Hidden Graves

by Jack Fredrickson

  Bohler relaxed back in her chair and smiled a little. ‘Wade gets off scot-free.’

  I smiled, too. ‘He can look forward to spending the rest of his life in philanthropy and having people marvel at what a generous, upstanding person he is.’

  ‘Almost,’ Jenny said, right on cue.

  Bohler shot her a fast look. ‘Almost?’

  ‘Almost,’ I said, leaning closer to her face. ‘Wade will realize he still has to worry about the accomplice he paid to frame somebody for murdering Marilyn Paul, to keep him aware of what was being learned by that same troublesome private investigator and, later, to set up a failed search of his back yard to shut down any further investigation. He won’t want to spend his life worrying that she might spill all of that to some overzealous, do-good prosecutor who won’t be stopped by crooked politicians.’

  ‘Wade won’t want that,’ Jenny said.

  ‘He’ll have to tidy up,’ I said.

  Jenny touched Bohler’s wrist and spoke soothingly, as though to a child. ‘Wade kills people who can hurt him. Marilyn Paul. John Shea.’

  ‘Why would Wade leave a loose end that could come back to haunt him?’ I added.

  ‘A big loose end,’ Jenny said, patting Bohler’s wrist hard now.

  ‘A blonde loose end,’ I said, unable to control myself.

  Jenny squeezed Bohler’s wrist. ‘Dead for sure.’

  Bohler, frantic, began looking back and forth between Jenny and me.

  ‘You know what bothered me right off?’ I said, making a show of asking them both. ‘How did an impound garage cop catch the Marilyn Paul case in the first place? Lieutenant Beech out in California questioned that right away.’ I shook my head. ‘I let it go, figuring that with all the cutbacks and such, sheriff’s deputies must be doing more than their normally assigned duties. Stupid, stupid me.’

  ‘Stupid, stupid you, Dek.’ Still squeezing Bohler’s wrist, Jenny shook her own head as if in sympathetic confusion.

  I turned to Bohler. ‘Of course, I know now that you didn’t catch the case. Real detectives caught it but they move slow and they let you in because you said you got a call about a corpse in my Jeep. You didn’t get tipped; you got told, directly, by Wade, who put it there. The problem was I was out of town, and you needed me in Rivertown to arrest me while in possession of the body. But then, the body disappeared, right out from under your nose. I can only imagine Wade’s fury when you told him about that. Still, he had a back-up plan. He had you search for the murder knife he planted in my Jeep.’

  Bohler shifted in her chair slightly, carefully. I slammed my hand down on her other wrist before she could pull away from Jenny’s grasp and grab her gun.

  ‘This time you were leaving nothing to chance,’ I went on as conversationally as I could. ‘You planted the knife and then hung around after phoning for a flatbed and a dog. But again your luck went bad. The knife got found before your dog arrived. Still, you figured you’d recover residual evidence, but the dried blood traces got trapped by a top layer of Burger King wrappers that went away with the knife.’

  Bohler’s eyes narrowed. She was looking at the cousins sitting at the table in front, no doubt calculating her odds of escaping if she could tug free from Jenny and me.

  I nodded to the cousins, who’d been watching us, for such was the price of the cabbage, and later, beer. They grabbed their guns, kicked back their chairs and hurried up to our table.

  Jenny and I let go. ‘Waistband, right side,’ I said.

  Eloise took the revolver from beneath Bohler’s sweater and motioned for her to stand up. She patted her down, found no other weapon and looked to me.

  ‘No extra bullets in her pocket?’ I asked.

  Eloise shook her head.

  ‘If you could please remove the bullets from her gun and give it to me?’ I asked.

  Eloise snapped open the cylinder, removed the bullets and handed me the revolver. I put the small gun in my pants pocket and told the cousins they could go back to their table.

  ‘If things go well you can have your gun back,’ I said to Bohler.

  ‘I didn’t kill anybody,’ she said.

  ‘For an expensive truck, Bohler?’ I asked, remembering Booster Liss’s assessment that the truck’s wheels alone cost a thousand dollars each. ‘You tried to frame me, just for money for a damned new truck?’

  ‘I was only supposed to discover the body. Then I was only supposed to leave the knife, come back with my partner, have him find it and impound your Jeep. That was all.’

