L is for Lawless

"I don't suppose you recognize the place," I said.

Ray shook his head. "Could be a private graveyard, like a family plot on somebody's property."

"Looks too spread out for that. Seems like a private graveyard would be more compact and countrified. More homogeneous. Look at the headstones, the variation in sizes and styles."

"So what's this have to do with two keys? He didn't have time to dig up a coffin and bury the stash. It was the dead of winter. The ground was froze hard."

I looked at Ray with interest. "Really. It was winter? So this might have been taken at the time?"

"Possible, I guess, but if he buried the money, he'd have needed grave-digging machinery, which I guess he could have got hold of somehow. Seems like he told me once he'd been a groundskeeper in a cemetery. He could have put the money in a mausoleum, I suppose. Anyway, what's your thinking?"

"But why a picture of this? Maybe it's the name Pelissaro. I'm just spitballing here. He might have left the money with someone by that name. In a building or business in the general vicinity of the cemetery. The Pelissaro Building, Pelissaro Farms. The old Pelissaro estate," I said, wiggling my brows.

Ray shook his head. "You're barkin' up the wrong tree."

"Well. Maybe it's something visible from here. A water tower, an outbuilding, a stone quarry. Where's the phone book? Let's look. Let's dare to be stupid. We might hit pay dirt."

"Look for what?"

"The name Pelissaro. Maybe he had a confederate."

I glanced around the kitchen and spotted the residential pages sitting on the chair where he'd left them. I pulled out a chair and sat down, flipping through the White Pages to the P's. There was no Pelissaro listed. Nothing even close. I said, "Shit. Ummn. Well, maybe there was a Pelissaro back in the 1940s. We'll try the library in the morning. It can't hurt."

"We better do something fast. Gilbert's going to call any minute, and I'm not going to tell him we're off to the public library. I'd like to tell him we're on to something instead of sitting here daring to be stupid. That's the same as dead in his book."

"You're a pain, you know that? Here, try this." I reached for the Yellow Pages and looked up "Cemeteries." Approximately twenty were listed. "Take a look and tell me where these are located," I said. "If we got out a map and drew a big circle, we could probably narrow down the area. At the very least, we could check out all the cemeteries within a radius of the spot where Johnny was apprehended. Wouldn't that make sense? There couldn't be that many. Judging by the photograph, this cemetery is well established. Those graves are old. They haven't gone anywhere."

"You don't know that. Around here, they move graves when they dam up a river to make a lake," he said.

"Yeah, well, if the money's underwater, we've had it," I said. "Let's operate on the assumption it's still aboveground someplace. You have a map of Louisville? You can show me what's where."

Ray went out to the car and came back with the big map of the southeastern United States, along with a set of strip maps and a map of Louisville. "Compliments of Triple A. Car I borrowed was well equipped," he said.

"You're too thoughtful," I said as I opened the city map. "Let's start with this first one. Where's Dixie Highway?"

One by one, we worked through the cemeteries listed in the Yellow Pages, marking their locations on the map of Louisville. There were four, possibly five, within reasonable driving distance of the place where Johnny Lee had been apprehended by the police. I listed each cemetery along with the address and telephone number on a separate piece of paper.

"So now what?" he asked.

"So now, first thing tomorrow morning, we'll call each of these cemeteries and find out if they have a Pelissaro buried there."

"Assuming the cemetery's in Louisville."

"Would you quit being such a butt?" I said. "We have to assume this is relevant or Johnny wouldn't have sent you the picture. His object was to give you information, not to fool you."

"Yeah, well, let's hope he didn't do too good a job. We might never decipher it."

By nine o'clock, I was exhausted and began to make mewling noises about turning in. Ray seemed restless and jumpy, worried because Gilbert hadn't been in touch.

"What are you going to tell him if he calls?" I asked.

"Don't know. I'll tell him something. I'd like to get him and Laura over here first thing tomorrow morning so I can see she's okay. In the meantime, let's get you settled. You look beat."