“Give,” I said.
Boots drained his beer and went to get another one. When he got back he told me that April, the coroner, had called him right before he picked me up for dinner. “She got the results back from that skeleton and ran the DNA through the federal crime database. Turns out that skeleton, Alta Iona Ollis, matches a couple of Ollis guys doing time over in Missouri for murder and larceny.”
“Not Randy Ollis?”
“Nah. The skeletal DNA would probably match him, yeah, but he’s never been arrested. We don’t have him in the crime database. She did match someone else we know, though.”
“Who?”
“Your sticky-fingered houseguest, Darnell Zikes.”
“Darnell?”
“Yep. He’s Alta Iona’s great-great-grandson. No doubt about it.”
I let that piece of news sink in. “So, it’s no accident that he showed up here and was hanging with me and Veenie asking about the mansion and all.”
“I’m thinking not. Thinking he saw the news on the Squealer’s website and moseyed over this way to see if he could get his hands on some kind of inheritance.”
“Why would he do that?”
Boots shrugged. “Want some cake? They got a carrot sheet cake. Bet Beesley made it. I’m having a hunk or two.”
“Sure,” I said.
While Boots was off getting us cake, Veenie strolled over to our table. She was drinking a Big Red pop out of the bottle with two straws. She was wearing a sleeveless, lime-green tunic and a really wide pair of polka dot culottes. She had on white, patent leather go-go boots with purple tassels that she got off the Widow Guthrie at the Lutheran community yard sale. The Widow’s oldest daughter, Ramona, had been a majorette for the Corn Huskers marching band, back in the seventies.
“On a date, I see,” she said.
“No,” I said. “N-O. This is a business dinner. Boots is filling me in on the mansion mystery.”
“Dickie has the Impala fixed up. Said he’d bring it around tomorrow.”
Dickie waved at me from across the porch, where he was in line at the buffet loading two paper plates with fried fish and taters.
I waved back. “That Dickie’s a keeper,” I said. Men our age knew how to fix stuff. Get things done. Men these days, not so much.
My cell started jumping. It was Dode, so I answered.
“Them ghosts are back!”
“There are no ghosts, Dode. We told you, Kandy made all that up. She was trying to scare you. Get money out of you.”
“Nope. I got ghosts. I know what I’m looking at, missy.”
“Are they out under the apple trees again?”
“Yep. Like before. Got their big butt lights on.”
“You want us to come on over?”
“Course I do! They might give me the slip. I aim to catch them red-handed this time. You all park down the road in the tractor pull-off. Walk on up. I’ll keep an eye on them until you all get here. I got my rifle loaded, so if they try and give me the slip, I’ll blow holes through them so big they’ll think hell is the friendly place.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dode was telling the truth, per usual.
We all parked in the tractor pull-off down from the apple orchard and circled our vehicles together like covered wagons defending against a ghost attack. With night binoculars provided by Boots, we had a clear line of sight down to the orchard. The binoculars revealed a pair of bright green blurs, shaped like fuzzy people, moving around under the trees. They looked to be digging. We couldn’t tell much in the way of details.
Dode was dancing around, all excited. “Hot diggity! Now, how we going to catch them ghosts?”
Boots was studying the situation. He was swinging the binoculars back and forth, up and down, all around the mansion. “Dode, you sure were right. You got something going on over there.”
Veenie snatched the binoculars. “You reckon it’s someone looking for that gold? Did Melvin, that Fed agent, say anything about if they’d found all the gold?”
Boots sniffled. “He’s not sure. Said there were only two coins recovered from Dode’s jars. Ought to be another twenty coins somewhere.”
I said they could have been lost in the flood or spent down in Mexico and just never reported.
“Could be,” said Boots.
I was thinking to myself that two coins weren’t so bad, given that these coins were worth half a million. Not bad for spare pocket change kept in a cellar jar all those years. I said if someone were still digging then, in their minds, there was more gold or more of something worth turning earth for. “If we got closer, reckon we could make out more about who’s doing what down there?”
