I wanted to close my eyes suddenly. It had been a long, difficult day and I still didn’t understand so much. “Why here, Lieutenant? Why did the car get buried in my backyard?”
“Lincoln O’Hara owned this property then,” McElone said. “He wasn’t living here and he wasn’t renting it out. It was sitting quiet. Nobody was watching. They could take all night to bury the car and nobody would know.”
I sifted through all the dizzying details of this episode in my head. “Wait. What about the four bullets in the kitchen beam and the gun we found in the floor? What were they all about?”
“The gun was there just because Darlene had been holding it all these years and got antsy about it being found in her house, so she got Bill to hide it during a bathroom break from the construction,” McElone explained. “The bullets are a little more complicated.”
“How’s that?” Josh asked.
“Well as it turns out, those bullets are a match for the gun that Nathaniel Adamson used to kill himself,” McElone said. “At least, they were the same vintage and the same caliber. We can’t say they were precisely from the same manufacturing lot, but they’re not terribly common these days and they were then. So we’re still trying to figure out if Nat actually did do himself in, or if someone else might have helped him along. The incident report from the time isn’t being especially helpful.”
I glanced at Paul, who immediately dropped down into the basement.
“And the bullets from Nat got to my house …”
“I’m not clear on whose idea it was because Bill is talking ghosts, but he says he was ordered to stash the bullets in your ceiling. I guess they thought they wouldn’t be found.” McElone snorted a laugh of sorts. “They were wrong.”
Josh shook his head. “It’s hard to get your mind around all of it. One man cheats on his wife and more than thirty years later we’re trying to sort out what happened after that. And it almost got us killed.” He reached for my hand and I took his and squeezed it a little.
McElone stood up. That took a while, as she is tall and imposing. “But I came here to ask you questions,” she said. “How did Sgt. Menendez know you were in danger and how did she know to come to Bill Harrelson’s house in Hazlet?”
“I can only guess,” I said. “But I saw the sergeant talking to Bill earlier and she seemed very serious about what she was saying and hearing. I’m guessing she suspected her mother wasn’t taking the investigation well and was following up even after you told her not to do that.”
“I think that without her, Darlene would have gotten herself into a situation where the officers would have been forced to shoot her,” Josh told McElone. “She talked Darlene down and made her put away her gun. Another officer might not have been able to do that.”
Paul flew up through the floor. “Confronted with the facts, Nathaniel Adamson admitted he did not die of suicide,” he said. “His wife Harriet shot him and made it appear to be by his own hand. That’s one reason they are not traveling together now that they are both on my side of the equation.”
So that’s why Harriet wanted the bullets to be stashed somewhere she thought they would never be found. Should I give that information to McElone? Would it do her any good? Harriet was dead, after all. My mother looked at me and cocked her head toward the lieutenant. And since getting through my marriage to The Swine I’ve mostly followed my mother’s advice.
“I have some information on Nathaniel Adamson’s death,” I said to the lieutenant. “But it’s not anything you’ll want to put into a police report.”
McElone shut her eyes briefly and then looked at me. “Is there any legal action I should be taking in regard to that information?” she asked.
“I don’t think that would be possible.”
She absorbed what I’d said and took a breath. “All right, then,” she said. “I’m heading back to my office.” She took a few steps toward the door.
“Lieutenant,” I said. McElone stopped and turned to look at me. “I’m a little puzzled. Why did you tell us all that stuff about what Darlene and Bill confessed? Usually you won’t even give me the time of day if you don’t have to.”
McElone’s lips narrowed a bit. “You were going to get me to tell you anyway,” she said. “I just didn’t have the energy to fight it at this time of night.”
“Go home and go to sleep, lieutenant,” Mom said. “You’ve done a full day’s work tonight.”
“First sane person I talked to today,” McElone muttered as she left.
Chapter 36
“It looks good,” Maxie said.
Indeed, the light aqua paint she had decided on for my kitchen did add some character to the room now that I was finishing the last wall. Maxie had offered to do some of the painting herself but I felt that the sight of a roller working itself on the wall was the stuff of a spook show and not a trip to the fridge for some orange juice. I had let her work on the place after my guests were asleep at night. One of them, a lovely older man named Milt, was not here for the ghosts and would have been a little freaked out otherwise.
It had been three weeks since Katrina, Adam and Steve had packed up and left the guesthouse, and now approaching the new year I had only Milt and another guest who had been sent by Senior Plus Tours, a woman named Margot who loved the ghosts and liked to wade in the freezing cold ocean. I get them all here at the guesthouse.
Josh was in the store (he stays open on Saturdays but takes Sundays off) and things seemed like they were more or less back to whatever version of “normal” was currently unraveling in my house.
“It does,” I agreed. “I’m glad we managed to agree on the plan after all.” It had taken some long negotiations worthy of a multinational arms treaty but Maxie and I had hammered out a design for the kitchen that included her color scheme and my insistence on having cabinets and countertops pretty much where they’d been before to avoid any serious construction labor and the resulting costs of that. Two cabinets were now hung closer to the island, which was actually useful. Point, Maxie.