  ‘How about the night Wade came to my place? You came along as back-up. What was he going to do, shoot me?’

  ‘He was crazy that night, paranoid about what you might have learned. He called me at the garage, told me I’d damned well better meet him at your place. I didn’t know what he was going to do. Whatever, he chickened out.’

  ‘You pulled me over before I could see who it was.’

  ‘That doesn’t connect me to anything.’

  ‘Remember, Jeffries remembers you from ten or fifteen years ago, working private security for a couple of Democratic events. He connects you to Wade.’

  She pushed her chair back and got up. ‘This is crap.’

  ‘Wade won’t do time and he won’t forget that you’re the only one who can get him prosecuted. He’ll hire killers. They’ll find you.’

  I handed over the small revolver. ‘Keep it handy, Bohler.’

  She made for the door. I signaled to the cousins to let her go.

  ‘How far will she get?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘The meanest part of me wants her to run for the rest of her life, to be always looking over her shoulder. That same mean part wants Wade to be hunting her for forever, too, to always be sweating a day when Bohler tells all.’ I tried to summon up a smile. ‘For Marilyn Paul, I wish long lives for the both of them.’

  ‘What finally convinced you she was in Wade’s pocket?’

  ‘When I told her I was going to search the woods across the street. She tipped Wade that I was coming because that’s the only reason a guard could have been waiting so close. He heard me, found me and would have killed me if I hadn’t outrun him. When I got away, he and the other night man took off. They must have called the day shift boys to stay away as well. None of them had signed on to be questioned about the fresh grave across the street.’

  ‘They were gone by the time we arrived at that fire,’ she said.

  ‘I got lucky. If they’d hung around they would have put it out and no cops would ever have come to discover those graves.’

  ‘No, Dek. You wouldn’t have given up. You would have set another fire.’

  I gave that a nod.

  ‘Explain something,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t Wade simply call the police when Theresa died in that crash? It would have been ruled an accident.’

  ‘He must have been in deep shock, and in denial. They were close, those two Wades. But part of him must have been lucid enough to fear what the crash would do to his future. He drove the Cadillac up into that sunken garage, closed the doors and built her a fine pine casket. He buried her across the road, on a property no one would ever think he owned. And he grieved. He must have grieved deeply.’

  ‘And then along came Red Halvorson, not that long afterward?’

  ‘Another horror not of his conscious making,’ I said. ‘I can almost pity the person Wade became, buffeted by such tragedies.’

  ‘So many years passed, living with such guilt.’

  ‘Years of doing many good things,’ I said. ‘And then along came John Shea and Marilyn Paul, threatening to stop all the good he still intended to do.’

  ‘Marilyn Paul, a nosy pest who could upend his entire career,’ she said. ‘And John Shea, a blackmailer and a murderer. Both had to be gotten rid of.’

  ‘As I had to be gotten rid of, though he needed me alive to wear the jacket for killing Marilyn. He’d found my name in her apartment and saw how I could be a fall guy. He remembered Bohler an
d contacted her, waving money. She went along.’

  Jenny touched my hand. Mrs Galecki, who’d just set down four pitchers of beer for the cousins, charged up quick as a bullet, scribbling my check. She slapped it down onto the table, face up, and hovered close, waiting for me to look at it. I looked. She’d charged $112 for eleven drinks, $81 for four pitchers of beer, $52 for stuffed cabbages, $15 and change for tax, and $71 for her own tip.

  It broke the moment. I started to laugh. Mrs Galecki dropped one hand to the handle of the meat cleaver in her apron, daring me to dispute the charge.

  Jenny looked at the tab and then up at her mother’s steely glare. And then she started laughing, too.

  ‘It’s the Chicago way,’ I managed.

  We stood up. I set down six fifties, two twenties, two singles, thirty-five cents and the last of the lint I had in my pocket. It was all that remained of Marilyn Paul’s money and all that remained of my own. Mrs Galecki nodded, satisfied that I’d been plucked clean.

  We headed toward the cousins. They raised their beer glasses, toasting my largesse. Jenny stopped and put a hand on Bernie’s shoulder, or perhaps it was Stanley’s, or Frank’s. I couldn’t tell.

