Nevermore...

Eager to start their life together, historian Vickie Preston and Special Agent Griffin Pryce take a detour en route to their new home in Virginia and stop for a visit in Baltimore. But their romantic weekend is interrupted when a popular author is found dead in the basement of an Edgar Allan Poe–themed restaurant. Because of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the corpse, the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters paranormal team is invited to investigate. As more bizarre deaths occur, Vickie and Griffin are drawn into a case that has disturbing echoes of Poe’s great works, bringing the horrors of his fiction to life.

The restaurant is headquarters to scholars and fans, and any of them could be a merciless killer. Except there’s also something reaching out from beyond the grave. The late, great Edgar Allan Poe himself is appearing to Vickie in dreams and visions with cryptic information about the murders. Unless they can uncover whose twisted mind is orchestrating the dramatic re-creations, Vickie and Griffin’s future as a couple might never begin...

Praise for the novels of

New York Times bestselling author

Heather Graham

“Graham is a master at world building and her latest is a thrilling, dark, and deadly tale of romantic suspense.”

—Booklist, starred review, on Haunted Destiny

“Intricate, fast-paced, and intense, this riveting thriller blends romance and suspense in perfect combination and keeps readers guessing and the tension taut until the very end.”

—Library Journal on Flawless

“Graham is the queen of romantic suspense, and her latest is proof that she deserves the title. What makes this story more fun than most is the relationship between Kieran Finnegan, who wants nothing more than family harmony and a functioning restaurant, and FBI agent Craig Fraiser, who wants justice. Sparks fly, and it’s electric.”

—RT Book Reviews on Flawless

“The Krewe is back! Graham excels at weaving history, finding the proper balance between past and present and keeping a story fresh and authentic, with Haunted Destiny being no exception. The chaos and camaraderie of the characters are captured with vivid detail, and the identity of the killer will keep you guessing until the very end.”

—RT Book Reviews on Haunted Destiny

“Riveting mystery...interesting history, sweet romance with a second chance at love.”

—Fresh Fiction on Darkest Journey

“Graham stands at the top of the romantic suspense category.”

—Publishers Weekly

“An incredible storyteller.”

—Los Angeles Daily News

Wicked Deeds

Heather Graham

For my oldest son, Jason Pozzessere,

and for Kari Stewart, a true delight to have in our lives.

Also for her folks, Kelly and Gail Stewart—

simply wonderful people.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Griffin Pryce—special agent with the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters

Victoria (Vickie) Preston—historian and author

The Krewe of Hunters

Adam Harrison—head of the Krewe of Hunters

Jackson Crow—field director, Krewe of Hunters

Angela Hawkins—special agent, married to Jackson Crow

In Baltimore

Franklin Verne—popular bestselling author

Monica Verne—his widow

Myron Hatfield—Baltimore medical examiner

Carl Morris—detective, Baltimore Police

At the Black Bird restaurant

Gary Frampton—restaurant owner

Alice Frampton—his daughter, hostess at the restaurant

Lacey Shaw—gift shop manager

Liza Harcourt—president of the Blackbird society, a Poe appreciation group

Brent Whaley—writer, member of the Blackbird society

Alistair Malcolm—Poe expert, member of the Blackbird society

Jon Skye—waiter

At Frampton Manor

Hattie Long and Sven Moller—housekeeper and caretaker

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

In Dreams

It was dark, and it was night, and she was following along a strange wooded path.

Vickie Preston fought against it; good things never started this way.

But she wasn’t in deep woods. She was not far from some kind of a city—she could see light through the trees.

The light seemed strange. It wasn’t the contemporary, bright luminescence of electricity that shined with such fervor that it was easily seen from space. This was different. Soft light. As if it came from candles or...gas. Gas lamps.

She had, she thought, stumbled into a different time, a different place. She made a turn, and the darkness was gone, things changing suddenly in that way of dreams; she was in a city, and it was day, late afternoon perhaps, with evening on its way.

People were rushing about, here, there and everywhere.

“Vote! Fourth Ward polls!” someone called out.

A woman with a big hoop skirt pushed by Vickie, dragging a man about by an ear. “Harold Finder! Voting is no excuse for my husband to show himself in public, drunk!” she said angrily.

Harold was twice his wife’s size, but Mrs. Finder seemed to have an exceptional hold on his ear!

They had just come from what appeared to be a tavern. Vickie looked about, wondering why no one noticed her. They were all dressed so differently; men in frock coats and waistcoats and cravats and women with their tightly corseted tops and great, billowing skirts. Granted, she was sleeping in a long white cotton gown, “puritanical,” or so Griffin had teased her.

No, no, oh, yuck! You know how I feel about our dear historical Puritans! she’d told him.

Vickie, like Griffin, had grown up in Boston. She’d become a historian and wrote nonfiction books. Despite trying to understand the very different times they had lived in, she just didn’t care much for the people who had first settled her area—they were completely intolerant.

Griffin could usually just shrug off the past; he’d been a cop when she’d first met him and he was an FBI agent now. The past mattered to him, but mostly when it helped solve crime in the present.

He’d been sleeping next to her, of course. They were on their way to Virginia from Boston, ready to start a new life. But they’d stopped in Baltimore, at a hotel... They’d laughed as they got ready for bed, he’d teased her about the nightgown...

She did not look like a Puritan!

Griffin had assured her that she wouldn’t wear the “puritanical” gown long, and she hadn’t, but then, freezing in the air-conditioning of their hotel, she’d put it back on...

She was glad, of course. Otherwise, she’d be walking stark naked around this unknown and bizarre place.

Where was she?

She turned to the doorway of the “polling place” where Harold and his wife had just departed. She could hear all manner of laughing and talking. It was definitely a tavern. Gunnar’s Place.

And there was nothing indicating Puritan Massachusetts here—she wasn’t in Massachusetts and these people certainly weren’t Puritans.

She walked in, wondering if women were welcome. It didn’t matter. No one seemed to notice her.

The place was smoky and dusty. Barmaids were hurrying about, handing out drinks. Men were being solicited for their votes.

There was a lone man seated on a wooden bench at a table, head hanging low. But when Vickie entered, he looked up, and he beckoned to her.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said impatiently. He stood, wavering.

He was a small man, just a little shorter than Vickie, maybe five-eight to her five-nine. His hair was dark and a curl hung over his forehead. His eyes seemed red-rimmed and sunken in his face, which was quite ashen, with a yellow pallor.

She knew him.

She’d seen his picture throughout her life; she’d loved his work. She’d loved that he’d been born in Boston—even if he had come to hate that city. There was a wonderful statue of him now, a life-size bronze figure of the writer, hurrying along with a briefcase and a raven.

She knew his face from so many pictures and images, a man haunted by demons in life, most of those demons brought about by his alcohol addiction. She’d always wondered if more knowledge during his age might have helped him; a really good therapist, a good program...

“I’m hallucinating you, you know. Delirium tremors,” he told her gravely. “But I have been waiting for you, Victoria.”

“I love your work!” Vickie said. She flushed. It was a dream, or a nightmare, and she was having a fangirl moment. She needed control and decorum.

“Yes, well, then, you are brighter than my insidious detractors,” he told her. “But here’s the thing. You must stop it. I am being used—my work, my memory. It was good—it was all good, until I came here, until I reached Baltimore. Then, they...were upon me.”

“They who?” she asked. “No one knows—it’s still a mystery.”

“They were upon me,” he repeated.

Vickie reached across the table and set her hand gently upon his. He was trembling, she realized, violently. “You’re not looking very well,” she said.

And he turned to give her a rueful smile. “No. I will not be here long, you see. But I’m glad that you made it, so glad that you’re here. It’s happening again. And you must do something. You must stop it. No one will see, because it’s much the same. Do you understand?”

“Not a word,” she assured him.

He looked across the room and seemed concerned; he stood suddenly and hurried toward the door. Vickie raced after him.

She didn’t see him at first. He was on the ground, slumped against the building. She tried to reach him, but there was already a man at his side, attempting to help him. She noted an address then, Lombard Street.

As she stood there while the one man tried to help, people continued to hurry along the street. Hawkers shouted out their wares—and their candidates. Drinks were promised for votes; there was laughter, there was a rush of music, someone playing a fiddle...

She tried to reach the fallen man, thankful that at least someone was helping him.

Across the bit of distance between them, he opened his eyes and looked at her.

“I have to go now,” he said.

“No...!”

“But I must. And you...”

“Yes?”

“You must pay attention.” He laughed softly. “Don’t let it happen again.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

A loud cawing sound seemed to rip through the air.

He looked at her sadly and said, “Quoth the raven—nevermore!”

1

“There’s been an incident, a very bizarre incident,” Jackson Crow said.

His voice over the phone as he spoke to Griffin Pryce was steady—as always. Jackson had pretty much seen it all. As field director of a special unit of the FBI—unofficially known as the Krewe of Hunters—Jackson had just about seen it all, although he’d be the first to say they’d probably never “see it all.”

The “bizarre” was usually the reason the Krewe got called in.

“What’s the incident?”

“You’ve heard of Franklin Verne?” Jackson asked.

“The writer? Yes, of course. Kind of impossible not to have heard of him—he likes to do his own commercials. He’s known for action books with shades of horror, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

Griffin frowned, thinking about the night before. He’d actually heard mention of Franklin Verne’s name—he and Vickie had stopped for a damned good dinner and some excellent wine at a spectacular new Baltimore restaurant. Their waiter had mentioned that Franklin Verne was in the city and they were hoping to see him in the restaurant for a meal—and, of course, an endorsement!

“Griffin?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking that you’re about to tell me how he died, and since you’re on the phone with me, and you know we’re in Baltimore, I’m assuming he died in Baltimore?”

“Yes, last night. He was found in the wine cellar of the Black Bird, a new restaurant—”

“What?” Griffin said. He knew the restaurant—pretty well! It was, in fact, the posh place where he’d taken Vickie last night.

“The Black Bird,” Jackson repeated.

“We ate there last night.”

“Oh. Well, that’s convenient. You know right where it is.”

“I do. Fell’s Point, not far from where we’re staying. You know Vickie—we found a really great old historic hotel. Blackhawk Harbor House. In fact, I’m standing outside. It’s so wonderfully old and historic, though I can’t seem to make a cell phone call from inside.” He glanced up at the building. It had been built as a hotel in the 1850s—built with concrete and care. It would probably withstand any storm. The hotel was handsome and elegant, and Griffin enjoyed it—but he still found it annoying when he couldn’t get a decent signal on his phone from his room.

“They sure weren’t expecting Franklin Verne at the restaurant,” he told Jackson. “They talked about the fact that they hoped that he would come in. His patronage would be great for business.”

“I imagine. Well, he was there—is there. Sadly, he’s dead. At the moment, they’re calling it an accidental death.”

“Okay. So. How did he die? Was it an accident, possibly...?”

“A combination of over-the-counter drugs and alcohol,” Jackson said. “That’s a preliminary—the ME, of course, will deny he suggested any true cause as of yet. You know how that works—they won’t know for certain what caused it until all the tests are back. I take it you haven’t seen any news yet?”

“Jackson, it is 7:30 a.m. This was our last weekend before settling in—me back from a long stint in Boston, and Vickie moving to a new state and an entirely new life. Hey, it was supposed to be free time. We were out late last night. Vickie is still sleeping.”

“Okay, you haven’t seen the news. Anyway, Franklin Verne used to be quite the wild man, drinking, getting rowdy with friends, playing the type of hard-core character that appears in most of his books. His wife, Monica, put a stop to it a few years back—when the doctors told her he wouldn’t make it to old age. But his body was found in a wine cellar. According to Monica, Franklin had been clean for two full years.”

“You know all this because...?” Griffin asked him.

“Because Franklin Verne gave generously to a lot of the same causes our own Adam Harrison holds so dear,” Jackson said.

Adam Harrison was their senior advisor—he was, in fact, the creator of the Krewe, and a man with a phenomenal ability to put the right people together with the right situation.

“Naturally,” Jackson continued, “he’s quite good friends with Monica, so... Well, there you have it. He’ll wrangle us an invitation into the investigation eventually—you know him and his abilities with local police.” Jackson hesitated a minute. “Even if we wind up having to tell Monica she lost her husband because he slipped back into addiction, she’ll have the truth of the situation. For the moment, I need you to go make nice with Detective Carl Morris.”