Katrina Breslin had filled out a glowing evaluation form for the guesthouse based on her proposition that I had done everything I could to give her a great vacation experience including intervening to save her life. I didn’t think I’d actually done that last bit but felt I was not in a position to argue the point. Katrina had already visited Bill Harrelson in county lock-up and said she would continue her correspondence with him, whom she hoped would avoid a lengthy prison sentence. His trial had not yet been scheduled.
“It could have been more interesting but I see where you actually needed it to be a working kitchen for Melissa,” Maxie said. That’s Maxie when she’s agreeing with me but still wants to get in a dig just to keep the score in her favor.
Of course Maxie had also advocated for a second access to the basement directly through the kitchen floor, and while I could see some utility—but not much—in the suggestion it was something I did not feel like expending time and money on right now. That had been a slight point of contention, but when I gave in to Maxie on new crown moldings in an accent color of very muted orange she was appeased.
There was a knock at the back door. I looked up to see Phyllis Coates standing on my doorstep. That was a tiny bit disturbing as Phyllis rarely leaves her office for anything but a hot story, and I wanted to be done being a hot story for a very long time, if forever was not available.
Phyllis doesn’t much deal in pleasantries so as soon as she made it inside she said, “I heard the prosecutor isn’t trying Darlene Menendez.”
“A hearty hello to you as well, Phyllis. Why did the prosecutor decide that? Wasn’t Darlene guilty enough for him?”
Phyllis chuckled. “Oh she’s plenty guilty of obstructing justice and about six other things,” she said. “You got any coffee?” Luckily I did because it was Saturday and Melissa was home so I’d been sure to make a fresh urn. I got Phyllis a cup from the den and she followed me there. “The prosecutor and Darlene’s attorney
came to an agreement that she was not competent to stand trial. Once the assistant prosecutor heard Darlene go on about having a ghost help her cover up a crime she was convinced.”
I handed Phyllis the coffee, black as I knew she liked it. “Yeah. People who see ghosts are definitely nuts.”
“It probably didn’t hurt that she had a daughter on the cops,” Phyllis said, ignoring my semi-snide remark. “Law enforcement protects its own.”
I led her toward the coffee table because 1. Phyllis was drinking coffee and 2. Maxie was in the kitchen and not paying attention to living people. Phyllis is a reporter. She has heard rumors about my house but I prefer to keep her away from any sights that would verify those rumors and make her want to investigate further.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked. “You could have texted me that little piece of legal gossip.”
“I’m here to see Melissa,” she said.
That wasn’t a total surprise. Since I delivered papers for her when I was the age Melissa is now, Phyllis has long discussed a part-time job with Liss. I looked at her. “She can’t get working papers until she’s fourteen,” I reminded Phyllis.
“And she turns fourteen …?”
“Next month.”
On cue my daughter appeared in the entrance to the den, dressed in sweats and looking like someone who had just slept about ten hours and didn’t know why she was awake now. Her feet were in slippers that accentuated the sound of her shuffling across the room toward the coffee urn. She made a sound I can’t describe. Then she saw we had a guest and her face brightened up in a nanosecond. “Oh hi, Phyllis,” she said. “What’s new?”
“Hey, Melissa. Came by to talk to you about work.”
Liss had been waiting for this literally for years. She probably believed she had been waiting for it her whole life, but I’m sure there were years when she was in diapers that working for Phyllis wouldn’t have appealed quite as much. “When can I start?” she said, rushing to her almost-boss’ side.
Phyllis knew well enough to answer correctly. “First you have to be fourteen and then you have to wait until your mom says it’s okay.”
Melissa looked at me with the same eyes that have been talking me into things against my will since she was two months old. “Mom?”
“I want to know what the job entails.” I looked at Phyllis. “She’s not going out chasing crime stories. Period.”
Phyllis held up her hands. “No. I wouldn’t ask her to do that. That’s the fun part. That’s what I get to do. No, Melissa, you’ll be working in the office on administrative things, organizing my paperwork and such.”
Melissa, who’s seen Phyllis’s paperwork, looked daunted just for a second. “Okay,” she said after a beat.
“But eventually I’m going to need you to become an assistant editor. You know the paper is mostly online these days. I need to have a social media presence and I don’t do that yet. Now, I don’t want you being the voice of the paper and taking all the heat until you’re older, but you’ll be working up to that, okay?”
Liss looked at me, I nodded a hair reluctantly, and she reached over and gave Phyllis a hug. “It sounds great!” she said. I didn’t think it sounded that great, but it’s been a while since I was thirteen.
“You realize she’s going to college in five years,” I reminded Phyllis.
“I’ll worry about that in five years. A journalism degree can’t hurt.”
Best to change the subject. “So what else about Darlene? What about Bill Harrelson?” I asked. “Is he going to jail?”
