Bones Behind the Wheel

by E. J. Copperman

  Menendez climbed up the ladder Tony had conveniently left by the scene of the … crime? She stuck her head into the hole while holding a small flashlight to better see inside. She pretty much had to go through Paul to get there but didn’t know it, and Paul didn’t seem to care. Who was I to object?

  “There’s some tape attached to the beam,” she said. “I take it that was what held the small fabric pouch in place.”

  “That’s what the Mandorisis said,” I told her.

  “What’s a Mandorisi?” Lassen asked.

  “A small fabric pouch like the one I saw the lieutenant put in her pocket?” Paul asked. He knew there was no way I was going to answer him with the two officers present but he just talks like everybody can hear him. Look, each person has a way of coping with being dead; that’s Paul’s.

  “Those are the contractors working on the beam,” I said. “Tony and Vic Mandorisi. And I’m hoping you guys might be able to get done fairly quickly in here so they can come back and do the repair. I mean, not to rush you, but could you maybe rush?”

  “That’s going to depend on what we find,” Menendez said. She wasn’t showing any immediate annoyance at what I’d said, but I figured I’d probably sounded more obnoxious than I really am. “The more that’s here the more we have to document.”

  “Well, that could have been there a long time, right? It might not have been a crime at all, or one that has a statute of limitations that ran out?” I knew that wasn’t going to be true, but I wasn’t supposed to officially be aware of the pouch McElone was carrying around in her pocket so I could make myself sound as stupid as possible.

  Lassen, who was holding the ladder for Menendez but also filming her with his phone, looked sharply at me. “Why are you concerned with the statute of limitations?” he asked.

  Wait; was I making myself a suspect? And if so, in what? “I’m not,” I said, because it was actually true. “I’m just worried about the beam in my ceiling.”

  “It’s not coming down anytime soon,” Menendez said. “I can see why you want to have it fixed, though.” She looked down at Lassen. “Fresh packing tape, Jason.”

  “I don’t have any. I can check in the car.”

  “No, that’s what I’m finding up here. This thing wasn’t in here very long.” She removed the tape with a pair of tweezers I suppose she had in her pocket and placed it inside a plastic evidence bag that must have come from the same place. The woman was a veritable Inspector Gadget. She handed the bag down to Lassen, who held it in his latex-gloved left hand.

  I felt the way I do when the guy comes to fix the dishwasher: Should I watch the two cops and be available in case they had questions, or should I leave them to their work and go take care of my own business? Actually, I usually stay for the appliance repairman because I like to know how things work. In this case, I really didn’t see any utility to my learning about forensic procedure. Besides, Paul, with his head completely obscured in the ceiling, could fill me in later if there was anything at all I would want to know.

  I couldn’t imagine what that would be. It seemed to me that in this case, the less I knew about it the better. Let Paul have his fun, even if he’d missed out on trailing McElone today. I felt bad enough about that to drive him into town later if he wanted to pick up the lieutenant’s trail.

  I started to back away toward the kitchen door (which was still thankfully operational) when Menendez said, “Are you leaving?”

  So I froze in my tracks. “Do you need me for something?” I asked. “I can stay.” Which response would make me seem less guilty? Menendez had a way of making me feel like I’d done something wrong despite my knowing I hadn’t. I was pretty sure, anyway.

  “No. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t get in the way of the ladder.” Okay, so maybe some of that inferred guilt was in my own mind. “Go ahead.”

  So I did. I noticed Paul looking down at me with an expression of complete wonder at how I could tear myself away from such a fascinating spectacle, but somehow I managed and pushed through the kitchen door to the den. I figured that since I hadn’t been able to get the coffee and tea urns out for the guests (and since I could hardly finish off the Mandorisis’ Box of Joe), the least I could do would be to drive over to Dunkin Donuts and pick up some coffee, decaf and tea for the three people (well, two now that Adam was at Stud Muffin) I was hosting that week.

