The Gravedigger's Ball (23 page)

“What do you think the killer used to do that?”

Coletti looked skyward, half expecting to see the bird circling overhead. When he didn’t, he turned to his old friend and gave it to him straight.

“Those injuries came from a raven,” he said. “My guess is the killer had the bird attack Workman to torture him into talking.”

“What kind of information would Workman have had?”

Coletti explained while the two of them walked away from the ghoulish scene.

“Workman knew the Gravedigger,” he said. “But for some reason he didn’t tell me that when I spoke to him today. My guess is that whatever Workman was hiding from me is the same thing he tried to hide from the killer.”

They walked to a spot in the grass where bits of bloody flesh were marked off with yellow markers. Officers in latex gloves and goggles collected samples.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think something had that for a meal,” said the detective.

“Something did,” Coletti said as he watched an officer pluck a black feather from the grass and deposit it in a plastic bag. “And I’m guessing it was the raven. It seems to show up wherever the killer does.” He watched the crime scene cops for a few minutes more before turning to his friend. “So, in terms of sharing the evidence across jurisdictions—”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll share whatever you need, whenever you need it. There won’t be any delays or paperwork or red tape. Just let me know what you want, and you’ve got it.”

“Thanks,” said Coletti. “But the main thing I need is to find out what Workman really knew.”

A woman’s voice called out from beyond the perimeter. At first Coletti thought it was Kirsten again. The voice was too high, though. When they turned around to see who it was, there were two middle-aged women standing there. One of them had strawberry blond hair and a world-weary face. The other had short brown hair that was flecked with gray, and the low-cut blouse she wore beneath her coat showed pearls resting against a hint of cleavage. Both women had sadness in their eyes.

A uniformed officer walked over to the detectives to deliver the women’s message.

“They say they need to talk to you, Detective Coletti.”

“Who are they?” Coletti asked.

“Lily Thompkins and Violet Grant. They’re with a group called the Daughters of Independence.”

Coletti’s eyes came to life. “Excuse me for a minute,” he said to his friend. Then he hurried across the grass while taking his notepad from his pocket.

The press corps watched closely as he made his way over to the pair. Coletti pulled them inside the perimeter and walked along the edge of the scene until they reached a sprawling oak tree. The three of them stood beneath the tree as if it could hold the weight of all that had occurred that day.

“I’m Lily,” said the one with the strawberry blond hair, “and this is Violet. We got here as soon as we heard.”

“We’ve been trying to reach both of you,” Coletti said. “How come I didn’t hear from either of you before now?”

“We were afraid,” Lily said.

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid we were going to be next,” said Violet.

Coletti took out a pen and began taking notes. “Why would you think that?”

“Because no one would kill Clarissa unless they wanted what she knew, and the only thing Irving Workman and Clarissa had in common was their belief in the professor’s theories.” Violet nervously played with her pearls. “For all we know, this killer could be tracking down everyone who believes. That would make us targets.”

“That’s right,” said Lily.

“Had either of you ever met anyone other than the members of your group who believed in Workman’s theories?” Coletti asked.

Lily nodded. “There were a couple of young men from Penn, but they came and went.”

“Wait here,” Coletti said. He went to his car and retrieved the manila envelope containing the pictures he’d gotten from the university. He came back and showed them to both women. “You said there were a couple of young men who came and went. Do either of you see any of them here?”

They both looked through the pictures, their eyes lingering on one or two. “I can’t say that I recognize any of them,” Lily said.

“I don’t recognize them, either,” Violet said. “But you have to understand that people who weren’t serious didn’t stay around long enough for anyone to remember them. Professor Workman wouldn’t let them. He only nurtured people who showed real fire.”

“You make it sound like a cult,” Coletti said, only half joking.

Lily smiled sadly. “It’s not a cult. It’s just a group of people who love the past even more than the present. Professor Workman gravitated toward people like us. That’s why he trusted us with his theories.”

“How’d you get to know Professor Workman?” Coletti asked.

