Bones Behind the Wheel

by E. J. Copperman

  Almost the second I finished sending the text, which was less than a full minute after Maxie had begun searching for records from the police department that were meant to be kept confidential, she looked up and said, “Got it.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed by Maxie or horribly dismayed at the state of the Harbor Haven police. Melissa touched Josh on the hand and did a head fake toward Maxie. He looked in her direction. “Wow, that was fast!” he said. “What did you find out?”

  Maxie, pleased with the praise, smiled. “It was easy.” Melissa started translating for Josh. “The bullets they took out of the hole by the beam don’t match the gun. They’re a smaller caliber, nine millimeters while the gun is a forty-five. Is there anything else you need to know?”

  Since Menendez, back when we were talking, had initially told me the bullets didn’t match the gun that had fired at me, the only news was that we now had it confirmed. So I thought I’d try asking a question myself. “It’s about the gun I found. Could that be the gun that shot Herman Fitzsimmons all those years ago?”

  I hadn’t specifically told Maxie how wonderful she was, so it is possible her response had a touch more irritation in it than the one she’d given Josh. “I guess it’s possible. There are no ballistics tests mentioned in the documents I found. They might not have had time to do them yet.” She looked at my plate. “Are you gonna finish that or can we start in with the designs?”

  “Soon,” I said, taking a bite I didn’t really want just to reinforce my point. “Are gun licenses a matter of public record in New Jersey?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find them.” Maxie’s tone still wasn’t as friendly with me as with Josh, who ironically couldn’t hear it, but she was proud of her skills. “What do you want to know?”

  “If any of these people owned a forty-five caliber pistol: William Harrelson, senior; Nathaniel Adamson, Darlene Fitzsimmons Menendez; Harriet Adamson; Sheila Morgenstern; Herman Fitzsimmons.”

  Maxie, who had started clicking away on Josh’s keyboard as soon as I’d started mentioning names, looked up. “You think Herman shot himself and then buried the gun in our kitchen?” She’d given up the idea that this was her house alone but did not relinquish all claims to at least partial ownership. It was my name on the mortgage; I knew that for sure.

  “No,” I answered. “But we can’t rule out the idea that he was shot with his own gun.”

  Maxie tilted her head to the left in a whatever gesture and kept clicking away. While she did that Paul rose out of the basement, giving me ghosts in virtually every direction. “I communicated with Anthony Blanik again,” he said. “And I believe I might have made contact with the spirit of Nathaniel Adamson.”

  “I’m looking up gun records,” Maxie said. Why would Paul—or anyone else—be speaking to someone other than her?

  “What did they tell you?” I asked Paul.

  “Sgt. Blanik was somewhat less distracted this time,” he said. “I imagine mornings on Bangkok are not quite as much a spectacle as the nights.” I could have told him that and I’ve never been to Thailand. “He remembered a little more about the Fitzsimmons case.”

  “Does he know if Fitzsimmons owned a forty-five?” Maxie asked. I guessed she hadn’t gotten to that name on my list yet.

  Paul looked a little puzzled. “It did not occur to me to ask,” he said. He turned his attention back toward me while Melissa continued to give Paul a play-by-play. I added United Nations translator and sports commentator to the growing list of possible professions for her. She’d be great at any of them. “But he did say that he always thought of the case as a homicide. He said there was definitely some professional animosity against Fitzsimmons, especially among his fellow Elks, and he specifically mentioned Sheila Morgenstern. But he believed the best avenue to explore was personal—the affair with Harriet Adamson was apparently well-known to everyone except Fitzsimmons’s wife and Harriet’s husband.”

  “Did you ask Nathaniel Adamson about that when you found him?” Melissa asked.

  “More or less. It was a delicate conversation. It’s been a good number of years, but people who die of suicide are often somewhat sensitive about the times just before they became like Maxie and me. And that is what I found interesting.”

  “What did he say about his wife cheating on him?” Maxie asked. She was still clacking away on Josh’s laptop, and my husband couldn’t keep himself from watching the keys go up and down. You’d think he’d be used to stuff like that by now but it never seems to lose its novelty.

  “All he managed to communicate clearly was that his wife’s indiscretions were not the reason he did himself in,” Paul said. “But he had definitely put up some very defensive walls against accessing those thoughts.”

  Josh waited for the translation. “But he did admit he knew about the affair. Do you think he killed Herman Fitzsimmons?”

  Paul, gentleman that he is, texted directly to Josh to keep him feeling like an integral part of the team. I peeked over my husband’s shoulder and saw the message, Not enough data to form a theory yet. If Paul had lived long enough he might have had that tattooed across his chest. It was sort of his motto.

  Josh looked over at Liss and me. “Where does this leave us? We have any number of people who might have been mad at Fitzsimmons but no evidence at all that one of them shot him and buried him in a Continental.”

  My friend Phyllis possesses an instinctive sense of timing that is truly a wonder to behold. At that exact moment she answered my text.

  Second person’s blood in the car came from William Harrelson. What have you got?

  Chapter 30

  “So Bill Harrelson’s dad left some blood in the Continental when Henry Fitzsimmons was shot,” I said. “Does that mean he killed Henry? Why would he kill Henry?”

  We had relocated to the movie room, where Adam and Steve were getting ready to leave for dinner. Steve knew of Federici’s, a famous Italian restaurant and pizza emporium in Freehold but Adam thought that might be too far a drive to get pizza when there were lots of places in the middle.

  “But Federici’s is where Bruce Springsteen’s keyboard player worked,” Steve said. I didn’t explain that Danny Federici had actually played in this very space not all that long ago. It’s a long story, but he was a very nice ghost. “It’s like a piece of history.” Just for the record, they also make a really good pizza.

