The Gravedigger's Ball Read Online Free Page A

murder, Detective Coletti.”
    “I know you would. That’s why you’re coming back to headquarters. We’re going to find out exactly what you know.”
    “Oh really?” she said with muted anger. “Well, here’s what I know. I know I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to. I know I can call my husband and have a lawyer down here in five minutes, and I know that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened here. But I’ll answer whatever questions you have, because I know one more thing.” She stared at him in the same way she’d done at her sister’s grave. “I know you don’t trust me.”
    “I don’t trust anybody,” Coletti said as he opened the door to his unmarked black Mercury and gestured toward the backseat.
    Lenore searched his face carefully. “I know you don’t. That’s why you’ve been alone all these years.”
    She got into the car and looked up at him with a calm that was almost frightening. She’d spoken her piece, and it was neither opinion nor assumption. It was simply the truth.
    “You don’t know anything about me,” Coletti said, sounding more certain than he felt. “But before this is all over, we’re gonna find out all about you. I promise you that.”
    “Good,” Lenore said defiantly. “When you figure out who I am let me know, because that’s what I came here to find out.”
    Coletti was about to press her, but before he could say anything more, a familiar voice spoke up from behind him.
    “Am I interrupting something?” asked Detective Charlie Mann, his dreadlocks draping over his hoodie as he craned his neck to get a better look at the woman in the car.
    There was silence as Coletti and Lenore stared at each other. “No, you’re not interrupting anything,” Coletti finally answered. “But I do need to talk to you in private.”
    Coletti closed the car door, turned around, and took his young partner by the arm. Then he walked him across the cemetery to the spot where workers from the medical examiner’s office were about to remove the body.
    “What’s wrong with you?” Mann asked as he examined Coletti’s sweaty face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    Coletti looked back toward the car, where Lenore sat watching them intently. “Maybe I have.”
    Mann glanced at the woman as she sat in the car and made a call on her cell. “You mean her ?”
    Coletti nodded. “Her name’s Lenore Wilkinson. She’s Mary Smithson’s sister.”
    “Yeah, right,” Mann said with a chuckle.
    When Coletti didn’t respond in kind, Mann’s laughter faded. He glanced at the car, and when he saw Lenore’s eyes staring back at him, his expression changed.
    “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
    Coletti nodded.
    “Have you had a chance to talk to her?”
    “Not as much as she’s talked to me,” Coletti said. Then he paused. “She, uh, seems to know things about me. I don’t know if it’s some kind of parlor trick or if she talked to her sister more than she let on, but it’s strange. It makes me wonder what kind of things she knew about Mrs. Bailey. Or what Mrs. Bailey knew about her.”
    The two detectives stood there for a moment before Coletti took his notepad from his pocket and handed it to Mann. “We found a piece of paper near the body. I copied down what it said. Does it ring any bells for you?”
    Mann looked at the notepad. Then he took out his iPhone. “Deep into that darkness peering…” he said as he typed the words into a Google search. A second later, the results popped up. “It’s a line from ‘The Raven,’ by Edgar Allan Poe.”
    “I gotta get me one o’ those phones,” Coletti said.
    “I bought you one two months ago. Where is it?”
    “I’ve got it somewhere,” Coletti said, sounding like a school kid telling a lie. “Besides, my old phone still works and I can send texts and get e-mail on it, so … anyway, what does the line from the poem mean?”
    Mann stared at Coletti for a few seconds. “I can’t believe you