Bones Behind the Wheel

by E. J. Copperman

  Paul stood there—well, hovered there—and stared at me for what seemed like a very long moment. “My goodness, Alison,” he said. “You’re right.”

  Chapter 15

  “So these spent bullets were found in the same hole as the car?” Det. Lt. Anita McElone has a talent for looking weary. has a talent for looking weary. It’s part of the job, I guess. I was sitting in the “visitor” chair in front of her desk, which was now inside a small office rather than in the bullpen where the other cops had desks. There were advantages to being chief of detectives, even when there’s only one other detective in the department.

  I had agreed to come see McElone because Menendez, who had arrived around nine in the morning, had taken the shells out of the hole after I’d pointed them out where “I” had found them. She’d reported it to McElone, then carefully placed them in an evidence bag (where most of my backyard was now residing) and sent them along to the lab, wherever that was, for examination.

  “Yes,” I confirmed for her. “They were in the hole near where the car was. That’s really all I know.”

  “You keep saying it like that,” McElone said, her eyes narrowing a bit. “You say, ‘they were found’ and ‘they were in the hole.’ You don’t say, ‘I saw them,’ or ‘I found them.’ ”

  I felt it best to remain silent, not because anything I said could be used against me in a court of law, but because there was no way saying anything right now was going to help me in any imaginable way. Paul, who was hovering over the lieutenant’s right shoulder, nodded his approval. As always, he was watching McElone’s every move the way a toddler watches her mother for indications of how to behave.

  McElone’s mouth twitched. “Is this a ghosty thing?” she asked.

  “You don’t really want me to answer that question, do you, lieutenant?”

  “This time I do. I have physical evidence in front of me. I need to know that if I go to an assistant prosecutor with it I can say how it was found. Now is there something you need to tell me?” McElone is as by-the-book as cops come but she’s not without compassion. She wants to do things right because that gets the crime solved and the criminal successfully prosecuted.

  So I couldn’t lie because I’m not going to get on the stand and say I found something if I didn’t. When I got hit with a bucket of wallboard compound and started seeing ghosts, perjury was not part of the deal. “My friend Paul found the casings,” I said. That was entirely, objectively true. Now if we could leave it at that …

  But we couldn’t. “And Paul is …?”

  There wasn’t any way to avoid it. “Dead. Paul’s dead. But you shouldn’t hold that against him.”

  McElone closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Then I can’t use the rounds in a court of law,” she said.

  “Sure you can. Nobody touched them before your crime scene team took them out.” I didn’t see how prejudice against the deceased should mess up McElone’s close record.

  “No, but since I don’t know how they were found—officially—I can’t be sure they weren’t just placed there this morning.” She looked down at her desktop, which was disturbingly immaculate. McElone has a real thing for neatness, which leads me to believe she has deep-seated psychological issues. But she’s definitely functional in society.

  “Won’t the crime lab be able to tell that from, like, erosion and stuff?” When you live with a thirteen-year-old, even one as articulate as Melissa, you pick up speech patterns.

  “Probably. But I need testimony from the person who found them about how they were found and in what condition. Can your friend take the stand in a trial? Would anybody even know if he was there?” McElone scrolled through something on her computer screen, probably to take her mind off the fact that the spent bullets had left the list of things she could use in a case of …

  “What’s the crime, anyway? Do you know what happened to the person in the car?” I asked. I hadn’t realized it, but McElone was acting like she had a tangible case on her hands when until now it had been a possible incident of someone with incredibly bad taste asking for an unusual burial.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Would anyone see your friend if he showed up in court?”

  It came out faster than I meant it to; in other words, I didn’t get a chance to think before I talked. “Well, he’s right behind you now and you don’t know it, so I’m guessing they wouldn’t.”

  McElone spun around on her chair like someone had said Al Capone was holding a tommy gun on her. Which I guess was kind of how she saw this situation. “He’s here now?” she said. I had to hand it to her—McElone’s voice sounded no different than her usual, when she would tell me I was an incompetent investigator and a pain in her neck. Or other area.

  “Yeah, but it’s nothing to worry about. He loves watching you work. He thinks you’re a great detective.”

  Paul held up his hands. “Stop making her uncomfortable, Alison.”

  I was only enjoying it a little bit. “In fact, he says he learns a lot by observing you.”

  McElone swiveled back around and tried to make holes in my forehead with her eyes. She failed, but it was close. “How often do you send ghosts in here to watch me work?” she demanded.

  “Just yesterday and today,” I answered. Also true. Although Maxie had definitely been here once or twice before.

  McElone swallowed visibly. “Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. If I can’t be comfortable in my own office I can’t function properly. You understand? Never send a ghost in here to watch me.”

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t so much sent ghosts as given them a lift to her office, but I let that go. “I promise. Now, you answer my question. What crime are you investigating?” Changing the subject seemed a worthwhile path to take.

  “Don’t challenge the lieutenant,” Paul said.

  I didn’t think that was what I was doing so I ignored him. I simply sat and waited for McElone to respond.

