Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  Lula had interrupted then with a tray of more sandwiches and foam paper cups of vegetable soup. She was a one-woman, full-service restaurant. With a steady customer. Every time Fuzzy walked though the house or yard, he was chewing and holding something wrapped in a napkin.

  “Anyone else?” asked Munson.

  “After Charley and I found Sullivan, I looked back toward the house and saw Fuzzy going in the back door,” Jane said. She tried to make it sound casual, neutral. She wasn’t sure why she wanted Munson to be unimpressed with the information, but she did. Until Jane uncovered what Fuzzy was doing out there on the prowl, she didn’t want Munson digging too deeply. And since Jane had reservations about Munson’s inquiries, she hardly knew how to describe her fear of Nellie’s heavy excavation equipment.

  “Just tell your mother what happened out there, then we’ll get on with the door-to-door,” said Tim, flinging open the door to the Mustang.

  “Why so concerned that we keep Nellie in the loop?” asked Jane. “She probably knows everything already. And what’s the door-to-door?”

  Tim consulted a small leather-bound notebook. Looking up, his face was one part Tim Lowry of T & T Sales, all business and appraisals, and one part Timmy, her bemused best friend who could not understand why she never remembered what he had told her a million times.

  “Sweetie, the city-wide garage sale is going to put this town on the map, but if we want to make it work, you know, hit the record book and all, we have to get everyone to cooperate. No holdouts. So I have a list of houses where the occupants have been a little reticent, and I thought if you and I, together …”

  “What in the hell is going on out at Fuzzy’s?” asked Nellie. She had come out on the back porch carrying a case of empty bottles. Jane knew that her mother probably had given up carrying cases of full bottles, or pushing the loaded dolly that could handle three cases at a time, but still, seeing her hoist this box of empties was fairly amazing. Nellie had admitted that she was close to seventy for several years. Maybe it was time for Jane to pin her down to the truth that she still might be able to see seventy, but it was in the rearview mirror. In fact, maybe it was time for Jane to have the retirement talk again with both Don and Nellie.

  “I’ve heard about a hundred sirens and seen all the cop cars in Kankakee racing out that way,” she added, wiping her hands on an old checked apron that Jane had found, pristine condition, and given her mother as a collectible kitchen textile, one that could hang on the wall of the EZ Way kitchen and, as Jane had said at the time, cozy up the place.

  “Fuzzy’s farm isn’t the only place located west of town, Mom,” Jane said.

  Nellie looked her daughter in the eye, and they stood locked for a moment, unblinking stare to unblinking stare. Nellie shrugged and raised her chin slightly. “Okay, you don’t have to tell me.”

  Don opened the back door and reached out an arm toward his daughter. “Come on in, honey. Lula called this morning and told us you all had quite a night.”

  Nellie untied her vintage apron and used it as a bar rag, wiping off the top of the porch railing. “Yeah, I forgot. Lula called. You two want any coffee?”

  Jane filled her parents in on what had happened. She didn’t go into any details about the bones ending up on Johnny Sullivan’s lap, about the voice from the outhouse, or about seeing Fuzzy outside after finding the body. Hell, Nellie probably knew all that anyway. Not only had Lula called, but Joe Dempsey and Mike Hoover were sitting at the bar. They had been over at K3 Realty when Henry Bennett returned from the farm. One of Munson’s people had driven him back, and according to Hoover and Dempsey, Bennett was shaking like a leaf when he told them about the body in the cornfield. Next to the EZ Way Inn, the real estate office seemed like the happening place for gossip in this town. Why in this depressed, least livable city were two movers and shakers like Dempsey and Hoover hovering around the real estate office?

  “Why were you two at K3 Realty?” asked Jane. “Looking for a house?”

  “Maybe,” Hoover said, at the same time Dempsey shook his head and said an emphatic, “No.”

  “Better get your stories straight,” said Nellie, slamming down two cups of coffee, and pouring the shot of Jack Daniel’s that Dempsey had asked for to “brighten” the coffee.

