Tomb With a View

3

The office phone rang, and ubervolunteer that she was, Marjorie didn’t waste any time. She answered it with a snappy, “This is the Garfield Memorial. Marjorie Klinker, docent, speaking,” and proceeded to ignore me completely.

Fine by me. With her busy pretending she knew all there was to know about James A. Garfield, I was free to follow him (or at least what was left of him) out of the office, through the entryway, and into the rotunda.

Only it wasn’t the rotunda. Not exactly, anyway.

When last I saw it, the memorial rotunda looked like it always looked with its marble floor and columns, its thirteen stained glass windows, and that big, honkin’ statue of the president on the marble dais under the dome, his head high, his chin up, his shoulders back, staring steadfastly at whatever it was he was supposed to be staring steadfastly at. Now, the whole place was filled with mist that shimmered like moonlight on water. The swirling mist curled softly around the bases of the columns and arched over my head. It blocked out the light of the stained glass windows, and made it so hard for me to see more than a few feet in front of me, I felt like I was inside a shaken snow globe.

Without a word or even a look toward me, the president marched on, and curious, I followed. By then, we should have come to the dais where his statue stood. But instead of marble, the floor at my feet suddenly turned to wood, and portions of it were covered with an Oriental rug in shades of deep blue and green.

Weird? Yes. But what happened next was even stranger. A chill breeze ruffled my hair, the mist whooshed every which way, and the rotunda was gone. We were standing on that rug in a room with a high ceiling and tall windows. Outside, sunshine dappled trees and bushes. Inside, the walls were painted white and accented with gold. They were decorated with portraits of presidents like Washington and Lincoln and a bunch of other stick-in-the-mud old guys who looked vaguely familiar from history books. There was a fireplace directly across from me, and a fire crackled in the grate. Between me and that fireplace was a long, rectangular table. Eight guys wearing old-fashioned clothes and too-serious expressions were seated around it. They were talking quietly among themselves.

“Whoa!” I stopped fast. “What’s going on? Who are these guys? And what . . . ?” When I looked up and squinted through the mist, I could just make out the second-floor balcony that looked down onto the rotunda. “What’s happening here? Where are we?”

“Where do you think we are?” James A. Garfield didn’t talk, he boomed. His blue eyes homed in on me like radar and pinned me to the spot. “We are in the Executive Mansion, young lady. Just as we should be.”

Like I was supposed to know what to say? I realized I was gaping, snapped my mouth shut, and blubbered a little before I composed myself enough to say, “Executive Mansion? You mean like the White House? You’re kidding me, right? The White House is in Washington DC and we’re in—”

“Young lady, I am the president. The president conducts business in the home in which he lives, and in the unlikely incident that you have not noticed what you should, indeed, have taken note of the moment you walked in here, I am working. In fact, I am quite busy, so if you would be so kind as to excuse me—”

“Hey, I didn’t come looking for you, you’re the one who showed up to find me.” I poked my thumb over my shoulder and back toward the way we came to remind him that while I was minding my own business, he popped up unannounced in the office. “You know who I am, right? I’m the one with the—”

“Gift. Yes. Of course I know. I am, after all, the president.”

“And you sure wouldn’t get far these days with those sound bites.” I was hoping to maybe get a chuckle out of him, but none of the starch went out of his shoulders so I just got down to business. “Usually when ghosts come looking for me, it’s because they want something,” I told him though I shouldn’t have had to. If he knew I had the Gift, he knew that much about me already. “Most of them want me to solve their murders, but I know that’s not what you’re looking for. Marjorie, she says—”

“Mr. President.” Ignoring me completely, a middle-sized man carrying an armload of papers walked up to the president. He was younger than the other men in the room, but he was dressed as formally as the rest of them including the president himself, in a black suit coat and vest, gray pants, a white shirt with a stiff collar, and a narrow bow tie. The man had a long, angular nose. There was a pair of glasses with no side arms pinched onto the bridge of it. His sandy-colored hair was parted down the middle and he had a mustache. It was fat and bushy, like a caterpillar.

