Free Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4) by Vincent Zandri

accounts that attest to Henry having killed Clara over suspicion,
    paranoia, and anger.
    Clara’s dress…
    With Balkis holding up the lamp, I make a
    three-hundred-sixty-degree examination of the room on the balls of my feet.
    “The dress isn’t here,” I say, almost under my breath.
    Balkis sidesteps to the stone wall, begins patting it with
    his free hand.
    “Perhaps it’s hidden in some secret chamber or compartment.”
    I shake my head.
    “My gut tells me it’s not here. That it was once here. But
    it’s not here anymore. Because it wouldn’t be hidden from view. Henry and Clara
    would no longer have any reason to keep it hidden. If it was the prime source
    of their obsession, it would be set out as plainly as their bodies.”
    He turns to me, his face glowing in the yellow-gold kerosene
    light.
    “Henry Riggs Rathbone, Jr.,” Balkis says.
    “He must have removed the dress after finding his parents
    dead. That must be when he bricked up the closet so that no one would ever find
    them, or the dress that drove them to their graves. When he buried his parents,
    their coffins were empty…and empty they remain.”
    Balkis’ face goes south. “So he did burn the dress after
    all.”
    Me, stealing a moment not to think necessarily, but to
    listen to my intuition. My gut. In my head, I see a younger version of the old,
    almost crippled man standing with the young Girvins outside the house. A man of
    maybe nineteen or twenty on his hands and knees, bricking up the closet opening
    and nailing down the floorboards so that no one would ever know of the
    subterranean room and the cursed human remains it contained.
    “I don’t think so, Professor Balkis,” I say, after a time.
    “In fact, I know so.”
    “How do you know?”
    I punch my own stomach.
    “I can feel it right here. Feel the dress’s presence. You
    see, like the Girvins who lived here after the Rathbones, I think it’s possible
    old Henry Junior was afraid of what might happen should he attempt to destroy the
    dress. Afraid that he, too, might be haunted by the curse for the rest of his
    days.”
    “Why do you think he bricked his parents up instead of
    giving them a proper burial?”
    I shake my head. “It must have had something to do with the
    curse. Disturb the dead, and disturb the curse.”
    “But what happened to the damn dress? The source of the
    curse.”
    “It’s possible Clara and Henry had the dress with them when
    they died. Maybe after discovering his parent’s bodies, a very spooked Henry
    grabbed hold of the dress and decided to do something else with it. Like get it
    out of the house for a change.”
    “So, where can the dress be then? Is it possible the
    Girvin’s finally located it inside some old box and took off with it?”
    “You tell me?” I say.
    He shakes his head, purses his lips.
    “I think not,” he says. “Even if they had stumbled upon it
    somehow, they were far too afraid of its powers to even go near it.”
    I turn back to the bodies. My eyes lock on their skull faces
    staring eternally into one another. At their fetal positions, at their love for
    one another even in the face of violent death.
    “Some things you just can’t fight while you’re alive. Some
    things you need to take with you to the afterlife in order to protect it. And
    to protect others from it.”
    “What on God’s earth are you talking about, Baker?”
    Me, turning back to Balkis.
    “I can bet you a full year’s salary, Professor, that if we
    manage to find the Rathbone cemetery plots, we also find the Lincoln dress.
    We’ll start with Henry Junior’s grave first.”

 
19
     

     
    We head back up the spiral staircase and exit the secret
    subterranean space through the hole in the floor. Once back inside Clara’s old
    bedroom, Balkis returns the lamp to the bed stand, blows it out.
    “You’re the historian, Balkis,” I say. “Where’s Junior
    buried?”
    He smiles. “I’ve already told you. Less than a mile away in
    the