“Carl Morris, sure,” Griffin said.

So much for the incredible plans he’d had with Vickie for the day!

“Addiction, a friend, temptation... It could have been an accident,” Griffin said.

“Yes. Except that none of the waitstaff saw him in the restaurant, much less down in the wine cellar. And, as I said, Monica—who claims she really knew her husband—is calling it murder.”

“Ah. Okay, are you coming up?” Griffin asked Jackson. Krewe headquarters was only about an hour and a half—two hours at most—from Baltimore, even counting Beltway traffic.

“Maybe, but Adam wants to move delicately with this. We’re not invited in yet—Franklin Verne’s death isn’t even considered to be a murder at the moment. But of course, the way the man died, there has to be an autopsy and an investigation. Get started for me, and then give me a call. Let me know what you think.”

“All right. When did this happen?”

“He was found about an hour ago. Adam got the call from Monica immediately after she was visited by the police and informed that her husband was dead. If you head in quickly, you’ll see the body in situ. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, it is Baltimore, and Poe is buried there, and, hell, the name of the restaurant isn’t Raven, but it is Black Bird...”

“What?”

“He was found gripping a little bird. Yes, a raven, of course. It’s the kind you can find just about anywhere they have Poe souvenirs. Cheap, plastic, black—on a little pedestal with its wings out, beak open...and the word nevermore written on the base.”

“Like you said, you can buy those souvenirs anywhere.”

“Yep. And, sorry. Just one more thing again.”

“What’s that?”

“He was surrounded by three dead blackbirds. Naturally, of course, no one can figure out how Franklin Verne—or the birds—got into the wine cellar.”

* * *

Vickie opened her eyes.

For a moment, she was disoriented.

She wasn’t at all sure where she was!

And then she realized that Griffin was there, looking down at her with concern. A half grin curled his lips, though that grin was far more rueful than amused.

Grim, even.

“A nightmare?” he asked her gently, a trace of worry crossing his bronzed face. There wasn’t a reason for her to be having nightmares—at the moment. The Krewe cases with which she’d been involved had come to their conclusions.

She was in the wonderful hotel in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point where she had enthusiastically suggested they stay on their trip from Boston to Arlington, Virginia—even though they hadn’t really needed to make it an overnight trip, much less a weekend one.

But she and Griffin had wanted time together. Fun time, sightseeing, before Griffin reported back to headquarters; Vickie was preparing to enter the FBI’s training academy at Quantico.

Eventually, they’d both be working out of the main special offices of the Krewe of Hunters unit. But for now, Griffin would be getting back to work, they’d both be settling in to living together—and Vickie would be starting up with the next class for twenty weeks of training that would lead to her graduation and an official position with the Krewe.

Vickie could have told Griffin about the dream. The Krewe were more than simply dedicated and well-trained agents. They had been gathered together carefully because they all had unique abilities, the center of those abilities being that they could communicate with the dead.

When the dead chose, of course.

She and Griffin had both known for years just what the other was capable of. While they had only rekindled their relationship recently, they had first met almost a decade ago—when a serial killer had nearly taken Vickie’s life. It had been a ghost, the older brother of the child she was babysitting, who had saved her by sending her running out of the house to safety, straight toward a young Officer Pryce. He’d been a cop before becoming an agent, though he had now been with the Krewe of Hunters for quite some time. He’d always known that he wanted to be in law enforcement.

It wasn’t that way for Vickie.

She loved history. She’d been a guide, leading youth-group tours as a historian, and she was an author of history books. She was proud to say that she was good at it—the most important reviews to her were the ones that said she had a way of making history fun for the reader.

It was only the cases with which she had recently become involved that had made her want to veer in a new direction. Not a change—an addition. There had been a case in which an incarcerated serial killer had managed to reach out to strike again, and then another where modern-day Satanists had tried to bring the devil back to Massachusetts.

She was now determined to do her best to become an agent herself, and it was a decision with which she was really pleased. It was odd to realize that she had once been embarrassed by her secret talent—the ability to speak with the dead. She hadn’t wanted to admit that it could be real. But she’d learned recently that her so-called curse allowed her to actually make a difference. She might have the ability to help in more bizarre cases—to save lives. And that mattered. To that end, she’d applied for and been accepted to the academy at Quantico. The Krewe might be a special unit, but even so, the agents were required to go through the academy. Vickie had passed the necessary tests on paper and made it through the grueling physical regimen necessary to become an agent.

Griffin already had an apartment in a wonderful old row house in Alexandria. For him, it wasn’t a move—just a return to his home of the past several years. He had only been back in Boston—where he and Vickie both were born and raised—on assignment.

Vickie had gone to college at NYU and then lived in New York for several years, but never farther south.

It was, she’d assured him, exciting to move.

But she was aware that Griffin believed it had to be a tug on her heartstrings as well—she was leaving a lot behind.

And she was. But she was also happy to be moving forward.

“A nightmare?” he repeated, and the note of worry seemed higher.

She smiled, staring into his dark eyes. Griffin was fine with her decision to become an agent; the Krewe was composed of both men and women, and he knew women were every bit as efficient and excellent as agents as men.

It was just her—but of course, he loved her. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to accept her walking into the same danger he did daily. He would, however, get used to it—and she loved him all the more for that fact.

“No, not a nightmare!” she told him. He far too quickly became concerned for her. All it had been was a bizarre dream. It might well have been due to the way they’d overindulged in some delicious blue crabs at dinner last night.

She would stay mum. For the moment. After all, she was in Baltimore. Edgar Allan Poe was buried here; he’d died here. Having dreams about him didn’t seem the least bit strange, actually.

But for the moment...

“It was a dream, and rather a cool one. I was walking around Baltimore...”

“We’re in Baltimore, so that seems...normal, maybe?”

She grinned, rolling onto an elbow to better face him—he’d already gotten up and showered and dressed for the day. He was an early riser—alert and ready to face the world as soon as he opened his eyes.

Vickie...not so much! But she was getting used to early mornings.

“Perfectly normal,” she told him. “It wasn’t a nightmare. It was just a dream. About beautiful old Baltimore—hey, it’s an important city, right? And we are going to go and do some cool things today, aren’t we?”

“Absolutely,” he promised. “Fort McHenry, the Inner Harbor, Federal Hill—”

“Don’t forget the aquarium!” she said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. But I thought we might want a full day for that. We can do whatever you choose, my love. Anything you would like.”

“You’ve done it all too many times before?” she asked him.

He laughed. “No. I mean, I have done it all before, but not with you, so it’s as if it’s the first time, right?”

“That is an incredibly good suck-up line if I have ever heard one!” she assured him.

She thought that the line might take them somewhere, but he smiled and stepped away from the bed.

“I just have a couple of hours of work first,” he said.

“What?”

“Work. But there’s not much involved at the moment, and not much I can do.” He added quietly, “Franklin Verne—you know who he is?”

“Yep. I’m living and breathing and have ears and eyes. You can’t miss him. What about him?”

“He died last night.”

“Oh, that’s too bad—terribly sad! I’ve seen him speak. I mean, I write nonfiction and he writes fiction, but I’ve been at a number of conferences where he’s been a speaker on a panel. He was charming and very funny...helpful, giving. He’s actually written some historical fiction, and while Verne tended toward horror—some action, some sci-fi and some mystery—he was a wonderful researcher as well.”

“Always the writer!” he teased.

“That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” She’d spoken with other agents and she believed that—assuming she did make it through the academy—she’d still be welcome to write on her own time. It seemed that Krewe agents were, in fact, encouraged to keep up with any previous pursuits.

“It’s fine!” he assured her quickly.

“So what happened to Franklin Verne? I know that he was ill a few years ago—in fact, he joked about it sometimes when he spoke, saying that his wife taught him how to have fun and not be totally boring without a dip in a whiskey vat.”

“Yes, I had heard that he was supposedly as clean as a newborn babe.”

“Supposedly?”

“He was found dead in a wine cellar.”

“In a wine cellar—he didn’t have a wine cellar. I don’t think he even drank wine. When he did drink.”

“Not his wine cellar. But how do you know he didn’t have a wine cellar?”

“He was very open about his health problems, about his wild days—and his love for his wife,” Vickie said. “So, if not his own wine cellar—where then?”

“The Black Bird.”

“What?”

“Amazing. That was my exact reaction when Jackson told me. Want to come with me? I’m on my way there now. Heading off to kowtow to a local cop named Carl Morris.”

Vickie rolled out of bed. “Ten minutes,” she told him.

He nodded; he knew she was telling the truth.

* * *

Vickie and Griffin had both thoroughly enjoyed the Black Bird the night before; the service had been wonderful and the food had been delicious.

Vickie had especially like the decor; the building was 1820s Federal style, and the restaurant had the first two floors and the basement of the building while the remaining three floors above were given over to office space. Upon entering a long hall of a foyer with exposed brick walls and plush red carpeting, you came to the hostess stand. From there it went through to the bar area.

The bar was lined with portraits of Poe and his family; there were framed posters of quotations and more, all having to do with Edgar Allan Poe.

Stairs led from behind the bar to several sections of seats and a few party rooms of various sizes. The main dining room was the first floor, and tables and booths were surrounded by bookshelves.

Of course, not even the master could have written enough to fill the restaurant’s shelves; it was an eclectic mix of secondhand novels. The venue had charmingly been planned on the concept that every diner was welcome to take a book, and, naturally, you were welcome to leave a book or books as well.

New editions of Poe books were sold in the gift shop, which was conveniently on the way out, at the back of the restaurant. Of course, one could leave through the front door, but the bookshop was like a minimuseum, and Vickie sincerely doubted that many people ignored it. Their waiter—he’d introduced himself as Jon—told them that though the restaurant was comparatively new, they attracted a lot of local, repeat clientele, for which they were very grateful. But locals didn’t tend to shop for souvenirs, unless they were entertaining out-of-town friends. Since they were happily playing tourist, Vickie and Griffin made sure to visit the shop. Lacey Shaw, the woman working the little boutique, was a bit of a Poe aficionado, and she assured them that even the locals loved to come in and chat.

And their waiter was also quite the enthusiast. “Seriously, poor Poe was much maligned in life, but most of the time, the people who wrote about him were seriously jealous competitors, so of course they tried to make him out to be nothing but a drunk with delusions of grandeur. In truth? He was brilliant. You do know that we credit him with the creation of the modern detective novel? ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’! What an imagination the man had!” Jon had told them, eyes bright with his admiration. He might be a waiter there, but he truly loved the works of the man and had studied his life.

“I promise you, we’ll not argue Poe’s brilliance,” Griffin had assured him.

Jon had gone on, “But people love the restaurant because of the library. It’s not a new idea but what a great one—bring a book, take a book! Or just take a book. Well, okay—buy a shiny new one in the gift shop, too. I love working here! Gary Frampton—the owner—is a wonderful man. I’m crazy about him. Alice—the lovely girl with the long blond hair who greeted you as a hostess tonight—is his daughter.”

It wasn’t “lovely Alice” who met them then, though, by light of the next day.

It was an officer in uniform.

Griffin produced his credentials, and the officer gruffly told him to go on downstairs to the wine cellar.

The stairs were brick, as old as the building, but well maintained. As they descended, the air got cooler. The cellar was climate controlled but obviously didn’t need much help. It was stone, deep in the ground near the harbor, and naturally protected from the heat of a mid-Atlantic summer.

A tall, slim man who somewhat reminded Vickie of Lurch from The Addams Family was standing quietly in the center of the main room. Crime-scene techs—easily identifiable by their jackets—were moving about, collecting what evidence could be found.

The body of Franklin Verne remained, giving Vickie a moment’s pause.

She had known him in life. She had seen him when he had smiled, gestured, moved and laughed.

And now, of course, the man she had known—if only casually—was gone. What remained, she felt, was a shell.

She glanced at Griffin. They both felt it.

Yes, Franklin Verne was definitely gone. Nothing of his soul lingered.

At least, not here.

The dead man was seated in a chair near a desk; it was a period piece, Victorian era, she thought. Fitting for the place, but it had a modern computer with a nice monitor, along with a printer/scanner, and baskets most probably from Office Depot that held papers and mail and more.

The desk, however, was next to an old potbellied stove. In winter, it might have warmed up the place a bit, for those condemned to keep the wine company on a cold night.

