Chapter 7

Overly Dramatic Narrator Voice

(to be read in an overly dramatic narrator voice, as always) Previously on the Mystery of the Vanishing Dead Guy...

Dr Henry Morgan discovered his adopted son Abraham has been keeping secrets of his own, especially regarding the life-giving Piemaker.

On twitter, a socially inept morgue assistant who, somewhat ecstatic that his favouritest person in the entire universe ever remained in a living state (as he had been for some 235 years or so), was sending mild personally invasive tweets regarding '#Mortinez', something Lieutenant Reece would later take him aside and lecture him about because this was still a case, even if they weren't sure exactly what they were investigating. Currently.

Both parts of the Good Ship Mortinez - which by the way, is still not yet official, at least not until chapter...spoilers, I'm sorry - were on their way around to the antiques store where Dr Morgan and Abraham both lived, and where the Pie Hole gang were crowded around a poorly hidden photo album. Now they were in possession of one secret, but there still remained innumerable other hidden truths left to uncover.

Such as the domino which, by falling, had started off the entire chain of events leading to what we know as the Mystery of the Vanishing Dead Guy. That being, who it was that had killed him. Was it fellow immortal Adam, whose peculiar manner of friendship really leaves a lot to be desired? Or was it some unknown agent? If so, why would they be interested in one Doctor Henry Morgan, Medical Examiner for the NYPD?

Could it be that there was no sinister conspiracy, it was only a hit and run after all?

And if you believe that, you'll believe anything…

Words to those effect were exactly the ones employed by one Emerson Cod to admonish the girl named Chuck's latest insane theory. If you, the crazy-ass Dead Girl, really believed that a man could die, disappear, and turn up elsewhere the very next day, then you were crazier than previously believed. It wasn't until she showed Ned the photo album that he nodded, confirming the identity of the man he had watched die earlier.

It was funny. For such a big secret, it had been surprisingly easy to uncover. Amazing what snooping/trespassing without permission can uncover, isn't it? Regardless, Chuck resolved to tell Abraham - the VDG's son? - that it was okay. She knew what keeping a secret did, especially secrets of such gravity. Especially secrets regarding death.

"Hey in there," she called out, leaning against the door to the cellar. "Look, this isn't what you think. We aren't going to tell anyone."

"Tell anyone what?" the man on the other side of the door seemed confused.

"We ain't going to tell anyone about your immortal fancypants father," Emerson snorted disdainfully. It was Chuck's opinion there was probably a law obligating him to be generally disagreeable whenever the occasion did not call for it. Grieving relatives and funerals were a specialty of his, shortly followed by frightened children and anxious Piemakers. "I might not be a nice fella sometimes, but even I know that some things, people just ain't supposed to know." at this, he fixed Ned with a look, a look that said 'okay, I said my bit, you pull your weight now'. A look Ned pretended to ignore, seeking solace from Chuck instead. Who promptly expressed the same look. The thing with Ned was if left to his own devices, it was questionable whether he would leave the Pie Hole. Emerson thought not. Chuck meanwhile took the view that while Ned was an adult who could take care of himself, sometimes he required a little nudging. If anyone was qualified to talk about life-and-death secrets, Ned was one of them. That was why this time, she was taking Emerson's side. Putting one hand behind her back, she squeezed it, imagining a world where their childhoods had never gone wrong, where they had grown up together and lived happily ever after.

This wasn't that kind of fairy story. Undoubtedly it was a fairytale, of course, but of a different, stranger, realer sort. The sort that leaves corpses vanishing and punchlines incomplete. The sort that requires an entirely different narrator.

"Uh...hey," Ned began, with all of his usual blundering and social ineptitude, causing Emerson to roll his eyes, possibly for the fifteenth time that day, a new personal low "I'm Ned." There was a lengthy silence. "I met Henry. When he died. And I mean I know a lot about life-and-death secrets, but it was still a surprise when, you know, he vanishedintothinairbecausepeopledon'tnormallydothatandyoucantrustmetokeepthissecretIpromise-"

"Ned," Chuck whispered. "Breathe."

