Bones Behind the Wheel

by E. J. Copperman

  “Nothing?” Phyllis demanded. “What am I paying you for?”

  “You’re not paying me.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  I looked down at her as I straightened a shelf of paperbacks. “Phyllis, you need to pay attention and hear me for once. I don’t work for you. Aside from throwing papers onto people’s porches I have never worked for you. I have no ambition to be a reporter and I have no talent for it either. I’m just your friend and that’s all.”

  When I glanced down again Phyllis was scrolling through emails on her phone. “I know, dear. I know. But with you on the scene I expect to get more than that.”

  It’s a lesson I learned at the one and only high school reunion I have ever attended (at the insistence of my best friend Jeannie Rogers): People never change. You think they will, but they won’t. They will be who they are and just get older doing it. It has been a real source of comfort for me because now I don’t have any expectations and I am almost never disappointed in anybody.

  I shook my head in something approaching amusement and said, “You better get out there, Phyllis. From here I can see McElone heading for her car.” I could see Paul following her only a few feet behind like a devoted puppy. This would be an excellent test of McElone’s detecting abilities. If she couldn’t sense a ghost staying with her all the time from a very close distance, how perceptive was she really? (And if she didn’t sense Paul’s presence, it wouldn’t bother her and I could have some quality “me” time—win-win!)

  Phyllis rose out of the chair, not as swiftly as she once had, and mimicked my headshake even if she didn’t realize it. “You’re just not trying, Alison,” she said as she headed for my back door.

  “That is exactly right,” I told her. She probably didn’t take note of that, either. I’d been in contact with two women who had jobs demanding unusual perception and neither of them had really noticed things I had. Maybe I wasn’t giving myself enough credit. But I finally had the house more or less to myself, assuming Katrina was upstairs showering (and she certainly was, I could tell by the sound of my water pipes shaking).

  As I got down off the stepstool I’d been using, my phone buzzed and I saw a text message from Josh: Just got back to the store. Have they figured out anything about the bones in the car yet?

  Not exactly the kind of romantic message one might expect from a husband of less than one year, but I’ve learned that you can’t anticipate people and besides, he’s a really good husband even without much practice. I sent back: Not yet. McElone thinks it wasn’t just a burial.

  Why we weren’t having this conversation on the phone or when Josh got home from the store tonight was a mystery but I’d decided I wasn’t going to be solving any mysteries for a while, if ever, so I didn’t pursue it. In a moment my phone buzzed again.

  Are you going to investigate?

  Okay, that got me concerned so I sent back: Go sell paint.

  I’ll take that for a no, he texted.

  You are correct, my friend.

  I put the stepstool away in the hall closet outside the library and thought about going up to clean the two guest rooms in use, which wouldn’t take very long. But apparently my text conversation was not concluded because the phone buzzed yet again with another message from my husband:

  Do you mind if I look into it a little?

  Chapter 5

  “You want to be an investigator?” My daughter Melissa, having concocted a magnificent dinner of garlic/brown sugar chicken and risotto, had received the usual accolades from Josh, my mother and me, the only other people in the room who could eat it. My father, noting the preparation that had been done in the damaged ceiling beam, was hovering near the top of the doorframe and Paul was sitting in/on the stove while Liss’s apple cobbler was baking in the oven. I don’t know if Paul gets any of the warmth from the oven but he certainly doesn’t feel the way I would if I were perched on top of a working oven, let alone inside it.

  Josh, chewing thoughtfully, considered the question and shook his head negatively. “No. I’m not interested in doing this more than the one time, like your mom,” he said, knowing perfectly well that I’m only (technically) interested in investigations because of the deal I’ve made with Paul. “I just find this particular thing fascinating, and I figure I can do some research without getting in the way of the police. I don’t expect to solve the case or anything.”

  “That’s good,” my mother said. “One private eye in the family is enough.” Mom doesn’t mind my doing the occasional investigation, and she actually enjoys hearing about the cases Paul makes me look into, but I think she considers it a dangerous vocation and given my previous experience, I can’t argue too strenuously.

  Maxie dropped down through the ceiling wearing a painter’s smock and cargo shorts. She wasn’t carrying any tools but she picked up a pad and pencil from the countertop and started sketching the inside of the kitchen door. Her husband Everett, in fatigues, floated in behind her, watching his wife with some admiration and I thought a tiny bit of tension, which is the proper way to view Maxie. “Don’t mind me,” she said absently.

  “Too late,” I said. It’s just hard to resist a good straight line sometimes. Maxie didn’t appear to hear me and no one else in the room reacted. So I had amused myself. That’s half the battle.

  I hadn’t returned Josh’s text when he’s suggested he might want to look into the car and the bones in the backyard. The bones had been removed now, thank goodness, and McElone had semi-promised the car would be gone the next day. I didn’t want to think about my husband taking up with the strange events and objects that had been dug up but I didn’t really know why. Was it that investigation was supposed to be my thing? I didn’t think so but it had come to mind. I certainly didn’t want to take on this question myself but for reasons I couldn’t really pin down I didn’t want Josh to do it either. Since I couldn’t come up with a decent argument against him getting involved I hadn’t answered and wasn’t raising any objections now. But I gathered he could sense my lack of enthusiasm.

