandmother all the time. But I can’t hear anything even when I try really hard.ˮ She shrugged. “Maybe you need to be special to hear what the dead are saying.”
Zoe wondered if she was special. She gazed up at the sky as though the answer might be found in the fluffy white clouds drifting lazily across the bright, blue autumn sky.
When they reached the main road, they stopped and looked both ways. Normally there was not this much traffic. Most of the cars were probably sightseers out to view the fall foliage or to buy pumpkins and apple cider at the farm stands.
Seeing a break in the traffic, Zoe jumped on her bike and pedaled across the road, veering to the left toward the entrance to the veterans’ cemetery. “Come on, I’ll show you where Uncle Luke is buried,” she called back to Jen.
Chapter Eighteen
The cemetery covered several acres of winding roads, freshly mown lawns, and woodland trails. Zoe stopped near a grove of birch trees to wait for Jen to catch up. The only sound was that of birds chirping and the gentle breeze in the trees.
She looked around. There must have been thousands of gravesites, most decorated with small American flags and colorful fall floral arrangements. Two workers with a green utility vehicle full of gardening tools trimmed ornamental bushes. In the distance, she could see a line of cars pulled up along the edge of one of the roads behind a black hearse. People milled around beside the cars.
Jen pulled up beside Zoe. “Is this where he’s buried?” she asked, catching her breath.
“No,” Zoe said pointing. “He’s in the back of the cemetery, near the pond.”
Dried acorns popped beneath their tires as they followed the narrow road through a wooded area. A small flock of wild turkeys feeding alongside the road scattered indignantly into the woods as the girls pedaled by.
Once Zoe and Jen reached the small pavilion in the back part of the cemetery, they hopped off their bikes and propped them up against a granite bench.
“I think it’s somewhere around here,” Zoe said, putting her hand over her eyes and surveying t
he area.
They fanned out in different directions, walking up and down the rows reading the stone grave markers. Not far away an elderly couple stood in front of a grave marker in a pine grove, their hands folded and heads bowed.
After a few minutes of searching, Zoe located Luke’s grave. She knelt down and read the words on it: “Lucian Esposito, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Vietnam.ˮ She brushed off some dry pine needles and continued reading. The words “His wife Mary Elizabeth February 16, 1949‒August 18, 1998” were carved into the stone below his name.
“What about your Aunt Grace?” Jen asked, studying the inscription. “Wasn’t she his wife?”
“That’s his first wife—he was married before, you know. Still in the end Grace was his real wife.ˮ She frowned. This was probably the work of Detective Tasca and Luke’s family. Taking a deep breath, Zoe placed her hand on the grave marker. The stone felt cold and lifeless beneath her touch. “Uncle Luke?” she whispered. “Are you there?” She listened. But all she heard was the sound of the flags flapping in the breeze and the steady high-pitched whining of cicadas in the surrounding woods.
“Over here!” Jen shouted. “Hurry. You won’t believe what I found!”
Zoe leapt up and dashed over.
Jen was standing near the pavilion staring down at two grave markers set apart from the others.
“What is it?” Zoe asked.
“It’s those two little girls that Craig Price murdered—Jennifer and Melissa Heaton.”
Zoe grimaced. “I didn’t know children were buried here,” she said.
“Me, neither.”
Jen pointed to a nearby row of graves. “Their mother is buried just over there. Craig Price murdered her too, you know.”
Zoe reached out with her foot and cautiously touched the grass over the children’s grave. Unlike the lush green grass elsewhere, it formed a brownish-green rectangle, the size of a small coffin.
A chill passed over her. Drawing back, she rubbed her arms and glanced up. Dark clouds were moving overhead. The yellow leaves on the trees next to the pavilion trembled as a gust of cold air stirred them.
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