Autumn Bones

Page 56

After all, I was Hel’s liaison. I was proud of it, and I damn well meant to do everything in my power to keep that title.
I cleared my throat. “Canvass the area for witnesses?”
He nodded. “Police work at its most exciting.”
No kidding.
A couple of hours and some twenty houses later, we had confirmed that no one in the vicinity had seen anything. Well, that’s not strictly true. There were a number of people who’d noticed a bunch of cars and motorcycles congregating in the cemetery around nightfall when our showdown with the Palmer ladies had occurred, but since the gathering dispersed without incident, no one had bothered to report it.
After that, nothing.
I let Cody handle the last few inquiries and took the time to check in with Sinclair.
“I heard,” he said without preamble when he answered his phone. Of course he’d heard the news. The whole town had probably heard it by now. “So what’s up? What’s going on? Do you think it’s related?”
“Other than the fact that someone stole the decayed corpse of Pemkowet’s most infamous murderer, I don’t know what’s going on.” I shifted on the passenger seat of Cody’s truck. Yep, still tingling. “Do you?”
“It was definitely . . . stolen?” Sinclair asked.
“Looks that way,” I said. “Although Hel summoned me last night to warn me that Pemkowet’s dead are restless and may rise, hopefully but not definitely in incorporeal form, and that if we don’t get your grandfather’s duppy contained by Halloween, the gate between the living and the dead may never be closed. Any thoughts?”
He drew in a sharp breath. “Daisy, I am so, so sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too,” I said. “It’s not your fault. We all made mistakes, and ultimately, it was my responsibility. So what about Grandpa Morgan?”
“Hell, I’ll try.” Sinclair gave a harsh, broken laugh. “Do you think I can fake sincerity well enough to fool a duppy?”
“I don’t think you have to,” I said. “You’re under my protection and Hel is willing to fight this. She gave me a spirit lantern.”
“A what?”
Thank you! So this wasn’t common knowledge. “It makes ghosts cast a shadow,” I said. “If you fix their shadows to the ground with an iron nail, it lays their spirits to rest. But since your grandfather’s spirit never was at rest, you’re still going to have to, um, recapture it and return it to the vessel in which it was contained. The pickle jar, I mean,” I added in case it was unclear.
“That makes sense. How do you know it was a pickle jar?” Sinclair sounded bemused.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t! It looked like a pickle jar, okay? Anyway, tell me you can do this, Sinclair.”
“I have to, don’t I?”
“Yeah, you do,” I said. “And the sooner the better. How do we find him?”
“You don’t find a duppy,” Sinclair said. “A duppy finds you. He’ll find us when he’s ready. But thanks to my mother, it could be anywhere. She set him loose on the whole town.”
Crap. That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. “You’ll be ready when he does?” I asked him.
“Damn right I will.” His voice was stronger and more certain this time. “And, Daisy . . . I appreciate it.”
Glancing through the windshield, I saw Cody approaching, shrugging his shoulders to indicate he’d had no success. “Thanks. Sinclair . . . about this grave robbery. I mean, it’s got to be related, right? But how?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we’re not talking about some ordinary spirit. My grandfather was an obeah man. A powerful one. He could make people do things. Things they wouldn’t normally do.”
“Like steal a corpse?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Why?”
There was a rattling sound as he shook his beaded dreadlocks. “Death magic? I don’t know. But maybe if you find the corpse, you’ll find my grandfather’s duppy.”
“Okay. Stay tuned. Let the coven know what’s going on. I’ll talk to you later.” I ended the call as Cody opened the driver’s-side door of the pickup and slid behind the wheel, mist dampening his bronze hair.
We regarded each other.
“No luck?” I hazarded.
“No.” Cody stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. “You?”
“Grandpa Morgan was an obeah man,” I informed him. “It’s possible his spirit could have convinced someone to steal the Tall Man’s remains for unknown nefarious purposes, and it’s possible that if we locate said remains, we may find Grandpa Morgan. Otherwise, no.”
Cody raised his eyebrows. “Nefarious?”
“Uh-huh. What next?”
He put the truck in gear. “Well, I guess we’d better inform the Tall Man’s nearest living kin.”
