A school trip?
Wendy and J.J. looked happy. As if they’d been having a great day. Maybe Wendy had volunteered to chaperone the outing.
He decided to take the picture out of the frame. When he did, he was startled when he turned it around to study the back.
There were two words written there: Lizzie grave.
There it was again. Puzzle pieces would somehow fit together if he could just maneuver them properly.
He stared at the picture, wishing, hoping, that it could give him more.
Then his phone rang.
He saw that it was Mo. She should’ve gotten out of the Haunted Mausoleum a few minutes ago. She was probably heading out with her friends for their late-late dinner or very early breakfast.
“Mo?”
Her voice was controlled, but he could still hear the terror in it. “There’s another one, Aidan. There’s another. A body here. A real one, I mean. We think it’s Sondra...but it—the body—has no head!”
* * *
Mo was pretty sure she’d acted as quickly and competently as possible under the circumstances.
Having discovered that they definitely had a dead body on their hands, she’d called Aidan immediately.
She’d told the others not to touch the body.
“Touch it? Are you crazy?” Phil demanded.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Grace said. “Whoever did this... Oh, my God! The actors have barely left. Someone was in here while we were...while we were scaring people! Oh, my God, they did this after Joshua Kirbin left. That means it was just a few minutes ago. That means—”
“Grace, they’ve done what they came to do. They’re gone,” Mo said. She was trying for courage; Aidan was on the way.
She’d found corpses before. But she’d been with cops—and Rollo. Or Heidi. She’d never been with just a few terrified friends in the middle of a cemetery.
“Let’s go out front. Let’s get the hell out of here!” Ron shouted.
“We can’t just go. We have to watch this scene until the cops show up,” Mo said.
“Watch it? For what? Are we worried about what can happen to this...this woman?”
“You’re sure it’s a woman?” Grace asked.
“That—or a man with boobs!” Ron said. “Oh, my God. It’s Sondra. It has to be Sondra. That looks like of her little scoop neck tops. This is why we haven’t been able to find her.”
“Where’s her head?” Phil asked.
They were all silent for a moment.
“I don’t want to know!” Ron said softly.
They stood there, silent again. The weird lights and the fog machine had been turned off, but it felt as if they were very alone in a vast sea where the floodlight seemed useless against the darkness of the night.
“We gotta get out of here,” Phil said. “We—”
“Wait!” Mo broke in. “I hear a siren.”
They all paused. It was distant at first, but then the sound became stronger.
“I have to go let them in. I locked the front gates,” Ron said.
He left, and the remaining three stood there as if frozen, waiting.
Then Mo saw Aidan. He was leading the way. Van Camp was right behind him, along with several men in uniform. Relief flooded through her and she abandoned her post by the coffin and raced to him. She didn’t throw herself into his arms.
She plummeted into them.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right!” he told her softly. “Well, it’s not all right, but we’re here. Your hands are frozen.” He rubbed them for a moment before extricating himself from her hold. Walking over to the others, he moved past them to get to the coffin. Van Camp joined him; everyone else stepped back as the agent and the detective studied the body.
“Could we go in where it’s warm?” Grace asked, shaking.
“Yes, yes,” Aidan said, turning to them. “Go into the parlor and sit. We’ll be there shortly. Officer Calloway, will you take them in, please?”
A young man in uniform escorted their group into the parlor of the mortuary. And now they sat among fake spiderwebs, by the piano with a bony hand atop the keys, red velvet draping and black all around them as well as a chandelier that seemed to hold centuries of dust.
Usually, it was just...where they worked. Where they knew what was fun and spooky, what was real and what wasn’t.
They sat there, the four of them, not talking, the officer standing guard. Mo sat on a Duncan Phyfe sofa with Ron; Phil and Grace sat in wingback chairs, both so pale they’d never made better ghouls.
It felt as though time was never-ending—and yet Mo was fairly certain it wasn’t that long before Aidan came in with Van Camp.
“We need you to tell us what happened and in what order,” Aidan said.
“It was closing time, ” Phil began.
“The others took off,” Ron added.
“We were planning to go to the café,” Grace said.
“Whoa, hold it!” Aidan said. “Ron, Grace, you two go over there with Detective Van Camp and tell him what you saw it. Mo, you and Mr. Ainsley stay with me.”
She looked at Phil, who nodded and then turned to Aidan. “The last group for the night had gone through,” he said. “We’re out in the distant reaches of the property here—Mo, Grace and me. We meet on that path to go back in. Mo has so much makeup on, she likes to wash it off. Sondra usually closes up, locks everything for the night. Ron came out to check on us, see who was still here. He said everyone was accounted for—other than the four of us, they’d all left—but that he couldn’t find Sondra. At some point, I was just looking around and I saw that fake coffin. It’s where an actor named Joshua Kirbin is usually posted, but I knew Joshua had taken off the minute we got the last tour announcement.”
“Who makes that announcement?” Aidan asked.
