Bones Behind the Wheel

by E. J. Copperman

  “What’s the second reason?”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  Maxie, hovering near the chandelier (it’s really just a four-bulb light fixture with a publicist), muttered, “I don’t feel like it.”

  Phyllis, who wouldn’t have heard Maxie even if she could hear ghosts (their voices are not audible over a telephone), said, “I need to write a story about this and you don’t feel like it?” Phyllis believes, simply because I delivered papers for her when I was thirteen years old, that I am an aspiring journalist. Phyllis is wrong.

  “Feel free to come over and report the story, Phyllis. I’m off the case.”

  It was Phyllis’s turn to sigh and she did so in a fashion that could actually be described as “crusty,” if that’s even possible. “I’ll be over in a while. Don’t let the cops leave.”

  “Don’t let them? I couldn’t get them to leave with a hefty bribe.”

  Phyllis disconnected the call. That’s Phyllis for “goodbye,” and I promise that’ll be the last “that’s Phyllis for” comment you’ll get from me.

  “So what about my decorating?” Maxie has waited close to half a second after I got off the phone, which was a remarkable display of restraint from her.

  “I give up. What about your decorating?”

  I saw Officer Canton appear near the French doors. No doubt he was going to ask me about stuff that I didn’t have answers for, which is always a highlight. I turned my back on the French doors so he couldn’t see that I appeared to be talking to myself.

  Maxie said, “I want to do some decorating and you won’t let me do it in other people’s houses, so how about here?”

  Here? In my guesthouse? After I’d spent more than four years getting it into the kind of condition I’d envisioned when I’d first taken the tour with the Realtor? “Nothing here needs decorating,” I said. I knew it wouldn’t stand up but it gave me time to think.

  Canton opened the French doors and called in without stepping over the threshold. “Miss?” he called. You had to love this kid.

  I turned toward him. “You need me, officer?”

  “You’re having that bullet hole fixed soon. I could redo the den,” Maxie said. It was true that my contractor friend Tony Mandorisi and his brother Vic were coming to replace a beam between my kitchen and the den where a bullet had … never mind, but the beam needed to be replaced and the Mandorisi brothers were coming to fix it. The ceiling and at least two walls would have to be repainted. I really wasn’t in the mood for a complete redecoration, particularly in the famed Maxie Malone style of “more is more.”

  “Not now,” I said between clenched teeth.

  “Did you say something?” Canton asked. “Miss, the lieutenant is here.”

  I looked at him. “Lieutenant McElone is here?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  That couldn’t be good.

  Chapter 3

  “I’ll have the car out of here as soon as I can get all the forensic evidence out of it that I need,” Lt. Anita McElone was saying.

  The scene in my backyard, to which I had been persuaded to return because McElone is a scaredy-cat, was not the one that was in my guesthouse brochure. The suspect Lincoln Continental’s trunk was sticking out of a gaping hole in the ground, held up by the excavator Jim … somebody … had been operating. Jim was sitting on the excavator’s track, staring off at the ocean and looking upset. Maybe the shock of finding a seriously undernourished corpse in the ground was starting to have an effect on him.

  Bill Harrelson was off to the side, contemplating the excavator and oblivious, it seemed, to Katrina’s attention no matter how extravagantly she might be lavishing it upon him. He nodded every once in a while when she took a breath.

  My husband was standing at the edge of the bottomless pit, peering in like he had stumbled across an amazing treasure and was trying to figure out how to get it out of the ground. I’ve seen him look happier, but not often.

  I had moved the picnic table up to the deck, which was where McElone and I were now sitting. This was as close as she would allow herself to get to the inside of my house. That idea was especially amusing because Paul was just to her left. He loved watching law enforcement at work and as long as McElone didn’t know he was there she would be very professional.

  “How long will that be?” I asked.

  “Usually I’d say there’s no way of knowing, but since you’re going to badger me until I give you a more specific answer I’d guess sometime tomorrow,” McElone said. She looked at me with eyes that dared me to complain.

  I’ve never been one to turn down a dare. “Tomorrow!” I said. “How am I supposed to run a tourist business with a great big hole in my backyard that has a huge car and a dead person in it?”

  McElone regarded me carefully. “You getting a lot of beach traffic these days?” she asked. “We had a high of fifty-two yesterday.”

  “People like to walk on the beach.”

  “There’s a dead person buried in a car on your beach,” McElone reminded me. “That’s a police matter. If I want to I can quarantine the place until the ME makes sure whoever it was didn’t die of a communicable disease. So do you really want to push me over one day?”

  I hate it when she has a point.

  “Good,” the lieutenant said when it was clear I wasn’t going to object any further. “Now we get to the part where I ask the questions.”

  “All my answers are going to be, ‘I don’t know,’ ” I told her. “Because I honestly don’t.”

  “Humor me. Let’s start with, how could you have not known there was a great big car buried under your beach?”

  That was what we were going to start with? “I think it’s pretty clear it was here long before I showed up,” I told her. “How could I have known it was there? The survey before I bought the place didn’t look for buried Lincoln Continentals, oddly.”

