The Gravedigger's Ball Read Online Free

it at the time. Rumor had it that he was a bit of a drunk. He’d disappeared on binges before. This time was different, though. He wasn’t in any of the taverns or flophouses he usually frequented, and he never showed up at home that night. Eventually, they gathered a search party to check the cemetery. Shortly after that, they found him crumpled in a freshly dug grave. His neck was broken. There were those who said he fell in because he was drunk, but most people didn’t believe that. Most people thought he’d been murdered.
    “The evening after they discovered him, a few neighbors got together to raise money for his widow to give him a proper burial, but the night they were supposed to bury him, his body disappeared. No one ever saw him again, and legend has it he was never really dead at all.”
    Coletti thought of the man he’d seen in the cemetery, dressed in clothes from a time gone by. “What did this gravedigger look like?” he asked.
    “There weren’t any pictures of him, unfortunately, but they say he was short, red-faced, and scruffy. The kind of man you might find on skid row. Why do you ask?”
    “The man I saw here earlier … I was just wondering if the gravedigger…” Coletti was about to go on, but he thought better of it. “Never mind.”
    The manager laughed. It was a squeaky, high-pitched sound. “Of course, none of us believes the legend of the gravedigger, if that’s what you’re thinking. There aren’t any ghosts at the ball. It’s usually just a fancy dinner with a hundred or so history buffs who like national historic landmarks. This year, with the economy being what it is, the ball’s a little more important. If it flops, we’re going to have to make some hard choices.”
    The manager went back to scrolling though the e-mails on his BlackBerry. “Here’s the message from Mrs. Bailey,” he said, handing the device to Coletti.
    The detective read it and was about to hand the BlackBerry back when he noticed Mrs. Bailey’s signature line.
    “What’s this acronym by her name—DOI?”
    The manager looked at it. “It means she was a member of the Daughters of Independence. It’s one of the groups that maintain mansions and other landmarks in Fairmount Park.”
    “Do you know who the other members are?”
    “There were only three, maybe four. Unfortunately I don’t have their names.”
    “That’s okay, I’ll find them.” Coletti fished a card from his pocket and handed it to the manager. “If you can forward me that e-mail from Mrs. Bailey, that’d be a big help.”
    “No problem,” the manager said, twitching his nose.
    Coletti walked toward the spot where the body had been found, but as he watched the crime scene cops work in and around the grave, taking pictures and dusting for prints, it was clear that they hadn’t found much beyond the dirt in Mrs. Bailey’s mouth. Coletti had more than that. He had Lenore Wilkinson, and he didn’t plan to let her go just yet.
    He found her exactly where he’d left her, standing near the crime scene tape and waiting for the body to be lifted out of the grave. When he came alongside her, Coletti could see the grief on her face morphing into a sort of numbness. He knew that she was shocked by what had happened, but shock didn’t exclude her as a suspect.
    “Come on,” Coletti said as he guided her away. “You don’t have to stand here. You can wait in the car.”
    “I want to get out of here,” she mumbled.
    “I’m sure you do. But I’m going to have to ask you a few questions first.”
    “Then ask them.”
    “It might take a while,” Coletti said smoothly. “I think we’d probably do better down at headquarters.”
    There was an uncomfortable pause. “Does that mean you think I was involved in this?”
    “Sometimes people can be involved in things and not even know it.”
    They stopped at the car and she turned to him as the numbness in her eyes gave way to fire. “I think I’d know if I were involved in a