A Grave Search (Bodies of Evidence)

by Wendy Roberts

  “No-o-o!” I sank down to sit on the cold tile floor. Wookie came over and flopped down next to me, putting his head in my lap.

  We both knew what this meant. When the house was broken into that person stole my spare keys so, not only did they have the keys for my Jeep, they also had the keys to my house. I wondered if the cameras had deterred them from coming back inside.

  “You know what bothers me the most?” he asked.

  “That whoever did this knows me.”

  “Yes.”

  They knew I was an alcoholic and knew my personal choice was wine. The bottle was a sarcastic taunt.

  Garrett was talking but I was only thinking about that bottle balanced precariously in the cup holder and suddenly it felt silly to be so upset and afraid.

  “They could’ve killed me.”

  Garrett paused in whatever he’d been saying before beginning, “Look, Julie, don’t—”

  “He could’ve just hunkered down in the back seat and killed me when I climbed in the vehicle, or hidden behind the bushes and shot me or broken into the house at night and strangled me—”

  “Stop!” Garrett shouted. “You need to calm down.”

  “I’m perfectly calm.” And I was. “They could’ve killed me but instead they left a bottle of wine like they’re a bully making fun of me.” I could feel anger replacing fear. “I’m going to chuck the bottle in the trash and go about my day. Cancel the cops.”

  “No! First of all, we’re going to want prints off that bottle. Second, you don’t know what else has been done. Maybe your Jeep was rigged and—”

  “Nobody stuck a bomb in this car and rigged it to blow because there’s no way they would’ve left me this present if that was their intention, right?” I was pleased with my own deductive reasoning. “Listen, Mr. FBI, you know I’m right.”

  When he didn’t reply, I told him to hang on a second.

  I grabbed a paper towel from the roll under the sink, disarmed the alarm and walked outside with Wookie at my side. I walked to the car, and carefully picked up the bottle of wine from the very top. Then I walked it over to the side of the house, now within range of the motion detector camera and set it down on the steps. I might have licked my lips and my fingers might have shaken just a bit as I held the bottle, but I was able to walk back to the Jeep.

  I could hear Garrett’s voice shouting from the phone in my pocket and when I brought it to my ear he was upset.

  “You’re just going to leave it there?” Garrett demanded.

  “Yup. Your cop can dust it for fingerprints or take it into evidence but I’ve got work to do in Blaine and—”

  “What are you going up there for?”

  I could feel his worry creep over the phone.

  “Don’t get upset...” I began. I whistled for Wookie, brought him in the house and again set the alarm and locked up.

  “Why would I get upset?” he demanded, his voice already going up.

  “I’m meeting Denny for coffee,” I replied, hurriedly adding, “Only to ask him questions about Ebba since he was the one who recommended me to her.”

  He was quiet and I wasn’t sure if this was the jealous boyfriend kind of quiet, or the worried FBI silence.

  “I’d feel better if you put off that meeting until I could drive you.”

  It was probably both kinds of quiet.

  “I’ll be fine.” I took a breath and climbed inside the Jeep and started it up. “Do you want to chat with me on speaker while I drive?”

  I knew he was busy. There was never a time Garrett wasn’t working on one case or a dozen, but he still chatted with me on the line for over twenty minutes while I nosed the vehicle north on I-5 toward the area that used to be home but now was just throbbing pain.

  He told me the officer was at the house and would check the premises and take the bottle.

  “I want you coming here afterward,” he told me. “You can go pack a bag, get Wookie and then come and stay with me until all this mess is sorted. You’re not safe there. Not with someone having your house keys. Not with cameras and an alarm. Not without me.”

  I promised I’d talk to him about that later, and ended the call.

  I had butterflies in my stomach at the prospect of seeing Denny. Things had ended poorly between us when my life became a vortex of doom and he’d stood on the edge of that spiral and, instead of standing by me, had chosen to cheat. I played an audible book through the speakers and comforted myself in my deep breathing and mindfulness exercises.

  Big Al’s was an all-American family restaurant that hugged the Canadian border. It had old-fashioned décor and you could choose to sit at one of the vinyl booths or perch on a stool at the counter. Home cooking and friendly service with a smile. Unless you were the talk of the town for the past fifteen months. Now, instead of service with a smile, the entire restaurant of locals fell silent when I walked in, and those smiles faltered and jaws dropped as I crossed the room and slipped into a corner booth.

  The restaurant recovered and slowly the low-level chatter returned and the sidelong glances stopped. A waitress I didn’t recognize asked me if I wanted coffee.

  “Yes, and water. Please.”

  While she ran off to get that, I hid behind the menu as if I was going to get anything besides the grilled ham and cheese sandwich I always got at Big Al’s. But maybe I should try something new. After all, I wasn’t the same person as I was back when I used to frequent this place.

  Denny was late but I expected nothing less. I’d ordered my grilled ham and cheese and nibbled the corners by the time he arrived. I knew without looking up from my phone the moment he walked in since the restaurant grew quiet again.

  He slid into the booth across from me, tucked his thick black hair behind one ear and smiled.

  “Look at you,” he said with an easy smile and a tone nearing approval.