  I touched her arm lightly. And then I went out alone, into the night.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  I switched off the television in Amanda’s living room at six minutes past eight o’clock the next morning and went to the window to look out over the beach along Lake Michigan. I was warmed by the same blue-and-red striped terry robe I’d worn during our marriage – which, touchingly, she’d kept – and by the coffee I’d just made in the same Mr Coffee we’d bought as newlyweds. Which, touchingly, she’d also kept.

  I took no comfort in the breaking news bulletin that had just aired on Channel 8. Jenny had been circumspect in reporting that senator-elect Timothy Wade was set to announce his resignation at a noon press conference. She’d reported the rumor that he was stepping away to care for his ailing sister, but then she pointedly mentioned that there were other rumors swirling around about him as well. She left no doubt that she wasn’t done with the story.

  Amanda came out of the bedroom dressed in a dark suit, pressing a last earring into place. ‘I caught Jennifer Gale’s report in the bedroom. She did a nice job.’

  ‘So did you, with your friends.’

  ‘I told them you do not yield once your mind is made up.’

  ‘The pundits are going to rip apart Wade’s announcement, looking for the truth.’

  ‘He’ll be brief and he’ll take no questions,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps someone will learn something in a month or a year that will force a re-examination of the Marilyn Paul case.’

  ‘Jennifer Gale?’

  ‘She’ll never quit.’

  ‘Fair enough. For us, there will be a newly appointed senator by the end of the month. A Democrat, as was agreed, until a special election is held. The committee is meeting next week.’

  ‘Wade’s Committee of Twenty-Four?’

  ‘It’s no longer Wade’s.’ She picked up her purse. ‘What’s up with you today?’

  ‘A drive to the south side to pick up a new thermostat, then out west, for a humidifier, and then home to resume working on heat.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said and headed back into the bedroom. She returned with a small box wrapped in brightly colored paper and tied with a red bow. ‘A little something I picked up for you.’

  I opened it. It was a box of Band-Aids, plain ones.

  ‘I’m to give up the Flintstones? No more Fred, Wilma and Barney flapping around on my hands?’

  She touched the sleeve of my old robe. ‘Get your furnace finished. I’ll be looking for heat at your place, too.’

  I gave her one of my finest leers.

  It wasn’t until two o’clock that I rolled up to the turret but someone had rolled up before me, quite literally. A bronze-colored Lexus sedan had run up and over the shallow curb in front of the turret and rested diagonally across the narrow ribbon of grass I pass off as a front lawn. I was not alarmed. The jolt of smacking the curb must have killed the motor before the car could slam into the turret. Only the wipers still arcing across the windshield, switched on by a driver hoping to see through a blur, signaled that the ignition was still on. It had not rained for days.

  The purple Northwestern University decal in the rear window betrayed the identity of the woman whose frosted blonde head was leaned back on the front seat, slack-jawed, sound asleep.

  I tapped on the side glass. Nothing. I tapped harder. Still nothing.

  I beat it with my fist. The woman jerked forward, wild-eyed.

  ‘Bipsie?’ I shouted to the glass.

  She powered down the window. ‘You Dek?’

  I opened the door and she pushed herself toward the opening. I caught her before she tumbled to the dirt and helped her out.

  ‘We thought we’d stop by after luncheon,’ she said with remarkable clarity, steadying herself against the side of the car until it and the ground stopped moving. ‘Long time no hear.’

  I bent to look inside the car. It was empty.

  ‘You came with someone?’ I asked.

  She bent to look in the front and the back. ‘Well, I can’t imagine …’

  I had the queasiest of flashbacks, an unreasoning and irrational remembrance, of a Bipsie who’d plucked my name from a sorority newsletter, a Bipsie more sober, more officious. A Bipsie more dead.

  I ran, afraid and unthinking, around the turret and down to the happily bobbing plastic debris in the Willahock.

  This Bipsie lay on her back on the bench, like something tossed up by the roil of the river. One of her feet pointed more or less toward the dam; the other had dropped to the ground. Her eyes were closed, in peace, but her mink coat was open, as was her mouth. She snored mightily.

  I laughed in relief.

  I’d been restored to my more rightful matters.