Murder and Mischief in the Hamptons

by T. L. Ingham

  Chapter Fourteen

  At my announcement, everyone scrambled into action and working together like a highly trained SWAT team, they had me out of the hole in no time, wrapped in a blanket and sipping a cup of tea that my mother had made in the guest house. Meanwhile, all of the emergency calls were made.

  The first to arrive was Jase's partner Detective Grummons, a man I had long ago labeled Detective Grumpy-buns. Though, of course, never to his face.

  "Jase is gonna be pissed," was all he said before heading over to direct the officers that had followed him in.

  I watched halfheartedly as they taped the area off with crime scene tape. Before long, the entire construction site was swarming with so many officers it looked like ants pouring out of an ant hill. Grumpy-buns took my statement, only grunting occasionally in response to the various things that I told him.

  I told him about the noises I had heard that had led me to the site in the first place. I told him about the hard shove that had knocked me into the hole and where I had landed. I told him about the discovery of the hard hat, wiping the blood off my hands, the jaw bone, the playing dead, the shovel that had been thrown down beside me and then finally finished with my being buried alive. All in all, it was an outrageous story and I might have had trouble believing it myself, if I hadn't lived it.

  Without realizing it, he echoed my father's sentiments. "Why do these things always happen to you?"

  "I don't know," I said defensively. "Before I came here, I didn't do anything more adventurous than chasing cows that wandered out of the pasture. I'm kind of over this place."

  Jase finally arrived on the heels of Grumpy-buns taking my statement and the two of them talked for a long time. I watched through lidded eyes, pretending I didn’t care, even though I really did.

  My mother came up beside me, offering to refresh my tea. I willingly handed her the cup, wishing she would slip something a little stiffer into it.

  "Just so you know, young lady, we still have long discussion in front of us. But in light of the events of the evening, I think it can wait until tomorrow."

  "Gee, thanks."

  "Don't get smart with me," she admonished.

  "Sorry," I mumbled, watching as Grumpy-buns headed over to Pia and Bernard, presumably to take their statements as well.

  Jase finally came over to me, and my heart thumped a little. Kind of like a dog's tail when they're happy to see you. Same thing, only I don't have a tail, so my heart took the job.

  "Hey," I said.

  He frowned at me. "Would you mind telling me what in the hell you were doing gallivanting around a construction site in the middle of the night?"

  "I wasn't gallivanting. I was- What? What are you insinuating here, buddy?"

  I was slowly beginning to catch on. He didn't honestly believe that I had come out here for some kind of illicit rendezvous with Mike? Right on the heels of our ardent kissing? What kind of girl did he think I was? I was indignant. So indignant that without even thinking about it, I punched him in the arm, following it up with, "Get your mind out of the gutter, buster!"

  "Ow!"

  "Yeah, well, you deserved it! And there's more where that came from too, if you keep on the track that you're on!"

  "What in the hell are you talking about?" He was rubbing his arm where I had hit him. Hey, I used to punch cows, I can hit pretty hard.

  "Whatever you're thinking about Mike and me. You're wrong. And you're dirty-minded to even consider it. Hitting below the belt. Stooping lower than a rattlesnake even. It's a lousy thing to accuse me of."

  "I'm not accusing you of anything, except your propensity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As usual! Aside from that, no one's accusing you of anything. So who's the one with the dirty mind now?"

  I glared at him. "Well, what else was I to think? The way you act when Mike's around, how else can I be, but on pins and needles?"

  "Yeah, if his eyes got anymore green he'd start producing chlorophyll for photosynthesis," Gloria suddenly joined us.

  "I don't need your help!" I said unthinkingly.

  "Honey, you need all the help I can give you," Jase said, thinking that I was talking to him. "As far as Mike is concerned, not for a second did I think your being out here had anything to do with him. The way you kiss me, you'd have to be a whole different sort to have another on the side."

  I blushed at this, but said nothing.

  Jase sat down beside me. "Look, I get that you simply walked into the middle of something that had nothing to do with you. What worries me is that you were out here at all. You're a bit of a jinx you know."

  "I know."

  "Grummons gave me your statement. Is there anything you can think of that you might have left out? Did you see the guy at all?"