Franklin Verne had died slumped back in the chair. His eyes were eerily open. A man in scrubs and a mask worked over him—the ME, Vickie assumed.

“Detective Morris?” Griffin asked, stepping forward to introduce himself. Vickie knew that Griffin would follow every courtesy, thanking the detective first and then speaking with the ME.

The Lurch-like man turned toward him, nodding, studying him and then offering him a hand.

“Special Agent Pryce?” Morris asked.

“Yes, sir. Thank you for the courtesy. Our supervising director is friends with Mrs. Verne, as I suppose you’ve heard.”

“Yes,” Morris said, looking at Vickie.

“Ms. Victoria Preston,” Griffin said, introducing her. “Vickie is heading down to start at the academy in a few weeks.”

“Excellent,” Morris said, nodding. He lifted his hands. “Sad thing. I’ve been standing here, looking around, hoping that something brilliant might come to me. I can’t say I knew Mr. Verne—he was local, but he and Mrs. Verne were only in residence part of the year these days. He’s a popular personage around here. There are wild tales of him back in the day, but he never stopped giving to the city police, and he was involved in a number of charitable enterprises.”

“I’ve heard he was a very good man,” Griffin said. “Vickie knew him.”

“I didn’t exactly know him,” she corrected. “We met several times at conferences. I write nonfiction books,” she explained.

It was certainly not something that was at all impressive to Detective Morris. “Perhaps this is uncomfortable for you,” he said, “being in here. Since you know the victim. And you are a civilian.”

“Accepted into the academy,” Griffin said.

“I’m fine,” she assured Morris, glad that Griffin had so quickly—and indignantly—come to her defense.

Morris turned to the man working with the corpse. “Dr. Myron Hatfield, Special Agent Pryce, Ms. Preston. Dr. Hatfield is, in my opinion, one of the finest medical examiners to ever grace the Eastern coast,” he said.

Hatfield straightened. He was tall, too, probably about fifty, with steel-gray hair and a good-sized frame; he was built like a linebacker or a fighter. But he had a quick—if slightly grim—smile. “Nice to meet you. Sorry about the circumstances. I’d met Mr. Verne, too, at a fund-raiser for a local children’s hospital. He seemed a good man. And...well, the night I met him, he looked great.” He looked as if he was about to say more. He shrugged. “I really won’t know much of anything until I get him into the morgue.”

“Doctor,” Griffin said. “My field supervisor suggested that he died of a mix of alcohol and drugs.”

Hatfield hesitated. “His mouth... Well, a layman could smell the alcohol. The condition of the body suggests a catastrophic shutdown of organs. But we need tests. I need to complete an autopsy. I hope that my words haven’t gone any further.”

“No, sir,” Griffin assured him. He turned back to Morris. “No one saw him come down here—they’ve spoken to all the employees?” he asked.

“It was a late night. The manager didn’t close up until almost three in the morning,” Morris said. “The place was, according to him, completely empty. We’re still trying to contact all the night staff, but the last thing the manager does is check the basement—the wine cellar here—and see that the shelves are locked for the night.” He pointed. “Master switch there. You can see that most of the shelves have cages. Some of these wines are worth thousands of dollars.”

“And there’s no other way in than by the stairs? What about cameras?” Griffin asked.

“None down here, but there are cameras at the front door and the back door, which is really more of a side door, by the gift shop.”

“We were here last night,” Vickie said.

“Oh?” Morris asked, a brow politely raised a half notch.

“Yes, but we were early birds, comparatively. We were gone by eleven,” Griffin said. “Ironic—our waiter was wishing that Franklin Verne would pay a visit and endorse the restaurant.”

“He’s endorsed it now, all right,” Hatfield said.

“So tragically!” Vickie said.

Morris grunted. “Yes, but people are ghouls. The place will be booked for years to come now—it’s where Franklin Verne mysteriously died!”

None of them could argue that. “Detective, may I walk around?” Griffin asked.

Detective Morris nodded. “I’ve been here almost two hours. Can’t figure it myself, but I don’t believe he vaporized or said, ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ There’s something here. I’m mulling. You knock yourself out.”

“We’re about to take the body,” Hatfield said quietly.

“Thank you,” Griffin said. Vickie kept her distance. She was startled when she heard Griffin ask Hatfield, “I heard he was holding a raven?”

“The kind they sell in the gift shop, right upstairs,” Hatfield said.

“Bagged it as evidence,” Morris said. He pointed to the desk, where the raven lay in a clear plastic evidence bag.

“Thanks,” Griffin said. He lifted the bag. He and Vickie both studied it.

Vickie had noted other ravens just like it at the gift shop the night before; they were cheap plastic, cost no more than a cup of coffee—perfect little souvenirs that brought back a memory and made you smile.

“There were three dead blackbirds by the body?” Griffin asked.

Morris lowered his head in acknowledgment. “They’re in the evidence bags at the end of the desk. Take a look—knock yourself out. I guess what’s going to matter is how they died, and that falls in Dr. Hatfield’s territory.”

“Actually, it’s a necropsy—but we have a fellow on staff who deals with all animals that aren’t of the human variety,” Hatfield said. “And we’ll keep you apprised every step of the way.”

“Thanks,” Griffin said. “They are blackbirds, right? Not young crows or ravens?”

“Blackbirds,” Hatfield agreed. “The size alone gives us that.”

Vickie held where she was, watching Griffin’s broad back as he headed down the rows of carefully shelved wine.

After all, he was an agent; she wasn’t sure what procedure would be. It was best in this situation to let Griffin move forward without her.

And...

For a moment, she felt dizzy, remembering her dream.

Poe—Edgar Allan! She had met him at a tavern that wouldn’t have been far from here...the tavern he’d been found near, delirious and wearing clothing that wasn’t his.

He’d been missing three days. Some said he’d been kidnapped for his vote—and thus the different clothing that he wore. Some said that it had been the drink, that he’d met up with friends and the alcohol had quickly cost him his life.

Some said it had been a murder plot, perpetuated by relatives of the widow he’d planned to marry when his business was accomplished...

But the author and poet had not died in a wine cellar. Rather, one of his immortal characters had done so!

“Miss?”

“Oh! I’m sorry!”

Men from the medical examiner’s office were there to take the body. She quickly moved out of the way.

Griffin came back from walking up and down the racks of wine.

“I’ll know soon enough what I suspect, even if it takes a bit longer to be official,” said Dr. Hatfield. “Special Agent Pryce, you’re welcome to come by this afternoon with Carl. I’m afraid that this gentleman will be bringing me in to work all day on a Saturday.”

Griffin shook hands all around and gave Detective Morris a card; Morris returned the courtesy. Then Griffin set an arm on Vickie’s shoulder and they started back up the steps to the restaurant.

They walked outside.

Vickie stopped dead.

There were birds everywhere.

“Ravens!” she gasped.

“Blackbirds,” he said. “I had an uncle who loved birds. Crows, ravens, rooks and blackbirds—all confused for each other, but all different birds. Ravens belong to the crow—or corvids—family, but not all crows are ravens. Blackbirds belong to the thrush family. A raven, however, is about the size of a hawk and a crow is about the size of a pigeon. Those guys...”

He was looking up; he suddenly stopped speaking.

“How bizarre!” he said.

“What?” she asked.

He pointed high where a bird glided over the street, far above the little blackbirds that gathered on buildings and wires.

“That one—that one is a raven,” he said.

Vickie wasn’t at all sure why—the sun was brilliantly shining—but she shivered. She stared at the bird.

It flew over the area, again and again, before lighting on the roof of a nearby building.

Griffin looked at her. “Come on. Let’s go see Mrs. Verne. I’ll report to Jackson. Maybe we can still get in a trip out to Fort McHenry.”

“Actually...”

“What?”

“I think we should visit Poe’s grave,” Vickie said.

“Haven’t you been before?”

“I have.”

“It’s just... It’s a grave,” he reminded her.

“Yes, but fitting today, don’t you think?” She shrugged. “It is one of those things you do in Baltimore, you know.”

* * *

The hardest part of the job wasn’t dealing with the dead.

The dead didn’t weep like the living.

Griffin hadn’t met Monica Verne before, but thanks to his conversation with Jackson, he knew that Adam Harrison was friends with her.

Adam was careful about the friends he chose.

Griffin and Vickie reached Monica Verne’s palatial home on the outskirts of the city right before noon.

An attractive young woman wearing a black dress, functional pumps and a bleak expression opened the door.

“Police?” she demanded. She had an accent. She was most probably from somewhere in Eastern Europe.

“No, ma’am,” Griffin began.

“You are despicable! You are horrible. Poor Mrs. Verne. She’s just learned about this unspeakable tragedy—from you people! And you are hounding her!”

“Ma’am!” Griffin said. “We’re not the police. We’re FBI—and Mrs. Verne requested that we be here. Please, we’re here on behalf of Adam Harrison.”

“Oh, oh, oh! Do come in! This way!”

She led them to the widow. Monica Verne was seated in the enclosed back porch of the home, which sat on a little hillock. Picture windows looked out on beautiful gardens, a pond and a small forest.

Monica was slender, almost ethereal. She was no trophy wife; while very lovely, she’d done nothing to correct the changes of time. She was obviously in her late sixties, and still beautiful. Great bone structure, huge powder blue eyes and a quick smile for them—even through her tears.

“I’m so grateful that you’re here and that you’ve come so quickly! I knew that Adam would help... I knew. The police are going to get this all wrong. It’s such bull! Franklin was, of course, a player when he was young—some drugs, a hell of a lot of drinking, partying. That’s how we met—back when I was modeling he was just becoming known as an author. Struggling! Wasn’t making much of anything at the time. I was actually the far more prestigious person! We met at a party where I was a guest—and he was working for the catering company!” She wasn’t boasting when she spoke; she was laughing. She choked slightly, more tears spilling from her eyes.

Vickie reached out and set her hand over Monica’s. “I’m so sorry.”

Monica looked at Vickie and nodded. Griffin thought that Vickie’s ability to empathize with others and offer them real comfort was going to be one of her greatest assets in joining the Krewe. It was also going to be one of the most difficult parts of the job for her to learn to manage. He lowered his head for a moment; it was an odd time to smile. And, an odd time to think just how lucky he was. Vickie was beautiful to look at—five foot nine, with long raven-black waves of hair and blue-green eyes that could change and shimmer like emeralds.

She was also so caring—honest and filled with integrity.

He truly loved her. Watching her empathy and gentle touch with Monica, he knew all the more reason why.

“My husband didn’t kill himself!” Monica whispered fervently.

“I don’t think it’s been suggested that he killed himself. I believe they’re considering it an accidental death,” Griffin began.

“Accidental death, my ass! If there’s any last thing I can do for Franklin, it’s going to be to make someone prove that this was no accidental death!” Monica lashed out, furious and indignant. She wasn’t angry with Vickie—who was still holding her hand. Her passion was against the very suggestion that her husband’s death had been through a simple slip—some misfortune.

She wagged a finger at Griffin. “You listen to me, and listen well. We were the best, Frankie and me. I swear it. When all else fell to hell and ruin, we still had one another. I had nothing against his friends, all the conferences, all the fun—some I went to, some I didn’t. I trusted him. I was glad of his buddies—his writing friends, men and women. I’m a reader, but I can barely string a decent sentence together. Frankie needed other people who could write and talk about it. But when it all threatened his body, I put my foot down. No drugs whatsoever—not even a toke off someone’s joint. No alcohol. None. And he listened to me. Because he wanted to live, and he loved and respected me. He loved us—he loved living. Adam sent you to me because he knows, damn it! Accidental death! No way. And you will find a way to prove it.”

“Mrs. Verne, what happened yesterday? Was he home—did you not notice that he wasn’t with you until the police came to tell you that...that he’d been found? What went on here yesterday?”

“What do you mean?” Monica asked indignantly. “There is no lie to this. You may ask anyone anywhere who knows the two of us, from friends to associates, to—”

“I’m not suggesting anything was wrong between you,” Griffin said, interrupting her softly. “What we’re trying to do is figure out where he was during the day, how he came to be where he was last night. Where was he when you went to bed?”

“Next to me, lying right next to me!” Monica said.

“What time was that?”

