Ghostly Graveyard (Zoe Donovan Cozy Mystery Book 17) (14 page)

“So you figured out who scared you in the graveyard and who killed Duncan, but did you ever figure out what Duncan was after?” Levi asked.

“Maybe. Gus said he came to Ashton Falls because Duncan had mentioned a gold mine. I realized it was a metaphorical gold mine and not an actual one. Gus said Duncan led him to the cemetery and told him the secret to getting what he needed to pay him back was a tombstone. Gus didn’t remember which one, but Duncan’s body was found lying across Isaac Wainwright’s grave, so I’m betting it was his tombstone Duncan was there to look at. Zak and I are going to go over to the graveyard to look at the headstone first thing in the morning. Do you guys want to come along?”

“Heck yeah,” Levi answered.

Interactive Reader Portal
: If you’re reading the story chronologically, read chapter 6 of
Zimmerman Academy
now by clicking on Zim3. If you’re reading
Zimmerman Academy
as a separate story, continue on to Chapter 14.

#zim3

It had been a while since Zak, Levi, Ellie, and I had all been out sleuthing together, and I found I rather missed it. Things had changed since Zak and I had gotten married and taken on the Academy and the kids. I won’t say things are better or worse than they were, but they’re definitely different. For one thing, I spend a lot more time being a wife and surrogate mother than I do being a best friend. Maybe that was the way of life as you matured and took on adult responsibilities, but I did miss the
us
we used to be, so perhaps I needed to find a way to create a little better balance in my life.

“Isaac’s headstone is over there.” I pointed across the cemetery.

We covered the distance silently, each lost in our own thoughts.

“So what now?” Levi asked as we stood near the headstone. There didn’t appear to be any secret compartments. At least not any that were visible.

“I don’t know. Gus just said Duncan led him to the headstone, and that it held a secret that would bring him enough money to pay everyone back.”

“Wait a minute,” Zak said. “The legend states that Isaac came to the area to find a stone.”

“Yeah. Which is why I’m thinking headstone,” I answered.

“But Isaac’s headstone didn’t exist when Isaac was alive,” Zak pointed out. “If Alvin did indeed want Isaac to find a headstone it would most likely be his own.”

I rolled my eyes. Of course. Isaac hadn’t been sent to find his own tombstone. Maybe I really was losing it.

“Do we know where Alvin is buried?” Levi asked.

“No,” I said, “but the letter led us to this cemetery, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say he’s buried here.”

“Are we sure we’re looking for a headstone?” Ellie asked.

“No, I’m not sure. I guess I just assumed that, as did Duncan, after the clues in the letter led us to this spot.”

I looked around the area. The gravesites were over a hundred years old. Many were decayed, while others were gone altogether. Still, headstones were made of stone and, as the legend suggested, if we assumed Isaac did come to America to find a stone, it might have endured. We decided to each take our own row to see if we could find evidence of him having been buried in this cemetery.

We didn’t.

I looked toward the house. It had been there when Isaac arrived in the area. I remembered Analee saying she suspected one of the reasons Duncan volunteered to help out with the Haunted Hamlet was because he wanted to have access to the house.

“What if the stone Isaac was sent to find was actually connected to the house rather than the cemetery?” I asked.

“Like a stone from the old fireplace?” Levi suggested.

“Or one of the stones from the patio,” Ellie added.

“Yeah, something like that. Let’s go take a look,” I said. “Even if Duncan found what he was looking for, maybe we can figure out the clue.”

The house actually had a lot of stone features, but I wasn’t certain which were original to the house and which had been added later.

“Do we have any idea what we’re looking for?” Ellie asked.

“Not really,” I answered. “I guess if you find anything that looks significant give a holler.”

We decided to split up and look around different parts of the house. I took the kitchen. I’m not sure why, but I had an intuition that the kitchen was the key to this whole mystery. I looked around the now tidy room. I thought about the fact that it had been a cleaver that had been used as a murder weapon. The cleaver had been inside the house earlier that day. I’d been operating under the assumption that Gus had lied and really had killed Duncan, but when would he have picked up the cleaver? He’d told me he’d come to the cemetery with Duncan, who’d promised him cash. When they arrived Duncan led him to Isaac’s grave. The thing was, at no time did Gus mention going into the house. Of course he could have omitted that fact to throw me off, but if he’d planned to leave me for dead why bother to lie to me?