“Either the box office clerk, Sondra or Ron. Tonight it was Cindy Chessy, the box office clerk. She’s the first to leave every night. All she has to do is put the strongbox and computer in Sondra’s office, then she can head out,” he said. “Joshua had plans with friends who worked at a different venue. They were meeting for an early breakfast. I saw him leave and then I went to the mausoleum.”
“Mo?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have noticed the coffin,” she said. “I was tired and ready to go home. Phil pointed out that there was...someone in it. It’s across a field of graves from us.”
“And none of you saw anything?” he demanded, incredulous.
“Define anything,” Phil said dryly. “The graveyard is full of ghouls, and at the end of the night we pick up some of the props because it could snow. Anyone could have walked around here with a body and no one would’ve noticed.”
“Okay,” Aidan said. “Let me go over this one more time. Last tour is announced—”
“And we finish wherever we are, just to make sure everyone in the tour group is really gone. There’s often one jerk in the last group who wants to stay behind,” Phil told him.
“So, last tour, finish up, people run out—with body parts, bodies and other props,” Aidan said.
Phil nodded.
“So then, your friend Joshua Kirbin left.”
“Yes.”
“Is that when you noticed his coffin?” Aidan asked.
Phil shook his head with a grimace. “No. I’ve seen this place a million times. The others were out—like I said, they’re closer to the building—and I was just waiting for Mo and Grace. I saw Mo come around her mausoleum and Grace walked over to her.”
“Then Ron came out, worried about Sondra,” Mo said.
“We were talking and the floodlight was on,” Phil explained. “I was looking in that direction. And I saw there was something in the coffin—and I knew it couldn’
t be Josh.”
Mo watched Aidan. He seemed weary; she had a feeling that something else had happened since she’d seen him.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Phil said, shaking his head again. “They’ll close us down now, won’t they? They’ll close it all down. They have to. I mean, Lord, you could leave corpses and heads everywhere here, and it would take a while for anyone to notice.”
“That is a problem, yes,” Aidan said. He looked at them both. “An officer is going to come and take all this down. Please stay here until he’s done and check with me before you leave. Mo—you and Grace—wait for me, please. I’ll see you home.”
It had been so shocking, so horrible, they hadn’t thought about the loss yet. But as she and Phil looked at each other, they both whispered, “Sondra.”
“I’m really sorry. I just met her today. She seemed to be a fine person,” Aidan said. He stood there for a moment, then turned and went out back.
A few minutes later an officer came in and took their statements. After that, Ron and Grace returned to the parlor.
“I don’t think I want to be here for Halloween next year,” Grace said dully. “I’m going to save up and go on vacation. I’m going to find a country where they don’t celebrate Halloween at all.”
“I can’t stop,” Ron said. “Makeup and fabrication. That’s my whole life.”
Eventually, Aidan came back in. “Ron, Phil, you two are free to go. Grace, I’ll follow you to your house. Mo, come with me,” Aidan told her. “We’ll get Grace home first.”
She nodded, feeling numb. When she left, she hoped she’d never have to come back here.
They stayed close behind Grace but Mo wondered if it even mattered.
The sun was already coming up. She didn’t know if it was because she was so shocked that she had nothing to say—or because she was just so worn-out.
When they reached Grace’s home, Aidan got out of the car and went to the door with her. Grace had an alarm system; Aidan waited for her to key in the numbers and lock herself in.
When he came back to the car, he spoke to her a little sharply. “Mo.”
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
She nodded. “Was it...was it Sondra?” she asked.
“It was. I’m sorry.” His voice was as sincere, as sorrowful, as it had been when he’d said those words earlier.
“Me, too.” She took a deep breath. “Aidan, does this mean there’s some kind of psychopath on the loose? Sondra... I doubt she even knew Richard Highsmith or Wendy Appleby. This can’t be connected to them.”
He was quiet. Then he told her, “The Appleby house was broken into tonight—and trashed.”
“Thieves who knew she was dead and that the house was empty?”
“Thieves take things. The only thing missing was Wendy Appleby’s computer,” he said.
“What are you thinking?”
“The Krewe’s working on it now, but...I don’t think Wendy Appleby had a husband who was killed in an automobile accident. I think that was just her story.”
“What do you mean? And, anyway, why would that matter, whether she’d had a husband or not?” Mo asked. “Do you think she and Richard were having an affair? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know if they were having an affair now, but I think they did nine years ago. I think Richard was J.J.’s father.”
“What...what led you to that conclusion?”
“I could be way off, but it’s a theory worth exploring. We found the Woman in White—who had an affair with Major Andre. And then a daughter, who married a Highsmith. As for Lizzie grave—there was a picture at the Appleby house with Wendy and J.J. at the cemetery. It looked like a school outing. And on the back of it she’d written, ‘Lizzie’s grave.’ It’s too much of a coincidence that they both wrote those exact words. They might have met there—or planned to meet there. To discuss J.J. or the future? Maybe she’d hidden the truth from Richard all these years.”