“Early. We’d been at my cousin’s house the day before. Her grandchildren were in town. We were literally exhausted—in bed by eight o’clock!”

“And when you woke up this morning—he wasn’t with you?” Griffin asked.

Monica shook her head. “But there was nothing unusual to that! Franklin loved to head out for walks first thing in the morning. He always told me that the longest and hardest part of writing was all in his head. When he went for his morning walks, he was really working. Of course, he’d say that with a wink, so what was and wasn’t really true...”

“Did he mention anything about going anywhere? Meeting up with someone? Any arrangements he might have made to meet up with a friend later—and he didn’t tell you?”

“He had no reason to lie to me!” Monica said. “No reason. Ever—and he knew it.”

“But he did keep up regular correspondences with friends, right?”

“Of course. The police took the computer from his home office. And—”

She broke off, sighing.

“What is it?” Vickie asked gently.

“They asked for his phone. But I don’t have it. They didn’t find his phone anywhere. And I can’t find his laptop, either.”

Griffin glanced at Vickie. Missing personal devices were suspicious.

Because there might be evidence on them.

“Franklin did not meet up with a friend! He did not break in to that cellar to drink wine! I’m telling you, I knew my husband, he...”

She broke off, gritting her teeth. She was trying not to cry. The woman was truly in anguish; she was also furious.

“I don’t know when he went out. I don’t why he went out—or how he wound up at the restaurant. I do know one thing.”

“What is that, Mrs. Verne?” Vickie asked.

Monica Verne startled them both, slamming a fist on the coffee table. “My husband was murdered!”

The motion seemed to be a cue.

In the yard, a dozen birds took flight, shrieking and cawing...

Griffin could see them as they let out their cries, sweeping into the sky.

A murder of crows...

And an unkindness of ravens...

As poetically cruel as the death of Franklin Verne.

2

“I feel just terrible for Mrs. Verne,” Vickie said. “I mean, it was obviously quite a love match. I don’t think that she’s going to be quiet about this—she’s going to let everyone out there know that she thinks that this was a murder.”

Griffin glanced at Vickie as he drove, taking them back into downtown Baltimore. She was incredibly—and very sweetly—a people person. She felt bad for Monica Verne, and seemed to understand both the woman’s pain and her determination.

“Yes, she will let everyone know exactly what she thinks, including everyone in the media. The problem is that she’s going to demand answers before people may have them. The ME is no one’s fool, and certainly in no way a yes-man. He will not give his report until he has every single test in. So...”

“I guess any ME has to be careful. I mean, a writer isn’t exactly a Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger or Prince, but...”

“Bite your tongue!”

“I’m serious—who recognizes writers? Stephen King, maybe. And okay, James Patterson—he does a lot of his own commercials, too. But—”

“People knew Franklin Verne. He was very popular—he gave to so many charities. He and his wife had no children, just one another—and all their good deeds,” Griffin said.

“But you’re saying it’s going to be a while before the ME will even say if it was a murder or an accidental death?”

“He will test for every poison out there, for every possibility,” Griffin said.

“So, what do you think?” Vickie asked.

“What do I think?” he repeated.

“That was, yes, indeed, the question,” she said.

He glanced over at her again as they drove. Vickie was serious and thoughtful. He gritted his teeth, reminding himself that she’d already been through two heinous cases. She’d never panicked; she behaved rationally.

She was about to go through the academy. It was a smart thing for her to do, the right choice; since they were staying together, she was going to get involved in his cases. He was glad she’d been accepted into the program.

And still...the worrying—the wishing he could keep her from all danger—did not go away.

“I think,” Griffin said, “that we’re way too early in this investigation to have any idea as to what is really going on. For one thing, I’m disturbed by the fact that no one can explain how Franklin Verne got into the restaurant—much less down to the wine cellar.”

“And the way he died... Well, I think they’ll find out that it was drugs or alcohol poisoning. So similar to Poe—though there are many theories on exactly what happened with Edgar Allan Poe, too,” Vickie said. “Some people believe he was just taken by pollsters—it was an election time, and in the 1800s, voter fraud certainly existed. One theory is that Poe was kidnapped by ruffians so that he could vote and then vote again—and that could be why he was dressed in clothing he hadn’t owned.”

“That sounds like a possibility,” Griffin said.

“Ah! But some people believe it was a murder plot by the brothers of the woman—Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton—whom he was about to marry. History is still undecided about whether they were or weren’t officially engaged when he died. She denied it sometimes, and sometimes said that it was true. I guess it was an understanding. She had been his first love, and his last, certainly. But she would lose the inheritance from her first husband if she married again.”

“Motive!” Griffin said.

“Yes. A thickened plot,” Vickie agreed. “Then again, some think he just got into a bar brawl, changed clothing for some more whiskey money—and died in his delirium because he was an alcoholic and, therefore, finally drank himself to death.”

“And that sounds possible, too.”

Vickie looked unhappy again. “Poor Monica. People will assume that Franklin Verne fell off the wagon, got started on a binge and managed to sneak down to the restaurant’s wine cellar.”

“Maybe we’ll get a lucky break. There are cameras at the front door.”

“They won’t see Franklin Verne on those cameras. I’m assuming the cops are checking them now, right?”

“Yep.”

“They won’t find him.”

“You’re so sure.”

“I am absolutely certain,” Vickie said. She hesitated, drawing in a breath and holding it. “I believe that he was murdered.”

There was something about her voice that made Griffin look over at her quickly. She was definitely deeply disturbed by something that went beyond their current speculation.

“What is it?” he asked her softly.

She glanced back over at him, thoughtful, yet appeared hesitant.

They’d originally met under horrible circumstances; Vickie had been just seventeen, he in his early twenties, and she’d been attacked by a serial killer.

They’d met again when a new serial killer was terrorizing Boston, and since then, they’d worked together to rescue a friend and save the lives of many people, including—in the end—Vickie’s own life.

They knew each other deeply; knew they saw and felt what most others did not.

And, still, sometimes Vickie seemed timid, as though afraid that when she spoke aloud what she had to say would sound ridiculous.

“Vickie!” he persisted. “It’s me!”

“Okay!” she said, and smiled. She took a breath. “Remember this morning? You asked me if I was having a nightmare.”

“Yes.” Griffin didn’t press.

“I was. Kind of. I was dreaming about Edgar Allan Poe. I was here—in Baltimore. But it was way back in time—on the day that he was found in delirium before he was taken to the hospital for the few days before he died. Poe was talking to me. He warned me not to assume that it was like what had happened to him.”

“This was before I heard from Jackson?” he asked her.

She nodded gravely. “Yes, Griffin. Before. I mean, I thought I was dreaming about Poe because we were in Baltimore, because we had enjoyed that great dinner and the Black Bird and our waiter had kind of inundated us with Poe. But...”

Griffin sat quietly.

The “gift” or “curse” that united Krewe members—that had sent Adam Harrison on his quest for his special teams—manifested in different ways. For most of them, it was simply seeing and speaking with the dead.

But because of what Griffin had seen and encountered over the years, there was little that he denied as possible.

Oh, he doubted most people! He was a horrible skeptic. He’d learned to be, since the world was far more filled with fake seers, psychics, mystics and mediums than most people would ever imagine.

But there were also those who truly had a sixth sense—and it did, sometimes, manifest itself in the world of dreams and nightmares. This wasn’t the first time Vickie had communicated with the dead in visions while sleeping.

“So, under these circumstances, your nightmare meant something. We’ll assume that you had the dream for a reason—and that it wasn’t an Edgar Allan Poe overdose at the restaurant. Did you see in this nightmare that the cameras at the front would get nothing?”

Vickie shook her head. “No, I just saw Poe himself in the nightmare. Maybe Poe was witnessing it, or... I don’t know. But I believe that Franklin Verne was murdered, and that his murderer is too smart to be caught on film. There’s also a delivery entrance. There’s a driveway that goes down to the basement at the back, remember? Receiving for the kitchen is next to the wine cellar, right through one of the little doors.”

“Yes,” Griffin told her. “I walked the whole thing. So, tell me—how did he get in through the receiving door?”

“With a friend. Or a so-called friend.”

“A friend? So you’re thinking accidental—or depraved indifference?”

“No,” Vickie said again, emphatic. “I think that Franklin trusted this person—and shouldn’t have. I don’t think that he set out to drink. I believe he loved his wife as passionately as she loved him. She had no problem with him being a wild Hemingwayesque writer—she didn’t care until his excesses started to kill him. Only then did she put her foot down. And I believe he knew that everything she did was because she loved him.”

“Wow. You did just meet her, right?” he asked, smiling—but with a sardonic tone.

“Oh, ye of little faith!” she said. “I am good at reading people.”

He laughed. “I have faith. I buy what you’re saying, too. I never heard anything other than that those two—Franklin and Monica—had a beautiful marriage.”

Griffin shifted his attention for a moment to navigating the one-way streets throughout downtown around the University of Maryland campus.

“And, we can’t forget the Poe mania around here—and Poe’s stories!” Vickie said. “There’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’!”

“Ah-ha!” he said. “The cask of Amontillado. Wine? A cask of wine. Saw lots of bottles down in the cellar, but no casks. Something I didn’t notice?”

Vickie nodded gravely. “I’m not talking about wine—it was a short story by Poe, circa 1846. The narrator of the story is a man named Montresor. He’s very angry with and jealous of an acquaintance, Fortunato. Fortunato has insulted him gravely, you see. The story is haunting and gothic and creepy—Montresor is dressed for the carnival season in black, and Fortunato is in all the colors of the jester. Anyway, to make a long story short—”

“Too late,” Griffin assured her, which earned him a glower.

“Montresor tricks Fortunato with wine, promising him a most unique sherry—and saying that if he’s too busy, he can get one of Fortunato’s competitors to come try it. Fortunato is too vain to allow someone else to try the wine. Montresor never explains what the insult was that he’s so angry about—he’s just on a vendetta and he explains how he’s become judge and jury. In the end, he walls poor Fortunato up in a crypt—and we learn he remains there, undisturbed, for fifty years. Pretty harsh.”

“He gets away with it?” Griffin asked.

“You never read the story?”

“Um—no.”

“What? How did you manage to neglect Poe growing up? You’re from Boston. Okay, so Poe hated Boston, but he was actually born there.”

“Hey! I know some of Poe’s work,” Griffin protested. “Everyone knows ‘The Raven.’ I absolutely loved Vincent Price. And Peter Lorre and—”

“You’re talking movies, not the written word!”

Griffin laughed. “Yeah, well? Without Poe, we wouldn’t have had the movies. A few years back—I don’t know how many—there was a movie with John Cusack playing Poe. In that version he died to keep his love from being murdered.”

“That’s not how he died! That was a movie.”

“Ah-ha! But you see, no one knows how he did die—that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the movie had him engaged to a pretty young thing. In reality, he was about to be married—as I was telling you—to Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, she with the brothers who might have been murderers, and with whom he’d been in love when he went to college. Her father hadn’t approved and he’d destroyed all of Poe’s letters to her, and so young love had been thwarted. Anyway, years later, her husband was dead and Poe’s wife, Virginia Clemm, was dead, and Poe and the woman he’d loved in his youth met up again. Poor man, he was just forty when he died. But Sarah Elmira was no sweet young innocent—she was about his age, a mother, all grown up.”

“Killjoy,” Griffin told her, and Vickie laughed softly.

“I don’t mean to be. I love a John Cusack movie, too. I think I would have found a different way to explore what had really happened. I mean, he was found delirious in clothing that wasn’t his! How did that happen? He’d joined the temperance society before he left Richmond, but of course, no matter how you look at it, the man was an alcoholic—though it seemed that he was a binge drinker rather than a habitual drunk. I can’t help but think sometimes that he might have had a much better life if he’d lived in our day and age. So much information disappeared right along with him regarding the days he was missing! His death was as much a mystery then as it is today.”

“‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...’”

Very determined, Griffin went ahead to repeat a good section of the famous poem. What he couldn’t remember, he thought he faked with a tremendous amount of panache. Vickie was grinning as he gave her his dramatic interpretation, so he was pretty sure that she knew when he was doing his ad-libbing.

“Well, you know the title, you know it’s a poem and you know it’s by Edgar Allan Poe,” she said, amused. “I’m totally impressed.”

“Wait and see how I wow people!” he told her.