“We’re nearly ready to begin, Mr. President,” he said. His voice was polished smooth, like an actor in a cheesy Shakespeare production. He tapped the pile of papers he carried. “However, there are some small matters we should take care of before you begin your meeting. There are some papers which need to be signed, and—”

“Excuse me! Talking here.” I mean, really, did he expect me to just disappear into the woodwork because he wanted face time with the president? I gave the young, pushy guy a sharp look.

He kept right on going as if I wasn’t even there. “. . . and I really would like to get these taken care of today, Mr. President, if you wouldn’t mind. There are a great many details and—”

“Hello!” He might be acting like I was invisible, but that didn’t mean I had to put up with it. I stepped forward.

It’s hard to miss a five-foot-eleven redhead in an emerald green dress. He did a pretty good job of it, and just kept talking. “. . . and there are certainly a great many things for you to discuss at your meeting today. There’s no need for you to fret about these few small matters, so I will gladly take care of them for you. If you could simply sign these papers, Mr. President—”

“All right, now you’re just being rude.” I waved a hand in front of the man’s face.

And he never once shut his mouth. “. . . I will see to it that everything is taken care of and leave you to your morning’s work.”

I gave the president a huh? look, and I guess he got the message because he dismissed the younger man with a tip of his head.

“That is Jeremiah Stone,” the president said when the young man walked away. “He’s an excellent aide, an eager fellow, anxious to keep the business of state moving apace. He is impatient, of course, as all young people are.”

“And pretty rude, to boot.” If he wasn’t going to mention it, I figured the least I could do was point it out.

“No, no. It is nothing like that.” President Garfield turned to face me. “Do not think unkindly of Mr. Stone. He is neither ill-mannered nor cruel. If he had even an inkling that he had slighted a young lady, he would certainly be most perplexed. He and the others . . .” He looked toward the men seated around the table. “They have all crossed over, you see. They are all firmly on the Other Side. They are not being rude in the least, they are simply oblivious to your presence.”

“But they can see you?”

“That’s correct.” He inclined his head.

“And you can see me.”

Again, he nodded.

“So I can communicate with you, but not with them. And they can communicate with you, but not with me.”

“There, you have laid out the whole thing quite compendiously.” I had no idea what that meant, but since the president smiled, I guess it was a good thing. “Since they are on the Other Side, they can have no communion whatsoever with the living. Now, miss . . .” Like I’d seen the characters do in boring costume dramas, he gave me a quick bow. “As you heard Mr. Stone say, there is much work to be done, and I cannot be kept from it longer than I should be. After all, I am—”

“The president. Right. But hey, I’m not the one keeping you from anything. You’re the one who showed up to see me. Which means they might have crossed over . . .” I looked at the men around the table, then shifted my attention back to the president. “But you haven’t. Which explains why you’re hanging around looking for me. But you can’t want your murder solved. Marjorie, she says they found the guy who killed you. They hung him.”

“Hanged.” He said this in the way a teacher would to a student who didn’t get something, even though the teacher thought it was pretty simple. “There never was any question who shot me. It was Charles Guiteau, of course. I imagine the history books report the facts most competently. The villain waylaid me at a train station in Baltimore. He admitted his crime immediately after shooting me. He never denied it at all. In fact, I would say he was rather proud of having delivered the shots which ultimately resulted in my passing.”

“Then if you know for sure it was this Guiteau guy, you don’t need me to solve your murder.”

“Of course not.”

Jeremiah Stone was back. He shifted from foot to foot, expressing his impatience without having to say a word.

“One moment,” the president told him before he turned back to me. “I do not actually need anything from you,” he said. “And yet . . .” He pulled in a breath and let it out with a sigh. If he had been alive, it would have rippled the mist around us, but since this was one dead president who couldn’t get any deader, those stray wisps just hung in the air between us. “There may be something you can do for me, Miss Martin. I am reluctant to ask, seeing as how you are a woman and it is hardly respectable as it is not within a woman’s responsibilities to handle such matters.”

