The Gravedigger's Ball

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Book: Read The Gravedigger's Ball for Free Online
Authors: Solomon Jones
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural
tell that their suspicions had deepened.
    “Run us through the timeline of your morning with Mrs. Bailey,” Coletti said.
    “My train came in at eight fifteen, and she met me in her own car—a gray Honda, I think. We were at the cemetery by eight thirty-five. I remember, because I looked at my watch when she pulled into the driveway off that street by the river. I think it’s called Kelly Drive.”
    “What did the two of you talk about?” Coletti asked.
    “The Gravedigger’s Ball, mostly. She wanted me to serve on the event committee this year and replace her as chair next year. She felt like the event needed new blood with new ideas—and new money, of course—and when we got to the cemetery, she walked me around the graves so I’d know what the money was for.”
    “And what would that be?” Mann asked.
    “The money? It’s for upkeep and maintenance. At a historic site like Fairgrounds Cemetery, repairs or restorations have to meet certain standards so the site can maintain its designation. That increases costs considerably. In fact, from what I understand, it’s not unusual for repairs on one mausoleum to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Multiply that by a dozen repairs a year and you suddenly have a budget that runs into the millions.”
    “Maybe Mrs. Bailey’s death had something to do with those millions,” Mann said, thinking aloud.
    Coletti agreed that money was always a possible motive, but a cemetery budget didn’t point to an obvious suspect. He thought to himself that there had to be something else, or someone else, that tied Lenore to Mrs. Bailey.
    “Did you see anyone or anything that seemed unusual or suspicious?” Coletti asked.
    “No, because there wasn’t anyone else there. We walked and she talked and when we stopped at the last grave I saw you. That’s when I asked her where Mary was buried, and she pointed to that evergreen tree. When I started to walk over to the grave, she told me to hurry back because she had something she wanted to tell me—something that would explain why it was so important for me to work with her on the ball.”
    Lenore felt a chill at the thought. She folded her arms across her chest and squeezed herself tightly. “That was the last thing she said to me.”
    Mann and Coletti looked at each other as Coletti pulled out his notepad and placed it on the desk. “Do you remember this poem?” he asked.
    She looked at it and nodded. “That’s what was written on the paper we found near the grave. Why?”
    “Because this might be what she wanted to talk to you about,” Coletti said. “The lines are by Edgar Allan Poe. They’re from a poem called ‘The Raven,’ and the next stanza contains a name that shows up eight times in the poem.”
    “What name is that?” she asked.
    “Lenore.”

CHAPTER 3
    It was 11:30 A.M. , a half hour after the stream of police officers going in and out of the woods had slowed to a trickle. The radio transmissions had lost their urgency. The commanders were closemouthed. The police officers guarding the media barricades were tense.
    The gaggle of reporters was abuzz about the murderer, to whom they’d affixed a moniker—the Gravedigger. As excited as they were about the gruesome story, they’d stood in drenching rains for nearly two hours, and they were growing increasingly unruly, having been promised a statement more than once. Most of them were from national news outlets. They had no choice but to wait.
    Kirsten Douglas was from Philly. She didn’t wait for anything. The crime beat reporter from the Philadelphia Daily News had already called nearly every source she had in the police department, and all of them were mum. Kirsten guessed they’d been told to say nothing. That meant she had to get her story the old-fashioned way. She had to dig for it.
    With brown eyes that were kind but intense and a round, welcoming face, Kirsten looked more like a mother than a crime reporter. Her brown curly hair was

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