Deeper Than the Grave (10 page)

Chapter Nineteen

The next hour went by quickly. I finished my sandwich. Trey ate two of his protein bars. The sky darkened, and a harder cold fell, like a sandbag tumbling to the ground. I was getting antsy going through the photographs one by one, but Trey was settling into a rhythm. Pull, sort, pile, pull again.

“By the way,” I said, “Marisa's little plan worked. Evie will be calling Phoenix to discuss security services. Apparently they've decided that Rose plus shotgun does not equal a secure environment.”

But Trey wasn't listening. “Tai? Look at this.”

I peered over his shoulder. He held a daguerreotype in his lap, or a photograph made to look like one, with stark black-and-white exposures and formally posed subjects. There was Dexter in front, with his walrus-like mustache and big belly, Richard at his side. And there, in the back corner, Lucius. He wore a Confederate kepi, but the eyes were the same—rakish, devilish, intelligent. And his uniform bore the insignia of the 41st Infantry.

I pointed. “That's him. Right there. Lucius Dufrene.”

“He was a member of Dexter's unit?”

“Sure looks like it.”

“Is that from the Amberdecker burial?”

I flipped the photo over. “No, it's dated six months before that.” I pulled the box into my lap and rifled through the images, stopping when I found what I was looking for. “But this one is.”

In this photograph, Dexter himself manned the cannon as he fired the salute, the smoke rolling through the red and gold trees. Evie was in the image too, as was a plush blonde I assumed to be her sister, Chelsea, the two of them beside three women in stiff black Victorian dresses, reenactors portraying mourners. Far to the left, separate from the main grouping, Rose Amberdecker stood as straight and still as one of the marble statuary. None of the Amberdeckers had gone for period clothes, but all of the men in Dexter's unit had donned the dress grays, rifles held at parade rest.

I handed the photo to Trey. “I don't see Lucius in this photo. According to Detective Perez, he disappeared around this time. And that was the last anyone saw of him until I found his skull.”

“A tentative identification?”

“Yes.”

Trey and I both knew that fingerprints didn't exist on a corpse eighteen months rotting, that the cops would be looking for family and dental records. Should the dental prove a bust, they'd move to DNA. But the reality was—thanks to the cold-case nature of his death and the subsequent stirring of the pot by the tornado—Lucius' death was a case best solved by asking a million questions of the people connected to him. Hence Perez's visit to my shop.

I leaned back on my elbows. “I can't believe the stuff I know now.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I'm not thinking of Lucius as a tragic and perhaps oddball circumstance, I'm thinking of him as a case. My case.”

Trey put down the photograph. “Tai—”

“I know, I know. Not a licensed security professional.”

“And—”

“I can't drag you into things and expect your license to cover me. Trust me, these things have all been explained very clearly by various official people.” I paused. “But technically, I
was
asked to help locate the bones.”

“You were asked to locate the bones of Braxton Amberdecker. The bones you found belong to an entirely different person.”

I sat up quickly. “You're right. Lucius' bones are of no concern to me.”

Trey's eyes grew wary. “True. Which means we should—”

“Follow Braxton's bones instead.”

He frowned. “That wasn't what I was going to say.”

“I know. But they haven't been found yet.” I stared into the box full of photographs, layers upon layers of memories, buried one upon the other. “Trey?”

“Yes?”

“This is purely speculative, I know, but…what if Braxton's bones weren't in the coffin?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean none of Richard's crew found them. Evie's crack archaeological team didn't find them. The cops didn't find them. What if at some point between their original discovery and that coffin going in the ground, they were stolen? What if nobody's found the bones because there are no bones to be found?”

“Why would someone steal bones?”

“I don't know about bones, but collectors are hot for relics.” I started searching the piles around me, almost knocking over my bourbon. “There's a list of the burial items around here somewhere—”

“Don't you think the police would have considered this too?”

“Of course they would have. But they would have tucked that close to the vest and let Evie's team keep searching, knowing full well they were on a wild goose chase.” And then it hit me. I reached out and grabbed Trey's knee. “Omigod!”

“What?”

I clamped tighter on his knee. “What if it was Lucius in that coffin instead of Braxton?”