“By getting to know each other,” Lily said, as Violet nodded in agreement. “We were just three women who loved history. Not the tourist stuff they show you at the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. We loved the unusual—everything from Native American burial grounds to stops on the Underground Railroad.”

“We wanted to see secret passages and hollow walls and long-lost documents and hundred-year-old secrets,” Violet added. “But even when we saw those things, it was never enough for us. We wanted to be
in
the history, so when the Fairmount Park Commission came along and asked for a community group to maintain Tookesbury Mansion, we became one. We called ourselves the Daughters of Independence.”

“Any significance to the name?” Coletti asked.

Violet and Lily exchanged a glance.

“We all lost our fathers pretty young,” Lily said. “We used to joke that history was our dad, since we all loved it so much. It might sound corny, but we almost felt like history set us free to be ourselves. It gave us independence. That’s where the name came from.”

“So, how did you meet?”

“We met about two years ago,” said Lily. “Violet and I already knew each other socially, and we’d occasionally visit historical sites around town. We started seeing Clarissa at some of the sites, and the more we ran into each other, the more we wanted to, so the three of us decided to start doing it together. We all have a role in getting into new sites. I’m an adjunct in Temple’s history department, so I do the research.”

“My background is as a business manager,” Violet said, “so I’m the forceful one who persuades reluctant owners to let us into places that aren’t open to the public. Clarissa? She’s the sweet one. She’s more caring than either of us, but also a lot richer. So if worse comes to worst, she buys our way in. Well … at least, she used to.”

Violet stopped twirling her pearls around her fingers as a tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly. “I’m sorry. It’s just odd to think of her in the past tense.”

“It’s all right,” Coletti said. “Please go on.”

“The three of us were voracious learners,” Lily said. “That’s why we went to Fairgrounds Cemetery the first few times. It was right near the mansion, and the history was there to be studied. Eventually we met Irving Workman there, and he knew so much that we were immediately drawn to him.”

“When did he bring up his theories about Poe being a seer?” Coletti asked.

“Fairgrounds gives tours of the more famous gravesites,” said Violet. “We took one along with Irving. The tour guide mentioned the Gravedigger’s Ball and started talking about the legend behind it. That’s when Irving asked if the cemetery could substantiate the rumors of Poe working there as a gravedigger. The tour guide said no, but he invited Irving to share what he knew about it. By the time the professor finished speaking about Poe and the potential of the human mind being literally buried beneath our feet, it was almost like a whole new world opened up to us. The story was fascinating, his theories were riveting, but as entertaining as it was, we all had our doubts.”

“Ellison Bailey did, too,” Coletti said.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Ellison wouldn’t know a historical fact from a hole in his head.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Coletti said. “But he did say something I found interesting. He said he didn’t trust Irving Workman. So my question is, why did you?”

Lily looked at the ground as she spoke. “Irving showed us things,” she said softly. “He had handwritten drafts of ‘The Raven,’ with Poe’s notations in the margins. He had the first draft of the ‘Paean,’ which Poe rewrote and later renamed ‘Lenore.’ He let Clarissa bring in an expert to authenticate the items. And when her expert proved they were real, we listened to the professor more closely. That’s when he showed us how the poems went together to form a single message.”

Violet jumped in, her eyes lighting up as she described the way the poems weaved together. “In ‘Lenore,’ Poe describes her as young, blond, beautiful, wealthy, and surrounded by people who don’t really love her. By the end of the poem, there’s a call for someone to sing to summon the gods. Irving believed Poe intended for that to be a call to Pallas Athena—the Greek goddess of wisdom and war.

“In ‘The Raven,’ Pallas arrives when the bird sits on a sculpture depicting her. Workman believed that finding Pallas was the key to unlocking the wisdom Poe hid at Fairgrounds.”

“So if finding Pallas was the key to unlocking this mystery, why would Clarissa become so obsessed with finding Lenore?”

Violet looked at Lily, and they both turned to Coletti with eyes that wanted to say more, but just as they were ready to speak, the detective from Cheltenham walked over to them.