No way I was going to let that pass, not even from a president. “Things are a little different now than they were back in your day,” I told him. “Since you’ve heard of me and you know I have the Gift, you must also know I’ve handled a whole bunch of stuff that was—”

“Yes, yes. Such unpleasant matters. We will not speak of them.” Apparently that was that, because he got rid of the subject with a shake of his broad shoulders and looked me up and down. “I fear that I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty. It is therefore no easy thing for me to remember that, in your world, women are more free to do things for which they might not be deemed qualified for or prepared for by way of upbringing, intellect, or temperament.”

Had I just been dissed? By a president?

I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t taking the chance. If I’d been in my stocking feet, the president and I would have stood just about eye to eye. In my Jimmy Choos, I had the advantage and I took it. I looked down at him. “I’ve heard that back in your day, some women had jobs,” I said, as innocent as can be. “I heard about one who was a reporter for the New York Times. Her name was Lucia—”

“Really, Miss Martin!” The president’s beard twitched.

“Though I am trying to be progressive and learn to live with the reality of women working out in the world, I have yet to reconcile myself to women—or anyone else—discussing inappropriate subjects. In order for our relationship to progress in a manner that is both appropriate and mutually beneficial, you must certainly remember that.”

“In order for our relationship to progress in a manner that is . . .” No way I could remember the rest of it, and I screeched my irritation, not to mention my frustration, and cut to the chase. “How about if you just tell me what you want.”

“Well, there is one small problem.” He seemed almost embarrassed to mention it. “It does not, of course, make me waver in my resolve to execute the duties of my office, but it does make it devilish hard to—” He caught himself and cleared his throat. “You must excuse me, Miss Martin. I have not had the singular pleasure of communicating with a member of the fairer sex for some time, and I am afraid I have forgotten my manners. What I meant to say, of course, is that taking into consideration your more tender sensibilities as a weaker vessel—”

“No wonder history always put me to sleep!” I couldn’t help myself, I had to interrupt. If he kept yammering on, I was going to jump out of my skin. Maybe the old guy and Marjorie were related after all. That would explain why they were both so boring. “It takes you so long to answer a simple question, how did you ever get anything accomplished?”

“Oh, I got a great deal accomplished during my administration. Which is quite remarkable, you will agree, considering I was in office actively for only four months. I ordered an investigation into corruption in the Post Office. I presided over a Treasury refunding in which most holders of maturing six percent bonds agreed to replace them with a three-and-a-half percent rate. I . . .” Maybe he was starting to get the message that I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about; he swallowed the rest of what he was going to say.

I curled my hands into fists at my side. “So this small matter you’d like me to take care of . . .”

“Oh yes. Certainly. It is not that I wish to inconvenience anyone, but I am, after all, the president and—”

Oh yeah, by this time, I was practically willing to beg him to get a move on. Anything to get him to stop wasting my time. “What do you want me to do?”

He finally gave in, but I don’t think it had anything to do with me. Jeremiah Stone was pacing not three feet away, tapping that pile of papers of his and mumbling something about how nothing could be accomplished until the president put his signature on them. “There is a great deal of commotion around here,” the president said, and something told me he wasn’t talking about Jeremiah Stone or the men at the table, who were looking a little restless.

“You mean because of the commemoration.” I nodded. Believe me, I understood! “Well, there’s not much I can do about Marjorie. I think she’s a royal pain, too.”

“It is all disturbing the important work I have to do.” The president stared at me. “You do understand, I am sure. There is a great deal for a president to accomplish, and when he is interrupted by other things . . .”

It was obvious from the way he glared at me that he believed Marjorie wasn’t the only one disturbing his important work.

Dismissed and dissed, all in the same morning.

I walked away, waving a quick good-bye to Marjorie, who was still on the phone, and at the front door, I turned around for one last look into the rotunda. There was the statue, the marble columns, the stained glass windows. Everything was back to normal, and there was no sign of the somber men around the table, of Jeremiah Stone, or of the president.