  She didn’t hesitate. “I don’t recall being told by a superior officer that you were to be included in any discussion of my investigations.” That was McElone as pure as you could distill her. She didn’t have to acknowledge that she’d reacted with some visible discomfort just a few seconds earlier at something that hadn’t caused me nightmares in years (although there were a few rough months at the beginning) and just jumped directly into her standard argument. That boiled down to, roughly, I’m a cop and you’re not. It could be effective, but now I was wondering why I’d bothered coming in today and wanted to get something to make my visit seem at least a little worthwhile.

  “I bring in some perfectly helpful evidence your crime scene people missed and you don’t even want to tell me what it is I’m helping you solve?” I said, my voice rising just a little. “That’s two used bullets and four unused bullets found on my property and I don’t even get to know why? Do I have to walk out of here talking about how my ghost found the used ones?”

  “What do you mean, your ghost?” Paul said.

  McElone flinched a touch. “Don’t raise your voice,” she said.

  I folded my arms. “Well?”

  She leaned forward with her forearms leaning on her desk (probably the most that had ever rested on that pristine surface) and her eyes did not have a great deal of warmth in them as she looked at me. “Fine. The fact is, your … friend … is right. We have a homicide on our hands based on the preliminary report we’ve gotten from the ME. And it’s a really, really cold case because he says that body was buried and hasn’t been touched since sometime in the last century. You happy now?”

  I bit on my lips a little. “I don’t think happy is the word I’d use.”

  “Since this only happened on your property by coincidence, long before you owned the place, my very best advice would be to forget the whole thing, tell your pal not to get in the way and let me do my job,” McElone added. “How’s that?”

  “I never had any intention of investigating this case, lieutenant.
I’m perfectly happy to leave it to you,” I said. “I wish you the best of luck with it.” I stood up and lifted by bag off the back of the chair, slinging it onto my right shoulder.

  “Good. How about your friend?”

  I couldn’t resist the impulse to look up at Paul now that McElone had brought him into the conversation herself. He was nodding his head, but more in a thoughtful way than an affirmative one. “He’s nodding his head,” I told the lieutenant.

  “I’m thinking,” Paul protested. “I haven’t agreed to anything.”

  “Good,” McElone said. “The last thing I need is to be looking around my office for someone I can’t even see.”

  “I promise he won’t be here. Thanks for your time,” I said. “When do you think I can have my yard back?”

  “Shouldn’t be long this time. Try not to find anything else.”

  I left her office and shut the door behind me. Paul was following me so I put my earbuds on and plugged them into my phone. That way I wouldn’t look like a complete lunatic when I started talking to him. Paul would not be able to contain himself after that exchange, I knew.

  Sure enough, as soon as we got to the bullpen he caught up with me and stayed by my side.

  “Your ghost?” he said.

  Chapter 16

  “Who would have been around here forty years ago?” Josh asked. “Do you even know who owned the house then?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But then it’s not my business, is it? And since the lieutenant asked me to back off, it’s none of yours, either.”

  Josh, Melissa and I had met my mother (and by extension my father) at a new Harbor Haven restaurant called Harvest, a farm-to-table affair that was doing its best to be ecologically and agriculturally responsible while managing to raise prices over the average restaurant by only about ten percent. I believe there is a price we pay for saving the planet, and ten percent didn’t seem all that high when you put in those terms. Besides, Josh was paying.

  “Mom,” Melissa scolded. “You can’t make that kind of decision for Josh.”

  My husband patted her on the arm. “It’s okay, Liss. I get where your mom is coming from, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep being interested in the case. I mean, there it was in our backyard all this time and we never knew it. I feel like it’s kind of been waiting for us to find it.”

  I touched Josh on his left hand. “I didn’t mean to sound like that,” I said. “But the lieutenant was clear. She doesn’t want anybody else investigating this murder, and I don’t blame her.”

  Josh smiled the crooked smile I thought was weird when he was twelve and had different feelings about now. “It’s okay, Alison. But you’re going to have to convince Paul, I’m afraid.”

  Paul, who had hitched a ride with us and was positioned just to Mom’s left and up a couple of feet, touched his nose. It’s something I’ve seen people do when they’re uncomfortable, and there was no doubt Paul wasn’t exactly cozy in this setting. He doesn’t mind strangers but feels like he’s more conspicuous—he’s not—in a crowd. The fact was Paul wasn’t any more noticeable to the general public than my father, who was examining the miter work in the crown molding, or any of six other ghosts who happened to be present in the restaurant at this moment. One older gentleman was swooping from table to table and desperately sniffing at each plate despite being unable to smell anything. He clearly missed food more than most spirits.

  “I don’t see how my finding more evidence will serve as an obstacle to the lieutenant,” Paul said. “If I continue to investigate and turn up nothing I have done her no harm, and if I manage to find something that will help her investigation I believe that will be a service to her and the police department.”

