The Skeleton Box sl-3

by Bryan Gruley

  “No knives or guns?”

  “Not that we can tell. We took… we took the rug.”

  “The rug?”

  “It was soaked.”

  “Ah. Me Sweet Ho,” I said, and Darlene smiled wanly, beautiful even then.

  My mother knitted the rug many years before. A little yellow house sat on a pond ringed by pines over the legend “Home Sweet Home.” Over years of wear, the house blurred into the pond and trees, and some of the letters in the words faded into the fabric. When we were a lot younger, Darlene had liked to needle me about it.

  She reached into a back pocket and produced a cell phone. She punched a few buttons and held it up in front of me.

  “Listen.”

  I moved closer and bowed my head to the phone. There was a beep. A few seconds of silence gave way to a woman’s voice.

  “Darlene,” it whispered.

  “Jesus,” I said. The voice belonged to Mrs. B.

  “Listen,” Darlene said.

  “There’s someone here,” Mrs. B whispered. She had to have been hiding. But why hadn’t she called 911? Maybe because her daughter was, after all, a cop.

  The call went silent but for the sound of Mrs. B’s breathing. Hearing those shallow breaths must have been torture for Darlene, for they told her that her mother was frightened in the final moments of her life. I heard the creaking hinge of a door. I knew that sound. One of the two doors to Mom’s bathroom. There was a footstep. I pictured Mrs. B ducking her head out, stepping into the hallway, peeking around the corner into the living room.

  If she saw someone, she didn’t say.

  The door creaked shut.

  There was silence again, then the sound of the other door opening. Mrs. B started to cry out but something muffled her voice. There was a brief scuffling, then a thud, then silence.

  “My God,” I said.

  “Wait.”

  A few seconds passed. Then came a single word, in a barely audible whisper, a word I had never heard before. It sounded like “nye-less.” Like the name Silas, but with an “n.” Then, sounding barely able to speak, Mrs. B uttered it again: “Nye-less.”

  Darlene ended the call.

  I wanted to reach out and hug her, for what had happened to her mother, and for what she must have felt for not having picked up her mother’s call. Would she have made it to the house in time? Would she have been able to get an ambulance there faster?

  “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I said.

  “I heard it ring, figured it was Mom, but… I was chasing a raccoon out of Mrs. Morcone’s house. She left the door open again. I thought I’d call Mom when I was done.”

  “What was it she said? Nye-less? What is that?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve listened to it a thousand times.”

  “Can your tech guys make it clearer?”

  “They can barely do a reboot.”

  “Maybe it’s a name.”

  “I thought of that.”

  “What about the state cops? They have a lab.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Darlene,” I said. “You haven’t told anyone yet, have you.”

  She had come close to losing her job the year before for failing to pursue a lead in the case of a close friend’s apparent suicide. She had let it become personal. Dingus gave her a break, knowing himself how hard it was for a cop to keep the proper distance in a place that could feel as crowded as New York City, minus the convenience of anonymity.

  The case had also been the proximate cause of our second breakup, because my own investigation had exposed Darlene’s apparently willful negligence. So we’d gone our separate ways, or at least she had gone hers.

  “No, I haven’t,” she said.

  “It’s evidence. They’re going to run a check on the phone. They’ll see she called you.”

  She yanked her cap back on her head. “I’ll tell them. It’s just-it was my mother.”

  “So you’re on the case?”

  “Damn right I am.”

  “How’s Dingus? I’m thinking he’s afraid of losing, eh?”

  “Heck, I’m afraid he’ll lose. I couldn’t work for that jerk D’Alessio. I wouldn’t.”

  “So…”

  “I’d need a job somewhere. With Mom gone…”

  I felt a little shiver of panic. “There’s plenty of time for all that,” I said.

  “We have to solve this, Gus.”

  “Why don’t you let the police-”

  “Dammit,” she said, “I am a police officer. I’m not about to go home and fucking cry into my pillow. My mother didn’t bring me up like that.”