  So Paul wasn’t helping when he stepped out of the oven and said, “I think the case definitely needs some closer examination. After seeing what Lt. McElone is researching I believe as she does, that the person in that car probably had not died of natural causes.”

  “What do you think of teal?” Maxie asked from the upper reaches of the room.

  Josh can’t see or hear the ghosts. So I didn’t have to react to anyone who wasn’t currently drawing breath if I didn’t want him to be included in the conversation. I’d long ago concluded, however, that such a tactic was rude and since I actually do love this husband (we won’t discuss the first unless it’s absolutely necessary) I had made it a policy to keep him up to date on posthumous chitchat.

  In this case, I didn’t have to do much. “For the whole room?” I asked Maxie.

  “No, just around the door. I’m thinking about other colors for other walls.” Maxie was nothing if not inventive. The last thing I needed in my kitchen.

  “Might not be the time, Maxie,” Everett suggested. He went ignored. Maxie was focused. She can focus better than almost anyone I know.

  I didn’t answer her. Melissa, who can see and hear the deceased (better than I do, in fact), looked over at Paul. “You think the person in the car was murdered?” she asked.

  Josh’s eyes took on a focus they hadn’t had before and he looked at her. “Who said that?” he asked. “Was it Paul?” Josh knows the ghosts’ backstories and he has great respect for Paul’s investigative abilities. I guess he figures anyone who could keep me alive through a series of murder investigations must have some idea of what he’s doing. I think Paul is an excellent observer and interpreter of information and something of a lousy bodyguard.

  Melissa nodded.

  Paul glanced at Josh, whom he still didn’t know very well despite his being in my life for a few years full-time, and noted his interest. “The lieutenant said it seemed unlikely the pe
rson would be buried in a car if no one was trying to hide the body,” he said. “She was unable to find any records of a burial in a Lincoln Continental in this area and she went back to the car’s date of manufacture in 1977.”

  I saw Melissa, who was sitting next to Josh, lean over to quietly relay the information Paul was disseminating.

  “So that would point to the idea that the person in the car was not buried there willingly,” my mother said. Mom watches a lot of true crime shows on television. And she hangs around my house quite a bit. After a while everybody who spends time in the guesthouse thinks they’re in a rerun of Law & Order and acts accordingly.

  “It’s a theory,” Paul said. “But it fits the limited number of facts we have so far.”

  “What’s this we stuff, Kemosabe?” I said. “I told you, I’m out on this one. I have no interest in poking around an old car that was buried under sand for forty years. I have a guesthouse to run and a ceiling beam to replace starting tomorrow.”

  “It’s gonna be a tough one,” my father added because he thought he was being helpful. “Some of the wood is bent at a really interesting angle because of the bullet. This might go up higher than we thought.” Dad loves a construction challenge. Dad wasn’t helping to do the work or paying for the people who were. I adore my father, but his enthusiasm is sometimes a little … impractical from my standpoint.

  Josh got up and started clearing plates to put into the dishwasher. “I don’t want to involve you, Alison,” he said. “But I do want to keep up with what’s going on. I think this whole thing is fascinating. I mean, a car buried in the ground with a body in it, and right in our backyard!”

  “You make that sound like a good thing,” I said. My husband had never really shown this kind of fanboy interest in anything before when I’d been around. He didn’t even follow a football team. It was a little disconcerting.

  “I don’t see the harm in it. Everybody likes a good mystery.”

  That was a matter of opinion. I liked a good mystery fine when Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple was solving it. Took so much of the responsibility out of my hands.

  “I’m not saying there’s harm in it.” I picked up more of the utensils and dishes on the counter and walked over to the open dishwasher Josh was filling. “I’m saying I don’t want to be the consulting detective this time. I want to be blissfully ignorant of what’s going on with this investigation as soon as McElone gets that car out of the ground and hauls it away tomorrow.”

  Josh stopped in mid-dish-placing. He has a better sense of spatial relationships than I do so he can load a dishwasher more efficiently. And if you ever meet him I urge you to tell him I said so. Better for him unloading it, too. “So I guess I’ll just have to hear about anything that goes on through Phyllis at the paper,” he said. There was almost a wistful quality in his voice. I felt bad about depriving the poor guy his interest, but not bad enough to start poking around bones in a car.

  But Paul had already picked up on the problem and seemed intent on providing an answer. He reached into his pocket—the ghosts can conceal objects in their clothing and they won’t become visible until they’re removed from said clothing—and pulled out the rudimentary cell phone I’d bought for him after he’d developed enough manual dexterity to use it. Ghosts can’t be heard through telephones, but Paul could push buttons and that meant he could text.

  He did just that, and in a moment I heard a ping from Josh’s phone. He looked a little puzzled and reached into his pocket for it, then checked the screen carefully. “I don’t know this number,” he said.

  “It’s Paul,” I told him.

