Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  Jane was so used to opening boxes in strangers’ basements, she almost pulled up a hay bale and went to work. She stopped herself, realizing that she would have to ask Fuzzy and Lula’s permission to take a look at what Fuzzy had brought home from the war. Except, of course, for what hadn’t been placed inside a box. Behind the stack of crates, between the boxes and the wall, was an old leather bag as large as a postal sack. Jane figured it might be okay to sneak a peak at that. She pulled it out from where it was placed in the crevice and thought it was probably more old tools, felt like it might hold a hoe or a weeder of some kind.

  Odd. Despite the fact that everything around her was labeled for war and even though a man had been shot not fifty feet away from the barn, the gun that tumbled out of the bag when she tugged at it caught Jane completely and terribly by surprise.

  Jane was sure that every neighboring farm for miles had heard Munson yelling at his officers. There had been five who had searched the barn and every one of them swore that the bag with the gun had not been there when they had walked through the day before.

  Looking at their miserable faces, Jane believed every one of them. She waited until Munson had finished with them, then went over and took his arm, leading him back into the barn.

  “I saw the bag behind there,” said Jane, “pulled it out, and only after the gun fell into the dirt did I notice the straw around the bottom box. Look.”

  It was bunched up into little ridges. The box had been pulled out, moving the straw, then pushed back after the bag with the gun had been put behind it against the wall.

  “This was just done. There are mice running all over this barn and at least two cats who prowl around in here. Those perfect little hills of straw were recently made or else they wouldn’t be so perfect. You can see the little tracks in the dirt from the box being pulled. Your people didn’t miss it yesterday. It hadn’t been done yet,” said Jane.

  Munson had already wrapped the gun and sent it into town.

  “It was a twenty-two. Gun that shot Sullivan was likely a twenty-two.”

  Neither Jane nor Munson had heard Fuzzy come in. “You need a gun?” asked Fuzzy.

  Jane instinctively shook her head at Fuzzy, trying to warn him not to talk. But he was looking at Munson. “You need to shoot something?” Munson shook his head slowly.

  “No, Fuzzy, we were just talking about your twenty-two we found in here, wondered how it got stuck behind those boxes.”

  “No, it ain’t in those boxes,” said Fuzzy. “That was just an extra I stuck there. Hadn’t put it in its place yet. I keep all my guns right here.” Fuzzy pointed to the blank wall behind him.

  Jane and Munson both remained silent and Fuzzy laughed.

  “Don’t see them, do you? It’s a trick. Learned it on a farm in England when I was over there. We stayed in a bunch of barns when we was there, teaching some of them Englishmen to take care of themselves if they were invaded. Me and an Englishman named Lester came up with a way to hide things in his barn.”

  Fuzzy felt along the wall behind him, then smiled. There was a popping sound as a latch unhooked and Fuzzy lifted a window-size piece of wood away from a recessed cabinet in the wall.

  “See there? This was the window between the stalls, and I just hung barn wood up over it and made me a hidden cabinet. The farmers over there in England had these hiding places for the rifles they had just in case. And they had these silencer things put on them, see, so they could pick them Germans off quiet if there was an invasion.”

  Jane wasn’t sure if the whole story Fuzzy was telling was accurate, but he was right about the hidden compartment behind the wooden panel. No one would ever notice it if they weren’t looking over the wall inch by inch. The hinges at the top were stained to match the wood, but more important, the same layer of dirt and dust covered them so the hardware was indistinguishable from the wood. And in the cabinet were five guns, all outfitted with some kind of attachment the size of a juice can.

  “I made these silencers just like the Brits did. Why not? I told Lula if I kept the guns quiet, she couldn’t get mad at me for shooting the squirrels and the possums and such, not if I wasn’t making any noise, right?”

  Fuzzy took down one of the guns and walked toward Munson and Jane, pointing the gun directly at them. Jane could feel Munson stiffen beside her and put his hand on the holster inside of his coat.