  I’d gone up to my bedroom to get the right jacket for this weather when my phone buzzed. Josh was texting from his store: Melissa says the cops are still there. Lt. pocketed evidence? That was all I needed: my husband trying to figure the motives of a police detective from inside a paint store.

  I’m sure she knows what she’s doing, I sent back.

  She says the car is gone and the cops didn’t do it.

  I’m not doing this, I reminded him.

  Paul hasn’t texted. Ask if he still wants me to help. Shouldn’t he have been worrying about matte finish versus flat, or something?

  I didn’t know how to continue this conversation. The thing about texting is that people have lost sight of what it’s supposed to be—a way to send one message quickly. Instead they use it to substitute for a telephone conversation, and it only takes about eight times longer.

  Still, I didn’t want to call Josh back. I didn’t want to have this conversation in any form, even by carrier pigeon or telepathy (although telepathy would be cool). Maybe the best thing to do would be to ignore the whole thing and hope it went away. That had never worked before but there had to be a first time for everything.

  Paul’s not here now, I sent. (I couldn’t just not answer my own husband.) Let you know when I can talk to him.

  Now, that should have been the end of it, at least for now. But I’d never seen Josh quite as worked up about something as he’d seemed when talking about this thing with the car in the backyard. If I told him about the emerald, I was afraid he’d close up the store, come home wearing a deerstalker and carrying a magnifying glass and start saying things like, “Elementary, my dear Kerby.” And the last thing I needed was my husband addressing me by my last name.

  But he did persist. Where’s Paul?

  I could have lied but I’d already been through one marriage that had a lot of hiding and falsehoods and that had ended with me referring to the father of my child as The Swine. So I try to avoid obfuscation with Josh. He’s got his head up in the ceiling and can’t be reached. That would settle matters, surely.

  I picked up the jacket and walked downstairs to the front room, but I didn’t make it out the door fast enough. Lassen walked out of the kitchen and called me from across the room. “Um … ma’am?” I’d liked it better when Officer Canton had called me “miss.” I stopped and looked at Lassen.

  “Yes?” It seemed the thing to say.

  “Can you come back in here a minute? Sergeant Menendez has something she wants to ask you about.”

  Those were not the words I had been hoping to hear, but I didn’t see a choice. I couldn’t make a run for it or try to shoot my way to freedom. I don’t own a gun and I’ve always been a lousy runner. In gym class I used to run backwards so Mrs. Hedgeman would understand why I was so slow. It saved tons of explanation.

  Instead, I trudged back into the kitchen, where I found Menendez down from the ladder and Paul stroking his goatee at record rates. None of that was encouraging.

  “Ms. Kerby,” Menendez said, pointing vaguely upward, “what happened to this ceiling beam?”

  Oh, so that was it. This would be easy to explain. “I thought Lt. McElone had told you about that,” I said. “It was hit by a gunshot a number of months ago.” I knew exactly how many months it had been but I was trying to show how casual I could be about it because … I’m still working on that.

  Menendez seemed oddly puzzled by my answer. “A gunshot,” she said. “One gunshot.”

  Was this in some way a test of my memory? “Yeah. One gunshot.” I was the one who had been shot at; you’d think my account of
the event could go unquestioned.

  “Then something very strange is going on here,” Menendez said. “Because there are four bullets here.”

  Chapter 9

  “Four bullets?” Josh looked at me with some confusion. “How could there be four bullets in the beam? I mean, I wasn’t there, but I know there was only one gunshot because that’s what you and everybody else told me.”

  “The bullets weren’t all in the beam,” I said as he took off his pants. Josh was changing after working at the store all day, and was about to get into the shower. I sat on our bed watching him and (mostly) telling him about the events of the day. “Menendez said three of them were just stuck in the cavity next to the beam. She was pretty sure they weren’t even the same caliber as the one that had lodged in there and made me give all this money to Tony and Vic.” Even with the discount the repair was costing me more than spare change I could find in sofa cushions. And I’ve looked.

