Veenie stuck her head out the window of the Chevy. “Is that bad?”
Dickie made a face. “When was the last time you had an inspection?”
I leaned forward and squinted at the sticker on the windshield. “Two years ago?”
“Oh heck. You’re driving illegally, you realize.”
Veenie jumped in. “We’re not illegal. She has a driver’s license.”
Dickie shook his head and wiped his hands on a red shop rag. “Car has to be inspected every year, gals. You know that.”
I did know that, but since Dickie had retired, I didn’t like my odds of the Impala passing an inspection. Spike Hill, the young guy who bought the Lube It Up from Dickie, had two fishing hooks in his bottom lip and abnormally short arms and legs. He looked like something that belonged in a circus. And he did not appear the least bit susceptible to my senior charms. “Can’t you inspect it for us?”
“Could. Maybe. The boys still like me down at the Lube It Up. But you’re going to need a whole new radiator. Some engine work. She’s burning a butt load of oil.”
Veenie looked at me accusatively. “This is because you buy that cheap gas at the Korean Go Go. That place is run by Ruskies. You know the Koreans are plotting to blow us up again. You ought to buy Phillips 66 Flight Fuel. That stuff runs rockets.”
“Phillips 66 don’t exist no more,” I said. “Also, stop picking at me, Lavinia. Dickie said he could fix it.”
“No problem,” said Dickie, checking his watch. “But can’t do it today. Got to order a radiator. Talk to Spike about reserving a bay to do the work. It could take a week.” He slammed shut the hood.
Veenie smooched him up. “Thanks, honey bun.”
“You bet, sweet pea,” he said in return.
I rolled my eyes.
I went to back out of the sand lot, but Boots Gibson was standing square behind me, hands on hips. One hand was holding a string of catfish, his catch for the day.
“Uh, oh,” Veenie said. “Busted!”
Boots strolled up and peered in my window.
“You want to see my license?” I said.
“Smart ass,” he said.
Veenie piped up. “We weren’t doing anything illegal.”
Boots moved his head farther through the window. “Lavinia, the way you say that makes me think you were.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake, what is it you want Boots?”
“Well, I was going to tell you that April called. She has a cause of death on that skeleton. But I reckon I won’t be pestering you two anymore.”
“Boots!” I called. “You come straight back here.”
He did.
“Tell us what April said.”
“Well, all the tests aren’t back yet, but she has some things down pat. First off, the skeleton was a young woman.”
“We figured as much from the clothes.”
Veenie piped up. “Could have been one of them cross-dressers. J. Edgar Hoover wore ball gowns. Pumps too. If he’d died in one of them getups, you might have thought he was Queen Victoria or some other horse-faced old lady.”
Ignoring Veenie, Boots continued. “Died of arsenic poisoning. Big hits of the stuff in her hair and nails. Just thought you’d like to know this is now an official county murder investigation.”
“About time,” Veenie said. “We told you something bad was going down out there at that mansion.”
“Horse patootie,” said Boots. “That woman died a century ago. If she was killed—and that is a hell of a big if—whoever did it is long gone. You just created a mess of paperwork for me. Plus, I got to listen to Devon chatter on and on about how he’s a cold case forensics expert now. He’s strutting around in his beret like he’s the star of CSI: Knobby Waters. I may have to take him out to my back forty and shoot him just to gain some peace and quiet.”
Veenie leaned forward. “You got any suspects?”
“Heck no. We don’t even know who the woman is yet. They’re plugging her DNA into the convicted felon’s database. They’re hoping to get some match that will tell us her local kin line.”
“I bet it’s Alta Iona.”
“Alta Iona?” asked Boots.
“Alta Iona Ollis,” I said. “She was Jedidiah’s young wife. He took her dowry with him along with the contents of the bank vault when he rowed out of town in 1919.”
Veenie piped up. “She went batshit crazy when he betrayed her. Stole her family fortune and her heart. Left her knocked up. Sent her to the insane asylum. Locked her up like a loony.”
Boots made a face. “Then how’d she get back here?”
“We don’t know,” I said.
