Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report, Book 1) Page 4

  She went from rude and defiant to shy and quiet really quick, weird. I heard something about kids these days and personality disorders from too many video games and all that stuff; whatever it was at least she decided to be helpful. As I looked her over again, I noticed that she really went to a lot of work to avoid meeting my eyes directly.

  “Do I uh know you?” I asked her hesitantly.

  She shook her vigorously in denial but said nothing.

  “You sure, I mean if your father works here are you sure we’ve never met?”

  “Nope,” she said briskly.

  I decided not to push it, she was clearly on edge, probably worried about getting in trouble for being caught smoking inside a museum after hours. Kids can try to look as aggressive and as badass as they want with their leather jackets, combat boots and cigarettes, but they’re still kids and kids scare easy. She would probably anxious until she knew for certain that she wasn’t going to be in any sort of serious trouble.

  “Hey kid, the cigarette thing, I’ll forget I saw if you promise not to do it again, right?” I said in a calm and reassuring tone.

  She nodded and mumbled a quiet “thanks.”

  I thought it best to leave her alone and I headed down the hall leading towards where hopefully I would find her father and maybe some answers. I was only walking for a minute or two before I came to another set doors that I pushed open and was shocked at what I saw.

  “Uh…. damn.” I breathed. I have a way with words.

  I’d say that where I was now was a warehouse except for the fact that I had never been in a warehouse this big before or one this filled with priceless artifacts and pieces. There was just row after row of heavy duty metal shelves that towered up to the ceiling, each rack was literally crammed with sealed shut wooden crates, some were holding massive glass containers that resembled oversized aquariums.

  A rapid clacking sound snapped me out of my reverie and I turned to the source of the noise to see a young woman walking towards me, transfixed on a clipboard in her hands. She was dressed in a pair of khakis, wearing a black pair of those shoes you see in post offices and such, the kind that are work safety approved and all that whilst still being comfortable. I put her about five foot eight, a fair bit taller than the young girl I had met earlier in the hall. She had on a comfortable looking white full sleeve loose fitting shirt; she had the sleeve rolled up to her elbows. I noticed a glint around her neck and saw an expensive gold necklace hanging there, a heavily jeweled pendant was fastened at the end. The pendant was a golden flat oval, encrusted with several small although flawless emeralds, which complemented her equally beautiful emerald eyes, which were framed by a pair of dark brown half moon glasses.

  Her cute heart shaped face rang of a sexy librarian look, her brunette hair fastened up into a simple and out of the way ponytail, the glasses and working clothes, somehow she managed to pull it off effortlessly.

  I never knew women who worked in museums and other such working positions could look so…well…man… I’ve heard about stories of really attractive women working in offices and as librarians and of all that but couldn’t remember when I had actually saw one with my own eyes. Hearing and seeing are two different things.

  I snapped back to reality and remembered why I was here; I cleared my throat pointedly to help get her attention.

  Her head bolted right up and she gave a startled shake and yelp, as she looked up at me in complete shock. She looked me over for a quick second and said, “Norman?” in complete and utter disbelief but at least she recognized me, which was quite the surprise. “Wow, you look great, how’d you change so quick?”

  “Green tea diet,” I quipped, “it’s the latest trend, the pounds just fade away and my complexion has never been better!”

  She snorted, “yeah okay, more like liposuction.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Um sorry, it’s just that I saw you the day before yesterday and you were well… not in the best of shape and now you look twenty years younger, what else could you have done to change so fast?”

  “P90x?” I replied.

  She rolled her eyes and suppressed a laugh.

  I was starting to like this gal.

  “So what are you doing down here?” she asked, sounding thoroughly surprised at the fact I was meandering around in the warehouse.

  I let my gaze wander around the massive and jam-packed warehouse for a moment before quipping, “searching for the Ark of the Covenant,” leaning forwards I added in a whisper, “I think it’s in one of the shelves…shhh!”

  She her threw her head back and actually let out a snorty laugh…it was, dare I say, adorable?

  Her body had arched back a bit during the laugh, throwing her chest forwards and it prompted me to steal a quick glance at her employee identification card that was hanging a bit lower than her pendant from a simple red lanyard. Her name read Marsha Morressy.

  She caught me looking but didn’t realize what I was looking at, “uh, nice view there Norman?”

  My head jolted back up straight, “no…”

  It was her turn now to arch an eyebrow.

  “I mean,” come on quick thinkin’ time, “I was admiring the pendant, who gave it to you.”

  “Oh that,” she began

  Whew, disaster adverted.

  “James gave me that. It’s odd, it hasn’t even been that long and I didn’t even think he could afford to splurge on something like this.”

  “James?” I said confused.

  “You don’t remember James?” she asked disbelievingly. “You’ve been hovering over him for nearly a week, you even called him to your office a couple of times.”

  There was a painful stabbing sensation in my head, Norman’s memories were rapidly flooding my minds, too fast for me to make any sense of them but fast enough to cause me a frickin’ aneurysm.

  Figures.

  “You…alright there Norman,” Marsha asked, concern filling her voice.

  “Yeah, great,” I replied hoarsely.