What with getting tag-teamed by Marjorie and the most long-winded guy ever to hold public office, I needed a break, and fast. I drove to the administration building and snuck in through the back door, the better to avoid Ella and any phone messages Jennine might have taken for me while I was out. I had the latest issue of Marie Claire in my desk and that salad I had brought for lunch. If I could buy myself an hour of quiet time, I could put up my feet and get down to what was really important. An article on the hottest fashions coming for fall sure beat an hour with Marjorie or a dead president any day. Smiling at the very thought of avoiding my coworkers and chilling out for a while, I walked into my office and found—

Flowers!

I swear I felt the blood drain out of my face. I was left feeling cold and clammy, and I stood riveted to a spot near the door and forced myself to take a good, long look around. There was no one there. I knew this for sure because even though my office isn’t very big, I checked out every nook and cranny twice, even behind the door and under my desk. When I was one hundred percent certain that I was alone, I closed the door behind me and went over to the desk for a better look at the bouquet that had been left on my computer keyboard. It was a bunch of white roses and pink carnations with their stems wound with pink satin ribbon, and for I don’t know how long, I stared down at the flowers, listening to the blood whoosh in my ears and my heartbeat pound out a deafening rhythm.

Yes, I admit this all sounds a little over the top and (dare I say it?) crazy, too. Actually, I had good reason.

See, as if I didn’t have enough to deal with earlier in the summer when I was working on that cemetery restoration project and solving a twenty-five-year-old murder, I found out something really creepy—I had a stalker. And not just any stalker, one with bad taste in flowers, candy, and all-wrong-for-my-coloring lipstick. He’d been lying low since I’d wrapped up that last case, and always up for a good game of denial, I’d convinced myself that maybe I’d gotten lucky and he’d fallen off the face of the earth. It would have been nice to go right on believing it, too—if not for this bunch of flowers.

I scraped my suddenly damp palms against my shirtdress and poked the bouquet with one finger. Nothing happened.

Realizing just how nutsy it was to think something might, I wasn’t sure who I was angrier at—the stalker, who’d gotten to me so badly I was poking flowers to see if they’d blow up or something, or myself, for giving in to the fear. There was one thing I was sure of, though. I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

The thought burning in my brain, I grabbed the bouquet and marched out to the reception area with it.

“Jennine.” I don’t think I could have possibly surprised her since I was flaming mad and my peep-toe sandals banged against the floor, but she was scribbling a note on a message pad decorated with kittens, and she jumped a mile when I called her name. I stood in the doorway between the hallway and the reception area and waved the bouquet of flowers. “I’ve had it with this. I mean, really. I. Have. Had. It. And you’re going to help me put a stop to this horse hockey. I need to know who brought these flowers and I need to know it right now.”

In her job as receptionist, Jennine sees plenty of people, but they are not routinely five-foot-eleven redheads in full anger mode. Her eyes wide, she stared at me like I was making a scene (which I was, but since it was justified, that didn’t count). Then she simply blinked, and pointed a finger behind me.

I turned and saw what I’d been too hopped up to see when I stomped through the hallway—a man standing over on my right, his arms crossed over his chipped-from-granite chest, his shoulders resting casually against the wall.

“Quinn!” My voice was much too breathy and I cursed myself for giving in to the surprise and him for having the nerve to show up out of nowhere and pull the rug out from under me. At the same time I thanked the fashion gods for watching over me and making sure I looked as good as I did that day; I wondered if Quinn didn’t have a direct line to the same deities. He was wearing a charcoal suit and a shirt so white, it nearly blinded me. His tie was colorful in an I-am-a-detective-with-excellent-taste-and-I-don’t-need-to-prove-it-to-anyone way, a refined swirl of black, gray, and white with just enough red splashed in for good measure.

Delectability aside, this was the same man who’d walked out on me not three weeks earlier. I told myself not to forget it (as if I could), narrowed my eyes, and it was a good thing I had that bouquet of flowers. Hanging on to it prevented me from digging my nails into the palms of my hands. Quinn was taller than President James A. Garfield. I looked him in the eye. “What do you want?”

He shot Jennine a thousand-watt smile by way of excusing us, then took me by the elbow. “A little privacy would be nice,” he said.

I yanked my arm out of his reach. “Why?”

