“How did someone get the man to just lie down in the floor?” Morris asked.
“Sir, I deal with evidence. I believe that the medical examiner may be able to answer you on that after the autopsy. If I were asked for an educated guess, I’d say some kind of drug was used. We have had something new here on the streets lately, a variant of GHB, called baby-baby.”
“Date-rape drug,” Griffin said. Morris looked at him and he went on to explain, “We’ve just been getting reports about it at the Bureau,” he explained. “It’s basically a roofie, and the key element is that it makes a person entirely pliable. They’re awake and aware but have no energy, very little ability to move—and certainly none to fight back. Like Rohypnol, it takes away short-term memory, as well. It doesn’t act as any kind of an aphrodisiac, it just renders someone a vegetable. If our killer has his hands on some of this stuff, he could have easily gotten Franklin Verne down to the cellar and Brent Whaley into the floor.”
“I’ll talk to our vice people,” Carl Morris said. “God knows, maybe they can corner one of the peddlers on the street who can point to someone. Then again, it’s damned hard to get the truth from the street dealers because it isn’t like they ask for identification when selling their illegal crap.”
“I’m sure Hatfield is testing for everything,” Griffin said.
“I’m sure he is,” Morris agreed. “Testing takes a bit of time, though. We’ll get our officers asking around, whatever. When we have something definitive, all the better.”
“We don’t know that’s the case, anyway,” Amy Trent said. “I was just throwing it out there. I mean, I’m not a detective, but I’d say you just don’t ask someone to lie down in the floor so that you can board them in.”
“Most unlikely. I think we’ve all pretty much come to that conclusion,” Griffin said.
Amy shrugged. “I wish there was more that I could tell you. We’re scouring the room for trace evidence, but the thing is...all the people you’re probably looking at had business in this room and we’ve probably got trace on dozens more...”
“Do what you can, and tell us about anything you can get,” Griffin said.
She nodded. “Yep, of course.”
“Carl, will you excuse me, too, please?” Griffin asked. He needed to call in to Krewe headquarters and report the latest dire turn of events.
“Yeah, I need to call in, too. See what direction my lieutenant wants me to take.”
As Morris turned to make his call, Griffin did the same. He reached Angela Hawkins in the main office.
“I’d have called you, soon,” Angela told him. “You know, of course, that Adam Harrison is keeping his eye on this case. Franklin and Monica Verne were his kind of people—as in, they were very generous with Verne’s income—philanthropists, much like our fearless leader. And now Brent Whaley. The police aren’t letting out any information regarding his death due to the ongoing investigation. After the way Franklin Verne died at the same venue, I’m assuming Whaley’s death was something along the lines of a Poe story, too?”
“Yep. Boarded into the floor.”
“Jackson is out of the office. There’s a fund-raiser for service veterans at Adam’s theater today. I believe that we’ll head up to you as soon as he’s back. Even with traffic, it’s about an hour and a half drive.”
“Have we been officially invited in?” Griffin asked.
“Not yet. How are the cops on this?”
“At the moment? I’m working with the lead detective, Carl Morris. He’s fine. But like me, he’s calling this in to his superiors now. It could get stickier.”
“I’ll call Adam. He’ll see that it doesn’t,” Angela assured him.
“Keep me posted on your ETA,” he asked her.
“You bet.”
He hung up. A flash streaked before his eyes. The crime-scene photographer had snapped a picture as Brent Whaley was lifted from the floor. More and more flashes popped across his eyes. Everything was being recorded: the body in the hole, the body out of the hole...
And the hole in the flooring itself.
Griffin walked over to peer in. It was just worthless space. The floor had been set up on cinder blocks about eighteen inches over whatever lay beneath—he couldn’t tell. A layer of dirt and dust seemed to cover whatever the under-the-floor flooring was.
He frowned, thinking that the cellar should have been there.
“Why would there be this kind of space here?” he murmured. “The cellar isn’t under this part of the restaurant?”
He was actually musing aloud. He was, however, overheard.
“I wondered about that myself,” Amy Trent said, walking over to answer him. “Yes, the cellar is under us here. There’s a subfloor and a crawlspace because of the water pipes and some of the wiring. When the last owner renovated, he chose to work it this way. Odd, yes, but effective, I suppose. I called a friend down at city hall—he looked it all up for me. That’s how I know.”
“Thank you,” Griffin told her.
Odd.
So odd that...one would think you’d have to know about the structure of the place in order to plan to board in a body.
* * *
Poe.
Vickie sat at the table, glad that everyone around her seemed so self-reflective.
None of them noticed her watching the ghost, who seemed so at home in the restaurant as he studied the portrait of himself on the wall.
Apparently, he really enjoyed seeing images of himself. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was critical—or even wondering about the time he had spent alive on earth—perhaps he even wished that there were things he might have done differently. Maybe he knew there were situations when he had acted too rashly—hurt relationships with people who had cared.
The man did have an ego. But, Vickie thought, determining how she might best approach him with the others so near, his ego was about his work. As a man—to her, at least, and thus far as she had seen—he was polite, courteous and charming as well. In life—most of the time, she believed—he had surely been kind and solicitous of those he had loved and those he had called his friends.
