Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4) (7 page)

Balkis manages to pick himself up.

“My Lord, a staircase,” he says, stating the obvious. “But
where does it lead?”

“That’s the question isn’t it, asshole?”

“Please don’t call me that, Baker,” he says. “Besides…” His
thought trails off.

“Besides what?”

“You’re not about to call the police or beat me up or
anything else.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you want to see where that staircase leads as much
as I do.”

Crazy’s got a point…

“Okay, Professor,” I say, the lit kerosene lamp in hand.
“But tell you what. You try anymore stunts, I will knock your teeth down your
throat and feed your eyeballs to the neighborhood dogs. Do I make myself
clear?”

Bending at the knees, I pick up the mash hammer. Then, I
hand Balkis the lamp.

“You take the lead.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Funny,” I say. “Now walk.”

He just stands there.

I hold up the mash hammer like I’m going to hit him over the
head with it again.

“Okay, okay,” he says, raising the kerosene lamp so that
it’s at chest height, its dim light reflecting off of the old lath and plaster
walls.

He begins descending the circular staircase one step at a
time. I follow, taking each step carefully as though at any moment the old
rusted iron treads might snap in two. Judging by the way the old staircase
creaks, trembles, and cries out from the strain, that’s not a far-out
assumption.

The fetid odor grows more intense with each step downward.
Stale combined with a sweetness that’s not entirely unfamiliar. The air is
cooler, too, which makes me believe we’re heading down into an area that is
more subterranean than the basement where I was locked up earlier.

When Balkis reaches the bottom, his shadow stretches out
across a hard dirt floor that leads into a narrow room.

“Sweet baby Jesus in heaven,” he says, as I negotiate the
last step and lock my eyes on the dim, kerosene lamp-lit interior of the room
and the two bodies it contains.

“Yes,” I say, the mash hammer dropping out of my hand, “if
heaven only knew.”

They are lying on the floor which is covered with a rug that,
over the decades, has mostly decayed and rotted from ground moisture. The woman
and man are lying on their side, facing one another as if they’ve just laid
down in their queen-sized Serta for the night. Their bodies have been reduced
to skeletons, but their clothing has somehow been spared the ravages of time,
as if the underground tomb and the thick rug beneath them, has managed to
protect them from the elements.

Set on the floor in between them is a pistol. What I recognize
as a Model 1858 Remington Army issue six-shooter. Despite the layer of dust
that shrouds it, the pistol looks in good enough shape to shoot.

Balkis bends at the knees, picks up his smartphone, pockets
it. He then takes a couple of steps forward, illuminating their figures in
lamplight.

“Clara and Henry,” he whispers, as if speaking aloud will
somehow wake them up.

I approach them, stopping only when I come to their feet.
Her’s covered in high-heeled, lace-up shoes. His covered in leather riding
boots.

“So the murder/suicide theory is true after all,” I say.
“But he didn’t shoot her with Booth’s Derringer and he didn’t stab himself in
the gut. He shot her first, then shot himself, down here in this dungeon.”

“How can you tell?” Balkis says.

“You see where the pistol rests on the floor, less than an
inch from that nickel-sized hole in Henry’s forehead, his finger still on the
trigger. He shot her in the heart and then himself in the head, using his left
hand. Looks like his hand fell along with the gun and has remained in place
ever since.”

We both gaze upon the bodies in the ghostly golden
lamplight. Although dead and decayed, there still seems to be a love between
them. A love and emotion that remains palpable after all these years. That
sweetness I smelled at the top of the staircase wasn’t just the familiar scent
of death…it was also one of love. A love that still somehow exists between
Clara and Henry. A love that was almost destroyed by the blood and the ghost of
a man who was assassinated for something he believed in and who spilled his sad
life all over Clara’s white dress. A love that is completely missing in the
legendary accounts that attest to Henry having killed Clara over suspicion,
paranoia, and anger.

Clara’s dress…

With Balkis holding up the lamp, I make a
three-hundred-sixty-degree examination of the room on the balls of my feet.

“The dress isn’t here,” I say, almost under my breath.

Balkis sidesteps to the stone wall, begins patting it with
his free hand.

“Perhaps it’s hidden in some secret chamber or compartment.”

I shake my head.

“My gut tells me it’s not here. That it was once here. But
it’s not here anymore. Because it wouldn’t be hidden from view. Henry and Clara
would no longer have any reason to keep it hidden. If it was the prime source
of their obsession, it would be set out as plainly as their bodies.”

He turns to me, his face glowing in the yellow-gold kerosene
light.

“Henry Riggs Rathbone, Jr.,” Balkis says.

“He must have removed the dress after finding his parents
dead. That must be when he bricked up the closet so that no one would ever find
them, or the dress that drove them to their graves. When he buried his parents,
their coffins were empty…and empty they remain.”

Balkis’ face goes south. “So he did burn the dress after
all.”

Me, stealing a moment not to think necessarily, but to
listen to my intuition. My gut. In my head, I see a younger version of the old,
almost crippled man standing with the young Girvins outside the house. A man of
maybe nineteen or twenty on his hands and knees, bricking up the closet opening
and nailing down the floorboards so that no one would ever know of the
subterranean room and the cursed human remains it contained.

“I don’t think so, Professor Balkis,” I say, after a time.
“In fact, I know so.”

“How do you know?”

I punch my own stomach.