“If I wanted to stand here in the hallway and tell you, we wouldn’t need the privacy.” He knew where my office was; he led the way.

I made sure I closed my office door behind me, then crossed my arms over my chest. “Well?”

He’d already taken a seat in the chair behind my desk and he looked up at me, as unruffled at the center of personal drama as I’d seen him at the scene of a homicide. “I missed you, too. Why don’t you sit down.”

“I don’t need to be invited to sit down in my own office.” I took a couple steps closer to my desk, the better to glare at him when I asked, “What do you want?”

“I thought we should talk.”

“If you wanted to talk, you shouldn’t have walked out on me. Then we could have talked.”

“You’re angry.”

I tossed my head. “No wonder you’re a detective. You’re a real whizbang when it comes to getting to the heart of things.”

“Which is how I know you wouldn’t be angry if you still didn’t care.”

“Oh, no!” I backed off and backed away. It was better than daring to get too close and catching a whiff of the expensive aftershave he always wore. That stuff made my knees weak, and Quinn knew it. Rather than dissolve into a puddle of mush, I sat in my guest chair. “You’re not going to pull that on me.”

“What?” Quinn had a way of shrugging that emphasized his broad shoulders. His eyes were the exact color of my emerald dress and they glittered at me across my desk. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“Me?” I was out of that chair in a flash. “You haven’t seen unreasonable, buddy, not from me. I’m the one who was always up front with you, and you’re the one—”

“Who’s had three weeks to think about everything we said to each other last time we were together.” He stood, too, and came around to the other side of the desk. A stronger woman might have backed away, or at least taken a swing at him in an effort to wipe that sexy smile off his face. But I am not a strong woman, not when it comes to Quinn, and I didn’t move a muscle, not even when he settled his hands on my shoulders.

“I am about to prove just how very reasonable I am,” he said, his voice honey. “I’ve done a lot of thinking in the past three weeks, Pepper.”

I swallowed hard. I knew what he was talking about, because I’d done a lot of thinking in that time, too, and somewhere between the anger and the misery, I’d decided the only way I would ever take Quinn back was if he came crawling. He wasn’t on his knees, not yet anyway, but I could afford to curb my temper and bide my time. I felt an apology of epic proportions coming on. Oh, how I was going to enjoy hearing it!

He leaned a little nearer, and I knew that if I gave in the slightest bit and moved a fraction of an inch closer, he would have kissed me. As much as I wanted it, it was too soon to surrender. I kept my place, just like I kept my mouth shut.

He skimmed both thumbs over my collarbone and said, “I’ve decided to forgive you.”

Even I didn’t know I could move that fast. I had his hands batted away and the desk between us before Quinn knew what had happened. And believe me, I wasn’t at a loss for words, even though I was just about choking on my anger. “You? Forgive me?”

Maybe he looked a little uncertain because he’d never seen steam coming out of a woman’s ears before. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it, and I realize when you told me all those crazy things you told me—”

“About talking to dead people.”

“Well, yeah.” He scraped a hand through his inky hair.

“Me walking out on you, it was a knee-jerk reaction, and it’s not like anyone could blame me. I had every right to ask what was going on with you, and when you made up that nonsense about ghosts—”

“Get out.” The bouquet of flowers was the perfect prop, but I motioned toward the door with it a little too forcefully. A shower of rose petals rained down on my desk. “Get out of my office, and get out of my life, and if you ever think of forgiving me again, get that out of your head, too. I don’t need your forgiveness, Quinn, and I don’t need you.”

“I thought you’d be happy.”

“Oh, I’m going to be happy, all right. As soon as you’re out of here and you close the door behind you.”

He did, and guess what? I didn’t feel any happier. Just to prove it, after he was gone, I winged the bouquet of flowers at my closed office door. The ribbon around the stems of the flowers came loose and unrolled, and I saw that there were gold foil letters glued to the ribbon.

Dearest Grandmother, it said in loopy letters.

“Oh, you forgive me all right,” I mumbled to myself, giving the bouquet a kick across my office just for good measure. “And you proved it by bringing me a bunch of flowers you swiped off a grave!”