Boots said, “Yeah, but you ladies aren’t going down there.”
Veenie objected. “Bootsie, it’s our case. You gave it to us. Why you want to take it back now?”
“I gave it to you when I thought it was nonsense involving dead people and ghosts. Now that it’s federal and we’re talking millions and it involves live people, it’s in my jurisdiction.”
Dode made a little sound in his throat. “Ghosts on the move! They’re moving. Toward the mansion. Into the mansion.”
It was dark again under the apple trees. Boots unholstered his gun. “I’m closing in. You all stay put right here. Don’t move. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
He looked at Veenie. “Don’t you dare follow me either, Lavinia. I don’t want to accidently shoot your head off. Ruby Jane there would never forgive me.”
Boots moved off into the high weeds, quiet and stealth for a big guy.
Veenie eyed me. “I can’t just stand here and wait.” She was hopping from foot to foot, all agitated. She had her BB pistol raised in one hand. She waved the pistol. “Come on, Ruby Jane.”
Veenie took my hand and we were off into the low corn on the opposite side of the mansion from the side Boots was tracking in on.
Dode whispered after us to be careful.
Veenie and I found a low window around back where the boards had been pried off. There was an old oil drum close to the window. I held the BB pistol and boosted up Veenie onto the drum. I handed her the pistol. She used it to bust the rest of the boards off the window. She straddled the window but managed to get the seat of her culottes stuck on a nail that was protruding out of the window sill. She kicked up a fuss. Her white majorette go-go boots glowed in the moonlight, making her look like she was trying to ride a stubborn mule.
“You stuck?” I whispered.
“Leg of my culottes is.”
“Can you wiggle out of them?”
“Think so.”
Veenie squirmed and wiggled and at last was able to slide over the window sill into the house. I heard a little thump as she hit the floor on the other side. Her culottes were hanging on a nail in the window, waving in the breeze. I had no doubt that picture would somehow end up on the Squealer’s website, along with an inappropriately suggestive title about this whole case. What the heck. The only reputation I had to protect these days was a bad one.
I hoisted myself up into the window, careful to avoid the nail that had claimed Veenie’s pants. I landed behind Veenie on the other side. We were in a part of the house I’d not seen before. It looked to be a back sitting parlor. I raked a spider web off my face. Veenie was standing there in a beam of moonlight. Her white majorette boots glowed. Her dimpled knees shined like scabby apples. She was wearing a solid pair of baggy granny panties and didn’t seem at all upset about having lost her pants. Veenie was like that. She’d run butt naked through the fires of hell for a chance at an adventure.
“Follow me,” she whispered, her BB pistol held high in both hands. Her hands were shaking a little, so the BBs were rattling, but she managed to get a tighter grip on the pistol and quiet the gun down.
My heart was thumping a good bit. It was dark as an ink well in the interior of the house, and the place smelled dank and moldy. I muffled a sneeze in my shirt tail a couple of times. Nobody ho
me but dust and spiders. I doubted Veenie knew where we were going. I just hoped it wasn’t toward Boots because he had more than BBs in his gun.
And he never had liked Veenie all that much.
We heard a creaking sound overhead. Veenie decided to follow that. We crawled very slowly up the stairs trying hard to avoid any squeaky boards, but no matter which way we moved, the house creaked and groaned. We arrived on a landing that rolled out into a long, broad hallway. Quite a few doors lined the hallway. It was quiet. No sign of any living thing.
An idea popped in my head. I slid my cell out of my pocket and clicked on a flashlight app. It wasn’t the brightest, but by getting down on my knees, I could spray the light along the dusty floor. I saw a long trail where the dust had been cleared, by people walking, no doubt. The trail led to the end of the hallway. That door was shut.
“I think someone went into that room at the end of the hallway,” I whispered to Veenie.
“Okeydokey. Stay behind me. Tight.”
We scooted that way. Once we arrived at the closed door, I wasn’t sure what to do. Veenie seemed to know. She put her hand on the knob, and the door creaked open.
