Fangtabulous by Lucienne Diver Page B

removed his hand and muttered. “Sorry.”
    “No problem,” Brent answered softly, sounding all but done in.
    Marcy duck-walked over to us, carrying Brent’s jacket and hat. “You okay?” she whispered. “What did you see?”
    “At least you asked the important question first,” he answered with a weak grin.
    She shrugged. “Well, I’m not quite finished with you yet.”
    “I’m touched.”
    “Maybe later,” she agreed.
    Brent’s smile gained a little strength at that and as they looked at each other, it was like the rest of us, the coffin, the body, and the security guard all ceased to exist.
    Bobby cleared his throat.
    “Right,” Brent said. It took him time to refocus, though. This second vision had pretty much done him in. “That’s definitely the body. And he didn’t die easily.”
    “So how did he end up buried alive? And how did he get here? I mean, he’s got to be historical, right? If he’d been embalmed, he’d have been in no condition to scratch up that coffin,” Bobby said.
    “More likely, too poor for embalming,” I said. “Did you check out the pine box he was buried in?”
    Everybody stared at me. “What? I know quality. That’s not it.” I flung a hand toward the coffin.
    Bobby grinned. “That’s my girl. What about it, Brent?”
    “I don’t know. Definitely old, but how old? There’ve got to be some records around here somewhere about where this came from. You know, provenance—though I can’t imagine they know what they have here.”
    Bobby had been studying the coffin and cart and said suddenly, “Uh, guys, I think they do know, at least part of it. Check out the plaque beneath the coffin.”
    It was facing the mall window, which was how we’d all missed it originally. Bobby read it aloud for us. “ Coffin, circa late 1800s, with evidence that the inhabitant was buried alive. It was a fear so prevalent at the time that the safety coffin was invented, complete with a bell and pulley system to let graveyard attendants know if the recently ‘deceased’ required rescue. Such rescues are the origin of the expression ‘saved by the bell. ’ ”
    “Wow,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Look at that price tag,” Marcy added.
    “Ten thousand dollars—you’ve got to be kidding! Who’d want this gross old thing?” I asked.
    “A collector,” Brent answered. “Especially if it’s authentic.”
    “Which we know it is,” Bobby said. “But how did they get it? Is it even legal to buy and sell stuff like this?”
    “All good questions. And here’s another one,” Brent said. “Is there any connection with the Salem Strangler? If this guy was buried alive, he’d have suffocated to death. If there was a woman involved—”
    “There’s always a woman involved,” Bobby interrupted. I swatted him.
    “—it could explain why he’s throttling them, cutting off their air,” Brent continued. “But then, the same goes for Sheriff Corwin and his punishments—hanging, pressing—or any number of ghosts who were killed that way and are hanging around righteously upset about it.”
    “We’ve got to get at those purchase records,” Bobby said.
    A light strobed through the window, and we all dropped to the ground again.
    Bobby crawled over behind the counter and started tumbling locks and opening drawers, as quietly as possible. He quickly reclosed the bottom cabinets.
    “Inventory,” he announced, then sorted through various receipts. But they were old and unorganized. No convenient data storage or computer in sight, though there was a hand-held scanner locked away in one of the drawers.
    “Looks like they’re changing over to a paperless office,” Bobby said with a sigh. “Good for the environment, bad for us. Probably Chip or whoever keeps everything on a laptop and takes it with him when he leaves.”
    “I bet they use off-site backup for their records, then. I would,” Brent offered.
    “But those things are like Fort Knox. We’ll never get in.”
    “Then