  “Any of your ghosty pals know anything about this?” McElone’s voice dropped in volume despite there being no one she knew of who could have heard what she was saying. Paul looked amused.

  “Tell her I’m from Canada and don’t have a New Jersey driver’s license,” he said.

  I decided against taking his suggestion. “Nobody knows anything about it. They didn’t get here all that much before me.”

  The lieutenant nodded but didn’t make eye contact. She didn’t like having to broach the subject. “Can they ask around?” she said.

  “You’re admitting that you believe I have ghosts in my house?” McElone had steadfastly refused to put words to the thought although it had been clear she was convinced some time before.

  “I’m following any possibility that might help,” she said, which of course wasn’t an answer at all. “Is there any chance they could find something out?”

  I looked at Paul, which was probably something I shouldn’t have done. McElone noticed the movement and turned swiftly to see what I might have been looking at. Luckily Josh was climbing the steps to the deck in that general direction so she wasn’t too alarmed as far as I could tell.

  “Without a name at least it would be hard to check about the person in the car,” Paul said. “I need more information.”

  Paul is able to communicate sort of telepathically with other spirits, a system we call the Ghosternet. But if he wants to send out a message he needs to know who he’s looking for and if he wants to receive one in any way other than randomly, he needs another ghost to ask.

  I relayed Paul’s answer to McElone without being clear that it had come from someone other than myself. She scowled but nodded, understanding. “We’re going to do some forensics on the car. I’ll have the body out of your yard before tonight, anyway. Once we can get DNA we might be able to get a match but it’ll take weeks. Maybe they’re carrying a wallet with ID in it.”

  “How would you know it wasn’t planted there to give you the wrong idea?” I asked. Paul, looking impressed, pointed a finger at me like a gun.

  “I don�
��t,” the lieutenant admitted. “But it would be a place to start. You and I both think that car’s been down there for quite some time. This could be the coldest case I’ve ever seen.”

  Josh walked over, through Paul although he didn’t know it. Paul looked amused. He was in an amused mood today. “What have you found out, lieutenant?” he asked when he got to us.

  “Not much,” McElone groused. “Since you’re here I might as well ask if you’ve ever seen that car before.”

  Josh shook his head. “I never even heard about it before I came home for lunch today.”

  “Lunch!” I said. “You haven’t eaten. When do you have to go back?”

  “Pretty much now,” my husband said. “I’ll get a sandwich on the way. Don’t worry.”

  “I feel like a bad wife.”

  Josh leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “You are the opposite of that,” he said.

  “I’m a cop.” McElone stood up. “I don’t have to put up with this kind of stuff.”

  “I didn’t invite you over,” I reminded her. “This was your idea.”

  Josh looked over his shoulder at the car, suspended by its back bumper as apparently it would be for another whole day. “It’s really fascinating,” he said. “You have to wonder what this was all about.”

  “Good question,” McElone said. She didn’t sound nearly as enthusiastic as my husband did.

  “I know, right?” Josh kissed me again and headed into the house, no doubt to walk through and get into his car again.

  McElone let out a long breath. “I really hope the person in that car died of natural causes,” she said. “That would be nice.”

  “You say that like you don’t think it’s what you’ll find out,” I said to her.

  The lieutenant started toward the steps back down to the beach. “That’s because I don’t,” she answered. “You don’t bury a car in the sand because some guy had a blood clot. You do it because you don’t want the body found for forty years.”

  I watched as she approached Bill, who seemed glad to have something to do. “Tomorrow, right?” I called after her.

  McElone turned and looked at me. “There’s no way of knowing,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  McElone stayed another hour, re-interviewing Bill and Jim. Katrina was infatuated but not obsessed and came into the house after a bit to warm up and take a shower. The lieutenant had asked her two questions, she said, and determined there was no terribly useful information to be had from Katrina. At least on the subject of the buried car.

  I went back into the house and immediately encountered Maxie, who was still waiting, intent to keep hectoring me about redecorating part of my house. As soon as I was back inside she took up the challenge again.

  “The way I see it, I have been doing these shows for years for absolutely nothing,” she said before I could manage to make my way to the coffee urn. I put out a cart every morning with urns for hot coffee (regular and decaf) and hot water for tea. It was now time to wheel it back into the kitchen but not before I took an especially caffeinated cup for myself. It had already been a long day and I hadn’t even had lunch yet. “You owe me.”

  Maxie should have known better than to challenge me when I needed coffee. I turned toward her and stopped moving entirely. “I owe you?” I said. “You stay in my house, you met your husband because of me, your closest friend is my daughter and I owe you?” Maxie was the spoiled teenage brat I was hoping I would never actually have in my family.

  “Okay, maybe owe isn’t the right word.” That was a rare concession on Maxie’s part; this must have been an important point for her. I started wheeling the cart of the den and into the kitchen again. “Maybe it’s more in the area of fairness. Maybe I’m just saying that the one thing I really liked doing when I was, you know, like you, was creating interesting spaces. And now I’m looking at not being able to do that forever and it’s getting me down.”