  Josh pulled the t-shirt over his head and looked back at me. “So they’re not from the gun that got fired at you.”

  “No, probably not. Everything’s in the lab now. Who knows how long it’ll take until all the forensics come back. Personally, I’m trying not to think about it.”

  I was the only one doing that. Melissa had heard the whole story from Paul when she got home from school. I won’t say I’d decided not to tell her about it, but Paul had pretty much cut me off at the pass before I had a chance to make a decision on the subject. Having ghosts in the house, despite what you might have heard, is inconvenient.

  Liss was all in on investigating with Paul until I reminded her that eighth grade required her attention on such subjects as pre-algebra, American history, Earth science and English, and she had homework in all of them. She grumbled something under her breath it was probably better than I didn’t hear and stomped off to her room. We were having pizza for dinner. She punishes me by not cooking (not that she could have tonight anyway, but it’s the gesture that counts).

  Paul, meanwhile, had texted Josh but not given him many details. He’d tasked my husband (I was learning now) with finding out from Bill Harrelson and Jim … you know … exactly what would have been involved in removing a rather large vehicle from a hole in the ground and how it could be done without anyone in a close proximity seeing or hearing anything. He also wanted Josh to talk to Tony and Vic—who had started work well after lunch when Menendez and Canton had finally left after making the hole in my ceiling only twice as large as it had been before. Paul figured Josh would have a rapport with the working guys and he was right, but Josh hadn’t had a chance to talk to any of them yet, he’d said.

  “This thing just keeps getting more weird,” Josh said. He put a terrycloth robe on but didn’t tie it closed and picked a towel out of a drawer as he moved toward the attached bath. “So far every time I thought we were going to get an answer we got six more questions.”

  “Welcome to Paul’s world,” I said. Josh walked away with a grin on his face and closed the bathroom door behind him.

  I immediately regretted mentioning Paul’s name. I heard his voice through the bedroom door, because he never enters this room unless being explicitly invited to do so. “Did you call me, Alison?”

  “Not really.” I opened the door but instead of letting Paul in I let myself out. “I was just getting ready to order a pizza. What do you want on yours?”

  “That’s not funny, Alison.” Ghosts don’t eat.

  I started down the stairs to the front room. Steve Cosgrove was in the front room putting on a jacket. “Heading out?” I asked him, because I really love to restate the obvious whenever possible.

  “I’m meeting Adam in town,” he said. Steve was blonde and tall and clearly, from what I’d seen, devoted to his husband. “I’ve had a cold all day but I’m feeling well enough to join him for dinner. Any suggestions?”

  I do have arrangements with some of the restaurants in Harbor Haven and the surrounding towns. I send customers their way and I get a small (believe me!) percentage of the bill when it’s paid. But I never send guests anywhere but restaurants I’ve tried and feel comfortable recommending. That’s how I justify taking kickbacks. It’s a mindset.

  I gave Steve a couple of the names and he thanked me. He didn’t look ill; his nose wasn’t red and his eyes weren’t watery. I should be so sick. “I hope the commotion in the backyard didn’t keep you awake or anything,” I said.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Steve told me. “I use earplugs when I sleep. Adam snores like a goat.” I had no idea how goats snored but I chuckled anyway and Steve opened the door to go on his way. “By the way, the ghosts are still here, right? I didn’t miss anything?”

  We’d had the spook show in the afternoon, but only Katrina had attended. The performance had been, let’s say, something less than riveting but the audience of one didn’t seem to mind. “No, don’t worry,” I said. “There’ll be another show tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. I was the one who wanted to come see ghosts, you know. Adam is a little scared about the whole thing.”

  I don’t mind hearing that before guests arrive or on their first day, but once they’ve experienced the guesthouse for a while it’s my hope they’ll understand there’s nothing to be afraid of while they’re there. “Still?” I asked.