  “Hardly a story,” said Dempsey, glaring at Hoover while trying to smile at Nellie. The end result was a kind of frozen toothy stare. “Kankakee isn’t down for the count yet. It’s got a lot going for it. Great little town. Heart of the Midwest. River’s pretty. Great old buildings.”

  “Great old empty buildings,” said Don, looking out the front window at the shell of the old stove factory that used to be one of many beating hearts of the town.

  “Don’t have to be,” said Hoover. Dempsey tried to freeze him again with that look, but when he couldn’t get Hoover to pay any attention to him, he gave up and joined in.

  “Mike’s right, Don. Maybe you all should consider bringing some life back into this all-American town.”

  “Errbert,” Nellie said, without opening her mouth.

  Jane and Tim both looked at her.

  “Errrberttt,” she said, more emphatically.

  Don nodded.

  “Nellie’s right, and I’m not sure I’m for it, fellas. Haven’t made up my mind.”

  “Do you have any idea what anyone here is talking about?” asked Jane.

  “I’m enjoying it,” said Tim, unwrapping a Slim Jim and taking a bite.

  “Those aren’t free,” said Nellie, holding out her hand.

  “It’s not what you think, Don. We have other plans. We just can’t unveil them yet,” said Joe Dempsey, holding up his shot glass to signal for another.

  “Okay, boys, whatever you say,” said Don, turning and nodding at Nellie. “But I’m betting with Nellie on this one.”

  Jane shook her head. Her mother was a mutterer, a riddler, had been all of Jane’s life. She could, however, usually count on her father for clarification. If he was going to start agreeing with Nellie rather than interpreting for her, Jane could be in serious trouble.

  Nellie had moved on from “errbert” to muttering about Tim and the rack of Slim Jims he was twirling. Tim coveted all the snack display racks and bins that rested on the wooden shelves between the barroom and the eight Formica-topped tables that made up the dining room. Each time he was in the EZ Way Inn, running his fingers over the lettering on the heavy plastic tray of Beer Nuts and the stepped tin rack for the cans of anchovies and packages of crackers, Nellie put herself between Tim and what he told her were “advertising collectibles.”

  “Stay away from those things, Lowry,” said Nellie. “I need those.”

  “Nellie, you could get the more up-to-date displays from the delivery men. Why don’t you update?” asked Tim.

  “These work fine.” Nellie, still holding the balled-up apron, wiped off each metal rung and clip that held the beef jerky snacks. “If it ain’t broke …”

  “Who’s errbert?” asked Jane.

  “Don’t know, honey,” said Don, shaking his head. “You know any Herbert, Nellie?”

  “Who is he?” asked Nellie.

  “Somebody Jane knows,” said Don, moving over to the wash tanks to finish the glasses.

  “No,” Jane said. “What Mom was saying, ‘errbert’?” Jane lowered her voice and tried to gesture toward Dempsey and Hoover.

  “Airport, sweetie.”

  Jane stared at her father. He’d explain if she waited him out.

  “These fellows think we’re all too dumb to know, but they’re trying to buy up land that they think will become valuable if an airport’s built here.”

  “Fuzzy’s farm?” Jane asked. This private detective business was a snap. She had this case figured out and could finish the day working with Tim on the Kankakee garage sale. Fuzzy’s farm was probably designated as runway number three or something, and Johnny Sullivan was going to break the story before these two bought up all the parcels they wanted
. Last night they went out and shot him. All Jane had to do was call Munson and tell him what she had discovered while sitting on a bar stool at the EZ Way Inn. These murderers would be arrested, and she could add another notch to her crime-solving belt.

  Jane looked at the two whispering to each other over their coffee and whisky. Not exactly the embodiment of pure evil. Hoover had opened a package of Hostess cupcakes from the bread rack and was offering one to Dempsey, who smiled and shook his head. Not evil, but definitely shifty. Well, maybe not shifty, but clearly rascals. Maybe not rascals, but shrewd businessmen for sure. Hoover sneezed, grabbing the napkin from under his coffee cup just in time to cover his face. Dempsey put a fatherly hand on his shoulder and dug out a clean handkerchief and handed it to the younger man. Well, they were wearing suits that were more stylish than usually seen in the EZ Way Inn, so they were probably in business; but for some reason, Jane wasn’t so sure how shrewd they were. And before she even began to dig for her cell phone in her bag, she had decided that while these two could not be counted out, she had no real proof of anything and a phone call to Munson might be premature.