He smiled suddenly, aware she was watching him, and he turned to look at her.
He knew that she couldn’t really approach him—or, she could, but if she acknowledged him she’d appear completely insane or daft before all those who did not see him.
Especially after she had just helped Griffin rip up floorboards.
“Think I’ll get a soda. Mr. Frampton,” she said, hunkering down to stare Gary in the face, “may I go behind the bar and get a soda?”
“What?” he asked her, looking up.
“A soda, sir. May I go behind your bar and—”
“Of course, of course!” he assured her, waving a hand in the air.
“Would you like anything?” she asked Gary, and then Alistair Malcolm.
“I’m just fine for now,” Alistair said.
Gary shook his head.
Vickie headed for the bar, passing by Poe. He turned to watch her, and then followed her. She was looking downward when he perched upon a bar stool and spoke to her.
“Did I see anything, do I know anything? You wish you could ask. Ah, well. I’ll answer, anyway. It would only be fun to make people respond to you and look crazy to others when there aren’t corpses piling up. So! No, I’m ever so sorry, I did not see what happened. Another man is dead.”
“Yes,” Vickie said, keeping her head down, pretending to study the spigot and choose a button between the offerings there. “I thought you intended to watch some of these people.”
“My dear Miss Preston, I do believe that you’re quite accustomed to seeing the dead, that you’ve known many of my number. You must, therefore, be well aware that not even a ghost can be in more than one place at
a time. I have watched their Blackbird meetings, sometimes with gratitude that they remember me with such reverence—and sometimes appalled that they dare to think what was in my mind and my soul when I set pen to paper. I don’t know who killed Franklin Verne, nor do I know who killed Brent Whaley. However! I believe they’ll find that Brent Whaley died near the same time as Franklin Verne. It’s extremely perplexing. Franklin in the cellar and Brent up here...boarded into the floor. And yet you heard those heartbeats, just as I heard them.”
Vickie looked up at him, forgetting herself for a moment.
“Yes,” he said, a wry expression on his features. “It was a ghastly, ghostly sound, don’t you think?” he asked. “I heard it, too.”
“Did you create the sound?” she asked.
He seemed amused again. “Don’t you read any of those notes by the brilliant people who analyze fiction? Do we hear our own heartbeats, or is it an echo of what once was? Sometimes, perhaps, a man hasn’t got the ability to come back as a ghost, but perhaps is able to bring those with special gifts or curses to their earthly remains. But seriously, as an amateur detective, I believe we might well find out that Brent Whaley was killed at very nearly the same time as Franklin Verne and that, given perhaps just a few more hours, the malodorous scent rising from the floor would have given all a clue that—as that man Shakespeare made us all fond of saying—something is rotten in Denmark, to paraphrase. If I had known what happened with the first, I’d know what happened with the second. Sadly, even we dead can’t slip into the minds of heinous murderers to determine just when and where they will act, thus bearing witness to their deeds!”
She started to answer him, but then realized that—from across the room—both Gary Frampton and Alistair Malcolm were watching her.
They looked a little perplexed.
As if they were looking at someone who had helped rip up floorboards and was now talking to herself...
Making Liza Harcourt look almost sane!
She smiled, refrained from answering or even looking at Poe and shouted out, “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”
“Not me,” Gary said.
“Okay, sure! Lemon lime,” Alistair said.
She nodded. She looked up, hoping to imply with a stern stare that she wasn’t going to chat with a ghost when others were watching, but it didn’t matter. She wished she could convey to him that she did need to talk to him—she wanted to talk about her dream. Maybe he could remember where he had been when he had been attacked, even if he didn’t know who had done the attacking.
But she wasn’t going to be able to convey anything to the man.
Poe had disappeared.
Vickie poured herself and Alistair Malcolm sodas and then headed to the table to join the two men. Griffin and Carl Morris were still in the private room with the medical examiner and the crime-scene technicians.
“I guess I should get on the phone and start warning customers who are on the way,” Gary Frampton said dully. He rose, shaking his head and appearing extremely weary. “I’ll get Alice. I mean, that’s all right, right?” he asked Vickie.
“I believe that Detective Morris just wants some officers to be able to speak with everyone. Being here—anywhere—is fine,” Vickie assured him. “If there’s anything I can do...”
He seemed to brighten. “Yes, both of you, if you don’t mind? Can you help me cancel what reservations we can?”
“Um, yes. Of course,” Vickie said.
She looked up. Jon Skye was coming back toward the table, carrying the book that Alistair had asked Lacey to find, the Poe omnibus that included the story “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
“There’s Jon! An employee. I’m sure he’ll help!” Alistair said.
“Of course, yes, an employee,” Vickie murmured. “You won’t mind, right, Jon?”
Jon Skye looked back at Vickie, his expression showing that he’d rather do anything but.
“Sure,” he said weakly.
They headed with Gary to his office.
* * *
The body of Brent Whaley was out of the floor.
Dozens of pictures had been taken. Forensic scientists had gone over the area with all the possible tools of their trade and now the corpse was ready to be brought to the morgue.
