Tomb With a View

His gaze flickered from me to the cards in my hand. “Where did you find those?”

“Oh, come on!” I made sure I smiled. Like it was funny. Like being alone with him didn’t scare me and like I hadn’t taken the time as I stood there outside the door to call the feds over at the memorial. Hey, I’m not a complete moron!

Just like they asked me to, I did my best to stall Jack. The way to do that, I knew, was to keep him talking. “You know exactly where the cards were. No, wait! You didn’t know where they were, did you? That’s why you’ve been looking for them. First in Marjorie’s house. Now here in her locker. It was the locker,” I said, like it was a no-brainer, and slipped the cards into my pocket before he could get too close a look at them and realize they weren’t part of his phony-baloney stash. “Too bad I got to them first.”

His blue eyes glittered, even in the miserable locker room lighting. “You’re amazing. Have I told you that?”

“So many men have.” I tossed off the compliment with a shrug.

He stepped closer. “What else do you know?”

“Everything.” Sure it was an out-and-out lie. But as long as I was stalling, I was hoping to egg him on into filling in the blanks of my investigation. “I know you’re not a history teacher, but then, I’ve known that practically from the beginning. Before you say you teach at Lafayette High School in Hammond, Indiana, you really should check to see that there’s a school by that name in that city.”

He was as smooth as a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Karamel Sutra ice cream. “I don’t know another woman in the world who would have checked.” He gave me a quick bow. “My compliments. You’re as smart as you are beautiful.”

“And I’ve got a really good bullshit detector.”

Another smile. If the whole criminal genius thing didn’t work out, the guy could do toothpaste ads. “Is there anything else I should know you know?”

“You mean about the rest of the phony credit cards? The ones in the president’s memorial?”

His eyebrows rose the slightest bit. One corner of his mouth lifted into what was almost a smile. Call me egotistical (and who could?), but I actually think I’d just impressed him.

“That’s where Marjorie got the credit cards,” I said. He knew it. I knew it. But it didn’t hurt to run it all by him, just in case some of my information was off target. “It wasn’t this newest batch, either, because this newest batch . . . . well, you’ll find out what happened to them soon enough. The ones Marjorie took were from an older cache of cards. She found them and she was using them to feed her Garfield habit. But what, there’s some kind of system of checks and balances for phony credit cards? Well, there must be. Because you found out that there were a few cards missing. The trick was, you needed to figure out who took them. At first, you thought it might be me, but let’s face it, if I had unlimited access to unlimited spending, I would not still be working here at Garden View, and you saw that right from the start. Marjorie was the only other likely candidate, and she did spend all her time at the memorial. I helped you figure out that part of the puzzle when you asked about Marjorie’s spending habits and I told you about her Garfield sprees, right?”

I didn’t wait for him to answer. There was plenty more I wanted to know and time was running out. The cemetery isn’t all that big, and the feds can drive hard and fast, even when they’re trying to be sneaky. “There was no sign of the missing cards anywhere in the memorial so you ransacked Marjorie’s house looking for them. No dice. That’s why you’re looking here now. You’ve checked everywhere else. How did you find out about the locker in the first place? We just remembered it yesterday.”

He shrugged like it was no big deal. “I heard a rumor.”

I wondered which of the cemetery employees he’d charmed like he’d tried to charm me. I wondered if that was the same way he’d managed to get a key to the ballroom. While I was at it, I wondered if whoever that employee was, if he’d kissed her, too. Maybe that’s what made me testy because, while I was on a roll, I figured I might as well pull out all the stops. “I also know you can drop the phony American accent . . . Jonathan.”

This did surprise him. He stepped nearer. “Splendid,” he said, in that way that Brits can get away with that would sound corny coming out of an American guy. Just that fast, he lost the phony American accent and sounded like he’d just stepped out of one of those PBS presentations where everybody wears funny, old-fashioned clothes and rides in carriages. “You apparently have me all figured out. Care to share how it happened?”

I didn’t. But then, it was a little awkward explaining that the feds were on their way and that they’d better get there fast because I was running out of things to say.

“Care to tell me what all this has to do with murder?” I asked him.