  No, she didn’t, I thought. “Do you think it’s the same guy who did the other houses?”

  “That assumes just one person did all the other houses.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “Whoever it was, in all these break-ins, has been very careful. No prints, no nothing, nothing stolen.”

  “DNA?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Did the neighbors see anything?”

  “The Grays are in Florida, the Cerrutis were in Detroit at a hockey tournament.”

  “You’ve taped off the yard.”

  “Routine. But it’ll discourage somebody if they decide to come back.”

  “They’re not coming back.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Can I put any of this in the paper?”

  “I told you we were off the record.”

  Actually she hadn’t, but I wasn’t about to push it. I was glad she’d come to me. “OK.”

  “Please be careful what you report. This is my mother.”

  “I know. I will.”

  “Come here.”

  She put a hand on my chest, feeling for my heart. It was pounding.

  “You matter to me,” she said.

  “Do you want me to stay with you?” I said.

  “I’m going back to work. Nobody wants you there, believe me.”

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “No.”

  I leaned out the doorway and watched her hike down the path to her car, thinking about her mother and about my mom and about that word: nye-less.

  SIX

  The little bells on the door at Audrey’s Diner jangled as I stepped inside.

  “Ask him,” somebody yelled in my direction, and a bunch of other people sitting at the tables and along the counter yelled, too.

  “Ask me what?” I said.

  I had come from Mom’s house, where I’d sat by her bed watching her sleep for an hour, then made sure the sheriff’s deputy watching her knew how she took her tea. I thought I’d stayed long enough to miss the morning rush at Audrey’s. But I’d never seen the diner like this, not even on Saturdays when Audrey made her egg-pie special. Every stool at the counter and every seat at every table was taken. The tables were arranged in a haphazard semicircle so everyone could face the man standing a few feet away from me in a brown-and-mustard Pine County Sheriff’s Department uniform.

  “Take a seat, Gus,” Sheriff Aho said.

  “Ask him if that’s a good idea, Sheriff.” It was Elvis Bontrager, Mrs. B’s brother-in-law, Darlene’s uncle, and a Pine County commissioner.

  “What idea?” I said.

  Audrey DeYonghe emerged from behind the counter wiping her hands on the white apron she wore over a sky-blue smock. “Oh, dear,” she said, taking my face in her damp hands, then pulling me into her arms for a hug. “This is so sad. It’s so, so terrible.”

  “Yes.”

  “I almost decided not to open today, but I thought, well, this would be a good place for people to blow off steam. How is Darlene?”

  I glanced at Dingus. He was listening. “OK, I hope.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Not so good. She was sleeping when I saw her this morning.”

  “I don’t suppose there are any funeral arrangements yet.”

  “That’s going to take a while. T
he cops have to do their work first.”

  Audrey squeezed me again before letting me go. She reached behind the counter and pulled out a wooden stool. “Here, honey, set this over there. I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “Thank you.”

  I set the stool by the window near the end of the counter and sat. Dingus was still looking at me, waiting. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a notebook.

  “No,” Dingus said. “We’re off the record here.”

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “The sheriff’s trying like hell to save his job is what’s going on,” Bart Fleder shouted from the back of the room. Then everyone started to yell again. I couldn’t make out everything they said, but I heard “bingo” and “murder” and “Phyllis” and “incompetent.” I could barely believe I was in Audrey’s. The faces around me were pinched with fury and fear. Two women looked as if they had been crying.

  “Please,” Dingus said, holding his palms up for quiet.

  “Tell us what you got, and we’ll stop,” Fleder said.

  Elvis turned to me, his belly straining against the suspenders clipped to his jeans. “The sheriff wants to cancel all bingo. Just shut it off. Like that’s going to catch this guy. Brilliant, huh?”

  “Elvis,” Dingus said. His cheeks had flushed red behind his handlebar mustache. He wasn’t used to this sort of treatment. When he spoke to audiences of more than three or four people, he was usually the welcome guest handing out a safety award or posing for photographs with schoolchildren.

