Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

“We didn’t know where else to go,” said Mr. Sullivan, looking from Charley to Jane to Fuzzy and Lula. His wife nodded. And in an oddly formal ritual, they each accepted a piece of apple crumb, cut through the flaky crust into Lula’s secret ingredient–laden spiced apples, and sat silently chewing.

  “We don’t have any family,” said Jack Sullivan.

  “Just each other and Johnny,” said his wife.

  “My people were from Pennsylvania, and they’re all gone now. And Elizabeth has a brother somewhere out West, but we stopped getting a Christmas card from him, oh about two years ago, right, Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth Sullivan nodded.

  Jane thought about all the movies and books and television shows that romanticized the small-town farming life, big families with all the adults working together, raising a barn or building a fence, then everybody eating at noisy picnics under big old trees, the children playing on the tire swing and running in and out of the barn.

  In the empty, grieving eyes of Elizabeth Sullivan, Jane saw rural life the way it was today—lonely and isolated. These people had a small farm that they could barely hold on to and make a living. Their children and the children of their neighbors ran as fast and as far as they could from the physical labor, the uncertainty of production, and the dependence on weather and the whims of the marketplace. The Sullivans had been hoping to work a few more years and maybe their son, Johnny, would have taken over the land. What would become of them now? Would they have enough money saved to buy a little place in Florida or … wait. Hadn’t Lula said …?

  “Don’t you have another son, Mrs. Sullivan? Lula mentioned earlier that …”

  “Dead,” said Jack. “Helicopter accident in basic training. Over twenty years ago. Phillip was nineteen when it happened.”

  Lula stopped wiping the dishes. She was as still as Jane had ever seen her.

  “You never said …,”Lula started. “Elizabeth, why didn’t you tell anybody?”

  The Sullivans looked at each other.

  “At first, it was just too hard to talk about. There wasn’t a …” Elizabeth Sullivan stopped and took a long breath. “It was an accident over water. There wasn’t a body. Jack was still planting; it was spring. Johnny was just out of high school and going off to start college early, some summer opportunity he had. He never really came home after he left that summer. Until … until now. Until he started working on that newspaper and coming home on weekends. It was like …” She stopped and inhaled again, but couldn’t go on.

  Jack Sullivan said quietly, “It was like getting another chance.”

  Everyone drank coffee. Lula stared at Elizabeth Sullivan as if she had spoken gibberish. She appeared to find the news about Phillip Sullivan’s death even more upsetting than Johnny’s murder. The only sound came from the distant voice of Bob Newhart on the record player. Nick hadn’t come back into the kitchen. Jane was sure he didn’t even know the Sullivans had come over.

  “We brought these,” said Elizabeth Sullivan, handing Jane a large, brown paper shopping bag filled with newspapers. “Maybe they’ll help you.”

  Jane shook her head without asking the obvious question.

  “We heard Franklin Munson tell one of his people you were a detective. So we thought maybe you’d find out what happened to Johnny.”

  “The police …,”Jane started.

  “We want you,” Elizabeth said. “Johnny was working on big stories and I told the policeman that, but he didn’t even ask to see the newspapers.”

  “They think it was something about real estate. They kept asking about that jacket he was wearing, that Roger Groveland’s jacket.”

  “Do you know why he was wearing it?” asked Jane. They shook their heads.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Elizabeth. “He was a reporter, and he was probably going to write something bad about someone. We want you to find out. Jack and I want to know.”

  “We’ll pay you,” said Jack.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, it’s not about money. I’m just not sure I can find anything that the police …”

  Nick laughed out loud in the living room, drowning out Newhart’s hesitant stutter.

  “You’ve got a boy,” said Elizabeth Sullivan. “You’ll know how to find out.”

  The Sullivans stood up to leave. Jane hadn’t known how to refuse them or even why she wanted to say no. Hadn’t she, just a few hours ago, been upset with Bruce Oh for suggesting that she was supposed to wait for a client before plunging into an investigation? Why now, when she had a client, did she feel so uncomfortable?

