A Haunting of the Bones

by Julia Keller

* * *

  Four hours later, Bell realized that she had to get something to eat or risk keeling over. Her morning had been a busy one. She was perversely glad about that; it distracted her from her disappointment at the news about Dave Hickok.

  After leaving the Gazette office she’d handled a preliminary hearing on an aggravated assault case and taken a deposition regarding a massive check-fraud ring that stretched across four counties. Her duties as prosecutor didn’t stop, no matter how many bones were wrenched from their secret resting places. But it was nearly noon now, and she was feeling a little faint from hunger.

  She pushed open the front door of JP’s. The lunch rush—“rush” was a relative term in Acker’s Gap, especially these days, but a fair number of customers had already settled into their burgers or fried egg sandwiches or tuna melts—meaning that Bell, as a party of one, had to be satisfied with a seat at the counter. She could’ve pulled rank and demanded a booth; she was a public official and a friend of Jackie’s, to boot. And she was not above playing that card. She’d insisted on a booth plenty of times, on days when she needed the privacy.

  Today, however, she slid onto a stool without protest. Truth was, she was too tired to argue, even on behalf of a special privilege.

  “Coffee, hon?”

  Wanda Harshbarger was working the counter. She wiped off the space in front of Bell and waited for an answer.

  “You bet.”

  “Thought so. You look all in, Bell.” Wanda paid extra attention to a spot on the stainless steel that wouldn’t rub out. She didn’t want to meet Bell’s gaze just now. “Heard about what them kids found the other day. I’m sorry. I truly am.”

  There’d been no way to keep a lid on the discovery of the bones. Nor on the preliminary ID. In less than twenty-four hours, the news had spread through Acker’s Gap the way a creek meanders through open countryside—not with one wild gush, but at a methodical, relentless pace, picking up the sticks and small rocks of additional tidbits of information as it went. Bell had been accepting people’s condolences all morning long and was weary of it. After all, it was not as if she’d recently lost her mother. She died a long, long time ago, she wanted to snap at them. And I didn’t even really know her. But she didn’t say any of that, of course. Because they meant well.

  The news about a second set of bones had yet to make its way through town. It would happen soon enough. This was a blessed interlude of calm before the next round of questions started: Were they murdered at the same time? What else might be buried out there in the desolate part of the county, waiting to rise up and haunt their sleep?

  “Thank you, Wanda.”

  “Need a menu?”

  “No. Just a chef salad, please.”

  “Saltines?”

  Bell nodded. She didn’t care whether or not Wanda added the little plastic packet containing two crackers, but if Bell had said, “No, thanks,” then Wanda would’ve said, “You sure, hon?” and Bell would’ve been forced to reply, “Yes, I’m sure,” and then Wanda would’ve been obliged to say, “Well, if you change your mind by the time I bring you your salad, you just let me know and I’ll fetch ’em for you then, no trouble at all”—and so, to forestall all that interaction, all that excruciating chitchat, Bell agreed to the saltines.

  The revelation about Dave Hickok’s death had jarred and discouraged her. Once she’d found the clue that might have led her to him, Bell had let herself imagine the conversation with Hickok: The gathering of details about what her mother was like. And perhaps, at long last, the truth about Teresa Dolan’s death. It might have been arrogance on her part, but Bell—in the brief interval between her finding the ad and the devastating phone call from Sheriff Fogelsong—had persuaded herself that she’d be able to handle Dave Hickok. If he’d been involved in her mother’s death, no matter to what extent, she’d force him to confess. She’d get it out of him. As a county prosecutor she’d dealt with people like Dave Hickok before, and she knew how to turn the screws so that he’d come clean—no matter how long ago he’d committed the crime.

  And then she would know. Finally, she would know for sure. Donnie Dolan had been a child molester and a liar and a lazy bastard and an altogether miserable excuse for a human being—but was he a murderer, too? Or had he—for once in his repugnant, selfish, greedy, disgusting life—told the truth? Did Teresa Dolan run off with Dave Hickok? And was it her lover, and not her husband, who had killed her?