  Another phone call to Bruce Oh, however, might be timely. Talk to Oh was usually the first thing on Jane’s to-do list whenever she found a body. Of course, she wasn’t usually surrounded by her family and hometown police force when these events took place. It had been Jane’s experience that meeting up with corpses was almost always private. Last night, having Charley walk up behind her wasn’t only important for reassuring Nick that it wasn’t just something peculiar about Mom that led her into the complicated lives of the newly dead, it was also a comfort to her that her new profession was shaping up as a kind of family business. At the very least, it was work she could bring home with her.

  “Oh,” said Oh.

  “Oh,” said Jane, too late to stop herself. He really had to learn a different way of answering the phone. “It’s …” “Yes,” said Oh, “Mrs. Wheel.”

  Jane told the story to Oh that she had been repeating to Munson for most of the morning. She found that the time since leaving the farm and arriving at her parents’ tavern had not helped her remember anything new. Oh’s question, though, so different from Munson’s, tilted her head and made her see the scene from a slightly different slant.

  “When you saw what you thought was the scarecrow, did it make you laugh or shiver?” asked Oh.

  “I think I was relieved to come up with an explanation,” said Jane. “So I think I probably felt like laughing.”

  Oh did not comment.

  “That’s an odd question.”

  “Is it?”

  “Okay, I give up. Why is it important? My reaction?” asked Jane, ignoring Tim who, having no luck in persuading Nellie to sell him any of the tavern display items, was now pointing at his vintage Patek Phillip and giving her the head jerk toward the door.

  “Sometimes we laugh when we are sad. Occasionally we know something in our hearts, but we obey our head instead,” said Oh. “But usually, our emotions, our feelings, how we act without thinking or knowing, tells us something.”

  “And in this case?” asked Jane.

  “You don’t remember being more frightened, you remember being relieved at an explanation. Which means you didn’t see anyone threatening, menacing, to interfere with that relief; and I think it means you didn’t hear anything resembling a gunshot because that sound playing with that picture of a fall would not have provided relief. It would have struck fear.”

  Oh’s question had required Jane to replay the scene in her mind just as she had when Munson had talked to her earlier. More than once, Munson had asked if she remembered seeing anyone else, if a shadow had fallen across the moonlit scene, if she could recall anything unusual while watching the scarecrow, but she hadn’t been able to come up with anything new.

  “I remember why I felt relieved, why I smiled,” said Jane.

  “Yes,” said Oh.

  “The scarecrow turned and waved at me before it slid down,” said Jane. “I mean it seemed like it waved at me. I had the feeling I was seeing something sort of dancing in a different direction, but it turned and seemed to be looking at me. That’s when I thought I was seeing a scarecrow, and I smiled. In fact …”

  “Yes?”

  “If I only had a brain. I was humming that when I went to get Charley. The song’s been in my head all morning.”

  Jane felt like she was seeing the scene again for the first time. She had been watching out her window, watching something, someone out there, and that someone had been in profile, as if she were watching someone act with another onstage. Although the scarecrow’s costar was slightly offstage, in the cornfield wings. When she realized, or thought she realized, she was watching the breeze blow around some old clothes, it was when the scarecrow turned and faced her way and seemed to wave.

  “Mrs. Wheel?”

  “What I saw … Johnny Sullivan … turned my way and seemed to wave. Although the cabin was pitch-black. He couldn’t have seen me in the window.”

  “There were other objects, people in your direction?”

  “Everything. The path to the cabin. The outhouse just off the path. The tent next to the cabin. The shed and digging site just off to the side of that, and behind all of that, the house itself,” said Jane.

  “And you said that Charley had gone to the shed because he thought someone was there?”