  “Fuzzy, set the gun down on the floor and let me take a look at it, okay?” Jane asked.

  “Why?” Fuzzy asked, waving the gun in the air. “I can show it to you up close.”

  The next few seconds passed in slow motion.

  Fuzzy was about three feet away from them when they heard someone come in the barn door and call out Fuzzy’s name. The person was standing in shadow and was blocked from view by one of the doors to an adjoining stall. A man’s voice, firm but nonthreatening. “Mr. Neilson? Mr. Neilson?”

  As Fuzzy turned toward the voice, Munson grabbed the rifle and pulled it sharply backward, jerking Fuzzy off his feet. He landed in a pile of straw, but it was still a hard knock to his old bones. When Bruce Oh—master of the surprise appearance and nonthreatening voice—came over to them, he knelt down and very gently probed Fuzzy’s shoulder and patted him back into a lying-down position as Fuzzy struggled to his feet.

  “Mr. Neilson, sit here a minute and make sure you are okay, that no bones are broken,” said Oh.

  “Sorry, Fuzzy,” said Munson, “but you were making me awfully nervous with that gun.”

  “Good thing,” said Fuzzy, “because the next time I get my hands on it, I’m going to shoot your nose off.”

  Munson made some phone calls while Jane and Bruce Oh greeted each other.

  What Jane wanted from the greeting:

  “Mrs. Wheel, please forgive me for calling Detective Munson about the case without first talking to you and explaining my strategy. I was wrong—of course, we should be working on this—and as usual, you were right in anticipating our involvement. Thank you so much for seeing the whole picture and leading me into the light on this matter.”

  What Jane got was, “Mrs. Wheel.”

  “Detective Oh.”

  Jane was not that good at glaring, but she was making a splendid effort when Charley came in, followed closely by Nick.

  “There’s not a body in here, is there?” asked Nick, hanging back by the door.

  “Of course not,” said Jane. “Fuzzy was showing us some of his guns and he took a fall, but everything is fine.”

  Jane shrugged at Charley’s raised eyebrows. It was the best she could come up with since she wasn’t quite sure just what had happened. She knew with all of her heart and soul and logic and instinct that Fuzzy Neilson would not hurt another human being; and yet when he was walking toward them with that gun, every fear sensor in her body had gone off, wailing at her to fight or flee. Was it the presence of the gun that made the human being holding it disappear?

  Lula arrived at the door, dropping her tray of whatever pastries she had whipped up this morning when she saw Fuzzy sitting on the ground. She rushed over, knelt beside him, and spoke into his ear in a low, cooing voice. It was a side of Lula Jane had never seen. She had regarded Lula as cut from the Nellie cloth—all tough, no love—in the caretaking department, but clearly Lula had softer edges. Munson spoke to her, explaining what had happened, and Lula stood, fire in her eyes.

  “Do you mean to tell me that you had to knock down a harmless old man because he was walking toward you? Is that what I heard you say? He was walking toward you? You haven’t changed a bit since you were in grade school with my boy. You always did hit somebody in the nose first and ask questions later,” Lula said, finally stopping for a breath. “I am not going to put up with this, Franklin Munson. As soon as I get Fuzzy into the house, I am telling someone about this.” Lula, with Bruce Oh’s assistance, helped Fuzzy, who had gone as quiet as a frightened child, to his feet.

  “I am calling your mother,” said Lula.

>   Munson rubbed his eyes. He watched Lula walk Fuzzy toward the house and shook his head. “I really should have left town,” he said. Looking at Oh and Jane, he shrugged. “When I graduated from college, I was offered jobs in two different states, for Christ’s sake, but I said no. I like the people in Kankakee, I said.”

  Munson gave instructions to the two of his officers to wrap up the guns still in the barn and take them into town.

  “We think that Johnny Sullivan was shot with a twenty-two. We know that Mrs. Wheel might have heard some kind of noise but not necessarily a gunshot, and now we find—literally—a stable of weapons, with what appear to be working suppressors—right under our noses.”