The only thing that made any sense was that Gus wasn’t the killer. But if Gus wasn’t the killer, who was? Usually when I’m really stumped during an investigation I find myself relying on the classic motives: love and money. Duncan owed Gus money, but if he didn’t do it that just left…

“Oh my God,” I blurted out. “I know who did it. Gus didn’t kill Duncan.”

I ran into the living room. “I know who killed Duncan,” I yelled.

Levi returned to the room. “I thought we decided Gus killed Duncan.”

“We did, but we were wrong. I didn’t stop to think about the cleaver. Duncan was killed with a cleaver that was in the kitchen. If Gus followed Duncan to the gravesite and killed him when Duncan failed to come up with the money, when did he get the cleaver?”

“What’s all the yelling about?” Ellie asked as she came down the stairs with Zak on her heels.

“Zoe doesn’t think Gus killed Duncan after all,” Levi supplied.

“Then who did?” Ellie asked.

“Duncan’s girlfriend, Analee,” I said.

Zak frowned. “How do you figure that?”

“When I spoke to Analee she said Duncan had promised her that he would take her away to live somewhere tropical after he found the money he was looking for. When I found the box it contained a single airline ticket to Rio. My guess is that Analee found out Duncan planned to leave without her and came to the house to confront him. Analee mentioned to me that Duncan had wanted access to the house to look for something, so it makes sense she would look for Duncan here. My guess is they fought and she killed him in the heat of the moment. I’m going to assume she trashed the place to cover up what she’d done.”

“That also explains the red paint,” Levi pointed out. “She hoped it would cover up the blood.”

“If Analee killed Duncan in the house how did the body get out to the graveyard?” Ellie asked.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Analee was a tiny little thing, but maybe she had help moving the body. Benny said Duncan came by while he was at the house on the day of the murder. He said he left Duncan to lock up. What if he didn’t actually leave? Benny hated Duncan and he loved the event, so it seemed odd that he’d leave him in the house alone. It makes sense that Benny would hang around until after Duncan left. What if he witnessed the fight between Duncan and Analee? He might have helped her move the body.” I turned to Levi. “When you arrived on Friday who else was here?”

“Just Benny. Why?”

“What was Benny doing?”

Levi paused. “He was messing around with something up in the attic.”

“Did you go up there yourself?” I asked.

“No. I just saw that the little trapdoor was open, so I called up to let him know I was here. He came down then. To be honest, I didn’t think anything about it. Why? Is it important?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. See if you can find a ladder. I want to have a look to see if I can figure out what Benny was doing up there.”

Levi found a ladder and I climbed up to the attic and was able to answer at least part of the question. Alvin’s headstone was there, lying on its side. If you looked at the part that would usually be buried in the dirt a small compartment was visible, and it was clearly empty.

“Guess we’re too late for the treasure,” Levi stated the obvious.

“Guess so.” I found I was disappointed at the anticlimax. “I suppose all we can do now is call Salinger. If Analee was here maybe he can find fingerprints or traces of DNA. We know Benny was here, and if he did help her maybe he’ll crack if Salinger brings him in for questioning.”

“Benny confessed to everything,” I informed Ethan, Phyllis, and Will Danner, our new math teacher, that evening when they arrived for the party. Will had come dressed as a monk, wearing, I assumed, the seventh, unaccounted-for costume. I was glad we’d figured everything out before I knew he had that costume. I’d have hated to suspect him.

“It went down pretty much like I’d thought. Benny said he knew the headstone was in the attic. He found it when he went up there to run some wiring for the sound system. He didn’t know how it got there because the thing is heavy, but he knew the legend, so he spent a good amount of time looking for some sort of a clue.”

“So he was in the attic when Duncan showed up,” Ethan realized.

“Yep. He wasn’t sure Duncan knew about the headstone so he kept quiet. Duncan appeared to be looking for something until Analee showed up and confronted him about not taking her with him to Rio. They fought and he struck her. She picked up the cleaver and hit him with it.”

Phyllis grimaced. “What an unpleasant way to die.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, although I might take that over slowly suffocating. “Anyway, Analee panicked when she realized what she’d done. In fact, she had a total meltdown. Benny felt bad for her, so he went downstairs and offered to help.”

“They moved the body,” Will said.