Veenie said, “We’re holding a séance to ask her.”
“A séance?”
“Yep. We got us a professional medium. We’re setting her up out at the Wyatt mansion so we can talk directly to Alta. Solve the mystery.”
“No, you’re not,” said Boots. “You’re definitely not doing that.”
Veenie leaned over. “You’re not the boss of me, Grape Nuts Gibson.”
The Sheriff clutched his badge. “This here says I am, Lavinia.”
Oh boy. If Veenie didn’t shut up, I was going to be visiting her in the county jail and taking her sharp spoons and shit so she could tunnel out. I asked Boots why we couldn’t have a séance.
“That mansion is a crime scene now. No one can enter that property unless they are working for the state forensics team. Thanks to you two, it’s going to take months to get through all the red tape on this case.”
That shut Veenie up.
Me too, for a spell.
“I’ll be off now,” said Boots. He took his string of fish and sauntered over to his pickup truck. He tossed the fish into the cooler in the back bed and eased out of the sand lot onto the gravel road back to town.
“Well,” I said.
“Well,” echoed Veenie.
“I think we’ve been put in our place.”
“We certainly have been.”
“Totally.”
I fired up the Impala. Smoke steamed off the hood.
“Where we going Ruby Jane?” Veenie asked.
“To see Randy Ollis.”
Veenie’s little eyes brightened.
“I’m thinking maybe he knows something about Alta. Then I think we need to call up Dode and Kandy. Arrange what time the séance ought to be. Arrange to pick up Kandy tomorrow night so we can get this dog and pony show on the road.”
Veenie flashed a grin. “Bootsie boy won’t like that.”
“Probably not. Definitely not. But it doesn’t really matter what Bootsie boy likes. We’re not inviting him to this little shindig,” I said as I swung the Chevy up the steep brick plant hill road.
Chapter Ten
Randy Ollis’s house was on the left behind the brick plant, just past the blue gill pond. It wasn’t really a house. More like two trailers snuggled close to each other on cement blocks. The trailers were from the sixties. One was two-toned aqua and white. The other had been painted with black spots and had horns mounted on the front. I think it was meant to be a cow. A pair of plaid sofas nested in the tall weeds in the front yard, and several abandoned cars circled the sofas. A row of shanty-style dog houses lined the dirt driveway. Black-and-tan hounds ran back and forth on a chain run. They yelped at us as we got out of the car. The black and tans were coon dogs. Coon hunting was a big sport in this part of the country.
Veenie stopped to pet the dogs. That just made them holler more.
A man stepped through the screen door on the cow trailer. He had long, tangled brown hair, like Jesus, and he was wearing a hooded Indiana Pacers sweatshirt. His knees poked out of his worn blue jeans. He stood in his bare feet on a stack of cement blocks that served as the stairs into the trailer, squinting, trying to decide if he knew us. His hands were tucked under his armpits like maybe he was cold.
“Howdy!” Veenie said.
The man squinted some more. “You ladies lost?”
> “Nope,” I said. “Not if you’re Randy Ollis.”
“The one and only.” He grinned. He had a nice smile. “Hush it up!” he yelled at the dogs, which had started baying again. “Pardon them,” he said. “They don’t get much company. What can I do for you ladies?”
He looked us over good, like he was checking to see if we were carrying bibles or Watch Tower magazines.
“We’re here about Alta Ollis.”
“Lord, she’s dead. Long time now.” He scratched the side of his nose.
Veenie stepped forward. “We think we found her. Out at the Wyatt mansion.”
“No shit? Hey, wait. That skeleton? I knew you looked familiar. You’re that old lady ghost hunter from the Squealer, ain’t ya?”
Veenie puffed up. “Yep. That’s me.”
“You think that skeleton is my kinfolk. Aunt Alta Iona?”
“We do,” I said. “We tracked you down from that file folder of stuff you left at the library.”
“Holy shit,” he said. He put his hand to his eyes to shade them and peered out up and down the road. “Is this going to be on one of them unsolved crime TV shows? Shit, I just love those shows.”