  Steve moved his head back and forth a bit in a maybe-yes-maybe-no sort of motion. “I think ‘scared’ might be overstating it. He’s a little weirded out.”

  “Well, let me know if there’s anything the ghosts or I can do to help him with it,” I told him. “We all want everybody to be comfortable here.”

  “We have a case to discuss,” Paul tried to remind me. I did not listen because I didn’t have a case to discuss.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Steve assured me. “A little fear will do him good.”

  “Still,” I said.

  Steve nodded and went outside. A chilly breeze came in while the door was open just to remind me that November is not June. It’s not even October.

  Before Paul could go on I turned and faced him, probably more abruptly than he had anticipated. “We don’t have a case to discuss,” I said. “There is no case. I’m not helping. When Josh comes downstairs you can talk to him about whatever you want, but I’m not in on this. Do you get that?”

  Paul blinked a couple of times and I knew it wasn’t because he needed to get more moisture into his eyes. “I did not mean to suggest otherwise,” he said.

  “Good. Because I’m not.” I walked purposefully—I thought—into the den, where Katrina, the only unspoken-for guest at the moment, might be found. I didn’t turn around to see if Paul was following.

  Sure enough she was on one of the sofas reading a Sue Ann Jaffarian novel she had probably picked up in the library. She looked up when I walked in. “Hi, Alison.” Her voice sounded a trifle raspy as if I’d walked in on her when she was napping.

  “How’s everything going, Katrina?” Asking an open-ended question like that makes it possible for the guest to bring up any topic she considers important. You find out things about your hosting skills and your guesthouse when you do that. (And I learned all this without a single class in hospitality! Hard to believe, no?)

  “Just fine.” Her tone didn’t match her words.

  “Something I can help with?” I asked. It was a dangerous question because I’d seen the way she was eyeing Bill Harrelson the day before and I’ve been in situations where guests had asked me to help them with their love lives. I’m remarkably bad at that.

  “Just wondering how much longer the construction in the back is going to go on,” she said. Bingo. Bill Harrelson.

  Katrina was not one of my Senior Plus guests; I’d guess she was in her mid-forties. She’d come to the guesthouse this week from her home in Newark, Delaware (where they pronounce it New-ark for some reason New Jerseyans can’t completely absorb—we call our largest city Noork for the most part) because she’d heard about the haunted guesthou
se and thought ghosts would be fun. I try to make sure they are fun—for the guests. This business is all about being selfless.

  “I’m afraid it won’t be done before you go home,” I said. “I hope it hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience.”

  “Oh, no. It hasn’t been a problem at all. But the noise last night made it a little hard to fall asleep.”

  Behind me, even though I couldn’t see him, I think I heard Paul stroke his goatee.

  “The noise last night?” I asked. Now my voice sounded a little raspy.

  “Yes. I don’t understand why they’d be working so late at night back there, but I heard it from my bedroom at about two a.m.” Katrina looked at me like I was being especially obtuse. I was trying to remember what obtuse meant.

  “Ask her what she heard,” Paul said, because clearly he thought I was an idiot.

  “What did you hear?” I asked Katrina. But I’d like it on the record that I was going to ask that before Paul said anything. I’m actually not an idiot.

  “When they took that big car out of the hole last night.” Katrina sat up on the sofa and put her book down, with a handy bookmark right where it belonged, on the coffee table in front of her. “You know, with the big crane, or whatever.”

  The excavator. “Did you see it?”

  Katrina smiled a little guiltily. “I did want to see if Bill was outside,” she said. “So I put on some clothes and went to the back to see, you know, over there.” She pointed toward the French doors.

  “And what did you see?” I just kept feeding her the straight lines so she could do the jokes. It’s what I do.

  “Well, they were pretty much done by the time I got there,” she said. “The big hook with the car was driving away down the beach.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “I think you need to talk to Lt. McElone.”

  “Indeed she does,” Paul agreed.

  Katrina looked at me wide-eyed. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, Katrina. You might be the only person in the house last night who did something right.”