Trey didn't react at first, but eventually he got the picture. “You mean—”

“I mean, what if somebody took the contents—bones, burial goods, the whole shebang—then killed Lucius with that pry bar and then stuffed it and his body in the empty coffin? Which then got cemented up in that tomb out in the cemetery. Which then got scattered across the Amberdecker woods by a tornado?”

“But—”

“You saw the coffin, didn't you? Yesterday morning?”

Trey shook his head. “No. Richard said one of his crew had found it, and he was planning to investigate, but then you found the skull and we rendezvoused with you instead. And then Rose held you at gunpoint.”

Now he was getting intrigued. I could see him snapping to attention again, his index finger tapping, his brain sparking and whirring.

“If that coffin had Lucius in it instead of old bones, it would have looked as grotty as that skull.”

“It would have, yes.”

“And nobody would have noticed the extra weight during the re-burial.” I pointed at the photograph. “They had it on a caisson. Just roll it up to the vault and slide it right in—one, two, three, shove.”

Trey reached for his yellow pad and sketched out a bubble map, then jotted a quick timeline in the margin. I tapped my foot while he evaluated and analyzed. Finally he put down his pen and exhaled. “It's a plausible theory.”

“I knew it! Which means that if we find the bones, the killer—”

“No, no, no.” Trey shook his head adamantly. “We aren't finding bones, or killers. That's—”

“Hold on a second.”

“—and plausible does not mean probable. There's a matter of mechanics, and a means/motive/opportunity breakdown, and…who are you calling?”

I tucked my phone between my shoulder and ear. “Richard.”

“But—”

“I need to know if he actually saw that coffin and if so, what shape it was in, and…crap. Voice mail.” And then I remembered. “Damn it, he's taken his unit on an encampment. They left an hour ago.”

“Tai—”

“I'll have to catch him later.”

I ran my hands though my hair. The floor was a jumbled mess on my side, a series of neat stacks on Trey's. I dragged the photograph box into my lap and started pawing through it.

Trey peered over my shoulder. “What are you looking for?”

“Any other pictures of…aha!”

I snatched another photograph out of the box, this one of a young brunette side by side with Lucius, his hand on her waist. He was wearing a Confederate jacket, but he'd paired it with jeans and his giant NASCAR belt buckle. At first glance, the girl seemed to be in Civil War dress. She wore a red corset and matching crinoline, but copper buckles accented the stays and the skirt ended in a ragged hem far above the knee. Her purple-streaked hair was cut short and razored in the back, with long jagged bangs, and a Victorian blunderbuss pistol was tucked into a holster at her hip.

“From a reenactment?” Trey said.

“Not a reenactment. Steampunk. This Victorian mad scientist thing. See?” I tapped my fingernail on the pendant she wore, what looked like a cast-iron infinity symbol with a copper gear mounted in the bottom loop. “Definitely not reenactment jewelry, or dress. But look behind them. That's Dexter's counter in the background.”

“Do you recognize the girl?”

“No. But that's definitely Lucius. He's not steampunking, though, not with jeans and that belt buckle and a tee-shirt with a picture of a…” I held the photo closer to my face. “I swear that looks like a pig in a leather vest.”

“Wait. I know that pig.” Trey took the photo from me. “That's a shirt from Hog Wild.”

“Which is…”

“A bar in Buckhead, near the Triangle. I used to get call-outs there.”

“Bad place?”

Trey considered. “Problematic is a better description. Most of the calls were for drunk and disorderly, but occasionally we handled more serious violations. Drugs, shootings, stabbings.” He tapped Lucius' image in the photograph. “That's the shirt the servers wore.”

So Lucius had been dressed for work, not play. I leaned closer, placed a gentle hand on Trey's knee. “You do realize I'm going to go roughnecking at Hog Wild tonight?”

His expression was one of stoic resignation. “I suppose I do.”

“Would you like to join me?”

He kept his face averted, but I saw the spark kindle in his eyes. “I suppose I should.”

Chapter Twenty

Hog Wild occupied one of the seamier seams that knit Buckhead together. Several miles removed from the high-end boutiques and see-and-be-seen dinner spots, it ferreted itself behind an industrial grind club near the intersection of West Paces and Peachtree. One look and I understood Trey's assessment of “problematic.” Nothing like a bunch of hormone-amped youths of privilege mingling with the genuinely dangerous to create a powder keg.