  “Supressors?” Jane asked Oh.

  “No such thing as a silencer exists really. The noise from the gun can be suppressed, but not totally silenced,” said Oh. Munson told one of his officers to go ask Lula for something, and Jane thought she heard something about shoes.

  “What are you doing? What’s happening to Fuzzy?” asked Jane.

  “We can’t ignore the fact that all these weapons are on the property. A man was shot here; and you yourself reported that, besides you and your husband, the only person you saw in the vicinity was Fuzzy,” said Munson. “We’re just going to check the clothes he was wearing, his shoes.”

  “His shoes? He’s a farmer,” said Jane. “And a gardener. His shoes are going to have all the dirt on them from everywhere on the property, including the cornfield. What can you possibly prove by analyzing the dirt on his shoes and his clothes …” Jane stopped.

  Between the house and the cabin was a relic from bygone days that had made Jane smile every time she passed it. A clothesline. Strung from two metal poles sunk in concrete were three thick, taut lines. A floppy cloth bag hung from one of the lines, filled with wooden clothespins. On one of Jane’s trips into the house, she had given in to her craving for the feel of wooden clothespins and plunged her hand into the worn, pink-and-blue cotton bag. Pulling out a handful, Jane reviewed the history of the clothespin from the examples in her hand. There were the narrow wooden ones that someone had carved by hand, the more uniform rounded plump ones, then back to narrower, straight-edged pins with squared-off heads and wire hinged bodies. But it wasn’t just the clothesline and the clothespins that made Jane smile, it was the clothes hanging from the clothesline. The constant parade of blue jeans, overalls, white T-shirts, socks, and men’s pajamas that rotated positions on the lines announced to the world that Lula was a woman who did laundry and was proud of it. In fact she did laundry every day. Munson would get the clothes he asked for—clean as tomorrow, smelling of a fresh breeze and slightly stiff with sunshine.

  In the flurry of “not exactly a new crime, but a new glitch in the crime scene protocol” that ensued—Munson barking orders, Lula escorting Fuzzy to the house, slapping away the extended hands and offers of help from all except Nick, who walked on Fuzzy’s other side, asking him about the leaf fossils he had found in a box in the shed—Jane was left facing Charley and Oh. They formed a quiet oasis outside the barn, where once again, six officers were stationed by the door, waiting for the crime scene van to arrive. Again.

  “How did you know about the Sullivans?” asked Jane.

  Oh shook his head.

  “They asked me to find out about their son, they …” Jane hesitated. Why was it difficult to actually speak the words? “They hired me.”

  “Clients,” said Oh.

  “How did you know?”

  “You just told me, Mrs. Wheel. I am here because my wife insisted that she was needed to help Mr. Lowry with his record-breaking garage sale. When I reminded her that she had told me she’d outgrown garage sales, she informed me that she was revising her policy. She feels the sale Mr. Lowry is planning might have … what was her word? Potential.”

  “You phoned Munson,” said Jane. “He told me.”

  “Yes, I did,” said Oh. “After Claire decided we needed to come down, I called your cell phone, which you did not answer. I then called the EZ Way Inn and left a message with your mother. I think.”

  “You think you left a message, or you think you were talking to Nellie?” Charley asked. Even though he was a part of the conversation, he was using a stick to dig into the mulch around a lilac bush, one of the row that lined the path to the barn. Jane filed away the scene. The next time Charley gave her the evil eye for turning over a vase and checking the mark when they were a guest in someone’s home, she would remind him that he had never met a patch of dirt he didn’t like to scratch around in.

  “I spoke with your mother,” said Oh. “I was not confident the message would be delivered. She told me you already had enough problems and hung up.”

  “Then you called Munson?” asked Jane, forgiving Oh immediately. He had walked through the firestorm that was a telephone call to Nellie, and that was penance enough for surprising her.

  “Here’s something interesting,” said Charley. “I thought I saw a little sparkle down here.”

  Charley showed them a piece of polished rose quartz that had been covered by the tree bark and mushroom compost.