He pulled into public parking near Westminster Hall and Burying Ground. “Poe’s grave, at your command, my love.”

She looked at him and smiled. “So you’re going to wow the dead people with your Poe-etic license?” she asked him.

“Sometimes,” he reminded her, “dead people are far more important than the living.”

“Sometimes,” she repeated.

The old Presbyterian church itself—long since deconsecrated and now known as Westminster Hall—offered tours on certain days of the week with reservations, and special tours when prearranged. The catacombs and the inside of the structure were only available through those special times and reservations. But the burial ground surrounding the old church was open to the public, and historical markers identified many of the notable dead.

“Poe was buried in the back at first,” Vickie said, walking quickly ahead of Griffin.

She wasn’t heading toward the back, though, but rather toward the place where Poe had been moved when admirers of his work had finally gotten together to manage the creation of a fine monument to him.

“In an unmarked grave!” she said. “He had a cousin—Neilson Poe—in the city of Baltimore. Neilson was finally contacted after Poe was found and brought to the hospital. But the thing is, Poe never came back to his senses. He was delirious from the time he was found to the time he died.”

There were other visitors to the burial ground, some wandering around to view other notable graves, some hovering by the monument to Edgar Allan Poe.

“Miss, excuse me—is he really here? Or is this just the monument? You seem to know a great deal.”

An attractive woman of about forty or forty-five had stopped in front of Vickie; she’d apparently heard her speaking.

Vickie flushed. “I don’t know that much. I just always loved his work. I do know that he was exhumed and moved here—with other members of his family, Virginia Clemm, his wife, and Maria Clemm, her mother. You can see their names if you walk around the monument.”

The woman thanked her.

Others were gathering. Some came with curiosity—and some with absolute reverence, bowing their heads, speaking softly and then just standing there, as if by gathering at his grave they could breathe in some of his brilliance.

Griffin noticed that a boy standing near the monument suddenly jerked—as if he’d been startled or touched by someone unseen.

He looked around the monument, but saw nothing but other visitors who had come to pay their respects to Baltimore’s famous poet.

Griffin walked around the monument himself, then stopped short.

A man stood there, with dark hair and a sad face. He seemed to be dressed oddly for the day and the time.

The man saw Griffin. He lifted his hand in a salute, staring at Griffin gravely.

Griffin had never been the Poe reader that Vickie was. Of course, he’d never been any kind of a historian, either—able to rattle off names and dates with such amazing conversational ease.

But even he recognized the figure.

For a moment, he thought that the man was an actor, out to entertain Baltimore visitors at the burial ground.

Then the man disappeared, as if he’d faded into the stone itself.

And Griffin could only presume that he had just seen the real Edgar Allan Poe.

* * *

The news was out; it was everywhere.

Baltimore had lost another great writer, and how oddly, how eerily! He had died in a wine cellar—at a restaurant called the Black Bird, a restaurant that entirely honored the great writer Edgar Allan Poe.

Boston claimed Poe for its own—and had just added a life-size statue of him with a raven on Boylston Street. But in life, Poe hadn’t much loved the city of his birth. To be fair, he had lived and worked more in Virginia and Maryland. It seemed, however, that just as “Washington slept here” was a common refrain, Poe was also coveted. And it was only right. New York City had quite a claim on the man, too—in the Village, and up in the Bronx, where he had last lived, and where his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, had been waiting for him to come retrieve her.

Right now, Baltimore had renewed their claim on the man—and was musing over what facts were known about his death—and how they compared with the death of Franklin Verne.

Griffin and Vickie had come to the police station to meet up with Carl Morris, having given up the illusion that they were on any kind of a vacation or even off for the weekend.

Maybe they had been on the job from the moment the dream had first plagued her that morning, Vickie thought. And, if not then, they had become completely involved once Jackson had called, or even as soon as Monica Verne had reached out to Adam.

Monica’s resolve and passion couldn’t be ignored. Vickie just wished that she hadn’t brought that passion to the media so quickly.

Monica Verne was offering a hundred-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could lead her to the true cause of her husband’s death.

“Great, just great!” Griffin muttered. “Now we’ll get calls from every demented soul in the city.”

“Well, maybe someone will come forward with good information,” Vickie told him.

They were standing with Morris and a group of officers in the center of the work floor of the station; one of the officers had brought up the live footage on the large screen that hung from the room’s ceiling, available anytime there was some type of video footage that should be witnessed by all.

Monica must have called the local news station just minutes after Griffin and Vickie had left her home; any self-respecting journalist would have hurried to her with all possible speed.

Phones were always ringing, lighting up, at the police station. It almost appeared as if an alien ship sat above them, there was such a display of sound and light as the show aired.

Morris looked at Vickie, shaking his head sadly. “We can hope, but...for the most part? This kind of thing takes up hours of work, and yields little. But yes, we can hope.”

“Well, Monica is convinced her husband was murdered,” Vickie said.

“And she’s probably right,” Griffin murmured.

“Sorry!” Carl Morris called, his voice deep, rich, loud—and extending to the different officers and detectives in the room. “Answer all calls—do your best to sort the wheat from the chaff.”

“You’re going to love this one, Detective!” an officer called out, holding up one of the police station’s yellow crime-tip forms. “The Martians are here. They learned how to beam people places by watching Star Trek reruns for hours and hours. They killed him because they had to suck out his brain.”

Morris waved a hand in the air. There wasn’t much laughter. There were far more sighs.

Morris motioned to Vickie and Griffin. They followed him into his office.

There was a monitor screen at the side of his desk. Morris picked up a remote control and hit it. “Maybe you can see something I missed. I’ve gone over the digital video or whatever the hell it is from the front-door cameras a zillion times.”

Nothing happened on the screen. Morris swore softly. “Hang on,” he told them. “I have to go find a kid.”

The kid—Officer Benedict, who appeared to be about twenty-five—hurried in after Morris stood at the door and yelled out.

“Here, sir!” Benedict said to Morris, glancing at Griffin and Vickie with a grimace. “This, sir, turns it on. Then just hit this arrow, and it will play. The arrow is Play. But the device must be powered on.”

“I got it this time, I got it!” Morris said. “Hey, these things are new. We just got them in a week or so ago. Thanks, Benedict.”

“Yes, sir,” Benedict said.

“Stay, will you? These special agents might want the footage slowed down.”

There was only one real agent there at the moment—Griffin. But he didn’t say anything and Vickie kept quiet as well.

“We have footage from the opening at eleven o’clock all the way through the night,” Benedict explained. “So, it would take hours to watch it all.”

“Go ahead, start at the beginning,” Griffin told him. “I’ll have you speed it up—but please, Detective Morris, Officer Benedict, please let us know if you see someone coming or going that we should know about.”

“Of course,” Morris told them.

They began to watch the footage. They saw Gary Frampton, the owner, opening the door and looking out on the day, then closing it again. His daughter, Alice, arrived. A small cluster of men and women who’d been identified as kitchen staff showed up. Then later, Lacey Shaw, the Poe lover/gift shop manager, and then their waiter from the night before, whose full name was Jon Skye. More staff ambled on in. Then came the customers.

“There! Stop it. Back up a bit!” Morris told Benedict.

The young officer did as he was told. Morris leaned in to the screen, pointing at people as he said, “There. Naturally there is a major Poe literary society here, a national Poe society and others. Among them is one actually called the Blackbird Society, and they’re dedicated to all things Poe. Franklin Verne belonged nominally to a number of societies, and among them was the Blackbird Society. That woman there, Liza Harcourt, is the president. The man at her side is Alistair Malcolm, vice president of the society, and with them is...” He paused, staring at the screen.

“That’s Brent Whaley,” Office Benedict said. “Another writer. He’s probably best known in science fiction circles, but he loves horror and Poe. Oh, and he belongs to several societies, the Poe one here, and also an H. P. Lovecraft one up somewhere in the northeast, probably Rhode Island, where Lovecraft was from and where he’s buried.”

They all looked curiously at Officer Benedict.

“You have great information,” Griffin told him.

Benedict flushed and shrugged. “My parents are kind of armchair members. They pay their dues and they love to read all the different stories and articles that go out. They’re just kind of homebodies.”

“They all went in together,” Morris noted. “I’ve met Liza and Malcolm, just not Brent Whaley.”

“Well, they must be friends. They’re society friends, at least,” Benedict said.

Other diners came and went. Benedict sped up the recording, and people on the screen began to look like little ants.

Liza left the restaurant at about three thirty in the afternoon.

Malcolm left a few minutes later.

Brent Whaley didn’t seem to leave.

“Take it all the way to the next morning,” Griffin asked.

They watched as the evening diners—including Vickie and Griffin themselves—came and went. They watched as the staff left, including their waiter, Jon Skye, gift-store maven Lacey Shaw and finally Alice Frampton with her father, Gary. Then nothing. Just a few late-night stragglers walking past, but the front door didn’t open again, and the time stamp on the video rolled into the next day.

“Did you see Brent Whaley leave?” Griffin asked, looking at the others.

“Let me run the footage back,” Benedict said.

Morris pointed at the screen when a large group was leaving together. “Is that Whaley there? I think it’s the same man—the top of his head appears to be the same. But maybe not.”

“You have to be right,” Benedict said. “Yeah, that has to be him. He’s just surrounded by that big crowd—looks like it was a rehearsal dinner for a wedding. Guess Brent got into the middle of it.”

“Maybe—or maybe not,” Griffin murmured.

“We’ll find out. Because if he was still in the restaurant... I guess we’ll pick up Brent Whaley. If he tells us he walked out in a crowd...we’ll know for sure. But even with the cameras, there are things that can be missed. And there is the delivery door... Oh, we’ll be really nice. We’ll ask for help from him,” Morris said wearily. He shook his head. “Would one writer kill another? Out of jealousy, anger or a perceived insult?”

Griffin looked at Vickie. “I don’t think it involved writers, but... ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’” he said.

“Oh, yeah, man! I read that one,” Office Benedict said, enthused. “So cold! So precise... But our victim wasn’t walled in.”

“Poe liked to wall people in, huh?” Morris asked, shaking his head. “‘The Black Cat.’ He liked burying people alive, too. ‘The Premature Burial’—and others, I’m sure.”

“Everyone is a Poe expert,” Griffin murmured, looking at Vickie a little bit baffled. She had to smile. “Detective, Mrs. Verne said that you took her husband’s desktop computer. Have you been able to find anything on it, any references to him planning to meet up with anyone—anything at all?”

“Our tech people are on it—and they’re good,” Morris assured him.

“I’m sure they are,” Griffin said. “We’ll be in touch then,” he said. “Will you let me know if you’re able to find Brent Whaley?”

When they left a few minutes later, Vickie whispered to Griffin, “That really was a great rendition of ‘The Raven’ you gave earlier.”

He laughed, squeezing her hand and smiling at her. “Yeah? Well...”

He looked away. Something was bothering him, she thought. “My turn,” she said. “What? What’s going on?”

“I saw him.”

“Him—who?”

“Him—Poe. Edgar Allan. He was at the burial ground.”

“The ghost of?” Vickie asked, frowning.

“Looked just like Poe—and disappeared in the wink of an eye. In my experience that means, A, I’ve worked at this job too long, B, there’s a really amazing magician at work in Baltimore, or, C, the ghost of the master of horror and mystery himself, Edgar Allan Poe, is walking among us!”

3

Vickie stood on North Amity Street, looking at the building that Edgar Allan Poe had once called home.

She was on her own; Griffin had headed to the morgue with Carl Morris. The medical examiner—Dr. Myron Hatfield—was going to start right in on Franklin Verne.

With the uproar in the city over the very unusual passing of such a man, it was imperative that he give a cause of death as quickly as possible. He had already been approached by various media outlets, of course.

He’d said he could not give out cause until he had received results on every test that must be considered when such a death had occurred.

Bravo, Myron! Vickie had thought. She was sure that certain things might quickly be obvious. She was glad that the man intended to be thorough—and that he wouldn’t be pressured into speaking before he was ready.

Morris had, she realized, kept a number of pieces of information from the press. There was no mention of the dead blackbirds found by him, nor the little souvenir-style raven Verne had been holding so tightly in his hand.

Vickie looked up at the house. She had downloaded and printed some information about the residence while at the police station.