Trey paused outside the door, dirty neon and jukebox guitar washing over him. I could smell the gray haze of cigarettes, hear the ceramic clack of pool balls in a fast break.

I inhaled deeply. “You can get drunk just breathing this air.”

Trey glared at me. “You say that as if it's a good thing.”

“It's home-sweet-home to me. The bathrooms are probably an all-access pass to hell, but I bet the beer is cheap. And I bet there's a dartboard.”

“I'm sure there is. There always is.”

“Are you coming or not?”

He squared his shoulders. “I'm coming. But stay close. And don't get near the dartboard.”

***

Inside, the sticky floor sucked at the bottom of my boots. I pushed in next to the bar, Trey as close as my shadow. There was only one empty seat, so I took it. Trey put his back to mine and surveyed the room. I didn't have to look to know we were getting more than our fair share of attention.

“I told you not to wear the jacket,” I said.

“I can't wear the holster without the jacket, and I wasn't coming without the holster.”

“You look like a former Red Dog.”

“I am a former Red Dog.”

“Which is exactly why you shouldn't look like one.”

I leaned backwards slightly and my shoulder blades connected with the muscles of his back—the latissimus dorsi and the rhomboids, warm and solid—and for the first time in my life, I understood what it meant for someone to
literally
have my back. I remembered what Garrity had told me, about the SWAT team and the hand on the shoulder, and knew that Trey took it literally too.

At the pool table, a bald guy with a beard down to his bellybutton eyed me as he leaned over his shot. Two other men moved to stand beside him, all of them wearing jeans and leather vests, their forearms intricate snaking webs of tattoos. They talked quietly, but kept their eyes in our direction, and I felt every one of Trey's muscles tense.

“Tai—”

“I know. I see them.”

His voice was calm. “We need to leave. Now.”

“Nope.”

“Tai—”

“Trust me. I've been in the middle of enough bar fights to know when one's about to break out, and it's not, so hang tight, boyfriend.”

“Bar fights?”

I showed him the pale slashing ripple across my palm. “See this? Bar fight.”

“You said you cut it on a broken bottle.”

“I did. During this bar fight.”

“Tai—”

“Just be quiet, okay? We're cool.”

Trey made a noise of annoyance. I kept the bikers in my peripheral vision. They were menacing-looking, all right, but there was something…calculated about it. A slinky blonde in a tight black dress moved into their midst and whispered something into the ear of the brawniest, who smiled in our direction.

The bartender came over. He was a late-twenties guy in jeans and a black Hog Wild tee like we'd seen in the photograph, pecan brown hair just beginning to recede, his small suspicious eyes the same hue. “What can I get you?”

“Jack on ice.”

“And your friend?”

“The same.”

Trey shook his head. “I don't want—”

“Give me your credit card. The black fancy one.”

Trey made the noise again, but he complied. The bartender brought the drinks and stuck them in front of me. I slid the card his way. He stared at it, then at me. “What exactly are you looking for here?”

“Information.”

“Then why did you bring a cop?”

“I didn't.”

He jabbed his chin at Trey. “He's a cop.”

“He was, but he got fired for bad behavior.”

Now Trey was double annoyed. “I did not, I—”

I elbowed him, and he stopped talking. He was suspicious and confused, a gasoline-and-matches combination, but he was too concerned about the growing menace at the pool table to make an argument. To a novice, the room continued much as before—the jukebox played Toby Keith, the smoke curled like dragons' tails above the pool tables. The only tipoff was the conversational noise, dropped low now so that every ear could tune into what I saw saying.

“We're here unofficial-like, and we don't want any attention either. We're looking for information, that's all.” I showed him the photograph. “You know either of these people?”

The bartender shook his head. “Nope.”

“Even the guy wearing the same shirt you're wearing now?”

“Before my time.”

“How do you know that if you don't know him?”

“Because I said so.”

I looked to Trey for some reinforcement, but he wasn't paying the least bit of attention to the bartender. He had moved shoulder to shoulder with me, his back against the bar, hands loose, ready to launch some Krav Maga in any particular direction.

I kept my voice calm. “If there's really nothing you can do to help me, then fine. I'll take my questions to the cops. Maybe they'll help me. Or maybe they'll show up here. Who knows?”

I heard the peculiar silence then, like the soft lifting ripple of the hairs before a lightning strike. And then a woman's voice cut through the gathering tension.