Phyllis snapped into reporter mode, which is her default. “The prosecutor thought long and hard about charging him with kidnapping but he brought charges of criminal restraint and assault with a weapon, which Bill definitely did. He got something of a break because he cooperated against Darlene the business with her dead husband, even though everything he said was secondhand news. He was a kid when Herman Fitzsimmons got himself shot.”
“So was the girl who shot him.” My daughter is not really focused before she has coffee.
“The whole thing was so much more complicated than it needed to be,” I mused aloud. “Theresa shot Herman. All Darlene had to do to cover it up was say he was assaulting her and it was self defense and the cops would have disposed of the body for her.”
Phyllis shook her head. “It was 1983. First of all he wasn’t assaulting her but even if he was, domestic violence wasn’t being prosecuted nearly as often as it is today. They would have investigated, they would have come to the correct conclusion and Theresa Menendez would have gone into foster care. Would that have been better?”
“Maybe.”
Maxie emerged through the kitchen door. “Are you almost done? I want to get to the molding!” I didn’t answer for Phyllis’s benefit and Maxie looked disgusted. “I’ll start it myself.” She headed back toward the kitchen before I could even begin to anticipate the unearthly racket she was about to commence.
Luckily, Phyllis had done her business and that meant Phyllis was ready to move on to the next thing. “Okay then,” she said to Melissa. “When you’re fourteen and you’re applying for working papers you know where to find me.”
Phyllis left through the kitchen, so Maxie didn’t start in on her painting of the molding—which I decided would be okay because she’d do a good job and I didn’t feel like it—until Phyllis was well out the door and backing out of my driveway.
Melissa and I walked into the kitchen to watch Phyllis leave and so Liss could get some milk for her coffee. There are creamers and a small pitcher of milk out on the urn cart, but I had kept both in short supply because we had only two guests and Liss likes milk from the fridge that cools the hot coffee down a bit. As we walked in Maxie, up near the ceiling with a paintbrush in her hand, looked down at us. “What’s up?” she asked Melissa. Melissa gets a greeting. I’m lucky when I don’t get a snarl.
“I got a job!” Liss told her.
“Cool!” They’re like sisters, only I’m pretty sure my thirteen-year-old is the more mature one.
They continued to gab away with Melissa telling Maxie all about her upcoming responsibilities—about which she knew very little—and Maxie carefully painting the ceiling molding that muted orange. I looked around the room and considered all that had happened here since it was under construction and I’d gotten a bucket of wallboard compound dropped on my head. The room looked different, and I hoped better. The bullet wound to the ceiling was repaired and invisible. The walls were a cheerful new color. The place would be useable for Liss to cook dinner for me, her stepfather and her grandparents tonight and she loved doing that.
I sat down next to the center island away from Maxie’s drop cloths. She was a careful and meticulous painter but I still wanted to stay out of her way. Let Melissa and Maxie talk like sisters for a little while longer.
After all it was only five years until Liss would be away in college and I’d be in my forties. But Maxie would be Maxie forever. So I’d let her enjoy the bond she’d developed now and try to make it last a little longer.
Most of the utensils and cooking implements were away in drawers to avoid the paint, but the island was in the center of the room where Maxie (and eventually I when she got bored) would be working so there was no danger of their catching the odd drop of orange from above. I had put the newspaper down and now picked up a section to read. I like real newspapers on real paper. I’m old school.
In order to spread it out on the countertop I had to move a pitcher in which we kept wooden utensils, cooking spoons and such that might have gotten knocked over otherwise. So I pushed it a little bit to the right and picked up the cup of coffee I’d left when Phyllis had appeared, which was no doubt cold now.
That didn’t matter because I stopped with the cup halfway to my lips as I stared at the space I’d created by moving the pitcher.
Sitting on the countertop, which I’d personally cleaned the night before, was an emerald. And next to it, w
hat I could only guess was a gold doubloon.
Also available by E. J. Copperman
The Haunted Guesthouse Mysteries
The Hostess With the Ghostess
Spouse on Haunted Hill
Ghost in the Wind
Inspector Specter
The Thrill of the Haunt
Chance of a Ghost
Old Haunts
An Uninvited Ghost
Night of the Living Deed
The Asperger’s Mysteries
The Question of the Absentee Father
The Question of the Felonious Friend
The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband
The Question of the Missing Head
The Mysterious Detective Mysteries
Edited Out
Written Off
Author Biography
E. J. Copperman is the author of a number of mystery series, including the Mysterious Detective series (Edited Out), the Haunted Guesthouse series (The Hostess With the Ghostess) and with Jeff Cohen, the Asperger’s mystery series (The Question of the Felonious Friend). E. J.’s newest, the Agent to the Paws mystery series. It is exhausting for E. J. just to think about it
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Jeffrey Cohen
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-887-3
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-888-0
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-889-7
Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle
Bones Behind the Wheel Page 26