“I can feel it right here. Feel the dress’s presence. You
see, like the Girvins who lived here after the Rathbones, I think it’s possible
old Henry Junior was afraid of what might happen should he attempt to destroy the
dress. Afraid that he, too, might be haunted by the curse for the rest of his
days.”

“Why do you think he bricked his parents up instead of
giving them a proper burial?”

I shake my head. “It must have had something to do with the
curse. Disturb the dead, and disturb the curse.”

“But what happened to the damn dress? The source of the
curse.”

“It’s possible Clara and Henry had the dress with them when
they died. Maybe after discovering his parent’s bodies, a very spooked Henry
grabbed hold of the dress and decided to do something else with it. Like get it
out of the house for a change.”

“So, where can the dress be then? Is it possible the
Girvin’s finally located it inside some old box and took off with it?”

“You tell me?” I say.

He shakes his head, purses his lips.

“I think not,” he says. “Even if they had stumbled upon it
somehow, they were far too afraid of its powers to even go near it.”

I turn back to the bodies. My eyes lock on their skull faces
staring eternally into one another. At their fetal positions, at their love for
one another even in the face of violent death.

“Some things you just can’t fight while you’re alive. Some
things you need to take with you to the afterlife in order to protect it. And
to protect others from it.”

“What on God’s earth are you talking about, Baker?”

Me, turning back to Balkis.

“I can bet you a full year’s salary, Professor, that if we
manage to find the Rathbone cemetery plots, we also find the Lincoln dress.
We’ll start with Henry Junior’s grave first.”

We head back up the spiral staircase and exit the secret
subterranean space through the hole in the floor. Once back inside Clara’s old
bedroom, Balkis returns the lamp to the bed stand, blows it out.

“You’re the historian, Balkis,” I say. “Where’s Junior
buried?”

He smiles. “I’ve already told you. Less than a mile away in
the Albany Rural Cemetery. Have you wheels, Mr. Baker?”

“My rental truck’s parked down the road.”

“What are we waiting for?”

I hold out my hand, press it flat against the professor’s
bulging sternum.

“You know, Balkis,” I say, “I’m not that easy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I get that we’re after the same thing now, albeit
for different reasons. You want that dress so you can communicate with
Lincoln’s ghost or some such nonsense. Plus you want it for fortune and glory.
I want to uncover it so that it can be proudly displayed in its rightful place.
The Smithsonian. Or something like it. You see, Balkis, that dress isn’t yours
or mine or even the Girvins, be they dead or alive. It belongs to the people of
the United States of America and for which it stands and all that jazz.”

“Oh, I agree,” he says, placing his right hand over his
heart like he’s about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But his act is a lie,
and he knows that I know it. “I just want to see the dress finally revealed
after all these years.”

“Good,” I say. “Because otherwise, I’m gonna have to tie you
up and leave you here until this thing is finished.”

“Please don’t even think that way, Mr. Baker. You need me to
assist you in the delicate task of exhuming Henry Junior, which I assume must
be accomplished illegally. At the very least, you need a second set of eyes.
Don’t you agree?”

Mofo’s got a point. I’ll give him that. When Detective
Miller handed me this job of finding the Girvins, he more than likely did not
expect me to start looking for the dress instead, not to mention engage in
something super illegal like grave robbing. But then, he didn’t exactly warn me
against it either.

“Okay,” I say. “But how do I know I can trust you? You’ve
already knocked me over the head once, and tried to blow me up. Then there’s
the matter of the missing Girvins.”

He grows a grin. It tells me he’s already thought up a witty
retort.

“Well, the bomb was a fake, and you have also knocked me
out. Or knocked Booth out, anyway. We’re even. And as for the Girvins, I
already told you, I had nothing to do with their slipping off the radar.”

Stealing a moment to think.

“Tell you what,” I say. “Give me your phone.”

His eyes open wide. “Why?”

“Give me your phone and your wallet while you’re at it.”

“And what, pray tell, difference does it make if I hand over
these things to you?”

“Insurance,” I say. “Simple as that. You try anything with
me and I’ll make sure your personals get deep-sixed somewhere where you can’t
get them back. Like Detective Miller’s inbox for instance.”

He laughs.

“Not for nothing, Mr. Baker,” he says. “But you’re unarmed
and I’m quite a bit bigger than you.”

My open-handed jab connects with his sternum a split second
before he realizes I’ve even thrown a punch. He goes down hard, desperately
trying to replace the air I’ve just knocked out of him.

Down on bended knee, I proceed to empty his pockets of his
wallet, phone, and even a nice tight little bundle of cash.

“You’re wrong, Balkis,” I say. “You’re not bigger than me.
You’re just fatter. And slower. And about as physical as a stick of butter.”

He tries to nod while the soft skin on his face turns fifty
shades of red.

“Now, you can help me dig up the dress. But if it is, in
fact, inside Henry’s grave or one of the empty ones beside him like I think it
is, it goes to a museum immediately. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” he mumbles.

If I weren’t about to pull off an illegal exhumation, I
might get on the horn with Miller, let him know that the real story behind
Clara Harris/Henry Rathbone doesn’t even come close to matching the historical
record. Maybe the murder/suicide aspect, but that’s about the extent of it. But
of course, he’d scream at me for not being on the trail of the missing Girvins.

As I exit the bedroom and start back down the stairs, I
picture old lady and old man Girvin, the blood trail they left behind, and the
Derringer that had been freshly fired. For now, Balkis and I have to work
together to solve this thing. No choice but to swallow my suspicions about his
having had everything to do with the old couple’s disappearance. Everything to
do with their murder.