  Floyd Kepsel piped up. “I think what Elvis is trying to say, Sheriff, is that we couldn’t give a hoot about bingo being canceled. But is that it? Is that all you have for us?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m trying to say, Dingus,” Elvis said. “Do you see my wife here today? Huh? Do you? She comes here every day”-Elvis rapped a forefinger on the table with each word-“because she loves this place and this town because it’s quiet and peaceful and you don’t have to lock your doors and we have places like this where nice people come to have a nice breakfast and talk about their grandkids. But she’s not here today, Sheriff, because she can’t get out of bed, she can’t move, she can’t do anything but cry.”

  “I’m sorry, Elvis. You know-”

  “Sorry? I’ll tell you what’s sorry. What’s sorry is you coming here like this is some damn campaign stop and telling us we’re the problem, we’re the ones who have to be confined to our homes.” The yelling started up again. “What if the guy starts breaking in on bowling night, huh? You going to shut the bowling alley, too? And what about hockey? We got a big game tonight and everybody’s going. You going to order us to forfeit so we all stay home because you and your overpaid deputies can’t catch a thief who doesn’t even take anything?”

  “He’s not a thief,” Dingus said. “If he was, we’d have-”

  “No, he’s a murderer.”

  It was Sally Pearson. Her home had been broken into on a bingo night in February. She rose from her table. The room quieted. Behind her, I saw Jo Evangelista dabbing at her eyes. I felt a catch in my throat and started taking notes to distract myself.

  “A murderer, Dingus,” Sally said. “And he killed one of the best of us.”

  “I realize that, Sally. We’re doing everything we can.”

  “We don’t have murderers in Starvation Lake. It can’t be one of us.”

  “Probably not,” Dingus said. “But we have to look at all of the possibilities.”

  “Do it, Dingus. And do it quickly. Because we can’t have this hanging over us in our town. We’ve had our problems with the economy and the real estate but we get through it because we know what we have here, a little piece of heaven on earth.”

  “And there are no murderers in heaven, sir,” Elvis said.

  Sally sat. Dingus fingered the brass mitten-shaped clasp on his tie. “I’m deeply regretful that we haven’t solved this-these cases,” he said. “And I understand your concerns. But I’m afraid I must go ahead with my decision to cancel bingo until we have a better handle on this.”

  “What’s to stop this guy-”

  “Enough, Elvis.” Audrey barked it from behind the counter.

  Elvis turned in his seat. “Now, come on, Aud-”

  “I said, enough. Phyllis was my friend, too. Dingus is doing his best. If that isn’t good enough, you’ll have a chance to let him know at the polls. But now let’s let the poor man do his job. If you still insist on second-guessing him, that’s up to you, but you’ll do it somewhere else from now on. And Sheriff?” She turned to Dingus. “I’ll thank you to refrain from calling meetings in my establishment. The same goes for Frank D’Alessio.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Dingus said, giving a little bow. “With that, I’ll take my leave.” He picked up his hat and jacket off a chair and had opened the jangling door halfway when he looked at me. “You,” he said. “Out here.”

  I followed the sheriff down Main. He veered into the narrow alley between Repicky Realty and a defunct antique shop, waving me along.

  “Where are you taking me?” I said, but Dingus ignored me until he turned onto the walkway along the Hungry River and stopped. He peered over the railing at the river gurgling to the lake. He shook his head and leaned his elbows on the railing. Green paint was peeling off in spots because the town had only enough money to repaint once every two years.

  “My loyal deputy was in there earlier,” he said, “stirring up the rabble.”

  “D’Alessio?”

  “The one and only.”

  “The guy’s dumber than a sack of hockey pucks.”

  “Which never hurt a politician before, so far as I can tell. I wasn’t going to do any dog-and-pony shows, but Skip was in there getting a coffee and saw D’Alessio and gave me a jingle and said, ‘Boss, you better get down here before they hang you in effigy.’”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yes. Frank’s treating all these crazy ideas-Phyllis got shot with a hunting bow, she got sliced up with a cheese grater-like they’re all real possibilities. He doesn’t know a thing.”