  “You get a bad night of sleep or something?”

  “You could say that, felt like I woke up from taking a dirt nap.” I said flatly.

  “At least you weren’t actually taking a real dirt nap, could you imagine that, being dead?”

  “Oh, I think I could.” I replied.

  Her eyes widened for a fraction and then just gently shook her head, “don’t take this the wrong way Norman, but I think you’re being weird.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of weird going on my life right now but all that asides, can you refresh my memory, James?”

  “Yeah, he’s cataloging and going over every item we have for the new Middle Eastern exhibit that’s scheduled for next month. He’s back there right now, he’s been pulling all-nighters this whole week.”

  Right, so this was the guy everything was pointing me to; I really hoped he had some answers because I sure as hell didn’t. So far all I had were leads to a person, not some supernatural baddy. I don’t deal in normal.

  “Uh, Norman?” Marsha said, waving a hand in front of my face, “you there, you sort of glazed over for a sec?”

  “Yeah right, sorry, lost in thought. Yeah I remember James now, I met his daughter earlier down the hall, she seemed uh—”

  “His daughter!?” She interjected.

  “Uh yeah, that’s what she said.”

  “He never told me that he had a daughter,” she sounded scandalized, I don’t know why.

  “Does it matter?” I asked stupidly.

  “Well yes, it does to me,” she scoffed, “we’ve been seeing each other since I started I working here.”

  “How long have you been working here Marsha, exactly I mean?”

  “The museum called me in at the start of the cataloging for the new exhibit, about a month” she clipped.

  Okay, now I had something, not much but something, she was a new employee. That means she probably didn’t know much about museum or too much about any of th
e other employees, well asides from James and –

  “Where did you say his daughter was?” she asked, cutting off my train of thoughts.

  “Down the hall, leaning up against the wall near the doors leading back to the museum and security office. Why?”

  She didn’t answer but just huffed an angry breath and started storming towards the direction I had mentioned.

  “Uh, Marsha…. James?”

  “That way,” she snapped, accentuating the way by stabbing a finger in the direction I was supposed to go in.

  What was it with people and just pointing, it is really that hard to say, “hey, I’ll take you right there, come on.” And then just show me the way?

  But I knew better than to ask her again, angry girlfriend charging off to go meet the unmentioned haughty stuck up young adult daughter of her boyfriend. I was smart enough to know not to get involved in that storm. Norman already died once, didn’t need to die again.

  Cause of death: Laceration by fingernails…not a good way to go.

  I didn’t have much time so I hoofed it over to a tiny little hall with only a few grayish blue doors in it; one had a small scrawled sign that indicated it was the Middle East section. I gently pushed the door open and came into a relatively sparsely filled room, which was odd considering how much stuff they had back in the massive warehouse.

  There were a few cultural items; some extremely ornate and fragile looking plates that had artwork on them. Small brass cups and other food related items. It was mostly a great deal of dining and living equipment, cutlery, rugs that still managed to possess a sense of beauty and quality even though they were obviously old and very delicate looking. There was a fair of amount of jewelry but none of it was heavily adorned with gems like Marsha’s necklace was, it was just a collection of small bracelets and the like.

  I noticed a heavily aged and worn looking Shamshir lying about, it’s a Middle Eastern sword.

  There was more plates and cups all neatly arranged and carefully placed on tables, clay pots, an oil lamp, there was a bronze mask which looked like some demonic face. There were several metal pitchers and some small hexagonal metal trinket that I had no idea of what it was actually supposed to be.

  At the middle of this cacophony of old stuff was a wiry little man, disheveled medium length black hair with a few days growth of beard that was equally messy. His dark brown eyes were profoundly lined, due to stress no doubt. He looked haggard and just plain worn out.

  Marsha did say this guy had been working all-nighters. Some people are just committed. I didn’t get that sense with James.

  His dark blue work shirt, the kind mechanics and probably archeologists in field wear, was heavily wrinkled, there were what looked to be sweat stains on it. His plain blue jeans were just as wrinkled, overall it looked like the guy hadn’t slept, showered and obviously shaved in days. Even under normal circumstances this guy was definitely not a looker.

  And yet somehow he and Marsha were dating…talk about lucky.

  He looked up at me and wearily said, “Norman, I’m surprised,” which was odd because he certainly didn’t seem like it. He managed to recognize me right away despite all the changes that had happened to Norman, “It’s been a day or two since your last visit, I was beginning to worry,” he continued almost robotically.

  “Yeah well I’m back now, just came to uh, check up and take a look around.”

  He shot me an oblique look but otherwise remained silent and went back to his work, writing fervently on sheets of papers that were scattered around him in a pile.

  I hovered over him for a while, looking around the room several times but finding nothing suspicious so I decided to take a more direct route.

  “Say James, have you noticed anything weird going on around here, anything strange or unexplainable?”

  He gave me another weary looked and muttered, “you mean how you all of the sudden look twenty years younger and lost a great deal of weight?”

  “Uh, yeah, like that?”

  “You’re telling me you don’t remember changes to your own body, Norman?”