There was somebody in that room all righty.
Veenie stopped short in front of me and screamed like a snake had run up her leg.
“Lord Almighty!” gruffed Boots as he slid into the beams of moonlight that flooded the room. He lowered his gun. “Jesus Christ Almighty!” Don’t you two old nincompoops ever listen to a word I say? I could have splattered your heads like watermelons.” Boots studied Veenie, who still had her BB gun pointed at his belly. Her dimpled knees shined in the dim light, all white and scabby. Her baggy old lady panties looked a good bit like a diaper.
“Lavinia Goens,” said Boots, “are you not wearing any pants? Are you, honest to God, half-naked like I think you are?”
I was about to explain about Veenie’s attire and object to being called a nincompoop when I heard an engine start up outside. A car sputtered and choked to life. Not a very new car or a car in very good mechanical working order either, from the sound of it.
I tiptoed over and peered out the slit left by a broken board nailed at an angle across the upstairs hallway window. The window looked out toward the main road in front of Dode’s farm.
A vehicle flashed past Dode’s farmhouse. The security lights by the barn burst on. A purple Gremlin sped by and then disappeared as the barn’s pole lights blinked off. The Gremlin was missing one red taillight. It disappeared around a corner in the gravel road and headed down the knobs toward town.
“Dang it! Our ghost got away,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was late by the time we got home, and a chill was in the air. The porch lights were on, bright enough so that a swarm of insects were buzzing in the spray of light. Sassy was sitting on the porch swing. Melvin was sitting next to her. He was out of his Fed uniform now, dressed in his mama boy turtleneck and creased trousers again. He threw us a little wave and a smile.
Sassy gave us the cold shoulder.
Veenie walked up to them. “Why didn’t you tell us lover boy there was a Fed?”
“Didn’t know,” said Sassy. “Thought he was a high-class liquor salesman, same as you.” She was dressed in a pink, Angora V-neck sweater with white neck pearls. She had on white stockings and a nice, very short, navy, knit pencil skirt. Her eyebrows were painted on so high they looked like McDonald’s arches.
Melvin blinked behind his thick glasses. He had one arm swung around Sassy’s shoulders. “I’m a special agent. We try and enter a situation under a trustworthy identity. We get more information that way. Didn’t mean you ladies no harm. Didn’t expect to get Miss Sassy here out of the deal. But mighty glad I did.” He gave Sassy a cheek peck.
She glowed like she’d been hit with a pair of radioactive lips.
I was curious, so I asked about the case and the gold. “Your boys still searching the mansion for gold?”
“Nope. We did a thorough search. Used ground detectors and probes. If the rest of the gold coins are in that apple orchard, they are lost forever.”
“Ever heard tell of a guy named Darnell Zikes?”
“Oh, sure. Boots told me he’s been hanging around. Wanted for crimes down south. He’s the fellow whose DNA matched up with that skeleton, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Alta Iona and Jedidiah’s great-great-grandson, it seems.”
“Why you asking?”
“Pretty sure he was out at the mansion digging around tonight.”
“Well, he’s welcome to dig all he wants. My boss is satisfied there’s nothing more out there. Property belongs to the county. Been abandoned for decades. Don’t think anyone cares what happens out there now. Even if he finds more gold, it belongs to the federal government. He can’t fence it. We’d be on him like flies on fresh manure.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Veenie trounced into the house ahead of me.
Sassy stood up a little and stared after Veenie. “Ruby Jane, I don’t think Lavinia was wearing any pants. Was she honest to God not wearing any pants?” She was holding one hand to her breastplate.
“I dunno,” I mumbled, not caring to get into the sordid details or have my shut-eye delayed by listening to Sassy yammer on.
“Ruby Jane Waskom, what have you two been doing? Dear Lord, you two can’t be running around all hours like this in your underpants out in public. People will start talking. All of Knobby Waters will be gossiping about us and our house of ill repute. I got my good name to think of. My reputation. What will the single men think?”