  I smiled back and it was easier than I ever thought it would be. Even from across the booth I could smell the scent of the cigarillos he liked and it smelled like humbler times that gave me an unexpected ache.

  “You’re too skinny.” He picked up half my sandwich, which was now cold, and took a large bite.

  “And you’re too judgey,” I replied stuffing a french fry in my mouth.

  “You still with that old guy?”

  “He’s not old.”

  I wanted to get the upper hand here. I didn’t want this to slip into a comfortable reunion even if part of me did yearn for life before chaos. For a time when I lived in my small trailer with Wookie and worked at the gas station in town.

  “Saw on your Facebook business page you’re doing all that voodoo shit for a living now.”

  Just like that the warm fuzzy notion of coming home evaporated and I felt like he should be able to see it lift off me in a steamy vapor. Denny hadn’t been there for me when things went to hell, and he didn’t deserve my time of day then or now. I pushed my plate toward him so he could eat my leftovers.

  “Tell me about Ebba Johansson.”

  His eyebrows lifted and he gave me curious look at my businesslike tone but accepted it as he chomped down on my food.

  “She put herself through massage school, whatever that is, and pulled a good-sized chunk of cash out of running a bunch of those places in casinos around these parts. She has lots but I don’t know how many girls rubbing people down at casinos and she gets a cut. Heard she even has people giving massages to dogs.” He shook his head and laughed. “People will pay for anything these days.”

  “So she’s just a hardworking single mom then?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “She hasn’t been in the casino much these days though. Last time I saw her she just looked done. She’s trying to sell the business. Guess Ava dying was too much.”

  “Did you know Ava?”

  “Might say that.” He signaled the waitress for coffee. “I did her a time or two way back when.”

  I straightened and could tell Denny was enjoying my startled look.

>   “You guys went out?”

  “I wouldn’t say we went out. More like we stayed in.” He gave me a sly wink.

  “When was this?”

  He picked up a french fry and waved it in my face. “You’re jealous.”

  “I am so not jealous. At all.”

  “Too bad.” He thanked the waitress for his coffee and then took a sip.

  “So when did you and Ava stay in exactly?”

  “Last year sometime. I’d see her around. She’d come around the casino. She was supposed to work but most days she’d just screw the pooch, yanno. Show up late or not at all, or just show up to party, and a couple times she was there at the end of my shift so...” He lifted his mug of coffee to his lips for another drink and suddenly lowered it. “Don’t be telling the cops about that. I don’t need them coming around and asking me questions about Ava.” His voice was low and heated.

  If it was nothing but a couple rolls in the sheets I wondered why Denny was resisting telling the cops. He certainly had no problem bragging to me about sleeping with her and I bet others knew too but I didn’t want to get into that with him.

  “What did Ebba think of you messing around with her daughter?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t know about me and Ava. Not like we were a thing or anything. That girl was far too much a headache for me. High maintenance. Got on my nerves. Ebba’s too, and she was pulling her hair out about her daughter most days. She shoulda just cut those apron strings and let her fly on her own but, nope, she kept trying to get her in the biz, and every time Ava showed up with her hand open, Ebba would scrape together something to give her.”

  I waited when the waitress came by to refill my cup.

  “Guess she was trying to make a responsible young woman out of her daughter and get her to work,” I said. “Seems to me if business was going well then she had more than enough to spread around to her daughter.”

  “She put herself on the hamster wheel, yanno?”

  I didn’t have a clue what he meant so I waited for him to explain after he filled his coffee with cream and sugar. “Just one of those people who work all the time and wanted Ava to be the same. I think she thought Ava was just going through a rebellious phase.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Ava was never going to come and work in the family biz. She just wanted to do her own thing, and her thing involved partying hard and hardly working.”

  “Anything else you can tell me that other people don’t know about Ebba or Ava?”

  He gave that some honest thought as he sipped from his mug. “Not really. Ebba told me she really wants to retire now. She always used to talk about living by a lake without another soul around for miles once Ava took over the company.”

  “Lots of people have that dream.”

  “The only time I ever saw her and Ava getting along is when they were sitting in one of the coffee shops having lunch and they were chatting about some cottage on a lake and living without a care in the world. They talked like it was right around the corner.”

  “Now that Ava’s gone, it probably makes sense she doesn’t want to keep working so hard.”

  “Who knows what’s going on inside her head except she really wanted the news people to focus on you helping out with finding Ava. She was excited about that. Put some color back in her cheeks when she was beginning to look tired from all the grief, yanno?” He drummed his fingers a little on the table. “Guess she feels like if you find Ava she can bury her and it’ll help her to move on.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think she’s going to carry that anger and sadness with her forever until it drags her down into a plot next to her daughter and she’ll never enjoy any cottage near a lake.”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, she was busy out looking for Ava with all the search parties day in and day out.”

  “Guess most family members do that.”

  “Yeah and once she heard from the coroner that all the blood found in the woods meant Ava was dead, she took a couple weeks off. I figured she’d up and walk away from everything but she randomly came back. Guess it finally hit her that Ava’s not coming back but now all that money she took out of the business for the ransom is gone too. She told me she just needed to bury her daughter for closure.” He nodded his chin at me. “That’s when I mentioned you. Figured if you helped her find the body, maybe she’d get some peace.”