  Jane’s previous cases—and even when talking to herself in the smallest of silent whispers, she italicized cases and blushed from the inside out—because who was she, after all, to call herself a detective and to reflect on former cases—had fallen into her path.

  But accepting this one, Johnny Sullivan’s murder, was accepting herself in this role. Bruce Oh had already put her name on the letterhead, and Tim referred to himself as Helen Corning, the lesser known pal of Nancy Drew; but Jane hadn’t stepped outside of her own circle of family and friends to take on an investigation, to solve a crime, to crack a case, for god’s sake, and she winced at her own inner dime-novel lingo.

  “What do you think, Charley?” Jane asked, as they walked out to the cabin, after the kitchen was clean and Nick had put all the records away, arranged in the order he planned on listening to them.

  “We’ve got a few more days, and I want to write up something on the site here that will free up Fuzzy’s land. I’m not at all clear on what any of these random minerals and bones mean, but I know the site itself isn’t significant to the government. But I have to fill out the paperwork and snoop around a little. So why not see if you can help the Sullivans?” Charley asked, smoothing back his wife’s short, brown hair. “Not like you to shy away from a challenge.”

  Jane nodded and agreed that she should call Oh in the morning. On the one hand, she thought she might be hesitant because she would have to take herself seriously as a detective, and it all seemed too silly, too unrealistic. On the other hand, her previous career had been in advertising. She had produced television commercials, for heaven’s sake, so it wasn’t exactly like she was leaving brain surgery to become a fashion model.

  Okay, so when she peeled away all those onion skin layers of resistance, what was she left with? The fact that Jane Wheel, girl detective, was of course going to take the case, had already in her head taken on the case, and that the only reason she thought she might refuse was that her most likely and only suspect was her parents’ old friend, Fuzzy Neilson, whom she had watched tiptoe back into his house last night, not ten minutes after Johnny Sullivan had been shot dead in the cornfield. She could hear Oh asking her, shouldn’t you be willing to prove him innocent rather than fear that you’ll find him guilty?

  As soon as she was convinced that Nick was sleeping, Jane told Charley about the pennies she had seen Fuzzy burying.

  “It’s just one more strange thing,” said Jane. “His behavior’s so erratic, and I don’t know what to make of him being outside last night. I told Munson, so he’s probably asked him about it, but …” Jane trailed off and absentmindedly reached into her jeans to take out the pennies, also pulling out the Austinite sample she had pocketed when the Sullivans had surprised them in the kitchen.

  She noticed a little speck of green on the corner of the rock and was about to point it out to Charley—she wanted to show him she paid attention to all of his geology facts, and he had mentioned green as a color of this mineral—but Charley shushed her and cocked his head, listening.

  She thought she might have heard the soft closing of a door, too, and although she told herself it would be one of the police officers on duty, she joined Charley at the window that looked back toward the house. They stood side by side in the darkness of the cabin and watched Fuzzy Neilson walk slowly and stealthily out of his house. He headed first toward the shed where his collections were housed, then turned abrup
tly toward the cabin. He seemed to be heading straight at them, then turned again down the path to the outhouse and cornfield. He was carrying a sack, and Jane thought it was probably the same one she had seen him pulling the pennies from. Jane and Charley had moved quietly to a window at the back of the cabin, following Fuzzy’s route. It was the same window where Jane had stood watching last night’s events unfold. A few feet away from the outhouse, Fuzzy stopped and put the bag down. He seemed to be fiddling with something in his pocket and Jane had an urge to push Charley down and hit the floor with him. Was Fuzzy taking out a gun?

  “Oh,” said Jane, realizing what she was watching and turning away.

  Charley continued to watch. He bumped Jane’s arm, and she turned back to the window. Fuzzy picked up the bag and retraced his steps back into the house. Jane noted that the policeman stationed out at the edge of the cornfield had not even seemed to notice Fuzzy. Jane wasn’t sure any other officers were within sight, but none came running. Well, why would they? Fuzzy was entitled, she supposed, to walk outside in the dark and relieve himself in his backyard, which, as Jane and Charley could see, was the extent of this midnight’s rambling.