  “You’re just bored,” my mother told him. “I understand that. But you can’t follow Lt. McElone around all day and make her feel uncomfortable. That’s not fair either.”

  “Not to mention,” I added, “anything you find she can’t use in court. You’re setting her back, not helping her forward.”

  Melissa was relating Paul’s part of the conversation to Josh. He appeared to be listening to her very closely and nodded, although he did not—probably as a concession to me—take out his phone to monitor any text messages Paul might be compelled to send. The cheap cell phone I’d given Paul for texting didn’t look like much, but it would probably have caused something of a stir if it had suddenly begun floating in midair over Mom’s head.

  “That is not my intention,” Paul answered. “But I think there are things that Maxie, Josh and I can do behind the scenes that could help the lieutenant without making her feel badly about it.”

  “What about me?” Melissa asked.

  “You have school and we don’t have a client,” I reminded her. “You’re out on this one.” Especially since this had officially become a murder investigation I had decided there was no chance my daughter was going to get involved. I didn’t care if the violence had taken place forty years earlier and long before she was born. Murderers tend to be a vindictive type of people and I saw no reason my budding teenager should get on one’s wrong side. Not to mention that the escapades of the Continental the past couple of days indicated somebody right now was interested in this case, and probably not in a mild isn’t-that-fascinating kind of way.

  But Liss huffed a bit and concentrated on the sea scallops (from Barnegat Bay) she had ordered. She couldn’t maintain her snit enough to conceal the fact that she was examining them closely. No doubt she was picking up tips on how to prepare seafood, something she doesn’t do very much (okay, never) at home because I have a serious aversion to such things. Yeah, call me crazy. I live on the Jersey Shore and I don’t eat fish. Insert joke here.

  “I think it will be helpful to ask Maxie about the property records on the house,” Paul continued as if I hadn’t made it clear I didn’t want to discuss the murder in the car. “It is important, as Josh has pointed out, to know who the owner was when this crime took place.”

  Josh listened to Melissa’s transcription and looked up closer to Dad than Paul. “Thank you,” he said.

  We had decided on Harvest because the Mandorisi brothers had not actually finished work in my kitchen, although they’d gotten fairly close. Tony reported that Menendez, who had spent much of the day outside behind my house, had wanted another look at the beam where the four extra bullets had been discovered and that had slowed their progress. The brace holding up the ceiling was still in place, the old wooden beam had been removed and the surrounding area smoothed and sanded. The installation of the steel beam would take place the next day and then Maxie, if I could stand it, would begin her cosmetic work in the kitchen. The damage on the den side of the kitchen door would be minimal, Tony had said, but some repairs would certainly be necessary.

  For the moment, though, the kitchen was more impassible than it had been even the day before because of the heavy braces being used to hold up my house while one of the ceiling beams was, for all purposes, missing. So here we were, discussing a decades-old murder case that had emerged from my land among plants that had been in the ground this morning. There was something satisfyingly ironic about it.

  “I think Maxie will tell you she’s busy deciding how to make my kitchen look as bizarre as possible,” I told Paul while facing my mother so it wouldn’t appear I was having a discussion with the ceiling. “But you feel free to give it your best shot.” And then Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot flew into my head as punishment for some odd misdeed I couldn’t remember or hadn’t noticed. It stayed there the rest of the night. So whomever I wronged, we’re even now.

  “I can handle the computer research,” Josh said. “The property ownership is a matter of public record. That shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “You are going to bed at a decent hour tonight, young man,” I said. “I’m amazed you didn’t drop a paint can on your foot today after the fifteen minutes of sleep you got last night.”

  My father dropped down fr
om the ceiling chuckling. “You sound like you’re everybody’s mother tonight, Baby Girl,” he said. My father, who is the sweetest man who ever lived and no longer does, has a real talent for finding the wrong thing to say with the best of intentions.

  I chose not to respond. Josh, who did actually still look like he had rolled reluctantly out of bed six minutes before, nodded. “I’m looking up that one thing and nothing else,” he said. “I really do have to get some sleep tonight.”

  I was having a vegetable fricassee from so many towns in my area that I can’t possibly list them here. But it was very nice and included corn, tomatoes, red bliss potatoes and any number of things I don’t recall right at the moment. “That’s right,” I said. “You do.” One has to reinforce one’s point to emphasize the importance every once in a while.

  “I can do some of it,” Melissa said, not looking at me. “It’s just internet stuff. There won’t be any danger.”

  “No, but there will be time taken and you have stuff to do,” I reiterated. “This isn’t going to stop you from acing your tests.”

  I didn’t look at her but I could pretty much hear Melissa’s eyes rolling at the injustice of my totalitarian reign. Still, I was the landlord and the procurer of foodstuffs in the household and she would simply have to deal with it. Sometimes it’s good to be the queen.

  Paul had heard enough of the family bickering and decided to refocus us on the true importance of the topic at hand. “Someone was murdered either on that spot or killed and then brought to the spot forty years ago or more,” he said. “A more complete medical examiner’s report would be a very large help. Alison …”