I was too tuckered to point out to Sassy the hypocrisy of her concern. “Well,” I said, as I moved toward the screen door, “I imagine the single men will be lined up around the house come morning. In my worldly experience—most of it gleamed from watching you all these years—a half-naked woman is one of the few things men in these parts pay any mind to. That and catfish.”
Melvin laughed.
Sassy did not.
Veenie was storming around the kitchen pulling snacks out of the cupboard when I came in and plopped down in a chair. She’d piled the table high with a box of Twinkies, some pork cracklings, and a quart of chocolate milk.
I yanked a jar of Tums out of the cabinet to complete the feast.
We sat together sucking the crème out of Twinkies, not even turning the lights on.
We theorized about Darnell and the Gremlin being out at the mansion.
“What you reckon he was doing out there?” Veenie asked
“Must have been him digging around, making all those holes in the apple orchard.”
“But we saw what looked like two ghostly figures and lights. Anyway, that’s what I thought I saw with Boots’s binoculars, but sometimes I don’t see so well. That what you saw too?”
“Yep. Two figures.”
“I dunno. Randy Ollis and his kin have kept that story about buried treasure alive all these generations. Must be something to a tale that lives that long.”
Veenie gulped down a stream of chocolate milk. “Could be they’re just like everybody else. Don’t want to be poor and common. Like most folks in these parts, they don’t have a lot to be proud of. All they got is that story. At least somebody in the family was famous once, even if it was for being a crazy polecat.”
I heard footsteps tread up the basement stairs. The door sprung open, and Junior fell into the room. “Thought I heard you two yacking. What you doing up so late?” He was wearing a short velour robe over his underpants. His chest hair was fuzzed up like the tail end of a red squirrel. His John Lennon glasses rode low on his nose as he peered into the ice box. He pulled out a box of leftover Papa John’s pizza and sat down at the table with us. He tore at the cold crust with his incisor teeth.
Veenie pulled a skin of cold cheese off the top of the pizza.
I updated Junior on the action with the Feds, the two recovered gold coins, and the news on Darnell’s an
cestry and arrest warrants.
“Oh man,” he mumbled through pizza crust. “Seemed like such a decent guy too. Real free with the weed. Generous. You mean, it was like him who stole my hog, and you, Mama, who snatched it back?”
Veenie shrugged. “I know how hard you worked to get that bike.”
Junior put the pizza down and gave his mama a bear hug.
That made Veenie spit and spatter a good bit.
I asked Junior if he’d seen Darnell or had any idea where Darnell might be hiding out in the Gremlin.
“Nah. Man, if I knew where that sticky-fingered, little fart was I’d be out there beating the weeds after him.”
“Why?”
“Cause my guitars are missing. Some of my audio equipment too.” He stopped and grabbed another slice of cold pizza.
“The Fender?”
“Yeah. Knowing what a crook he is, I reckon he took my stuff. Man, you just can’t trust anybody these days.” He inhaled the last of the pizza and stumbled back down the stairs.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
By the time I rolled out of bed and washed the crust out of my eyes Veenie was in the kitchen stabbing at a pie and knocking back a pot of coffee with Dickie.
Dickie offered me a fat slice of cherry pie. “That one of Ma’s pies?”
“Sure is,” said Dickie. “Picked it up fresh on my way down the knobs. Brought the Chevy back. She’s purring like a kitten. You gals could race that old heap in the 500, if you wanted.”
I took the pie, poured myself a cup of dark coffee, and sat down to breakfast.
Veenie said Dickie knew the whereabouts of the purple Gremlin.
I almost choked on my coffee. “Where?”
“Seen it parked up on the knobs. Lover’s Overlook,” said Dickie.
“By the old dump?”
“Yep. It was up there about an hour ago when I rolled down the knobs giving the Chevy’s brakes the old test drive.”
“Was there a tent sticking out the back?”
“Sure. Canvas thing.”
“You see any sign of a sloppy guy with a beard?”
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