  The worst thing about Maxie is that she’s not actually a bad person. Ghost. Whatever. She does care about the people she cares about and even if her tactics are often as irritating as you can possibly imagine (and maybe more irritating) she can be counted on when you really need her. She has saved my life at least once. She has also driven me to distraction pretty much every day since I have known her. It’s a strange dichotomy, which sums up Maxie perfectly.

  Actually, any phrase with the word strange in it has a fighting chance of summing up Maxie.

  “I get that,” I said. I did understand that she was looking at a very, very long time that needed to be filled with something. “I’m concerned about you indulging yourself too much. This isn’t the house you bought for yourself, to show off your talents. It’s a public house for people to come and spend a relaxing vacation. You can’t paint the walls black, you know what I mean?”

  I pushed through the kitchen door and rolled the cart to the corner near the sink. I’d clean out the urns with enough time for them to dry before I had to refill them for the next day. I knew Maxie was following me into the kitchen despite the fact that her movement made no sound at all and I wasn’t looking in her direction.

  But I could sense her enthusiasm level spiking even before she swooshed herself over my head and looked me straight in the face. “You mean I can do it?” she squealed, every inch a nine-year-old who had just been given permission to attend a sleepover at her best friend’s house. “I can decorate the den?”

  That hadn’t actually been what I’d meant but walking it back now would be a severe miscalculation. Never get a poltergeist mad at you if you can avoid it. I’m going to have that embroidered on a pillow.

  At least now I could appear to agree while managing to pivot away from having Maxie do whatever she would do to my most public room. “Tell you what,” I said. “The ceiling beam being replaced sits right between the den and the kitchen. Why don’t we start with you making some designs for in here and we’ll see where it goes from there?”

  If she were in her normal state of mind Maxie might have noticed that what I’d done was get her to work in the room that guests see least often in the house, other than Melissa’s bedroom and the one I share with Josh. But she appeared to be downright giddy now, and spun around the circumference of the ceiling a couple of times in celebration.

  “I’m doing it!” she exulted. “I’m decorating again!” Maxie rose like a shot up into the ceiling and vanished. Which was the best possible outcome for me.

  But that was just one ghost down. Paul phased himself through the back wall of the kitchen and he was stroking his goatee. That wasn’t promising; it meant that he was thinking seriously about an investigation and I knew we didn’t have one to think about right now. My best tactic would be to cut him off at the pass.

  “We’re not looking into the person in the car,” I said. “McElone is on the case and you know for certain that we have no client, so we’re not.”

  “I had no intention of suggesting that we should,” he answered, in a tone that clearly indicated he’d had every intention of suggesting that we should. “I am not entirely convinced there is anything to investigate. The person in the car might very well have requested such a burial, although it would be interesting to see if there were any record of such a thing taking place on this property.”

  “If you want to do that you can do it on your own time,” I told him. “You’re capable of moving around now. Catch a ride to the real estate records at the county offices in Toms River. It’s not exactly around the corner but you can probably find your way there. Just don’t involve me; I’m not interested. Got that?”

  Paul tried to avoid looking like I’d just made his month and failed miserably. “Of course,” he said.

  Then I got a truly wicked idea. “Why don’t you just get yourself into town—I’ll drive you the next time I’m going—and just follow McElone around? You’ll know everything she knows and that will get you information you’ve never had in an investigation before.”

  N
ow Paul’s inner child was going to Disney World. “I think that’s an excellent plan!” he said. “When can we go?”

  I nodded toward the back door. “I’m not even sure she’s left yet,” I said. “You could start now.”

  “Very good thinking, Alison!” Paul practically flew—no, he actually flew—out through the back wall and headed in the general direction of McElone as I reminded him we still had the afternoon spook show to do in two hours. He made some perfunctory sound that was supposed to assure me he’d gotten the message but I made a mental note to see if Everett could come back from the gas station should it become necessary.

  I had a very brief, contented time when I went around the first floor and straightened up. I would have gone into the kitchen to start baking an apple pie, but then I remembered that I can’t do anything with food except eat it and that Melissa is the cooking genius in the family. It was just as well because then I’d have to clean up the kitchen and who needs that?

  As it turned out I wouldn’t have gotten past peeling the first apple anyway because my front door opened and closed. I don’t lock it during the day despite the guests having spare keys I give them (and scrupulously gather upon their leaving). I heard the activity in the front room and looked up from the library. Someone had come in and was walking around the house looking for me … or something.

  Sure enough Phyllis turned the corner at a full trot and pretty much charged into the den when she saw me. “Alison!” she blurted. Phyllis blurts more than she talks.

  “The cops are in the backyard,” I said, pointing in a general direction. “McElone might still be here. Go talk to her.”

  “First I want to know what you’ve found out,” she said, sitting down on one of my armchairs. “Tell me about the skeleton in the buried car.”

  “I haven’t found out anything,” I told her, wondering where she might have gotten the idea that I had. “Go ask the cops. I just happen to own the land the car was buried in.”