“And maybe you’re wrong. Maybe they were both history buffs. Or else Wendy did know Richard, discovered the grave and just wanted to tell him about it. Wendy wasn’t from here, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Wendy Appleby was dancing on the Broadway stage nine years ago—and Richard always loved theater.”
Mo shook her head. “From everything I hear, they were both decent people. Why wouldn’t Wendy have told Richard? Why wouldn’t they have at least let their child know the truth?”
“People have reasons—bad ones, sometimes—for doing things. It’s possible that, at the time, Wendy didn’t want to trap him into marriage but didn’t want to give up her baby, either.”
“That’s just conjecture,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed, but before he could continue, his hands-free phone rang. Mo heard his part of the conversation and wasn’t surprised when he told her, “There’s no Mr. Appleby. No father listed on J.J.’s birth certificate.”
She nodded. “I could tell from what you were saying. But why kill people for that? And why kill Sondra? Like I said, I don’t believe she knew either of them.”
“Could be smoke and mirrors,” Aidan said.
“Pardon?”
“Make sure someone else dies in the same gruesome manner. To create a diversion, send us in the wrong direction,” he explained. When they reached her house, he got out of the car and walked her to the door. “Mo, I’m sorry to ask, but can you get Rollo and can we keep going tonight?”
“Keep going?”
“We have another head to find,” he said. “And I’m sure you know the location of just about every headless horseman in the city.”
Her heart sank.
She didn’t want to find Sondra’s head. She hadn’t known Sondra the way Phil and Ron and Grace had. But she’d met her through the years—and Sondra had been wonderful to Mo for the few days she’d worked there.
But she also didn’t want to think of Sondra’s head set up as a ghoulish mockery to be discovered by someone else, a child, perhaps.
“I’ll get Rollo,” she said.
13
“Where should we go?” Aidan asked Mo as she returned to the car with Rollo.
“There’s the large metal headless horseman by the bridge,” Mo said. “But that one’s huge. You’d need several people to get a head on top of it. And there’s one at the entrance to the village set up specifically for Halloween. Other than that...at this time of year, they’re everywhere.”
“Yes, but you and Rollo can locate the one we need.” He paused. “How did you find Richard Highsmith’s head the day we met?”
“I had a piece of Richard’s clothing and I let Rollo get his scent.”
Aidan didn’t want to sound ridiculous, but asked his next question, anyway.
“Did you get a feel for Richard then—or see him?” Mo looked out the front window of the car. He hadn’t started the engine yet.
“Let’s go back to the Haunted Mausoleum first,” she said. “I may get a sense of where to go from there—and we can find one of Sondra’s sweaters or something she wore for Rollo.”
As he drove, he glanced over at Mo. She’d been up all night again.
So had he.
But he’d had more experience with nights like this.
Today, the announcement that another murder had taken place, at a haunted attraction, would mean the events would be closed again. Mo wouldn’t be expected at work tonight.
“Are you all right?” he murmured. “Tired?”
She turned to him. “I’ll survive.”
When they reached the Haunted Mausoleum, the police and crime scene experts were still busy. While Mo went to retrieve something of the dead woman’s from her office, Aidan took the time to check in with Gina Mason, who was
supervising her crew. She stood with Detective Lee Van Camp out in the graveyard.
“Anything here?” he asked the two of them.
“Anything?” Gina repeated. “This place was full of people last night. The people in costume who were at work—and the hundreds walking through. There are cigarette butts everywhere, even though smoking’s not permitted in the graveyard. Kids will sneak off. There are footprints all over the place, not to mention fibers and hair.”
“What about the body?” Aidan asked. “Any results from that? Any witnesses?” he added.
Van Camp answered him. “We can hope, but we don’t know yet. The M.E. came for the body, and his people will examine it. But as far as witnesses go, this is almost like a magic trick. You know, it’s all about distraction. An event was going on here, and the problem is, everyone was looking at that and screaming. They’re supposed to get scared and scream. The killer could’ve carried that body in front of dozens of people—and they’d all have thought it was part of the show.”
“We’re going to have to speak to every one of the employees. Somebody must’ve seen something,” Aidan insisted.
“I’ve got police messengers heading to every address,” Van Camp said wearily. “We’ll get to all of them.”
“So we believe she was in her office when she was taken—right here, right on the property. We can assume she was knocked out with chloroform first, but there’s not a drop of blood in the mortuary itself. Or have you found something?” Aidan said.
“Nothing that remotely resembles a trail,” Gina Mason told him. “And, I swear, Agent Mahoney, my people are good.”
“I don’t doubt it. But we found the killer’s lair at the old cemetery, which would’ve been too far for him in this time frame. However, it’s where we found his tools for cutting off the heads.”
“A hatchet and knife, available in any hardware store in the nation,” Gina told him.
“Okay, she was knocked out in her office, carried out by the killer masquerading as an actor and then...then beheaded somewhere else, maybe at his previous lair, and brought back here to the graveyard,” Aidan said.
“That’s what we’ve got so far,” Van Camp agreed.