  Or it could’ve been somebody else altogether, Bell knew. She was well aware that Hickok might not have all the answers she was seeking. But it was a fresh trail. It was a new day.

  At least it had been all of that, until Nick Fogelsong’s call had snatched away even that one fragile thread of a chance. A chance to know.

  “Got a call from Larry.”

  Bell was so startled that she almost knocked over her coffee mug. Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed Jackie LeFevre coming toward her, leaning over from the other side of the counter. Jackie had a spatula in one hand. A hairnet had captured her long thick hair, shaping it into a plump black raindrop. She was flushed from the heat of the grill.

  “What?” Bell said.

  “Larry. Last night.” She shook her head. To Bell, Jackie seemed more irritated than frightened. “Mad as hell. Just like always. Said he was calling from a pay phone at a gas station halfway between Richmond and Acker’s Gap. Said he’s coming here, no matter what. He used a pay phone so I’d answer—because if I’d seen it was his number on the caller ID, I never would’ve picked up. He was right about that.”

  Bell had two thoughts simultaneously: I didn’t know there were any pay phones left anywhere on earth was one. The other: I’m a lousy friend. With everything else going on, she’d not given Jackie or her problems a second’s worth of thought. From the moment she’d gotten the sheriff’s call about the bones, those bones had preoccupied her. It was a wonder she’d been able to focus on her work at the courthouse that morning.

  “Did you talk to Sheriff Fogelsong?” Bell asked.

  Jackie nodded. “He’s alerted his deputies. But like you said, until Larry does something, we just have to sit tight. So far, all the bastard’s done is shoot off his mouth. Keeps telling me how much I’m gonna regret treating him this way. Telling me to watch out. Telling me I better see the light—or else.”

  Before Bell could comment, Jackie had returned to the grill. She finished up two hamburgers, sliding them onto the bottom halves of a pair of buns on a big white plate and handing the plate to Mindy Lewis, the other waitress. “Fries’ll be up in a sec,” Jackie told her. “Go ahead and take him the burgers while they’re hot.”

  Jackie, Bell recalled, had envisioned another sort of place when she’d first opened JP’s. It would be a place where nobody ordered fries or onion rings as side dishes because the grilled asparagus and oven-roasted Brussels sprouts were so enticing. Gradually, though, she’d been forced to abandon that dream. The people of Acker’s Gap had started avoiding JP’s, driving the extra distance out to the interstate to the fast-food chains to get what they wanted. Frustrated but realistic, Jackie plugged in the deep-fat fryer and now kept it going all day long.

  “Guess nothing much changes around here,” she’d muttered over her shoulder to Bell one day last year as she’d turned the dripping wire basket to one side, dumping a pile of shiny fries onto a plate. “You try and help people out, show ’em another way, and they go right back to what they know best.”

  Bell had given Jackie a sympathetic smile, but felt like a damned hypocrite when she did so. Because she was the one who’d ordered the fries.

  * * *

  The next day, Bell was sitting at her desk in her courthouse office when Rhonda Lovejoycharged in. Rhonda was a large woman with a piled-up parfait of brown hair with blond highlights, a yen for brightly colored skirts and flamboyant tops, and a unique skill set: She had a bloodhound’s relentlessness when it came to tracking people down and a light, highly effective touch when it came to
interrogating them.

  “Found her,” Rhonda said.

  “Great.” Bell flipped down the lid of her laptop, glad for the excuse to abandon the memo she was writing to the county commissioners. She and Nick Fogelsong had been trying for a year now to get them to requisition the funds for a third deputy. Bell crafted a new argument for each commission meeting. Trouble was, she saw it from the commissioners’ side as well: With limited public resources, would the advantages of an additional deputy outweigh the benefits of repairs to torn-up roads and dangerously overstressed bridges?