  I wanted to point out all the times he’d told me he didn’t believe in my ability to find people. I wanted to say how he’d compared my dowsing rods to using a Ouija board and called me crazy. All the words I wanted to say stayed strangled in the back of my throat.

  The waitress dropped off the bill. He didn’t even make an attempt to reach for it.

  “You ever meet Ronald Low? Ava’s boyfriend who supposedly killed her?”

  “I knew him enough to look at him but we never hung out or nothing. I did see him come around the casino with Ava a time or two. Saw Ava, Ron and Ebba all chummy a couple times too. Guess things changed.”

  “Guess they did.” I was about to get up and then another thought occurred to me. “You ever know a guy named Wes who grew up around this area?”

  “Black dude? Crooked teeth?”

  I nodded.

  “Sure, I knew Wes. He moved outta this area maybe three years ago now. I heard he’s got a landscaping business or something. He’s a few years younger than me. Was about your grade in high school or maybe a year younger.”

  “Really?” I thought hard and shook my head. “I don’t remember him from high school at all.”

  “Back then nobody called him Wes. Everyone called him Wheezy on account of his asthma.”

  “Oh my God! Wheezy.” I rubbed the back of my neck as a strong memory jumped to the front of my mind. I’d asked Wheezy if he was okay when I heard him gasping for breath a few feet away from me. In return, he slammed me into a school locker so hard I saw stars. “He was such a dick.”

  “Yeah, some saw him that way I guess. I never paid him any attention.”

  Those who weren’t bullied rarely even noticed it happening all around them.

  I picked up the bill and got to my feet. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Guess that was the least I could do,” he said.

  “Yeah, it was.” Which was a subtle reminder that he owed me so much more.

  I left him sitting there in the booth and tipped heavily when I got up to the counter to pay. Once I was back in my Jeep I realized I was fine after meeting with Denny. Even though he was connected to heart-wrenching chaos from another time, I was fine.

  Maybe I’m getting better, I thought, then I noticed my hands were shaking as I started up the car.

  With my eyes closed I drew in a deep calming breath.

  “I liked that boy well and good enough. Better than the FBI fellow. Denny knew his place.”

  “Shut up, Gramps!”

  I screamed so loud that a woman climbing out of her car parked next to mine gave me a fearful look.

  Chapter Eleven

  I drove home with my head in a fog that didn’t clear until I’d blown those old stomping grounds behind in my rearview mirror.

  When I saw the highway exit for the burger place where Katie worked, I decided to take it. She’d said she would send me those secret spots that Ron liked to visit but so far I hadn’t heard from her. One of the people working the counter told me that Katie didn’t have a shift today but I could find her working a clothing shop at the mall. I thanked the woman for her time and got back in my car. I had no desire to go by the shopping center.

  Back on the highway, I turned up the volume of my book hoping the advice for finding peace in trauma would somehow finally permeate my skull and stick. I was debating what my next step with the search for Ava would be when I saw Tracey Cook standing on the shoulder of the highway with her thumb out and her green hair blowing in the wind. I hit the brakes and angled onto the shoulder and she jogge
d up to meet me.

  She flung open the passenger door and climbed in. “What are the chances?” Her words came out happy and breathless.

  “Chances of you getting abducted by some serial killer and tossed in a ditch somewhere?” I said. “I’d say the chances are pretty damn good.”

  She found that impossibly funny, dropping her oversized purse on the ground and placing her hands on her knees as she giggled. “You are an old bitchy mama in a young girl’s body, yanno that?”

  “I am not!” I gave her my best pissed-off glare but she only smiled back in return. “It’s just not safe for you to be thumbing.”

  “Car is in the shop again,” she explained. “I’m wanting to surprise my boyfriend on our anniversary is all.”

  “You should’ve just asked him to come get you.”

  “Where’s the surprise in that?”

  She had a point.

  “Yeah but—”

  “I get it.” She reached over and patted my knee reassuringly. “The shit you see in your biz—well, you think everyone is either a murderer or setting themselves up for a killing.”

  “Occupational hazard,” I admitted with a sigh. “Where are you going?”

  “Marysville. You don’t have to take me all the way unless you’re heading in that direction.”

  I shoulder checked and then accelerated back onto the highway. “I’ll take you.”

  I couldn’t live with myself if I dropped her somewhere and she got picked up by some groper or murdered and tossed in a Dumpster.

  “Fine but this depressing shit needs to go off.”

  I wasn’t even aware that my book on grief was still playing over the speakers. I reddened slightly but she made no other remark about it, just punched the radio stations until she found one she liked.

  My peaceful although somewhat brooding drive now became a cacophony of loud music as Tracey searched for a station. At one point she found a pop artist we both liked and I even found myself singing along with her. My heart felt lighter. It was like the early days when Katie and I would drive around, windows down, bellowing along to a top hit while our hair blew in the wind.

  When the radio stations all seemed to be playing commercials, Tracey hit the off button. She gave me directions to where this boyfriend worked. The area was dangerously close to a house I’d visited another time.