“Might be,” said Veenie. “Can we come in? Ask you some more about Alta?”
“Er,” he danced on his bare feet. “I reckon. I live alone. Divorced. Just me and the dogs. Place is a mess. Don’t get much company out this way.”
Veenie and I hopped up the cement-block steps and into the trailer. It was dark inside and smelled wet. The stale air was heavy with cigarette smoke and mold. The plywood walls were plastered in posters of Dale Earnhardt Junior and Danica Patrick. A paint-by-numbers oil painting that featured two dogs hunting hung askew above the sofa. The wall on the right of that, toward the kitchen, featured a glass rifle case with one of the two doors missing. The case held three rifles and several stacked boxes of ammo.
Randy ran a hand along the sofa, knocking off a pile of clothes, hunting magazines, and some Papa John’s pizza boxes. He brushed crumbs off the puffy sofa and offered us a seat. “You ladies want something to drink?” he asked as he cracked his knuckles. “I got water. And beer. PBR.”
I said I was fine, but Veenie took a cold PBR. He slipped it into a foam koozie with a NASCAR logo on it, so it’d stay cold and not slip out of her little hand.
A window air conditioner was running. It was loud and sounded a lot like a cat trying to cough up a metal hairball. Randy had placed a rusted roasting pan under the window to catch a line of drip from the air conditioner.
“Nice place you got,” said Veenie.
“Oh thanks. Not much, but it’s home. Wife got the house in the divorce. I rent out the other trailer. Brings in a little income. I work the second shift at the foundry over in Bedford.”
Veenie sipped her beer. “You ever hear tell what happened between Alta and Jedidiah Wyatt?”
“Oh sure. Family still talks about it. We was rich folk once. A family don’t forget something like that.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he took a swallow of beer.
I asked if Alta had died in the asylum down in Corydon.
“Nope. In fact, she never made it there. You know about the baby, right?”
“Tell us,” I said.
“Well, old Jedidiah knocked up Aunt Alta, if you’ll excuse my French. Then he left her high and dry. Not much else to tell.”
“The papers you left at the library included a commitment order sentencing Alta to the state asylum in Corydon. Your great-great-granddad, her brother, had Alta Iona committed?”
“Oh he tried, sure enough.” Randy took a pull on his beer and swept the hair back from his eyes. “But she holed up in that half-done house. Refused to go. No one knew she was pregnant but her. When the baby came, she went batshit crazy. They took that baby. Sent it to the orphanage up in Brownstown. My family would have kept it, but it was a girl.” He took a pull on his beer. “And they were busted broke. Robbed blind by Jedidiah. No money to feed another mouth. Back then, nobody wanted a girl.”
“You know what happened to that baby girl?”
“Nope.” He took a big swallow on his beer. “I think she got adopted by some well-to-do folks over in Brownstown who couldn’t have a baby, but I don’t know names. Never seen records. I think everybody decided out of sight, out of mind. Back then people didn’t tell kids they was adopted. She probably didn’t even know.”
“Your family still own the old Wyatt mansion?”
“Heck no.” Some bank down in Louisville, or maybe Jeffersonville, anyway some big bank held the mortgage. They got the thing lock, stock, and barrel. Guess they couldn’t sell it, or else they went under too in the Depression. I think the county owns the place now. Back taxes. Not right sure.”
I was curious about the arsenic poisoning Boots had told us about. “Anyone ever tell you that Jedidiah killed Alta?”
“Oh heck, no. Why you ask?”
“April Trueblood, the coroner, says that skeleton was loaded with arsenic.”
He whistled. “Man this is just exactly like one of those unsolved TV mysteries. I wish I knew what happened to her. I was told she wouldn’t go to the asylum. They took that baby girl to the orphanage, her begging them not to. You think that rascal killed her, huh?”
“Hard to tell, but we’ll let you know what we find out.” I stood up. “Don’t want to take up more of your time. Appreciate your yacking with us.”
“Not a problem.” Randy kicked us a path to the door. He held open the screen door. “I will tell you, some folks, my grandpa Ollis mostly, used to go on and on about how there was a treasure buried out there at that old place.”