  “Yeah.” Rhonda didn’t wait for an invitation to sit down on the couch across from Bell’s desk. She smoothed out the hem of her skirt. “Started on the job right after you texted me yesterday. For one thing, her name’s not Haney anymore. It’s Gilmore. Sheila Gilmore. And she lives on the other side of the state. In Petit County.” Rhonda took a deep breath, preparatory to explaining how she’d done it. “There was a bankruptcy filing in federal court for Haney Roofing in 1977. Company didn’t last very long, apparently. Hard to make a go of it in that business. In any kind of construction business, really. You can ask my brother Willie about that—he’s started up and then had to shut down two construction companies. Fellow once said to him, ‘You know, there’s a lot of money in construction,’ and Willie said, ‘Yeah. Mine.’ Anyway, the contact information in the filing was years and years out of date, but the attorney this Sheila person used—Leon Fink—is still practicing. Reached him last night.”

  “And he knew Shelia’s new name?”

  “Nope.”

  Bell looked a bit confused, which delighted Rhonda; she loved to up the dramatic ante while describing her work.

  “Turns out,” Rhonda continued, “that Leon Fink was clueless. Sounded like he’s about a hundred and fifty years old. But his secretary, bless her heart, stayed in touch with Sheila for a little while after the bankruptcy was final. Long enough to know that Sheila married a man named Royce Gilmore and moved to Petit County. Now she sells real estate. So it wasn’t too hard to locate the company she works for and get contact numbers for her. Work, home, and cell—you know how those real estate agents are. They want you to be able to reach ’em anytime, anywhere. I e-mailed all three numbers to you just before I came up here.”

  The assistant prosecutors’ office was in the courthouse basement, a stone-floored, low-ceilinged, dungeon-like space that only a tolerant soul like Rhonda Lovejoy would endure without complaint. The other assistant prosecutor, Hickey Leonard, was not so forgiving; he had insisted for years that the office constituted cruel and unusual punishment and swore, furthermore, that if he weren’t so busy scraping off mold and stomping on spiders, he’d take his grievance to a Supreme Court justice. Or maybe just a Raythune County commissioner. Depended on who returned his call first.

  Bell opened her laptop. Tapped the keys. “Here it is.” She looked at the numbers. She felt an odd sensation, similar to the one she’d felt when she had come across the ad for the roofing company that proved Dave Hickok had existed. Inch by inch, she was getting closer to the people who had known her mother. Finding out that Hickok was dead had been a blow—but Hickok’s business partner, Sheila, apparently was still alive. And thanks to Rhonda’s diligence and creativity, the means of reaching her was right here. On the glowing screen with the pulsing cursor. The cursor looked as if it were daring her to keep going, to push on.

  “I’ll try her tonight,” Bell said. “Got some things I need to finish first.”

  The truth was, Bell didn’t want a witness when she called. She needed to be alone. If Dave Hickok’s business partner had information for her about her mother, she’d rather be by herself when she heard it; she didn’t know how she might react. Certain emotions, Bell had taken pains to bury very deep. When—if—they finally broke the surface, she didn’t know what would happen to the rigid control she had carefully maintained for so long, the thick exterior that sealed the heat within, like a cast-iron lid on a scalding hot skillet.

  * * *

  The big black Chevy Blazer with the county seal on the sides huffed to a stop in front of Bell’s house. She was sitting on the porch, even though the air had grown chilly now that the sun was down. She’d sensed Sheriff Fogelsong might stop by tonight. They’d spoken on the phone several times since the discovery of her mother’s remains, but they had yet to speak face-to-face. That was unusual; typically, they’d see each other several times a day, either in the courthouse corridor or taking a break at JP’s. But the burden of their respective caseloads had intensified in the past few weeks, even before the bones had come to light.

  “Hey,” he said. He took a seat. She was sitting cross-legged on the porch swing, in sweatpants and sneakers.

  She lifted the green bottle of Rolling Rock. “There’s another one of these in the fridge,” she said. “Interested?”

  “No, I’ve only got a minute. And technically I’m still on duty.”

  “Technically, so am I, but it’s not stopping me.” She grinned and lifted the bottle for another sip. “Any more word from the forensics lab?”

  “Not what I came by to talk about, but since you asked—yes, the additional tests have come back. They say they can now confirm their original thesis. The first set of remains is Teresa Dolan. The second set is Hickok. Both of them were the victims of foul play, of violent acts of some kind. With her, it looks like a series of blows to the head. He was struck repeatedly by a vehicle.”