While the home wasn’t furnished, it was on the National Registry of Historic Places, and, according to her reading, very much the same as it had been during the years Poe had lived there between 1833 and 1835. A Poe society had struggled long and hard to preserve the building and had managed to do so. Through time—and due to the expense of keeping up the old property—city organizations took over. Now Poe Baltimore, an organization dedicated to keeping alive the brilliance of the man who had lived and written some of his most amazing work in the city, took care of the house.

The house was a small brick row house in a line of other similar houses.

A friendly docent welcomed her and explained some of the rooms and the exhibits. The museum was proud to have Poe’s writing desk and a number of other important artifacts, some china, glasses and more that had belonged to the family. Vickie admired the objects—those that had belonged to Poe’s father, and those that were simply from the correct period.

Walking the rooms, halls and stairways of the house and studying the exhibits, Vickie wondered about the fact that Griffin had been the one to see Poe—while she had dreamed about him. She wondered if she was a little bit worried that the ghost had shown himself to Griffin rather than to her—or if she was just disturbed because her dream had been so real. She had nearly felt the dirt of the road; she had heard the noise of the tavern as if it had been real. She’d much rather simply see the man—or the specter of him—than face dreams that made her feel she was right there with the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the dust that stirred in the air.

The staircases in the house were wicked—with twists and turns and very narrow. Vickie smiled and stepped out of the way for a mother with a young son to make their way up.

Vickie followed; the house was mostly empty, but there were displays here and there.

She studied Poe’s family tree and felt she got a sense for why he loved the Virginia and Maryland areas so much more than Boston. Both of Poe’s parents had been actors. He’d been born in Boston, but his father’s grandfather had been a Revolutionary hero and the Poe family had settled in Baltimore even before the fighting had begun. And while his foster father had been in Richmond, Poe had found love in the arms of his cousin, Virginia Clemm. His mother-in-law/aunt had loved him, too. He’d formed a family here. According to one exhibit, Poe had considered himself to be a “Virginia gentleman.”

And yet, in the end, Baltimore had claimed him.

She was reading another placard when she felt an uneasy sensation. The mother and little boy were near her, along with an older couple and a small group of young women who appeared to be high school age. She looked around.

And then she saw him. He was standing behind the young women. He was watching her with what seemed to be tremendous enjoyment. As she stared at him, he smiled deeply, and then gave his attention to the pocket watch he drew from his waistcoat. He pointed a finger at her, as if he was mocking her. And then he disappeared.

She blinked.

She had seen him. She had definitely seen him.

And she was suddenly angry; he was playing with the two of them. Somehow, he had haunted her when she’d been sleeping! And now he was playing the mystery out with his appearances and disappearances.

If he had something to say, he needed to say it!

She turned and strode across the room, eager to get down the steps—very eager to leave the house. On the very narrow stairway, she felt something—as if a hand pushed her. She gritted her teeth, really angry—until she realized that she hadn’t been pushed, she’d been grasped.

Vickie managed to swing around just in time to catch the little boy, who had hurried ahead of his mother and tripped on a step.

She steadied him, mentally mocking herself.

Poe’s ghost had not been trying to push her down the stairs. She was glad to have rescued the overanxious boy and was quick to assure the boy’s mother that it was nothing—she might have tripped on the stairs herself!

Outside the small museum, she muttered beneath her breath as she headed for her car.

Glancing up, Vickie couldn’t help but note that while it was afternoon, the sun was still up in the late-summer sky. It had been a long day, and it seemed almost ridiculous that so much could have happened and it still be the same day. But it all had moved quickly. They had gone from the wine cellar at the Black Bird to see Monica Verne. From her house, they’d gone to Poe’s tombstone, then to the station, and from there, Griffin had gone on to the morgue and she had come out to the museum.

The afternoon was waning, but...

There was still sun.

And shadows, she thought, going into the parking garage. For a moment, she paused, turning quickly. She had felt certain that she was being followed.

She saw no one. But since she couldn’t see anyone, she spoke aloud.

“You wretched little bastard! If you’re following me, just show yourself. And if you can’t have the manners to do so, well, shove the hell off!”

No one replied. She tensed, hearing a footstep. It was just a man in a hoodie, hands deep in his pockets. He looked up at her as if she was crazy, shaking his head. He didn’t speak to her, but muttered beneath his breath.

“I’m not following you, lady. Take a pill.”

Wincing, Vickie let out a breath and hurried to the elevator at the parking garage, and then across the asphalt to her own car. She got in and set her key in the ignition.

It was then that he spoke.

“Good afternoon, miss.”

She nearly broke the key in the ignition, switching it off, turning to stare at the ghost.

It wasn’t that she was in the least afraid of the dead. Dylan Ballantine—the teenaged ghost who had saved her in high school—had taken it upon himself to be her near constant companion and torment her through a great deal of her college years. Now, he had a lovely girlfriend, Darlene—a young woman sadly lost to killers, but who had reached out to Vickie to help solve her case. She was used to having spirits around.

It had nothing to do with fear. It had everything to do with Poe’s ghost following her around and popping up in her car.

He was now seated next to her in his suit, waistcoat and an ascot. A curl of his dark hair fell over his forehead.

“Ass!” Vickie muttered, so startled that she was shaking. She was glad—at least—that he had spoken before she’d driven out into traffic.

Then she realized that she had just called a man who had created work she had admired all her life an ass.

But he did not seem to be offended.

Rather, he grinned at her with sheer pleasure.

“Wonderful! You do see me, and quite clearly!” he said. “I mean, one must face it. There were times, indeed, when I might have been compared to the lowliest of the beasts of burden! But I beg of you, believe this! I can be charming and sincere and offer the utmost assistance as well. And, my dear Miss Preston—oh! First, forgive me being so forward, but I observed some of the most recent events and heard your name. I am, of course, Edgar Allan Poe—and I do believe that you need assistance!”

“Sir, I will tell you this,” Vickie said, irritated and amazed that a ghost could make her feel so aggravated, “I see you clearly.”

His pleasure increased; his dark eyes twinkled. “I’m quite overcome—so deeply pleased. Why, it hasn’t been since...perhaps 1921 or so, when Mr. Abraham Grisham was in the city that I was able to speak so simply and easily with the living. He was a charming man—quite well lettered. He spoke to me at the burial ground. Oh, you mustn’t think that I spend my days sitting melancholy in the cemetery—despite the words I wrote. I... Well, I’m not at all sure what I’m doing here, but, my dear young woman, I dearly hope that you realize I wrote fiction, and that I was no ghoul!”

“No, of course not. I had a dream about you, about the day you died,” Vickie said.

“You seem like an intelligent young woman. I’d not have whispered in your ear as you lay sleeping had it not appeared so. I listened at the restaurant... You were knowledgeable. I was so pleased. So many people see me in such a sad light. As if I did nothing but haunt old, decrepit, decaying houses crumbling apart! Graveyards by night... They seemed to think I was a drunken, broken man, even in death, wasting away on a tombstone. That was that wretched Griswold—Rufus Griswold.” He stared at Vickie, as if waiting for her to say something.

She did. “Rufus Griswold. You attacked him with some rather pointed criticism of his work. When you died, he found his revenge. But you see, in the end, of course, you won. People became enamored of your work more and more with each year. I can assure you, very few people today would know the name Griswold—but there is probably no one who has ever attended a school in America who has not heard of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Bravo, Miss Preston, and words most kind. Far sweeter to my ear than those I heard before! Imagine—those that came harsh upon the ear before as you traversed the garage! Such rude words to fall from such rose-like lips!” the ghost said, shaking his head. “Dear me! Not that I have not known my share of opinionated members of the gentler sex, but...you can be quite hasty and devilish in your speech!”

She narrowed her eyes. “Trust me, I’ve said worse. Usually, when your kind makes acquaintance with me, it’s because they need help. If you wish for some kind of assistance, Mr. Poe, it’s not good manners to pop up here and there, and then disappear, testing the sanity of the living.”

He still looked at her, amused.

“Should I care? I’m afraid I’m quite beyond help, though, to be honest, I don’t at all understand this existence.” For a moment, he looked stricken—he had an expression that suited every description of him as a haunted and miserable man who had led a life of substance abuse, scraping for an income, continually plagued by death and misfortune in those around him. “My Elmira has gone,” he said. “All those I would call beloved, or friend—or even enemy. So...you, Miss Preston, surely need help. Not me. Therefore, I am at my leisure. You may do the groveling, if you so choose.”

“You may get out of my car, if you wish to be so rude,” she said.

He smiled at that. “My apologies! It is not my intention to be rude. You have no grasp of what it is like to be among the dead. Here on earth. Quite uncomfortable—I mean, those unused to being critiqued and disparaged would barely make it! People walking through you, not seeing you, not noting a pleasant, ‘Good morning!’ And those of my kind. Oh, the wailing and lamenting! Quite enough to give one a dreadful headache—I mean, had one actually had a real head that might ache!”

She had actually been really angry—as much as she admired Poe. She’d simply seen the dead most of her adult life, and there was one thing she knew for a certainty. They were very much like their living selves. Some were giving, some needed help, some were kind—and some were self-absorbed and self-righteous and not so nice.

“Do you know what happened to Franklin Verne?” she asked him.

“Most sadly, I do not,” he told her. “But of this, I’m quite certain. He did not kill himself. He did not fall back into the ways of sin or the flesh or into a vat of wine, as they might well say! I knew Franklin Verne. Well, I did not know him as those who called him friend might know him—I know the man because I observed him. He was a good man. A good writer. He loved his wife very much. I felt that we were kindred spirits.”

Vickie studied him, waiting. It had been, she knew, way too much to hope that the ghost of Poe, having appeared in her dream and now in her car, had all the pat answers she might need.

“He loved his wife, and she loved him,” Vickie said.

He nodded, grave now, not taunting or teasing. “You see, he reminded me of where I was when... Well, I don’t know what happened at the end myself, but I am referring to the point when I left this earth. When I died. I was on a train...and then I was dead. I have been listening to theories ever since. But that is no matter now. It is far too late to be solved. But so—here is one truth. Sarah Elmira Shelton was my first love. We were so young...and in love as only youth can be in love. Her father betrayed us. I went on. And believe me, I did love my Virginia. Dear, sweet, innocent Virginia! So very lovely! And yet, she was gone. And then I was back in Richmond, and there was my Sarah Elmira, a widow herself. She was no flushing young rose; time lay between us. Time had taken a toll upon us both as well. For her, I joined the temperance society. I gave up drink. And I did not die in a drunken stupor—to that I swear!” He was passionate, but he stopped suddenly, smiling at her. “I knew love, and that is what I mean. And I have seldom seen such a deep, rich, selfless love as that which Franklin Verne bore his wife, and which she bore him in return. He told her he would not drink. I told Sarah Elmira that I would not drink. I meant it—so did Franklin Verne. I came to you because the truth must be proved for him—he did not run down to a wine cellar and drown himself in a vat of wine!”

“No,” Vickie said.

“You must understand—”

“I do.”

“What?” He frowned. “You really believe that?”

“I believe he was murdered. I met Franklin Verne a few times. I also write. History.”

“Ah, nonfiction.” He studied her. “Not poetic at all, but...”

“Excuse me! It’s not easy, laying down facts and figures, making it interesting and keeping the reader going. Well, okay, sometimes history is so bizarre that it is all quite intriguing, but...”

“Back to me! And Franklin, of course. How are you going to prove the truth?”

“Griffin will find the truth. Griffin and the FBI and the police,” Vickie said. “I’m not an agent yet. I have no real power.”

“You don’t need power,” he told her.

“No?”

He lifted a hand into the air dismissively. “I am credited with creating the first mystery novel, you know. Detective novel. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’”

“Yes, I know the story. But Franklin Verne wasn’t killed by an ape.”

“Neither was I, my dear, neither was I. The point is this—one needs to merely follow the clues to discover the truth.”

“And you know how to follow the clues?”

“Indeed, I do. My dear Miss Preston, I did not write the first such novel without having some knowledge of the quest for such forensic knowledge.”

Vickie smiled. “Well, then.” She turned the key in the ignition once again.

“Where are we going?” he asked her.

“To the morgue.”

“I will not go in.”

“I’m not going in,” she told him. “Griffin is there. And I believe that Dr. Hatfield is very good at what he does. If there is something that we need to know, we’ll know it.”