  Josh’s face filled with wonder. “Really?” He’d never communicated directly with one of the ghosts before. He looked at the screen, then up into the ceiling, which is where people who can’t see ghosts always think they are. And sometimes they’re right. In this case Paul’s cell phone was clearly visible much closer to eye level, but Josh wasn’t looking there. “That would be really great. Thank you!” he said.

  “What would be really great?” Melissa asked.

  “Paul says he’d like me to work with him on this case,” Josh answered. He sounded sincerely honored. I’d worked with Paul on a number of cases now, and the idea of being honored by the experience was something I’d never actually felt. But who was I to burst my husband’s bubble?

  Paul texted furiously again for a few moments while Maxie considered the ceiling, which she did by becoming horizontal and looking at it from only a few feet away in her best Michelangelo-doing-that-Sistine-Chapel-thing impression. “Royal blue,” she murmured. I would have been seriously alarmed but I knew Maxie’s first ideas were rarely the ones she thought were best. She would ruminate on every detail of what she believed was her renovation of my kitchen for weeks and then hopefully decide not to do anything. Hey. I can dream.

  Josh’s phone sounded again and he looked at the screen. “Yes,” he said, “I think we can definitely work out a way to communicate but you’re going to have to take the reins on this, Paul. I’ve never been involved in an investigation before.” That was only technically true, in that Josh had been involved with virtually every case Paul had forced me to look into with him since we’d gotten together as adults (we knew each other when we were kids but lost touch for a long time). But he’d never been an operative, as Paul liked to say, before. “You’ll have to tell me what you want me to do.” I was sure Paul would excel at that.

  Paul, apparently, agreed. “That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said aloud. Then he texted something of the same general sentiment to Josh, who appeared absolutely tickled about the whole thing.

  “Maybe not navy,” Maxie mused to herself. “Puce. Could be puce.”

  “Maxie,” her husband said mildly.

  “Oh, really!” she sputtered, and vanished into the ceiling. Everett shook his head affectionately and followed her up. Slowly.

  “What time is Tony showing up tomorrow?” Dad said. “Maybe I should stay here tonight and help.”

  I love my father dearly. He has always been a calming and stable presence in my life. Well, almost always, but we were past that now and despite being dead, he had been quite an asset to the guesthouse the past few years, doing minor repairs and spending time with his granddaughter. And the idea of him spending the night was not entirely unwelcome. But the notion of his helping two living, breathing contractors replace a beam in my ceiling crossed the line into troublesome.

  “I don’t think we need any flying hammers while the guys are working,” I told him. “I appreciate the offer, but only Tony knows you’re here and he can’t see you either.”

  “I could supervise,” Dad suggested. He is at a loss when he feels he’s not being useful.

  “Feel free to drop by,” I told him, “but you have to let the guys do what they do. If you see a better way to do something—and you might—you have to go through me to communicate it. That okay?”

  Dad tilted his head this way and that with a thinking-it-over air about him. “Okay. But I’m making your mother drive me here first thing.”

  “Then we’d better get going,” Mom said. “I don’t like getting up early if I haven’t had enough sleep.”

  They were out the door in a few minutes. Josh, being given a play-by-play from Melissa, had started the dishwasher and now looked up again to locate Paul’s cell phone. So Josh knew his new mentor was still in the room and he had a general idea of where to look. He looked at the phone, which meant he was conversing with Paul’s belt buckle, but it was better than nothing.

  “What are my first instructions?” he asked.

  Paul stroked his goatee a couple of times and mused aloud. “Well, I’m going to be watching Lt. McElone to see what she finds out,” he said. “And I assume Josh will still be going to his store each day as usual.”

  Liss confirmed that with my husband, who looked positively amazed at the suggestion he might consider leaving his business unattended (or attended for more than an
hour at a time by a man in his nineties). “I’ll still be at the store during my regular hours,” he told Paul. “I’ll have internet access and I can go places and talk to people evenings or during quick lunch breaks.”

  That sort of stunned me because evenings were generally our time together, and Josh took lunch breaks in the store when he wasn’t coming home, which he did very rarely. I must have made some kind of sound because everyone looked at me at the same time.

  “Sneezed,” I said. It seemed to placate them and they went back to what they’d been doing.

  Paul sucked in his lips a little, thinking. He started pressing buttons on his phone and Josh’s cell buzzed. He looked at it. Then he looked up in Paul’s general direction. “Got ya, boss,” he said.

  “What does he want you to do?” I asked. I turned toward Paul. “What do you want him to do?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be involved,” Josh said. His tone wasn’t confrontational; he actually seemed confused by my question.

  “I’m not, but I’m interested in what you’re doing,” I answered.

  “There’s nothing for you to worry about,” Paul told me.

  Josh, not having heard him, said, “I’ll take care of it while I’m at work, Alison. Don’t worry.” The two men in my life, one to whom I was married and one who was deceased, were starting to act disturbingly similarly.

  I cleaned off the countertops and Melissa managed to get close enough that she could talk to me without Josh or Paul hearing what she said. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” she told me.

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered. “He’s my husband and your stepfather. He deserves our respect.”

  Liss held her gaze for a moment and then shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said.

  When I woke up the next morning the car was gone from the backyard so I thought it was going to be a good day.

  I was wrong.