I nodded. “They moved it into the cemetery. Benny realized he’d need to find a more permanent hiding place, but he also knew the haunted house crew would be coming at any minute, so he decided to set the body out of the way and then come back later, after everyone had gone. Benny happened to have red paint in his car, which he realized would help mask the blood, so he and Analee spread it around and then trashed the place so it would look like vandalism. After everyone had gone Benny went back to move the body. He got the idea of using the monk’s robe to disguise his identity just in case. He thought I’d left, but I’d taken longer to lock up than he predicted, so I saw him as he made his way toward the body. The rest you know.”

“And the item Alvin left for Isaac?” Phyllis asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“I might be able to shed some light on that,” Ethan offered. “After we spoke I did some more research. I discovered Alvin had a very valuable stone: a red diamond worth tens of millions of dollars on today’s market.”

“Duncan found a diamond worth tens of millions of dollars?” I asked.

“No. If you look at historical records it seems Isaac’s family did quite well financially after his death. It’s my guess Isaac found the stone and sent it home before he was killed. Because the stone wasn’t in his possession at the time of his death most people assumed he never found what he was looking for and the legend took hold.”

“If it could be shipped why didn’t Alvin send it in the first place?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose we ever will.”

“So Duncan wasn’t rich, he was just running away?” I thought of the plane ticket.

“It would seem so,” Ethan answered. “As you said, he owed a lot of money to a lot of people.”

I went in search of my parents and my adorable little sister. My mom, along with Ellie and Mariah, and Jeremy and Morgan, were in the den. Pepper and her boyfriend of sorts, Chad Carson, were sitting on the floor with the babies, making silly faces that caused them all to laugh hysterically. Ellie really was in her element among the babies. I knew how very much she wanted a child of her own, and in that moment I felt a conviction that she should have one. I hadn’t always supported the baby idea, but from this point forward I intended to do just that.

“Is it okay if Eve and I go up to my room?” Alex asked as she walked up behind me. “We’re working on a project for the Academy.”

“Sure, that’s fine. Have you seen Scooter?”

“He’s in the pool with Tucker, Pi, and a few of the guys from the band.”

One of the best things about the house was the year-round pool that could convert from indoor to outdoor as the weather dictated.

I headed back down the stairs, looking for Zak. We’d both been so busy lately that we’d barely had any time to connect.

“Are you having fun?” My dad walked up beside me, holding Harper in his arms.

“I am. In fact, I think this may be the best Halloween spooktacular I’ve ever thrown.”

“I think you might be right. Have you seen your mom?”

“She’s upstairs.”

“I guess I should go up and get her. I think Harper has had enough Halloween fun for one night.”

I reached for my sister, who was all but asleep. “I’ll hold Harper while you get your stuff together. How was trick-or-treating?”

“It was fun. Harper was the cutest little Piglet out there. It was so fun to watch her hold her bag out for candy when each door was opened. And when each piece was dropped inside, she looked thrilled and amazed. Every single time.”

I looked down at the toddler in my arms. “I’m sorry I missed it. Harper is growing up so fast. I’ve been so busy that I feel like I barely see her any more. I don’t want to miss all the special baby moments.”

“You’ll have your own babies soon enough and they’ll have their own special baby moments,” my dad assured me.

“Yeah,” I said as he turned to go. “I guess.”

I smiled as Harper rested her head on my shoulder. The poor baby was exhausted. I loved the way her curly hair brushed my cheek as I held her. I did want to have Zak’s baby one day; I just hoped the addition of children to the crazy life we already had wouldn’t take away from the connection we now shared. There were times I was afraid the bond we felt as a newly married couple would fade and we would become strangers passing in the night as we juggled kids, jobs, and after-school activities.

I looked around the crowded room for Zak, but I didn’t see him, so I headed for the pool. There, I found my totally awesome husband standing in the shallow end, waist deep in water, with both Scooter and Tucker hanging on him.

I looked at him and smiled. Our eyes locked and the noise in the room faded away. I knew now that, in spite of the baby in my arms and the preteens climbing on Zak’s back, we were totally alone, even if we were alone in a room full of people. Maybe our love would survive the challenges I knew were ahead. Maybe Zak and I would beat the odds and our love would find a way. Maybe the secret to love everlasting can be found in the silence that bonded hearts share in the midst of chaos.