Veenie popped up under Randy’s arm at the door. “A treasure?”
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “Can you imagine that? It’s the same way folks say those Reno brothers who robbed that train up around Seymour must have buried the gold somewhere. People been digging for the Reno brothers’ lost gold since the Civil War ended.”
Every Hoosier schoolkid knew the Reno Brothers legend. The world’s first train robbery had been in Seymour, Indiana in 1866, just after the Civil War. Simeon Reno and his brother John and their friend John Sparks boarded a train and made off with a safe full of gold. They robbed three trains. Most of the loot, well over one hundred thousand dollars in gold, was never recovered. People still walk those train tracks out to Hangman’s Crossing and down the fields, swinging their metal detectors as they go.
Veenie said, “Well who wouldn’t want a safe full of gold?”
“What makes people think Jedidiah buried anything?” I said.
Randy danced on his cold bare feet on the cement-block step. He shoved his hands down into the front pockets of his jeans. “Legend has it there should have been twenty thousand in that safe between townsfolk making trade deposits and Alta’s cash dowry. But that safe was empty. Bank auditors never recovered one itty-bitty penny.”
“You think there’s any truth in that story?”
“I reckon there’s some truth in every story.” He smiled. “Don’t make much difference now. That all happened long ago. I imagine if Jedidiah was like most of us, he took everything he could grab in that rowboat when he hightailed it out of town.”
“Where’d Jedidiah go?” Veenie asked.
The coon dogs started baying again as we crossed the yard. Veenie stopped to pet them.
Randy followed us out to the Impala in his bare feet. He tossed the dogs some biscuits from a can nailed high to a fence post. “Nobody knows where Jedidiah went. Some say back down south to Georgia or Alabama where his people came from. Some say Mexico. Same say he died in the flood. He just disappeared. Never to be seen or heard from again.”
“Like a ghost,” said Veenie.
“I reckon,” laughed Randy. He tapped on the top of the car and stepped back as I ignited the engine.
Smoke curled out from under the hood.
Randy pinched his nose shut and hopped back from the car. “You ladies might want to have
that looked at,” he shouted. “Smells like trouble.”
The dogs howled again.
Veenie gave Randy the double thumbs up as we zoomed away.
Chapter Eleven
I woke up with Veenie sitting on my bed, poking at me.
“You awake? Ruby Jane. You awake?”
I rolled over and eyed her. “Dang it, Veenie, I am now.”
“We got to go over to Pokey’s.”
I rubbed my eyes. They were fuzzy with sleep. I clicked on the bedside lamp. “What time is it?”
“Nighttime.”
“What’s this about? You hungry?” I sat up and shucked off my sleeping pants. I pulled on a pair of jeans and an Indiana State sweatshirt from the rocker by my bed. I always dumped my clothes on the rocker on the way to bed. Most women my age folded their clothes neatly at bedtime. I’d given up on all that neat stuff during menopause. During menopause everything fell apart on me. I figured it was no use trying to project orderliness, what with my body and the whole universe conspiring against me. I decided to join hands with the chaos. I’d been much happier since.
“Junior called. Needs a ride home from Pokey’s. Someone stole his Harley.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake. He sure it was stolen? Last time he called like this, he’d just forgotten where he’d parked it. He sound stoned?” I let my hands fumble over the nightstand searching for my eyeglasses.
“He sounded like he always sounded, whiney. I told him to call up one of them Goobers.”
“You mean Ubers?”
“Yeah, but he says they won’t come out to Pokey’s no more. They got robbed too many times. Says his new friend needs a place to crash too. Could we take him in?”
“Lordie, where we going to hang another living soul? The hallway closet?” I slid my feet into my sneakers. They were flowered canvas slip-ons. I was past the age when I wanted to bend down and tie my shoes every day.
“Maybe he’s a little person. He might fit in the dryer.” Veenie seemed awake and eager to chat. “We got any emergency money in the cookie jar?” She sat on the edge of the bed and swung her little feet back and forth, scaring up some dust bunnies.
Ghost Busting Mystery Page 6