The Black Heart Crypt

“It’s a pretty short article,” said Judy. “Just a three-paragraph notice in the ‘Goings-On About Town’ column.”

Mrs. Emerson leaned in to examine the screen more closely.

“Well, what exactly was going on, dear?” she asked.

Judy read from the newspaper report. “ ‘Immediately after the funeral for convicted felon Edward “Eddie Boy” Ickleby at Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, all thirteen coffins in the Ickleby family’s ancestral mausoleum were removed from the family crypt and transported forty miles south by truck to North Chester, Connecticut.’ ”

“Why?” asked Mrs. Emerson.

“The newspaper doesn’t really say. It just reports that all thirteen Ickleby men ‘who had been interred’ in the crypt behind Saint Barnabas church, which was founded by Squire Barnabas Ickleby and other ‘good Christian men’ in the early 1700s, would ‘find their eternal rest in an empty mausoleum down in Connecticut’s Haddam Hill Cemetery.’ It also mentions that ‘counting the recently deceased Edward Ickleby, twelve of the thirteen coffins removed from the ancient tomb contained the remains of Ickleby men who had been convicted of committing heinous crimes against their fellow man’ and that the transfer would be ‘supervised by the sheriff of North Chester Township, James Jennings.”

“Grandpa?” said Zack.

“Yep,” said Judy.

“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Emerson.

And then nobody said anything for two whole minutes.