  Bell was quiet for a moment. The official phrases—words such as “foul play” and “violent acts”—were familiar to her because she was a prosecutor, but hearing them in relation to her mother was another thing entirely.

  “She didn’t leave us,” Bell said. She spoke softly, musingly.

  “Looks that way.”

  Bell changed the subject. She needed to get the thickness out of her throat. “Did you find any next of kin for Hickok?”

  “No. No living relatives to notify.”

  She didn’t speak for a moment. She had successfully fended off her emotions a moment ago, but here they were again.

  “Belfa?”

  She shook her head. “Nick, I just don’t know. I mean, Shirley and I have been living so long with the idea that we’d never know what happened to her. Now that we might …” She let her voice trail off.

  “I get you. A confirmation always marks an end point. And maybe there was a part of you hoping that she was still alive somewhere. Might walk back into your lives one day, out of the blue. Wanting to get to know her two little girls all over again. See how you turned out. Now, though, you know for sure that it’s never going to happen. There’s a sadness there. A relief, maybe, to finally know for sure—but also a loss. Am I right?”

  “Close.” He was spot-on correct, but she didn’t want to tell him so, afraid that she might choke up when she did. Damn you, Nick Fogelsong, for knowing me as well as I know myself, she thought. Okay, better. But she didn’t really resent him for that. She needed him and his intuition about her—an intuition based on having been acquainted with her since she was ten years old—because she didn’t have anyone else. No one else had been there as long and as continuously as he had.

  “You’ve got to let yourself grieve a little bit,” he said.

  “No time for that.”

  His answer came back so quickly that she knew he’d anticipated her objection and was ready to parry it. “You were three years old when she left, Belfa. Everything was put on hold then. All the emotions, all those feelings of loss. Terror, too, if I’m not mistaken. Would’ve been hard for anybody—much less a little kid forced to rely on Donnie Dolan.” He shifted his feet. Lowered his voice. Fogelsong wasn’t a man given to platitudes, but clearly he’d thought about this long and hard and needed to say it. “You’ve got thirty-seven years of grieving to get through. I think you can give yourself a day or so to let it all sink in—before you run out and tackle the case.”

  “Funny,” Bell said. “That�
��s the same thing I said to Carla. When I called and told her about all of this, she was ready to rush right back here and start investigating. Finally convinced her to settle down. Give it some time. Jesus, Nick—this is her grandmother we’re talking about. Even though she never knew her—I don’t have a single picture to show her—I can tell that Carla’s pretty emotional about it. Even if she doesn’t show it too much on the outside.”

  “She’s not the only one.”

  In the brief time they’d been talking, dusk had slipped away and full dark had taken its place. Bell was grateful for that, and grateful as well that she hadn’t bothered to turn on the porch light. She didn’t want Nick Fogelsong to see her face right now. She could feel the dampness on her cheeks. Her eyes were stinging from the effort—a doomed one—to hold back tears. She waited a moment before speaking. She needed to recover her emotional poise. If she had to be vulnerable in front of anyone, she’d surely choose Nick Fogelsong—but even here with him, she hated to display such weakness. Hated it. Toughness was the thing that had enabled her survival. Had she capitulated back then—back when her father was regularly beating the hell out of her and Shirley, and back when he’d threatened to sexually abuse her, too—she would’ve perished.

  She would perish right now, come to that, if she didn’t push back against softness and neediness. That’s how she felt, anyway.

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Nick.” She willed herself to sound firm, unyielding. “Already got some leads. Going to find out what happened to my mother and Hickok.”

  She couldn’t see his face, but sensed he was frowning. Sensed he would keep trying to dissuade her. “It’s been almost forty years,” he said, right on schedule. “What about the idea of giving it some time first?”

  “That was your suggestion. I didn’t agree to it.”

  He took another tack. “What does Shirley say?”

  “You and Shirley see eye to eye on this one. She told me to let it be. Fine—so it’s two against one. I’m used to being the underdog.”