Brent Whaley had been placed with care and respect in a body bag on a wheeled gurney; at Hatfield’s okay, he would be wheeled out to an ambulance and brought to the morgue.
Myron Hatfield spoke with Griffin and Carl Morris.
“I can’t tell you right now. I will have to perform an autopsy. But here’s what I’m thinking, and, of course, my professional opinion is just slightly—and I do mean slightly—skewed by our circumstances. I believe that he was set in the floor and buried there beneath the floorboards. And when the floorboards were boarded over him, he had a heart attack. Now, there are many conditions that can mimic a heart attack. Pulmonary thrombosis, a collapsed lung due to pneumonia or even some kinds of poisoning. Anyway, I’ll find out. But what I believe is this—Brent Whaley was not in good shape, physically. He ate too much fat and salt. He weighed too much. He was, in truth, a heart attack waiting to happen. You two are the investigators, but I believe you’ll discover that he was killed by someone who knew he most probably had a heart condition. Burying him beneath the floorboards just about guaranteed a heart attack.” He eyed them both drily. “And, yes, of course, while it was possible that Franklin Verne died because of his own mischief and addiction, it is quite improbable that Brent Whaley nailed himself into the floor.”
Griffin glanced over at Morris. “Yes, I guess we have made that observation. Dr. Hatfield, what do you think about the possibility of someone having used a drug to get him pliant enough to wind up in the floor? I didn’t see any bruises on him or any signs of a struggle. Of course, I don’t have a medical degree. One of the techs and Detective Morris and I were discussing that as a theory as to the physical act of getting a man into the floor.”
“Sure. That’s a possibility. No, there aren’t signs of a struggle. I do believe it was a heart attack, but... I’ll get him to the morgue. These murders will take precedence at the moment—barring something else perhaps even more bizarre and absurd, but we’ll just hope that kind of event isn’t coming,” Hatfield told them. “Though I never discount that chance. You’re more than welcome to join me at the autopsy. Give me four or five hours to handle some business and personal affairs and then you can meet me at the morgue. I’ll get my assistants moving on this poor man right away.”
Morris and Griffin both thanked him. Hatfield turned and nodded to his men, and they started out with the corpse.
“Sad and strange—two people dead. In this restaurant. Has to be someone involved here. One of those wacked-out Poe enthusiasts,” Carl Morris said, watching the body leave. “Everyone who works here is under suspicion, as is everyone in that damned society. They knew about the cameras...about the back. But then again, none of that was really secret because Gary Frampton just isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. And still, whoever did this... No prints. No footprints. No sign of a break-in.” He swore softly.
“I’ll leave you here with the techs,” Griffin said, “And let the folks here head on home. I think, at this time, we need the place empty.”
“Yeah, sure,” Morris said. “I thought we might shake them up, making them stay. I guess no one is going to run in here with a confession.”
“Nope, I don’t think so,” Griffin agreed.
Morris headed out. Griffin looked for Vickie and found her at the bar with Jon Skye, Alistair Malcolm and Gary Frampton.
Alistair had his nose deep in the pages of a book.
An open bottle of whiskey was on the counter between Gary and Jon.
Vickie looked up at Griffin. “We—we just watched them take the body out,” she said.
/>
Apparently, the whiskey was their way of coping, and she had been able to do little but indulge them while she waited.
“A good man,” Jon said. “Good appetite. Really enjoyed it here. And...” He paused and flushed. “He tipped well. I mean, that’s the least thing, but...said something about him, too. He was generous to those who were working.”
“Good thing Liza, Lacey and Alice are in the back,” Gary noted. “Good thing. Watching the body go... Well, that was sad.” He proved his point, sniffing back a sob—and then hiccupping loudly.
“We’re all so sorry,” Vickie murmured.
“So, I guess I’m closed for a while, huh?” Gary said dully. He swept his shot glass in the air. “When might this restaurant be open again? What would the answer to that be? Nevermore!”
“You’ll open again. You’ll recover, probably be extremely popular. You’ll have ghost-tracking groups from around the country plaguing you,” Griffin promised him.
“She told me that... Your lady here...or your almost agent...or... Vickie... She’s really a great kid!” Gary said.
“Yep, that’s me,” Vickie murmured, looking at Griffin with a silent plea for help. “Maybe we could get an officer to bring Gary home. I think he needs some sleep.”
“It will be a while, though, huh?” Gary asked.
“A few days, I’m thinking,” Griffin said.
“I gotta get away. I just gotta get away,” Gary said. “Oh!” He turned to look at Jon Skye. “Hey, I’m feeling sorry for myself...but you, Jon! And the others. My servers and bartenders. How will they live?”
“The place won’t close forever!” Jon Skye said. He glanced at Griffin and then Vickie apologetically. He’d been sharing the whiskey with Gary, just sipping instead of taking shots.
“I have an old house... We can spend a bit of time there, Alice and me. Lacey, she just works for me because she loves the society and the books and the shop. She’ll be fine. It’s my other people... Lacey’ll want to come out and hang with us, I’m sure. Jon...well, you can hang out, too—if you don’t have to find a way to make money,” Gary said, shaking his head morosely again.