“Help? Who? Most certainly not that unfortunate woman. Nothing I tell you will bring her back.”
“Then could you just pop over . . . wherever . . . and talk to her? Ask her what happened and who dun it? That sure would make things easier.”
“Who did it,” he grumbled. “And no, I cannot accommodate you in this matter. It is not the way these things work.” When he turned and marched toward the stairway, I followed. “I’ve already told you I am unable to help. I was preoccupied this morning with matters of state. The single thing I noticed was that the woman was here early. Far earlier than you arrived.”
“Was she alone?”
“When I saw her, yes. Most assuredly.”
“Where did she—” We were almost at the stairway and I stopped for a moment. There were sections of the memorial where visitors weren’t allowed, and those sections were roped off and had signs nearby that said, CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC. The sign at the bottom of the stairway that led up to the old ballroom on the third floor was upside down. Automatically, I righted it and kept on with my questions. “Where did she hang out?” I asked the president.
I swear, his cheeks got red. No easy thing for a ghost. “I . . . I beg your pardon!” he sputtered. “I assure you, I certainly saw nothing hanging out, and if I had—”
OK, I had a laugh at the old guy’s expense. When I was done, I explained. “Hanging out. It means, like, the place she was when she was wherever she was when she was here.”
His eyebrows dipped. “Your grammar is deplorable.” He floated down the stairs.
I took the more conventional route and got back down to business. “So Marjorie . . . she was . . . ?”
“On the balcony, of course. You know that. But earlier, she was downstairs.”
“In the ladies’ room? Or in your crypt?”
I expected another lecture that included some nonsense about how indecent it was to even mention the ladies’ room. Instead, the president shook his head. “As I said earlier, I was preoccupied. I paid her no mind. I really cannot say where she went.”
He stopped floating at the main floor. I kept on going. If Marjorie had spent even a few minutes of the morning downstairs, I wanted to know why. I checked out the ladies’ room, and knew right away that she hadn’t been in there. The fixture above the sink had one of those curlicue, energy-saving lightbulbs in it. After it’s switched on, it takes forever for the bulb to brighten. Every employee and every volunteer knows to turn it on just once in the morning, then turn it off again right before the memorial is closed. It was still off.
When I stepped back into the hallway between the ladies’ room and the crypt, the president was waiting there for me.
It was more than a little creepy glancing from the President Garfield at my side to his flag-draped casket.
Rather than think about it, I went into the crypt. The crypt below the rotunda is shaped like an octagon. The president’s coffin along with that of his wife, Lucretia, are on display behind an iron fence at the center of the room. So are two urns. I knew from working at the cemetery that they contain the ashes of his daughter and son-in-law.
I did a circuit around the caskets and stopped right back where I’d started. “I don’t know what Marjorie could have been doing down here.”
“Paying her respects?”
I think it was a whatcha-call-it, a rhetorical question, but I was too deep in thought to care. “She’s got pictures of you everywhere. And books and all these weird sorts of trinkets. I don’t see why she’d have to come down here to pay her respects.” Like it might actually help me think, I went around again and my gaze traveled from the coffin of the president to that of his wife.
“You know . . .” I edged into what I knew could be a touchy subject. “I’ve been wondering . . . about that girl, Lucia Calhoun. If there really were any children—?”
I never got as far as even finishing the question before President Garfield started rumbling like a thundercloud. “Young lady,” he growled, “I understand that society these days is far more casual and less structured than it was back in my day, but really, I do not think that excuses a complete lack of decorum, do you?”
I wrinkled my nose. I wasn’t sure when we’d gone from discussing his love life to talking about decorating.
“It is simply not appropriate for you to be asking about such things,” he snarled.
“But Marjorie thought you were related.” My guess was this wasn’t news since Marjorie talked about it all the time, and Marjorie spent all her time in the memorial. “And now Marjorie is dead and—”
“Then it really cannot possibly matter, can it?”
I would have argued the point if Jeremiah Stone didn’t poof onto the scene. He was carrying a stack of papers and he tapped one finger against it. “You really must get these papers signed, Mr. President,” he said. “They are quite essential.”
“Yes, of course.” The president turned to me. “As you can see, I have matters of import to deal with. The ship of state cannot captain itself, and I must provide Mr. Stone here with the proper example. It is my high privilege and sacred duty to educate my successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.”
Like there was anything I could say to that?
They vanished and I stood there alone in the crypt, wondering what to do next. I mean, besides wait for the cleaning people. In the hopes they might show up sometime soon, I went back upstairs and thought about everything that had happened and all I didn’t know and couldn’t figure out.
“But Mr. President . . .” Jeremiah Stone was nowhere to be seen, but his voice floated on the air from the nothingness he’d disappeared into. “We must get your signature on these papers, sir. It is imperative.”
Signatures made me think about Marjorie and all that stuff—including the Garfield autographs—she had in her house.
And thinking about visiting Marjorie that night made me think about Ray.
And thinking about Ray . . . well, I knew Ray might not have all the answers. When it came to my investigation, he might not have any of them. But something told me that a guy who had the nerve to actually visit Marjorie at home just might be a good place to start.
7
I would much rather save my empty calories for the occasional martini than waste them on fast food. Which was why, though the rest of northeast Ohio was flocking to a new franchise called Big Daddy Burgers, I had never been inside the front door of one of the distinctive purple and white buildings. The next day was Saturday and apparently a whole bunch of people were out for lunch celebrating the weekend. It took me a while to find a parking place at the BDB nearest to the cemetery, and even longer to get up to the front of the line so I could ask one of the harried-looking teenagers who was packing the orders and ringing the register if Ray Gwitkowski was working that day.
“The old guy?” The girl’s eyebrow was pierced, and the little silver stud in it jumped when she gave me a look. Clearly, she was trying to figure out why someone as young and stylish as I was needed to speak to Ray. She poked a thumb over her shoulder toward the kitchen behind the counter and I noticed Ray flipping burgers at a grill. He was wearing an apron that matched the purple shirts of the kids taking the orders. “It’s not his break time. I know, because he goes right after me, but, well . . .” She glanced around, and since none of the workers looked as if they were old enough to drive and nobody seemed to be in charge of the chaos, she shrugged. “I don’t think anybody would notice if you went back there. If anyone sees you, they’re going to think you’re from the main office, anyway, since you’re old, too.”