Her boyfriend took a deep breath "I'm really sorry about this," he shouted - or, at least spoke at a normal volume, the Ned equivalent of shouting - through the door "We're just trying to find out who sort-of-but-not-really-killed Henry...Dr Morgan...or what's going on because Emerson has to be somewhere, he's taking his daughter to the movies, so if you could come out here and we could talk, tell us what you know about Henry's...uh, condition...please?"

The door opened just a fraction, and Abraham's face peeked around it, single visible eye and thick, impressive eyebrows anxiously examining the Pie Hole gang, lingering on Ned with a strange sort of recognition. Looking at him, Chuck noted something almost familiar about the man, though she would have been hard pressed to say exactly what. Perhaps it was the eyebrows.

"I- I'm sorry," the man murmured, almost inaudibly. "There's nothing I know that can help you. I don't know what you're talking about."

Emerson's eyeroll count upped itself to 16. Before the P.I. could say something tactless, the bell by the door rang as the door swung open and closed. Turning around, Chuck saw a confused female Detective with enviable hair, closely followed by a man in a curiously formal outfit, waistcoat, tie and suit, with a scarf wrapped around his neck.

A man recognisable from photographs as the Vanishing Dead Guy.

It was at this exact moment that Abraham used the stunned silence that had descended over the room as an excuse to lock himself inside the cellar again. His disappearance was barely noticed by anyone except Chuck. No, in the meantime, both Ned and Henry were staring at one another in almost terrified awe. Neither of them spoke, what could they say? The Detective was watching, hand hesitating near her weapon with some uncertainty; the question being, what the hell was going on? Chuck could have asked the same thing. The only one not puzzled by the situation was Emerson Cod, who lit a cigar and laughed.

"Well, looks like you're going to have a lot to talk about," he snickered. "If we could hurry this up, I really need to get going round about now,"

"You aren't going anywhere until you answer my questions and stop wasting police time," the Detective snapped.

Ned smiled awkwardly. "It's kind of a long story,"

"He stole your line," the Detective muttered to Henry (aka the Vanishing Dead Guy).

"How much do you know?" Henry asked Ned, ignoring his companion. His accent was truly beautiful, a refined British of the kind you only heard on TV.

"Man, that boy's clueless about everything," Emerson interjected. "But if you're referring to the part where you're, you know, not dead and likely to remain that way, then sure we know about that,"

Henry swallowed, as if accepting a difficult fact. "Abe didn't tell you then?"

"When he wasn't locking himself in the cellar, he didn't have time to tell us very much," Ned replied. "Hi again by the way. Do you remember me?"

The Re-appearing Not-Dead Guy furrowed his eyebrows, and Chuck noted that half the people in the room were rather blessed in the eyebrow department. Odd, that. "Yes, you're Ned. The Piemaker. Abe should have told you-"

"Quit talking about me behind my back!" a voice from the cellar yelled.

"Then come out here so we can discuss things properly," Henry replied, rolling his eyes at roughly the same time as Emerson.

The confused female Detective appeared to give up the will to live about now, and approached Chuck, the only sane one in the room. "Detective Jo Martinez." she offered a hand, which Chuck shook.

"Chuck."

"Do you mind answering some questions?" Detective Martinez asked, in an exasperated manner.

"Not at all," Chuck glanced over at the bickering men, at Ned who seemed utterly lost as ever. She shrugged. "Fire away."

A decision she would live to regret.

As a narrator there are certain sentences, cliches, that one sometimes cannot refrain from using. 'A decision she would live to regret' is one of those sentences, an overly dramatic expression that narrators crave excuses to use.

But then again, far better to regret a decision than not.

At least Charlotte Charles had that opportunity.

Unlike some people I might name.