  Monday morning, Munson confirmed Fuzzy’s nocturnal habits.

  “You mentioned seeing Fuzzy on the porch, and when I asked him he shook his head and didn’t seem to remember being outside at all. Lula came in with a tray of food and started laughing. She told me Fuzzy’s been peeing outside every night since they had young babies in the house. One of the kids was a real light sleeper, and Fuzzy got tired of Lula yelling at him when he’d forget and flush, so he started going outside. She said he never even wakes up anymore. Said now that he’s an old man, he’s out two or three times a night at least and never even remembers anything about it in the morning.”

  “So Charley could have heard Fuzzy by the shed and gone over there and by the time he got there, Fuzzy was already in the outhouse, then he just went back in as usual, not noticing anything or anyone else out and about,” said Jane.

  “Possible,” said Munson. “Your partner said that if that was the case, the shooter could have been out in the cornfield and gone straight to the road through the corn like we thought yesterday. Would mean Johnny had taken the bones out there himself like your husband thought, and after he went down, the bones either fell out of his arms onto his lap or the killer … somebody with the killer … set them up in his lap where he fell. Maybe they were trying to see what the bones were or maybe just trying to send a message or something,” said Munson.

  “Who?”

  “Oh,” said Munson, feeling for his cell phone, which gave out a low buzz.

  Jane tried to look as if she wasn’t listening as Munson discussed guns and bullets and as soon as he hung up, she asked, “What partner?”

  “Oh,” said Munson. “I told you.”

  Jane always got that strange down-the-rabbit-hole sensation when she played the name game that always accompanied an unexpected invocation of Det. Bruce Oh’s name.

  “He called yesterday afternoon and said you two were on the case and could we share information, you know,” said Munson. “I’ve got to admit, I didn’t like it much before, but the guy has sort of grown on me.”

  Jane nodded. She knew how that was. Oh did have that effect. However, although he might grow on someone, how did he also manage to keep her so off-balance? He called Munson yesterday afternoon before or after he had told her that they were not on the case because they had no clients? Was this how partners always worked?

  As soon as Munson went to the shed to talk to Charley about the bones, Jane pulled out her own cell.

  “If I have to wait for a client, don’t you also have to wait for a client? How exactly does this work? I mean, I feel it’s sort of embarrassing to find out from Munson that we … and besides now we have clients because last night the Sullivans came over after dinner and asked me, you couldn’t know if, just please call me back … it’s Jane Wheel; oh, you know who it is, you know everything before it happens any …” The answering machine clicked off and Jane, as usual, wished she could have made her message a bit cleaner.

  Jane spent the rest of the morning going through the newspapers that the Sullivans had delivered to her last night. Johnny was writing a continuing series, it seemed, on airport expansion, concentrating on the plan that would bring an airport to Kankakee. He had written extensively on what an airport might mean economically for the individual citizens of Kankakee. He had explored the various sites and layouts for the proposed field. He had conducted a series of interviews, a kind of door-to-door reporting of the pulse of the townspeople on whether they thought the airport a godsend or a curse. One article quoted three different real estate companies—they were all in favor—and the piece included quotes from both Roger Groveland and Henry Bennett of Kankakee “K3” Realty. A man-on-the-street kind of sidebar, Jane was interested to note, included a quote from Joseph Dempsey, identified as a local entrepreneur.

  “A town like Kankakee, rife with potential, is the kind of place people like to call home. An airport will only increase the likelihood that others will be able to find the joy and peace that this haven in the heartland brings.”

  Jane, who could fall in love with her husband based on Charley’s confident and casual use of a word like eschew, could also smell a contrived and phony use of language. Her education in advertising had not been for naught. Rife, she knew, would not be the kind of word that tripped off Joe Dempsey’s tongue when he was randomly stopped on the street. And how oddly random that Dempsey, a newcomer to Kankakee, would be Sullivan’s main man on the street. In fact, Jane was feeling that there were a lot of odd coincidences in these articles. Sullivan was wearing Groveland’s blazer, which was identified by Henry Bennett, who, although he had been interviewed by Sullivan in what the article described as a roundtable conversation, didn’t mention that he recognized the murder victim, just the blazer.