  “Well no one seems to believe it was the magic of Pilates,” I quipped.

  He looked at me strangely when he next spoke, “you’re telling me you seriously don’t remember?”

  Ok, something was definitely up and this guy knew what or at least something. Now the hard part was getting him to reveal something without making him too suspicious. I had to be subtle.

  “Just messin’ with ya James, yeah, I had some lipo done and then hit a Korean day spa.”

  He just sat there motionless in an awkward silence.

  “So what do you think about the new me huh?”

  “I think you look great,” he replied in a weary monotone.

  “Don’t get all excited now at my miraculous transformation.”

  No response, he just looked at me and let out an exasperated sigh.

  “So uh asides from me and my whole day spa rejuvenation thing, anything else weird going on James? You know anything strange and mysterious, maybe a walking reanimated dinosaur, shrieking presidents portrayed by actors and maybe an asinine monkey or two?”

  See, subtle.

  “No nothing, nothing at all,” he replied a little to quickly, and there was a hint of trepidation in his voice. That was the first bit of actual emotion James had shown in our conversation and not to mention that he had shot a worrying glance in the direction of one the tables.

  He knew something about something on one of those tables and that was important because…

  I felt that this entire case was just one big shell game being played on me by someone high up in whatever it is that I’m involved with.

  I decided it best to save my cosmic musings for another time, now I had to find a way to get James out of this room so I could take a closer look at things. “Oh James, by the way, I may have forgot to mention something.”

  “And what’s that Norman?” He asked drearily.

  “I met your daughter earlier and caught her smoking…inside.”

  He let out another exasperating sigh and mumbled an apology.

  So that was no good.

  “Oh, I also forgot to mention that I bumped into Marsha earlier, we had a chat about your daughter, she apparently wasn’t aware you had one. Last I saw, she was stomping off to meet her.”

  James didn’t say a word; he did however shoot straight up and literally rammed me out of the way, (rude) and tore off after Marsha I presumed.

  Save that for my notes in ways to get a guy to leave a room. Just tell him that you revealed he had a daughter that he had kept hidden from his current girlfriend and watch him take off in an attempt to save his own ass.

  Ingenious!

  Sometimes my brilliance amazes even myself…actually no it doesn’t because a lot of my brilliance is borrowed from many of the people who I’ve been in.

  Atleast now I could search the room.

  I scrounged around for nearly half an hour and turned up nothing, absolutely frickin’ nothing! I turned over every single object, scoured through all of James’ notes that he had left behind and not a single clue. I had just wasted half an hour of my already short clock. What was more annoying was that James wasn’t back yet; I mean I figured he would be after thirty minutes.

  How long does a conversation explaining to your girlfriend that you kept the fact you had a daughter, secret, take exactly?

  This case was definitely one of my more difficult ones, by now I would have at least found some sort of lead but all I had was a lot of nothing.

  That’s when I remembered what Marsha and Rick had said earlier, that Norman had been hovering over James for nearly a week. Norman was keeping his own records, which meant all I had to do was find them and peruse through them a bit and I might finally have something. It was fair to assume that he probably had them lying around somewhere in the curator’s office, that wouldn’t be a hard place to find and if I really needed the help I could alway
s ask Rick.

  Not that I was exactly keen on having another conversation with Mr. Not So Bright, but he was fairly competent at pointing in a general direction.

  My hand was literally on the doorknob, about to turn it when I heard a pair of voices. Some part of me, or Norman I guess, thought it better to wait and listen. I pressed my ear up against the door and tried to take in what was being said.

  That’s when my head started panging again, chances were that whatever had done in poor…well not so poor Norman was right outside the door. I tried to work through the pain and listen but it was difficult, it had escalated to the point where it felt like an entire hornet’s nest was buzzing around inside my head.

  “Norman’s acting weird, it’s like he doesn’t know or is pretending not to know.” One of the voices said, I couldn’t properly make it out, partly because of my massive supernaturally inspired headache and their voices were distorted. I know for a fact though that there voices should have been coming through reasonably clear, maybe muffled a bit due to the walls, but still discernable. I couldn’t get a clear read on the first speakers voice; something strange was definitely going on here.

  “More like he doesn’t know and more importantly shouldn’t know any longer.” The second voice said, that voice was even more distorted, it had an unnatural baritone to it, as it spoke I could swear I felt some slight reverberations in the air.

  Whoa kay, that was definitely in my “strange and mysterious” category, whatever was out there in the hall was most probably my supernatural hitter.

  “What makes you say that?” The first speaker asked?

  “Because,” the second voice began rather calmly, “he’s dead, or at least should be.”

  “What?!” The first voice exclaimed with a great deal of shock.

  “Yes,” the second voice continued, “I should know, I killed him.” It said in a disturbingly nonchalant manner. This thing did not care whatsoever about killing people, hell, it sounded like this thing didn’t even bat an eyelash when it did in Norman.

  “You…you… ka…killed him?!” the first voice sputtered in utter disbelief.

  “Well yes, although technically he killed himself. Actually I think it would be more accurate to say that he killed himself via my services.” The second voice replied, “what is it you mortals call it? Semantics?”