“The firefighters found some stuff in the wall near the spot where the fire started.”

“What kind of stuff?” Coletti asked.

The detective glanced at Lily and Violet before he spoke. “I can show you when you finish with your witnesses.”

“It’s all right,” Coletti said. “I think they might need to see it, too.”

The detective led the way as they crossed the lawn to the side of the house where the firefighters had piled items from what appeared to be an art collection. There were oils and sculptures, busts and reliefs. One bust in particular got Coletti’s attention.

He bent down to look at it, and his face creased in a look of disbelief. He snatched a handkerchief out of his pocket. Then he picked it up and asked the question whose answer he already knew.

“Why would Workman have this?”

“Because that’s a bust of Pallas,” Lily said simply.

“Pallas?” Coletti repeated, sounding confused. “This is…”

The words trailed off as he looked at the bust. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, yet there it was, staring at them with hollow eyes and sculpted hair pinned up on a graceful neck. Even though it was chipped and charred, there was no mistaking the identity of the bust. It was Lenore Wilkinson, and it was haunting.

“That bust is why Clarissa was so obsessed with finding Lenore,” Violet said. “It’s the reason we all believed.”

Coletti looked at the bust once more before calling over two cops from the crime scene unit. They bagged and tagged it. Then Coletti turned back to Lily and Violet before reaching into his pocket and extracting yet another piece of artwork.

“I almost forgot to show this to you,” he said as he opened up the folded sheet of paper and held it in front of them. “It’s a cryptogram that was tattooed on Clarissa Bailey’s neck. Do either of you know what it means?”

Lily looked at the picture, and her face cycled through a number of emotions, not the least of which was fear.

“No,” Lily said after staring at the picture for just a few seconds.

“I have no idea what it means,” said Violet.

Both women looked sincere when they spoke, but Coletti had a nagging feeling that they knew more than they were saying.

*   *   *

The interrogation room was hot, and so was Sandy Jackson. She and a homicide detective had been questioning Vickers, the manager of Fairgrounds Cemetery, for the last forty-five minutes, and with each passing second, his answers grew more convoluted.

They still were uncertain about how much the manager knew, but they were sure that he didn’t want to be involved. That was apparent in the way he kept hedging on his answers.

First, he didn’t know the man who’d volunteered at the cemetery. Then he wasn’t sure. By the time the manager changed his mind again, Sandy was just about ready to employ a choke hold. She walked out into the hallway to get some air. That was when she spotted Charlie Mann.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“Computer stuff,” Mann said as he looked at two sheets of paper he was holding. “Penn sent over the names and pictures of Workman’s students.”

“Any hits?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got a couple other irons in the fire. I just left IT to check on the information from the Baileys’ computers. Ellison’s is filled with porn and not much else.”

“What about his wife’s?”

“Her C drive was corrupted, but they think they can repair it and save the information. It might take another half hour or so.”

“Good, because I need your help.”

Charlie smiled as he looked her up and down, his eyes drinking in the curves that were bursting at the seams of her clothing. “What’d you have in mind?”

Sandy liked his eyes on her, but she wasn’t about to let him know it. She was all business now, and she needed Charlie to be that way, too.

“I’m questioning Vickers, the manager from the cemetery. I need you in on the interrogation.”

“I thought he was cooperating.”

“He was,” Sandy said. “But I think he’s scared.”

“You think he knows something?”

“I think he knows everything,” Sandy said. “He knew Workman and the guy who volunteered at the cemetery last year. He knew the volunteer was the one who found the raven and trained it, and he knows a lot more than that, but he’s trying to hide it.”

“Okay,” Mann said. “Let’s go.”

Sandy opened the door to the interrogation room, and Mann walked in smiling. He nodded a greeting to his fellow detective. Then he made a beeline for Vickers.

“I’m Charlie Mann,” he said, shaking Vickers’s hand. “I saw you at the cemetery this morning, but I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself.”

“Nice to meet you,” Vickers said nervously as Mann sat in the chair across from him.