  Munson had mentioned that he had someone reading Sullivan’s articles—his entire body of work e-mailed to them from the newspaper—which was why the police had not wanted to accept Elizabeth Sullivan’s paper bag full of her son’s clippings. Jane decided since they were all working on the same thing, she really had no reason to run all this by Munson yet. It could wait until she had a chance to run it by Oh, unless she had scared him off altogether with her phone message.

  Jane had started a notebook on the case. She had always kept books on commercial shoots and had transferred that kind of organization to shopping garage sales and flea markets. She made lists of items she was seeking for others and a current list of items she was looking for herself. She had pages of “misses,” the pieces she hoped would give her a second chance. There was that desk with the built-in typewriter that she had walked away from, left in the basement of a Skokie bungalow even after the older ladies running the sale had offered it to her for fifty dollars, including the oak swivel desk chair that matched it. What had she been thinking? It now had a place on her permanent list—as if she would ever find such an item again. There was the Weller vase she had walked by twice in a church basement, and when it finally registered what it was, she had reached for it and a tall man with a longer arm had lifted it past her face with a mean chuckle. She hoped these items, these “misses,” would teach her about thinking quickly, being decisive, worrying about transporting it all home later, after writing the check and seeing the sold sticker with her name on it firmly planted.

  In her case notebook, what was the equivalent of a “miss”? It was the question she had either been unable to ask or the questions that hadn’t found the right form. They were the curios of the case. The pieces to the puzzle that were just out of reach or camouflaged by all the other pieces. The pennies, the Austinite specimen, were misses—answers to questions not yet asked. She also made a list of the people who made her curious, even if she wasn’t sure exactly what questions she would ask them.

  Dempsey and Hoover were still on her list. Even if
they had had nothing to do with Johnny Sullivan, if Dempsey’s name hadn’t popped up in Sullivan’s interview, they would remain on her list. There was something fishy about turning Kankakee into a theme park, and she needed to get to the bottom of that before her dad became an investor in the Roper Stove Four-Burner Fun Ride or the Kankakee River Rapids Log Roll or something. Henry Bennett still had some questions to answer, and pretty soon she would come up with them. And her old friend Roger Groveland. How did his jacket get mixed up in all of this?

  Jane tossed her notebook onto the bed and walked outside. Nick and Charley were still over at the site, and Jane could see boxes stacked. Charley was lifting items one by one out of the box on top. His actions were so deliberate, so careful, they made Jane smile. These rocks and bones were as interesting and beautiful to Charley as a set of Depression-Era juice glasses, Heisey or Hazel Atlas. Go figure. Maybe she and Charley were more alike than she had recently thought. They were both collectors, preservers, protectors—problem solvers.

  There was a barn on the property that Jane hadn’t paid much attention to because of its placement in relation to the house and cabin. It was off to the other side of the house, not in the path to the shed or the digging site, not in the line of vision from the cabin out to the cornfield. The police had gone in and searched it, of course, but hadn’t found anything disturbed. They had reported that the layer of dust on the rototiller and small tractor had been undisturbed. The cobwebs that were laced over the old tools piled in the corner were intact. The large door stood slightly open, so Jane decided to take a look for herself.

  The tools the police had talked about were vintage gardening spades and forks that Tim might want to take a look at if Fuzzy had abandoned them. The stalls in the barn were empty except for some wooden crates stacked against one wall. There was some straw matted on the floor and it occurred to Jane that it wouldn’t be obvious if someone had walked into one of the stalls. No footprints in the dust would register if someone walked along the wall into the stall and simply stepped on the thatches of straw covering the dirt floor. Jane followed that path to get a closer look at the boxes. The bottom was labeled WWII, Property of Ronald Neilson. Jane knew Fuzzy had been in the service because she had seen pictures in the house. He and Lula’s wedding picture featured a young and upright Fuzzy with the same bristly crew cut, as dark then as it was white now, dressed in his army uniform.