“Yes.” The ghost of Poe looked thoughtful and concerned. “If Verne drank, someone forced that drink into him!”

“Possibly.” Vickie hesitated. “He did smell like wine.”

Poe lifted his hands. “I don’t—I can’t smell anymore, so...” He smiled at her. “I would think, Miss Preston, that you wear the sweetest perfume.”

“Well, thank you. I think,” she murmured. “We’ll go and get Griffin. He’s seen you, of course, you know.”

“How rare. How delightfully rare. Two of you! And it’s almost as if...”

“As if?”

“As if I were living again. If only...” He paused again, then seemed to straighten. “But we will not be waylaid in our quest. We will find the truth. Franklin Verne was a fine man. I believe that too often in life, he received slings and arrows for reviews. I think others were jealous of him.”

“Everyone gets bad reviews now and then,” Vickie said, and chuckled softly. “Anyone can review a book now and so many people do. I can’t think of an author who doesn’t get a bad review somewhere along the line—even if out of jealousy or sour grapes. Perhaps deserved—perhaps not. Books being digital and reviews online mean that... Well, like I said. Everyone gets a bad review now and then.”

“Rufus Griswold,” Poe said. “Rufus Griswold, too, is long from the world we both once knew. But what people see as the legend of me is largely through that man’s words. Yes, I could overdo. I was temperamental. I had an ego. I was prone to dive into alcohol. But I wasn’t a perpetual drunk! And I did join the temperance league, and I wouldn’t have gone against Sarah Elmira...”

“You think that Rufus Griswold murdered you?” Vickie demanded.

“Only on the page, my dear. Only on the page. I was somehow murdered. And while my thoughts on that pompous bastard with a total lack of imagination regarding coherent verbiage are dark, I don’t believe he murdered me. Did someone cause my death—other than myself, as sometimes assumed? Yes. But...even in death, I can’t find the truth. That’s why I feel that I must hound you and your lawman until the two of you find out what happened to Franklin Verne. If I can’t find justice for myself, I will strive to see that the words and opinions that cast ill on memories of me do not fall upon him as well. He mustn’t be maligned. For him, the truth of this matter will be known!”

* * *

There would never be anything nice about an autopsy.

The morgue was, however, as clean as one could imagine. The scent of decay was well washed in that of disinfectant. Stainless steel seemed to glint against tile, and while the dead lay silently upon their gurneys, the living moved among them with purpose and determination.

Franklin Verne was not the only corpse awaiting the tender mercies of the medical examiner.

At the moment, he was, however, the one who apparently commanded the most attention.

Photographers were still at work when Carl Morris and Griffin arrived; the body of the man had been stripped and cleaned and the first incisions had begun. Dr. Myron Hatfield spoke as he worked; he didn’t take notes by hand but rather had a microphone hanging above the body, recording. He acknowledged the arrival of Morris and Griffin, noting the time as well. He urged them forward, lifting a lock of Franklin Verne’s hair. “At this point, I am directing the detective and agent to notice the hematoma rising on the left side of the forehead. Such bruising does not appear to have formed as the result of any fall, but rather it appears to be the result of a strike by a hard, blunt object. Bruising is also beginning to appear around the mouth, specific points of such bruising appearing as if perhaps fingers and a thumb pressed the mouth open. Previous to the body being stripped and washed, the smell of wine was abundant upon the corpse and clothing, indicative of a great deal of wine being poured on the face and spilling over.”

Hatfield went on with his observations; then the typical Y incision had to be made. He continued to comment on the state of his subject.

Franklin Verne may have cleaned up his life, but he had done damage, and such damage Hatfield noted.

The heart was enlarged.

The liver bore witness to overindulgence.

But what cruel injury Franklin Verne had done himself in life had been on the mend. There was nothing visible that would have immediately taken his life. Samples were taken from the stomach, of the hair, and so on; they would be sent for analysis. An as-yet-unknown poison might have been the actual cause of death, but if so, that substance would be revealed with time.

The man’s heart had given out, perhaps due to the damage of an imbibed or otherwise ingested substance, perhaps due to the brutal strike on the head, or a combination thereof.

Finally, Hatfield fell silent. He looked down at the man he studied, his expression sad. He asked his assistant to please care for the body.

Then he turned off the microphone and stepped away with Griffin and Morris.

“So...no definitive cause of death?” Morris asked him.

“Well, there will be. As of right now...no. We’ll wait for the test results.”

“But what do you think?” Griffin asked him.

“What do I think?” Dr. Hatfield turned and looked at Griffin, studying him up and down for a moment. “Damn it, I don’t want to say anything official yet. If I were to suggest something, it could become rumor, and too many people take rumor as truth. Then you learn something different from forensic tests—and you have to explain what is proved far too many times. But between us? I think that some person or persons unknown set up Mr. Verne. I think that he was struck on the head with some blunt object. He was somehow spirited down to the cellar of that club, and wine and other substances were forced into him. Will I say this yet for the record? No. Yes, the man might have fallen, gotten up, stumbled in—and drank a ton of wine or whatever. His wife might have pinched his face. He might have pinched his own face shaving. I will not go on record yet. But neither would I have you waste your time assuming this to be the man’s own downfall or an accident. I suggest you begin your hunt for a killer now, gentlemen. And I believe, as in all such cases, the sooner one suspects the worse and seeks the truth, the better. Mrs. Monica Verne is no fool—her husband was murdered.”

* * *

Vickie waited outside the morgue for Griffin. She could have gone in; she chose not to do so. For one, Poe didn’t want to go in. She explained to him that there was a reception area that was corpse-free at most times, but he wasn’t interested.

For a ghost, he was pretty squeamish.

“Thankfully,” he told her, “there is something about the body and the tragedy of the decay that befalls us all. Rot is not, nor never has been appealing, as well I should know, since I have a talent for description of all that is foul and ghoulish in the extreme. That one can find the words to create the tremendous discomfort and fear to be found in such sadness does not mean that one enjoys...rot!”

And so they stood outside on the sidewalk.

At length, Griffin appeared, exiting the building with Detective Carl Morris. Morris noted her first, pointing her out to Griffin.

Griffin surely saw Poe at her side, but he barely batted an eye.

Griffin was skilled at seeing the dead—and not appearing as though anything strange was going on.

“Why, Vickie!” Morris said, smiling as he approached her. “There is a cool and comfortable vestibule, though I had thought—since you are about to enter the academy—you might have chosen to join us within.”

Vickie didn’t reply to his words but rather smiled and asked, “Did you learn anything?”

“Well, we learned that our illustrious ME believes that the man was murdered. He’s waiting on test results to discover just what caused the death,” Griffin offered. He kept from looking at Poe. “He was apparently struck on the head with a hard, blunt object.”

“And forced to drink,” Morris added. “Only tests will explain exactly what caused the damage to his organs,” he added, “and they’ll let us know what they discover.”

“He was somehow brought downstairs to the wine cellar of the restaurant—as we, of course, suspected. There—or perhaps to get him there—he was struck on the head. A good, hard blow. It might have rendered him temporarily unconscious. Wine—and possibly other substances—were forced into him. We saw the bruises on the cheeks that suggest his mouth was forced open. As far as poison or some other deadly substance being forced into him, yes, the tests will tell,” Griffin said.

“Dear God—too much like my own wretched demise!” Poe said. He looked at Griffin, a strange expression on his face. His words had been dark, but there was almost a smile on his face. He was testing and teasing Griffin—and her!

Griffin didn’t react.

The ghost was completely aware that Griffin saw him.

And aware, too, that Morris did not.

Beyond a doubt, something of the mischief maker had certainly remained with the soul of the man.

“Well, Franklin Verne was dearly beloved by many—and therefore had hidden enemies somewhere,” Morris said. “I’m going to the office. We’ll be speaking with Monica Verne and looking into Franklin Verne’s known associates. And you?” he asked Griffin.

“I think we’ll return to the restaurant,” Griffin said.

“It’s closed until tomorrow,” Morris said. “I’m studying the architect’s old layout for the building, trying to decide if there was any other way in. I may be sending crime-scene techs back in.”

“Of course. I’d like to look around now, if you don’t mind,” Griffin said.

“Not at all. I don’t give a damn who solves this—I just want it solved,” Morris assured him.

“My sentiments exactly, sir,” Griffin said.

Morris made a saluting movement with his hat. “We’ll keep in close contact,” he said, and then he left.

Griffin turned immediately to their ghost once Morris was out of earshot. “Mr. Poe. A pleasure,” he said. “I am a tremendous fan of your work.”

“Intelligent lad,” Poe informed Vickie. “FBI!” he continued. “Such an institution did not exist in my day. People were not fond of the federal government being in their business, you know.”

“Nor are they today,” Griffin assured him, “but then, there are times when the abilities of a far-reaching body to coordinate with offices everywhere is often beneficial. The world is easily traveled these days—the worst criminals can quickly hop from state to state.”

“Yes, yes, of course, I have been observing. Enough about the rest of the world. Let’s move back to dear Mr. Franklin Verne. You must prove that he didn’t go to that cellar and drink himself silly. You do have a plan, of course?”

“I do, yes,” Griffin told him.

“I shall help in any way I can.”

“Help would be most greatly appreciated. So to begin, what is your concern here? Do you know anything of what happened?”

“Do I know the killer?” Poe asked Griffin.

“Yes.”

“Don’t be daft, man!” Poe said, irritated. “If I knew, do you not think I’d have shared such information by now?”

Vickie hid her smile. Griffin looked downward for a minute.

The ghost had gotten him.

He looked up. “We are heading back to the restaurant.”

“Fine. I shall, when appropriate, tell you what I know of the people there.”

“You do know them, then?” Vickie asked him.

“Know them? Ah, to know one infers that there has been an actual volley of information, affection and ideas. Know? I know what one can from observation of people,” Poe said. He seemed to puff up a bit. “After all, they are part of a Poe society. Naturally, I find the members intriguing, and, of course—with all humility—I cannot help but admire their taste in the subject matter they choose to honor!”

“With all humility!” Griffin said to Vickie, but he was smiling, and she knew that he was fascinated—delighted that they had actually been able to meet the ghost of the poet and author.

“Touché!” Poe said softly. “Well, then, if you’ll excuse me, I have a bit of detective work I’d like to be doing on my own. I trust that you two will be avidly pursuing leads, and when we meet again, an exchange of information will help build the bridge to the truth!”

Poe turned and walked away. They seemed to see him...

And then they did not.

He had moved on.

“Where to now?” Vickie asked Griffin.

“Back to the scene of the crime,” he told her. “Where’s the car?”

Vickie led the way. Griffin was thoughtful. He glanced at her as they reached the car, and he smiled again.

“You’re driving? I’m driving?”

“Whichever. Here, you drive. You know Baltimore better than I do—and the way to the Black Bird.” Vickie tossed him the keys; he caught them deftly. They got in. For a moment, he paused.

“Poe!” he said.

She smiled. It wasn’t that often that she saw Griffin impressed.

“Poe,” she agreed. She hesitated. “It’s great—and it’s sad, too, really.”

“What’s sad?” Griffin asked, pulling out onto the street.

“Well, he had a hard life. His parents died. His foster mother loved him, but died. He argued with his foster father, who didn’t support him through college. He fell in love and the girl’s father hid his letters. He fell in love again, and his bride died. And then, as far as his own death went...no one really knows. And now...he’s still running around, haunting Baltimore,” Vickie said.

“Many times, life can be sad. And sometimes, it’s as they say—life is what we make it. Poe was incredibly talented. He did have an ego the size of Texas. He argued with people. He was a drunk.”

“Not as bad as his biographers might have made him out to be, Griffin!”

“Hey, I agree he was talented, and I think it’s great he’s helping on this,” Griffin told her. “But there was something dark about him—he did provoke a lot of his enemies. And there you go—there’s your next project. A book on Poe—in his defense.”

Vickie thought about that. “I’m not so sure I can do the research the way it should be done while I’m in the academy. But...yeah! You’re right.” She laughed. “And now I have insight.” She fell silent, hoping that they were able to find the truth—and that in doing so, they might, in a way, help the long-dead author as well.

Griffin pulled into the parking lot for the Black Bird.

“Showtime!” he said softly.

“Showtime?”