“It's all right, Eddie. I'll talk to them.”

She came in from the back. It took me a second to recognize her—the girl from the photograph, a few years older. Gone were the lace explosions of her skirt and corset. In their place were low-slung jeans and a tight black tee, cut short enough to reveal hipbones. The hair was longer and deep purple all over now, but the eyeliner was still thick, foundation too, covering skin rough from her not-too-distant adolescence.

I slid the photograph across the bar. “Did you know Lucius Dufrene?”

“You know I did. You got the damn photograph.”

“Were you two dating?”

“Dating?” She rolled her eyes. “Who are you, my mom?”

I took a steadying breath. “I just need an answer.”

“Then you should start asking better questions.”

She delivered the line with a little sideways jerk of the head. Lord help me, I recognized that too. Had I really been that cocky? Probably. I tried to find some compassion for the girl standing in front of me, the girl I'd been then—angry, spiteful, mad at anyone who presented themselves as a target—and failed utterly.

I made my expression as neutral as possible. “Like what?”

“What do you mean, like what?”

“I mean what kind of questions should I be asking? You tell me.” I put my elbows on the bar. “I'll just sit here and drink…Oh, I don't know. Whatever you have. We'll put it on Mr. Seaver's credit card.”

I heard what sounded like a growl from Trey. I crossed my fingers that it was only a steadying exhale and smiled. “Well?”

She sidled a look at the bartender. He shrugged. “Whatever you want to do, Cat.”

Cat plucked the credit card from my fingers. “What'll it be? Ma'am?”

I bit back the response rising behind my teeth. “Whatever you'd like to bring me. Kid.”

***

She brought me a shot of something that tasted like she'd set a dead pine tree on fire, put it out with cough syrup, then stirred the ashes into kerosene. It was the vilest, nastiest stuff I'd ever forced down my throat, and I'd slammed back some rotgut moonshine in my time.

She grinned. “Smooth enough for ya?”

Eddie the bartender chuckled. They hadn't had this much fun in a long while. Trey, however, looked like he wanted to call 911. Not for the cops. For an ambulance.

“Are you sure you know what you're doing?” he said.

I took another sip, coughed, and thumped my chest with my fist. “Yeah, yeah. Fine. I'll probably go blind tomorrow, but I'm good for now.”

Cat watched. She didn't offer me any water. She didn't offer me any answers either.

“How did you and Lucius meet?” I asked.

“At the gun shop where he worked. The owner took that picture of us.”

I tried to keep the surprise out of my face. “Dexter?”

“Yeah. He made the necklace I'm wearing. He was a blacksmith, cool for an old guy. I liked him. He wasn't crazy like the rest of those Old South redneck nut jobs.”

“Why did you take up with Lucius then? He was into that Old South stuff too.”

She eyed me steadily. “Lucius thought that whole thing was a crock of shit. He was good at pretending, though. He could be anything he needed to be.”

“Like?”

She shook her head and poured. “One question per shot.”

I threw back the remainder of the clear liquid, coughed some more, then leaned across the bar. “Okay, here's a question. Did Lucius steal a dead soldier's bones right out of his coffin, or was that you, because I don't know right now, but considering somebody most likely cracked Lucius' skull open then stuffed him in that same coffin, I'm leaning toward you, and if you can't help me figure out why it
wasn't
you, then I'm taking this photo to the cops on my way home and letting them have a shot, so can you maybe start being a little more thorough in your answers, yes or no?”

She blinked at me, her face suddenly pale beneath the makeup. Eddie the bartender placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Cat?” he said. “Time to get serious.”

She looked up at him, shaken. “Fine.”

The bartender turned to me. “Cat will take you to my office. You can talk in private there.”

Trey shook his head, his eyes still on the roughnecks with the pool cues. The bartender saw where Trey was looking and dropped his voice.

“Hey, don't worry about those guys. They're not real bikers. They're just extras from the movie. I promised I'd keep that on the down low, so…”

He pressed a finger to his lips. Trey exhaled in a huff. I recognized the sound, equal parts wariness and frustration. If things went dicey, he'd never let me forget it. But I had a feeling. And I needed that back room and some alone time with Cat to sort it out.

I touched my fingertips to the inside of his wrist. “Trey?”

“Fifteen minutes,” he said.