  I shook my head. "I wished I had. I'd like to bury him in that hole and see how he likes it. But no. All I saw was a shape and he was kind of bent over." At least I hoped he was, because I hadn't really seen the guy, I was taking what Alex had said on faith. And considering Alex couldn't seem to tell the truth if his life, er, death, depended on it, that was saying a lot.

  "Okay, so, when you got here, Mike was already in the hole. About how long was it between the time Mike left the main house and you arrived here?"

  "I don't know. Under an hour for sure. I mean, you were there. Everyone left and Pia and Bernard and my parents went to bed. We uh-"

  He grinned. "Yeah, I know. Go on."

  "Anyway, uh, then I went upstairs, changed clothes, started to take down my hair, and the thought hit me that I needed some of my blank canvases and another sketch book. I slipped on some shoes and headed over. Maybe forty-five minutes in all. Give or take."

  "Okay. You told Grummons that you heard a noise when you got to the front door?"

  "Yeah, it was grating, like metal on rock."

  "Probably he was doing something with the shovel you said he threw down."

  I shrugged. "I guess. Anyway, I went to investigate-"

  "Because going home and calling the police was out of the question."

  "Because I had no way of knowing criminal activity was occurring."

  "Fine. You went to investigate, then what?"

  "Like I told Grummons. I found the tarp pulled back, went to look in the hole and somebody shoved me in."

  "Do you remember anything from when you were down in the hole?"

  "First I found Mike. Well, actually, I landed on him. Then I found his hard hat and it was covered in blood. I wiped my hands off in the dirt and that's when I found the jaw bone. Then, the next thing I knew, the hole was being filled with dirt. I couldn't get out, so I covered myself in dirt and played dead. The guy threw something down at me and when I didn't move he must have thought either I was dead or unconscious 'cause he went back to burying me alive."

  "Was there anything else that happened down there that you could possibly be missing?"

  "Aside from the fact that the back of Mike's head was caved in and his hard hat was covered in blood, not much."

  "How did you know it was Mike?"

  Since the answer to that question was, 'A ghost told me,' I was struggling to find a response. Finally, I settled for, "I guess I just assumed. I mean, I connect the hole with Mike and I saw his hard hat, so I made the connection."

  "Couldn't it have been one of his construction workers?"

  "I suppose it could have. I guess you'll find that out when you retrieve the body."

  He eyed me a little suspiciously. "I suppose. Are you sure there's something you're not telling me?"

  "And now we're back to the illicit affair."

  He lurched to his feet. "No, as a matter of fact, we are not. But if that's where you want to take your mind, so be it. But it's not a trip I'll be taking with you." And then he stormed off.

  "What was that all about?" Pia came up to me.

  I sighed. "I don't know. It's just that Jase is so jealous where Mike is concerned and you certainly haven't helped with that,
" I glared at her. "I can't help but to wonder if he thinks I was meeting Mike out here for a midnight fling. Which I wasn't. But I can't tell him I know it's Mike because Alex saw him. So what am I supposed to say?"

  "All right, Watson. Let's think about this. Use some deductive reasoning. What was Mike wearing at the party tonight?"

  "I don’t know. Jeans, work shirt, work boots. Nothing special or specific. Any one of his workers would be dressed the same way."

  "Was there anything at all distinctive about him?"

  "No, not really. Again, they all kind of dress the same way. They all wear steel toed boots and jeans. They all wear hard hats- Oh, my God! Duh! I am so stupid sometimes!" I jumped up and flew over to where Jase stood talking to Grumpy-buns. "It was white! That's how I knew! It was white!"

  "What was white?" Grumpy-buns was the first to ask, although it looked like Jase was already catching on.

  "The hard hat. It wasn't yellow like the laborers wear. It was white- the supervisor's helmet. Mike was the supervisor. I just connected it without really thinking about it."

  Grumpy-buns considered this information. "Well, we'll know for sure as soon as the excavation team gets him out. But it's looking like you're right."

  "Yeah well, I may be right about Mike, but my question is, who was the other guy?"

  "That's what we're working on," Grumpy-buns assured me. "We'll get to the bottom of it."

  I hadn't been talking about the murderer. I had in fact been talking about the person to whom the jawbone belonged. And as my gaze brushed over the site and landed on Alex, I was fairly certain I already knew.

  It was the jawbone of an ass.