  “When will you be coming down here? Charley and I can reenact the entire scene and …”

  “Mrs. Wheel, why would I be coming to Kankakee?” asked Oh.

  “I’m flattered that you think I can handle this case alone, Detective Oh,” said Jane, wondering at what point in their relationship she would be able to call him Bruce, “but I think I’m not totally ready to …”

  “What case?”

  “Johnny Sullivan’s murder.” “Police business, yes?”

  “But …”

  “In television programs and books, Mrs. Wheel, detectives always come in and do what the police cannot. The cab driver or the waitress or the lawyer … they all become detectives and solve the crime. This is fine, because—excuse me, Claire is talking to me, yes, that’s right—Claire says, ‘or the antique dealerm and the picker’; they all solve crimes. But these amateurs all have something in common,” said Oh.

  “They’re not realistic?” said Jane.

  “They work for a client,” said Oh. “Someone asks them to solve the case. Or they have to prove themselves innocent. Has anyone asked for your help?”

  “Fuzzy asked for Charley’s help in assessing the bones and fragments at the site,” said Jane.

  “So you have one case,” said Oh. “See where that leads and be available when someone asks for your help.”

  Jane said she would and hung up.

  What the hell was that?

  First, Oh inspires her to think about what she saw, about what happened in a different way, then he takes it all away. Dismisses her involvement. What was this feeling? Dissatisfaction? Jane couldn’t walk away from what she’d witnessed. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and looked at her father and mother bickering with Dempsey and Hoover. Tim was consulting his book and pushing buttons on something that looked like a cross between a cell phone, a camera, and a coaster. Jane looked at her own dinosaur of a cell phone, at least nine months old, and began to redial Oh’s number.

  No. Not necessary. What had Oh said? She had one case? He was right. If she and Charley could figure out why a bunch of bones unrelated to any peoples or creatures that would cause them to be protected had been reported to the government … if they could figure out why Fuzzy’s farm was involved in any kind of dispute, they would, in all likelihood, find out why Johnny Sullivan was killed on that property. And if all this information did not lead to the big answer to the big question, she would find out anyway. She took a deep breath and dropped the phone into her bag. She had decided to get those cards printed, the ones that identified her as a picker and a pri
vate investigator—a PPI, as Tim had called her—and, by god, she was going to solve this case—client or no client.

  Jane looked over at Dempsey and Hoover. They looked out of place sitting in the EZ Way Inn, but Jane wasn’t sure that made them murder suspects.

  “Why do you think Johnny Sullivan was out at Fuzzy’s last night anyway?” Jane asked. She had picked up the glass carafe of overcooked coffee and topped off both Dempsey’s and Hoover’s green glass mugs. “You think he was interested in the errbert?”

  “Could be. Nosy man,” said Dempsey. “I’ve been here for about six weeks now on this … business deal … and every time that young man saw me, he’d start in asking inappropriate questions.”

  Nellie cleared her throat and nodded, stuck out her arms, and made a buzzing airplane noise. Jane laughed and had to give her mother some credit. When Nellie was on duty behind the bar, she could be pretty entertaining.

  “Nellie,” Dempsey said, leaning forward over his coffee mug, “if I tell you why I’m here, which by the way has nothing to do with a goddamn airport, will you stop telling everybody that I’m an airport guy? Nobody’ll talk to me anymore because of that, and it’s not true.”

  It was Hoover’s turn to shoot a look at his partner.

  “I thought we agreed to …”

  “Shoot, Mike,” said Dempsey. “There’s a dead man in the cornfield out there. Probably one of these crazy farmers thought he was an airport guy and decided to take care of business. You want everybody thinking we’re in the same club as Sullivan?”

  Mike Hoover shook his head and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. He asked Don if he had any tomato juice behind the bar.

  Jane filed away that question, the same club as Sullivan, because it promised another direction she wanted to take in asking questions. For the moment, though, she was happy to hear whatever Joe Dempsey had decided to say.

  Dempsey reached into his jacket pocket and took out three pale green business cards. He handed one to Jane, one to Nellie, and one to Don, who held it at arm’s length, and invited Tim to read with him.