L Is for Lawless

black-and-white photograph pasted on the front. The photo showed the faded image of a graveyard in snow. I picked at the loose edge, peering at the card stock under it. The print had been glued or pasted over a standard commercial picture of the ocean at sunset. I peeled it off and checked the back, hoping for some kind of handwritten note. The print itself was four inches by six, processed on regular Kodak paper, matte finish, no border. Aside from the word
Kodak
marching across the back, the rest was blank. "You think this is a new photograph reprinted from an old neg? Or maybe a new photo reproduced from an old one?"
    "What difference does it make?"
    I shrugged. "Well, I don't think a picture of the ocean at sunset tells us anything. Maybe the keys aren't related. Maybe the photo is the message and the keys are a diversionary tactic."
    He took the card and moved to the table, holding it to the light as I had, examining the photograph. I peeked over his shoulder. All the headstones looked old, the ornate lettering softened by rain and sanded by harsh winter snows. There were five shorter headstones and three larger monuments of the lamb and angel school. Even the smaller markers, probably granite or marble, were carved with bas-relief leaves and scrolls, crosses, doves. The dominant monument was a white marble obelisk probably twelve feet tall, mounted on a granite pedestal with the name PELISSARO visible. All of the surrounding trees were mature, though barren of leaves. A thin layer of snow covered the ground. One cluster of headstones was enclosed with iron fencing, and I could see a section of stone wall to the right.
    "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.