  “What did-”

  “The guy may have slammed her head into the bathroom door, and then, we think, into the floor. He may not have meant to kill her, but he did.”

  We stood watching the water for a moment. I’d never seen Dingus so worked up. “When was the last murder in Starvation?” I said.

  “In 1973,” he said. “A couple of brothers arguing over natural gas rights. Drinking, of course. One grabs a shotgun out of his gun cabinet and shoots the other across the kitchen table. I think he’s out of prison by now.”

  “That the only one?”

  “Before that, we had a man accused of murdering a nun at St. Val’s back in the forties or fifties. He got into it with somebody at the jail and got his throat cut. It was kind of a big deal at the time, though more because of the nun than the guy who killed her.”

  “And now you have this.”

  “Yes.” He came up from the railing. “And you are going to help me.”

  Dingus and I had a special relationship. Sometimes he helped me, mostly he didn’t. But when he did, he expected something in return, usually more than what he gave up. It never would have worked for a marriage, but as cop-reporter romances go, it was about as good as it gets.

  “Am I working for you or something?” I said.

  He stepped in closer. “Can it. You want to solve this as much as I do, whether it’s in your paper or not.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Your mother. She knows things. I know she knows them. She knows she knows them.”

  “Not always. She-”

  “Pipe down. I know about memory problems. My mama had them, too, may she rest in peace. But Bea, forgive me for saying, she knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “Sometimes she can’t dredge it up.”

  “Yeah, well.” He leaned his face in close. I smelled the Tiparillos again. “Maybe you can help her.”


  “And then what?”

  “Then you pass it along to your friendly neighborhood sheriff.”

  “So, Dingus, do you have any clues at all? Do you know why they’re not taking anything?”

  A frown bunched his mustache at his lips. He wasn’t going to respond. I considered asking about nye-less but didn’t want to expose Darlene. And I didn’t want to give away the only lead I had. “So, can I take off?” I said.

  “How about your friend Tatch?”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I let it go.

  “What about him?”

  “We got a tip he didn’t show up at the rink last night. That so?”

  A tip? Shit, I thought, that had to be D’Alessio, who’d heard from me that Tatch was a no-show. Then I recalled the message left at the Pilot the night before: Anyone checking on those whackaroonies at the Christian camp? Meaning Tatch. His camp.

  “Tatch wasn’t at the game,” I said. “But he’s not the most reliable guy on the planet.”

  “Uh-huh. He’s a goalie, isn’t he? Like you? I’m no hockey expert, but it’s pretty unusual for the guy who guards the net to miss a game, isn’t it? Kind of puts his team at a disadvantage?”

  “Kind of. What do you want from me?”

  “Just ask him a question or two.”

  “Why don’t you ask him a question or two?”

  “He’s your buddy. Couple of goalies, you think alike, right? If ‘think’ is the right word for goalies.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Just do it, huh?”

  A breeze off the river washed cold along the back of my neck. “I’m going out to his camp later anyway. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Good,” Dingus said. “You been out there before? I have nothing against born-again Christians, but I’ll tell you, that place is just a tad creepy.”

  SEVEN

  After Dingus cleared out, I headed down the river to Estelle Street, where I turned toward Main and the Pine County Courthouse.

  My chat with the sheriff had reminded me to pick up some documents. The week before, I’d requested several years’ worth of tax reports on properties owned or formerly owned by Stewart and Bernice Edwards, Tatch’s parents, or owned by Roy Edwards, Tatch himself. He and his little camp of born-again Christians were fighting the county over an increase in taxes on the property where their trailers huddled on a wooded hill above the lake. They were arguing that they were a religious organization that shouldn’t have to pay taxes at all, and certainly not more than before. Now that Dingus seemed the least bit suspicious of Tatch-even if I didn’t think Tatch clever enough to break into a house without getting caught or mean enough to hurt a flea-I figured I ought to have those documents handy, just in case.