  “Not a sample you’d expect to find here?” asked Oh.

  “I wouldn’t expect to find a tumbled and polished specimen of anything in the ground,” said Charley. “The soil here on Fuzzy’s farm, though, yields many surprises.”

  Charley reached into both pockets of his khaki work pants and spilled the contents onto a tree stump a few feet away.

  Jane was reminded of a bowl of shiny mineral specimens that sat beside the cash register at a rock shop they had visited on a South Dakota vacation. You could buy the polished stones by the “scoop,” which was an old sugar shovel that Jane had been interested in for its red Bakelite handle. The woman behind the counter had treated Jane as if she were certifiable when she asked to buy the scoop.

  “No, honey,” she had said slowly, “you buy a scoop of the stones, see?” And she demonstrated by scooping up stones in the bowl, then letting them fall back in. “You buy what you can scoop up in the scoop. You don’t buy the scoop,” she finished, speaking deliberately and carefully. Then she had placed the vintage sugar shovel out of reach, as if Jane might hurt herself with it.

  Jane picked up a few of the specimens.

  “Isn’t this coral?” she asked.

  Charley nodded, smiling.

  “We’re landlocked, right?”

  Charley nodded again.

  “A stream from the Kankakee River that might have run through here years ago wouldn’t be offering up any coral specimens, would it?”

  Charley shook his head.

  “At first when I saw the cat skeleton,” Charley said, “I figured it was just an honest mistake by an overzealous citizen—you know, someone heard that bones were uncovered, doesn’t see them at first, just decides this might be an old graveyard or a historically significant site—calls in an expert right away. In fact I figured that’s why there weren’t any other people from the local college here. Somebody came in right away, saw that a family pet had been exhumed, and left without fully explaining to Fuzzy and Lula that they could go ahead with their digging,” said Charley. “In fact I imagined an all clear from the state would arrive any minute. Since I was planning on being here a few days, though, Nick and I started poking around and found all kinds of stuff. We’ve got arrowheads and pottery shards, fossils, and a few pieces of bone. We’ve got leaf fossils and insect fossils. I’ve found South American amber and old glass beads. And these are for you.” Charley fished a tiny object out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Jane. “I know they’re buttons, but …”

  “An underwear button made of bone and a leather shoe button, probably from the 1890s or so,” said Jane.

  “You’ve come to some conclusion about these findings?” asked Oh.

  “If it had just been some animal bones and arrowheads, I would think that someone might be trying to salt the site. Make it look like something it’s not. Fool the
experts. I mean, Native American artifacts, even if it turns out that they’re not from any tribe that ever lived around here, will still hold up any activity for a while. There were Native Americans on Illinois land in this area, so it would make sense that something was found, but not something that belonged to an Arizona tribe. Until someone proved that it had been phonied up, though, Fuzzy wouldn’t be able to do anything to his land. No construction, no selling of topsoil, no development of any kind.

  “But this is ridiculous. There are ocean specimens, minerals that are from all over the world planted around here. So I would say whoever’s salting the farm is either not very bright or has a ridiculous sense of overkill.” Charley stopped and looked at Jane.

  “Or he just likes to plant things,” said Jane.

  Jane told Oh about the pennies she had seen Fuzzy burying near his roses. She also told him about the Austinite Lula had fished out of her plant last night.

  “So it would seem that Mr. Neilson himself is hiding little treasures on his property?” asked Oh.

  “It might,” said Jane, “if he weren’t so mad about not being able to sell his topsoil. I think what’s got Fuzzy so discombobulated is that he’s being prevented from doing what he wants on his own farm. I hardly think he’d be working against himself like that. I mean, if he is, he’s a great actor; and I don’t think Fuzzy’s ever been all that theatrically minded.”

  “Who called and reported the bones being found?” asked Oh.

  “That’s the question,” said Jane. “It wasn’t Fuzzy or Lula, that’s for sure. Is there a name of a complainant or anything on any of the papers Fuzzy showed you?”