Thirty-eight
The flagstone walk leading to Clancy Brannigan’s, aka Boo Radley’s, rambling old Tudor house showed years of neglect. The moss-covered stones were cracked and crumbling, weeds growing between them. Warped shutters covered the windows of the gazebo where he got his groceries delivered and the breezeway that connected it to the house was boarded over with gray plywood. Behind a film of dirt on the garage window there was the vague silhouette of an antique truck that looked like it dated back to the 1960s and probably hadn’t been driven since. On the old Tudor house itself, a tide of green mold was creeping up the white stucco walls.
All of which made it rather surprising that the place had a state-of-the-art two-way video monitor for a doorbell.
There was a long wait after Cody rang the buzzer, and I was starting to think maybe Boo Radley was an urban myth after all when a voice came over the intercom. “Yes?” It was a man’s voice, wary, but not as old and feeble as I would have imagined. “What is it, Officer?”
“Clancy Brannigan?” Cody inquired.
“Yes.”
“Can we come inside and have a word with you?”
A screen on the monitor blinked to life to reveal one owlish eye, magnified behind a thick lens. “Do you need to come inside?”
“Um . . . no, I suppose not. Would you prefer to step outside?”
“I’d prefer neither.”
Cody glanced at me. I shrugged. I had no idea what the departmental protocol was for notifying crazy shut-ins that their ancestor’s corpse had been stolen. “That’s fine, sir. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. It seems that Talman Brannigan’s tomb has been vandalized.”
“Again?” He had a point. If you were talking about a little graffiti, that was something that happened on a regular basis.
“This time it’s serious, sir,” Cody said politely. “I’m afraid the mausoleum was broken into and the remains are missing. I want you to know that we’re making every effort to find the perpetrators and restore the remains.”
The screen went dark, although we could hear faint scuffling sounds inside.
“Sir?” Cody called. “Mr. Brannigan?”
The screen lit up again, the magnified eye looming. I wondered why he bothered with a two-way monitor. Maybe just to demonstrate to the outside world that he was alive and capable in case someone called Social Services on him. Or maybe he just thought it was nifty. If the stories were true, he’d been some sort of inventor before he became acutely agoraphobic. While I was pondering, he spat out a name. “Cavannaughs!”
“Excuse me?” Cody said.
“Cavannaughs!” Clancy Brannigan repeated with disgust. “You want to find your grave robber, look for a Cavannaugh. You won’t find the body, though. Bet they’ve chopped it to bits and thrown it in the river. They’re afraid of the curse.”
“What curse?”
“Ask the Cavannaughs. I don’t believe in curses. I’m a man of science.” The screen went dark again. “Good day, Officer,” his disembodied voice said over the intercom.
Ohhh-kay, then.
Cody made a few more attempts at communicating with him, then gave up. “I guess we’ve done our duty,” he said dubiously.
“I guess.” If you ask me, some of the freakiest people in town are the ordinary human beings. “So what now?”
“I guess we talk to one of the Cavannaughs,” he said. Oh, great. The nearest descendants of the Cavannaugh family I knew of were Pemkowet Visitors Bureau ballbuster Amanda Brooks and her daughter, Stacey. And by the amused look on Cody’s face, that’s exactly who he had in mind. “You’ll live. It’s probably for the best that we give Amanda a heads-up anyway.”
Once we were back in the truck, the awkwardness returned in the form of silence. Apparently, violently intense sexual encounters aren’t entirely conducive to a professional working relationship. Who knew? The silence made me fidgety, and fidgeting rekindled that pleasant tingling. Talk about your vicious circle.
“So . . . Clancy Brannigan was supposed to be some kind of inventor, right?” It seemed like a safe topic. “What did he invent?”
Cody answered without taking his eyes off the road. “I think it was the Flowbee.”
“What? The vacuum-cleaner haircut thing? Seriously?” I asked. Cody shot me a sidelong glance, the corner of his mouth twitching. I laughed and cuffed him on the shoulder. “Jerk!”
“I don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “I don’t think he invented something that’s a household name. More like he’s the guy who figured out how to make a better widget.”
I was suspicious. “Is there really such a thing as a widget?”
He smiled again. “No. It’s just shorthand for a mechanical I-don’t-know-what. Sounds better than thingamabob.”
I contemplated his profile. “You know, we’re pretty good together, you and I.” I hadn’t meant to say it; it was one of those things that just slips out. Like after a violently intense sexual encounter with someone you’ve had a crush on for ages.