“Well, I would bet that we’re going to discover that Franklin Verne was killed by someone who knew him well.” His expression was grim as he looked toward the restaurant. “I believe he was killed by a friend, the worst kind of betrayal. And perhaps...”

“Perhaps it was the same with Edgar Allan Poe as well.”

4

The officer nodded to Vickie and Griffin and opened the door for them to enter. The restaurant was closed that day out of respect for Franklin Verne, and because it was an active crime scene.

While the restaurant was shut, Gary and Alice Frampton and Lacey Shaw from the gift shop had still come in.

Gary, a man of about fifty with salt-and-pepper hair, a medium build and an easygoing manner, was sitting at a table near the bar, frowning as he read the paper.

Alice was drying glasses behind the bar, inspecting them for spots.

Lacey was opening boxes. They were filled with little bobblehead statues of Poe and little ravens.

The same as the little raven Franklin Verne had been holding when he’d died.

But of course, no one knew that but the crime-scene technicians, the ME, Detective Carl Morris—and whomever he had shared with at the BPD—and Griffin and Vickie. Lacey Shaw certainly had no way of knowing that Franklin Verne had been holding one of the little bird models.

Unless, of course, she had killed him.

Lacey, along with Alice and Gary, looked up and ceased their activities when Griffin and Vickie arrived.

“Hey!” Alice said, seeming relieved that they were there.

“Hey, how are you all doing?” Griffin asked.

“Handling the situation the best we can,” Gary said, his mouth a grim, glum line as he finished speaking.

“Sad, sad, so sad!” Lacey said. Then she pointed to the TV screens above the bar and groaned. “Have you seen this yet?” A reporter was interviewing Monica Verne.

Alice hit a button on a remote control; the volume increased. Monica was an excellent subject for the TV news. She was bereft, and she was passionate, promising that she’d pay for any information leading to the truth behind her husband’s death, and vowing that she would get to the bottom of the situation. Her husband’s murder would not go without justice.

The reporter suggested that there had been no murder, that Franklin Verne might have fallen back into his old ways.

That brought another flurry of passionate denial from Monica. So much so that the reporter turned red and took a step back.

The bar phone rang shrilly, making everyone there jump.

“Don’t answer it!” Gary Frampton groaned. “It’s another kook.” He looked at Griffin and Vickie and sighed as if with great exhaustion. “We reopen tomorrow. Staying closed today as the police asked, but we’re already booked solid for tomorrow, from the first seating until midnight. I don’t get it. I wanted Franklin Verne’s patronage—I sure as hell never wanted him to die here! Now the phone rings off the hook already! And half the calls are from mediums, certain that they can contact Franklin Verne and that when they do, they’ll solve the mystery of his murder.”

“Mediums. Nice,” Vickie murmured, gazing at the phone. “Shall I?” she asked them.

“Please!” Alice said.

She answered the bar’s landline. “The Black Bird, may I help you?”

“No,” came the answer. “But I can help you!”

“I don’t think I need any help at the moment,” Vickie said. “The restaurant is booked for tomorrow. Perhaps you’d like to make a reservation for a future date?”

“I’m Liza Harcourt!” the voice said indignantly.

“And Liza Harcourt, you are...?”

Lacey, Alice and Gary moaned before the woman could answer Vickie.

“I’m the head of the Blackbird Society!” the woman said indignantly. “And I can come over right now and we can set up a séance. I will channel my spirit guide, and will take us all to the night and point us all in the right direction of the murderer!”

“Ms. Harcourt,” Vickie said, looking out at the others, “I’m so sorry. The police have closed the restaurant for the day and while the crime-scene tape stays up, the restaurant is closed to everyone except for law enforcement and the owner.”

The woman went off with such virulence that Vickie held the receiver away from her ear.

“You can hang up on her if you want,” Lacey suggested.

Alice looked at Vickie wide-eyed and shuddered.

Vickie let the tirade go on. When it seemed that the woman was forced to pause for breath, she quickly cut in. “The restaurant will reopen tomorrow. At that time, you’re welcome to speak with the owner about a séance.”

Gary Frampton let out a grunt of disgust.

“Well, excuse me! And who, exactly, are you—answering the Black Bird’s phone?” Liza Harcourt demanded.

Vickie hesitated. She was tempted to tell the woman that if she had psychic power, she should figure it out herself.

“I’m with law enforcement,” she said simply. That, of course, could be taken many ways, but it wasn’t a lie. “Good afternoon, Ms. Harcourt,” she said. And then she hung up the receiver.

“Hmm,” Griffin murmured, watching her. He looked at Gary Frampton. “And just who is this woman, Liza Harcourt?”

“As she said, she’s the head of a society—the one based here, in and through the Black Bird,” he added with a sigh. “I love books—and I love Poe, as you can see by the restaurant, I imagine. So, of course, I’m a member myself. I encouraged the creation of the society—at the very beginning, it was all that guaranteed me I’d have a customer now and then.”

“And she’s really harmless,” Lacey said. “A snob—but harmless.”

“She’s very wealthy,” Alice explained. “She really is a snob—elite, you know. Above all the rest of us. She doesn’t like me at all.”

“Why?” Vickie asked her.

“Probably because I’m not an aged and dried-up old bat!” Alice said.

“No,” Gary said softly, looking at his daughter with pride. “You’re beautiful, my dear—the spitting image of your mother, just as lovely!” His smile was poignant; Alice’s mother was apparently deceased. Gary cleared his throat.

“Liza! She’s filthy rich and...well, it was her husband’s money. But she’s managed to convince herself that she was the one born into privilege,” Lacey said.

“She considers herself an expert on Poe and his work. Oh, and, of course, she thinks she’s a wonderful poet herself. She did a reading one night—dreadful! But,” Gary added ruefully, “she filled the place. She is loud, cantankerous and full of herself. Still, she can be a great deal of fun and very supportive of the society, Poe—and my restaurant.”

“And that’s why we’re all nice to her!” Alice said, glancing over at Lacey and shaking her head.

“And she’s a medium?” Vickie asked.

Lacey laughed at that. “She’s a medium now? I mean, she’s come in here with a crystal ball and a Ouija board, but to the best of my knowledge, she’s never awakened anything but a few dust motes! Still, she believes that she has special communications with Poe.”

“I guess she thinks that she can contact Franklin Verne, too,” Alice said. She sighed softly. “She’s...okay. Really. You just need a lot of energy when she’s around.”

“And she knew Franklin Verne?”

“Quite well, yes,” Gary said, glancing over at his daughter and Lacey. “They both...had a lot of money. They gave to a lot of the same local charities. She always told me that she could get Franklin Verne in here.”

“Do you think that she did?” Griffin asked seriously.

“Do I think that she got him in here?” Gary asked. He seemed perplexed, and then his eyes widened. “Oh! I see. Do I think that she lured him here, that she plied him with wine...? Well, she’s a little bit of a thing. If she did lure him, she’d have had to have lured him, you know what I mean?”

“She didn’t carry him down any stairs,” Lacey said flatly. “She’s ninety pounds, tops.”

“Were they friends or acquaintances?” Griffin asked.

Gary stood and stretched. He sighed deeply, putting his hands on his hips, then he looked steadily at Griffin. “We were all acquaintances. Over time, through festivals and readings and what have you—book signings—we all knew Franklin Verne. Liza had been talking to him about coming to a meeting here, and she could be a very good friend—I’m sure that she intended for him to endorse the restaurant.”

“We didn’t know him nearly so well,” Alice said. “In passing, he might recognize us, and he might smile or wave. He wasn’t going to insist we come for Sunday coffee, or anything like that.”

Lacey had a distant look in her eyes. She was holding one of the ravens she had unpacked and looking thoughtfully toward one of the walls. “He was all right,” she said softly. “I talked to him now and then. Of course, I carried his new books in the gift shop. But I would actually talk to him now and then. Sometimes he’d call me—just to make sure that I wasn’t having any trouble getting his work from the distributor or the publisher. Of course, no one had trouble getting his work. He was very popular.”

“Like Poe,” Alice murmured.

“Poe did gain a great deal more popularity in death,” Gary said.

“As will Franklin Verne!” Alice said softly. “Sad, huh?”

“Who do you think would have hurt him?” Griffin asked. “I mean, I realize that Liza was the one who knew him, but you were all in or involved with the society. Any ideas at all?”

No one had a chance to answer him; they heard a hard pounding on the outside door, past the hostess station.

“What the hell? I have a huge sign out there!” Gary said.

“I’ll go,” Vickie volunteered. “It’s a bolt?”

“Yes, several, actually, no alarm on. Just twist the bolts. We are not open!” Gary said.

Vickie hurried to the door, leaving Griffin with the others.

There were three bolts on the door—not easily opened. But she didn’t believe that Franklin Verne and his murderer had entered by the front, anyway.

She unlocked and opened the door. And she stared into the face of Jon Skye, their young waiter from the night before.

“Hey!” he said, obviously very surprised to see her there. “Um...what are you doing here? I got a call this morning... I saw the news. But I figured that Gary and Alice were here, and I felt that I had to help and...why the hell are you here?” he asked.

“Griffin is with the FBI,” Vickie explained quickly.

“Oh. Oh, the FBI! But...I’m so confused. So, he didn’t just die. He didn’t sneak in to do a suicide thing, huh? He was murdered. Like his wife says? Still, I don’t get it. Oh, but yeah, Franklin Verne was so well-known. It’s national news—worldwide news, really. Is that it?”

“Actually, we don’t know anything yet,” Vickie said. “Any such death has to be investigated, and Monica Verne is very good friends with Griffin’s director,” she explained. She was still blocking the door. She hesitated, and then stepped aside. He’d come to lend support to Gary and Alice, much, she assumed, as Lacey had done.

Or because he was curious. But Vickie decided she’d let the others sort that out.

“Thanks,” Jon told her, entering. He nodded and strode ahead of her into the bar area.

The group there all greeted him. Alice seemed to perk up, glad to see Jon.

Griffin nodded at Vickie. Apparently, it had been the right thing to do, letting him in.

“I came by to see if I could help in some way,” Jon said.

“Sure, thanks. We’re all just sitting here a little shell-shocked. Appreciate you coming,” Gary said.

“It’s terrible about Franklin Verne,” Jon said. He looked over at Griffin. He shook his head. “I do understand that any unexplained death has to be explained. But...FBI? Does this all mean that Franklin Verne was murdered? That he didn’t just sneak in to give it all up, go on a binge—and die?”

Griffin didn’t answer the question but rather voiced one in return. “Do you know of anyone jealous of him? Someone who would want to hurt him—for any reason?” he asked.

Gary, Lacey, Jon and Alice all looked at one another. Then they all looked at Griffin and shook their heads in unison—almost as if it had been rehearsed.

“Whoever it was—if there was a whoever,” Alice said, “they hid what they were feeling. I mean, at least as far as we know.”

“But you will want to talk to Liza,” Lacey said.

“Yes, he’ll need to talk to Liza, of course,” Gary said.

“Dad, what, you think she’ll rouse the truth with a séance?” Alice asked sarcastically.

“She knew him,” Gary said, ignoring his daughter. “She can do her ridiculous séance. Who knows—maybe she’ll come up with something.”

“Oh, it will be great,” Alice murmured darkly.

“Liza is going to do a séance?” Jon asked. “I mean, they may want to talk with Alistair Malcolm and Brent Whaley, too. I’d say the three of them are the core of the Blackbird Society,” he said. “Others come...but not with the same passion and continuity. And Alistair and Brent were also friends with Franklin Verne,” he said, looking earnestly at Griffin.

“Thank you,” Griffin said.

“Yes! Special Agent Pryce will need to speak with Brent Whaley and Alistair Malcolm as well,” Lacey said, sudden energy in her voice. “Whaley is a writer! Part of the Poe society, but a writer, too. I mean, he actually writes for a living. He does a mystery series about a Baltimore detective. And, like Liza, he knew Franklin Verne! I’m sure Brent considers himself to be a friend of Franklin Verne—or, at least, he did,” she added awkwardly. “In fact, he and Liza have been known to get a bit snippy when discussing him. And Alistair is about the only one who can put little Ms. Liza Harcourt in her place. He owns an amazing collection of Poe memorabilia. Liza is quite jealous of it. There’s no way out of it—Alistair is very knowledgeable and he writes as well. He’s had some articles published and is always working on a book.”

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