  Adam couldn’t find it in his heart to refuse his spouse so the two of them were off in a few minutes, only after Steve had offered the advice (based on what he’d heard Melissa, Josh and me saying) that we should “stick with the gun license. Whoever has that is the killer.” A few days at the haunted guesthouse and everybody gets into the act.

  “The blood in the car is interesting, but it is not, if you’ll pardon the expression, the smoking gun we need,” Paul said. “It might place Mr. Harrelson at the scene of the crime without actually being involved. He might have rented the earth moving equipment to the owner of the Continental and cut his finger while doing so. We don’t know enough about the bloodstain yet. There are too many scenarios that don’t end with him being the killer. That said, there’s no better suspect just at the moment. I don’t know what his motive might have been, however.”

  Maxie, hovering near the ceiling and lying horizontally with the laptop on her midsection, said, “You’d think he would have reported the car stolen if he had nothing to do with it disappearing. I don’t see any police records about that, but not everything online goes back that far.”

  “The gun records, Maxie,” I reminded her. “What did you find in the gun license records that we’re not supposed to have?”

  “So far nobody has a license to carry,” she said. “But I’m still looking. It’s not like I can just Google a name and see if they had a gun. It’s more like sifting through every permit that was issued and seeing if the names we had match.”

  I held up my hands. “Take your time,” I said. “That sounds
huge.”

  “I haven’t forgotten about the kitchen designs,” she warned.

  “Neither have I.”

  “We should ask Bill about his father,” Melissa said. “Do you know how to find him?”

  I shrugged. “Until Everett gets back I won’t even know if Bill is out on a date with Katrina. As it is we don’t know where Katrina is, and I have no idea where Bill lives. It’s a dead end.”

  “Take it easy,” Josh said, stroking my shoulder in the cushy loveseat we’d occupied. “Nobody’s in any danger right now.”

  “You came and picked me up at school,” Melissa reminded him. “You closed your store early. If nobody’s in danger …”

  “We’re being proactive,” I said. “We’re trying to keep everyone safe all the time.”

  “Uh-huh.” I hadn’t told Liss about the threatening text message but she knew something was up; it was evident in the way she wasn’t asking me what was wrong.

  “The only person we haven’t talked to in this matter is Sheila Morgenstern,” Paul said, no doubt trying to redirect the conversation to something more investigate-y. “There is no direct evidence of her being involved but Sgt. Blanik was adamant that she held a grudge against Henry Fitzsimmons, although he didn’t know why. You should try to set up an interview, Alison.”

  I didn’t even argue. That’s how completely fogged in my brain was at the time. I hadn’t wanted to get involved in this investigation but it kept forcing its way into my house. Suspects and motives were being flung around in every possible direction and from every conceivable angle and no clear pattern was developing. Now the usual pattern—where some homicidal maniac had decided I was to be a target despite not having done anything at all threatening to them—was forming again and I was powerless to stop it. Might as well just bring on the inevitable. I reached for my phone.

  “You got a phone number for Sheila Morgenstern, Maxie?”

  Of course she did. Within seconds there was ringing in my right ear, and it wasn’t caused by a bucket of drywall compound hitting me on the head. Because I know what that feels like.

  “Hello?” The woman sounded middle-aged, if such a thing is possible. She wasn’t old, certainly, although my concept of “old” keeps going up in numbers the longer I live. And she wasn’t terribly young, so I assumed this was Sheila herself and not a daughter or granddaughter.

  “Hi,” I said, hoping I sounded friendly. I hate making cold phone calls, but doesn’t everybody? “My name is Alison Kerby.”

  “I don’t answer this kind of phone call,” the woman said, and hung up.

  Paul looked at me expectantly, and when I turned to face Josh he was doing the same. Melissa was staring at her phone, no doubt looking up some piece of information she thought was going to help. “She hung up on me,” I told the room.

  “Figures,” Maxie said off-handedly.

  “She did not understand why you were calling,” Paul said. No kidding, Paul.

  At the same time, Josh suggested Sheila had thought I was trying to sell her insurance.

  “I can try again, but I doubt she’ll pick up this time,” I told Paul.

  He nodded. “Perhaps try texting. If the number Maxie gave you is a cell phone—and the odds are it is—she might read the text.”

  I figured that was easy enough, and if Sheila never called back I’d be off the hook, which was my best-case scenario. I sent: I am a private investigator looking into a matter and I believe you might have some useful information. Please call back. And I left my cell number for Sheila to use.

  “Aha,” Maxie said. “I have a hit on the license to carry a gun.”

  There was nothing so far from Sheila, so this was the best source of information we had at the moment. “Who owned the gun?” I asked Maxie.

  “Herman Fitzsimmons,” she answered. “A forty-five, too.”

  I was confused so I looked at Paul as Melissa finished telling Josh what had occurred. Josh said, “What?”

  Paul was stroking his goatee madly. “The medical examiner was very clear that Mr. Fitzsimmons did not shoot himself,” he said. “But he was the person who owned a gun of the same caliber as the one that killed him.”

  “It’s pretty clear,” said my thirteen-year-old daughter, still checking something on her phone. “Darlene shot her husband with his own gun because he was having an affair with Harriet Adamson.”

  Chapter 31

  Before any of us could respond to Melissa’s conclusion, my cell phone buzzed and the number was the one I’d used to call Sheila Morgenstern. I picked up before she could change her mind, still looking at my daughter.

  “This is Alison Kerby?” the woman I’d spoken to asked.

  “Yes. Are you Sheila Morgenstern?”

  There was a pause. “How did you get this number?” It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t exactly a no, either.

  “It’s a matter of public record,” I said, although I wasn’t certain that was true. I’ve learned not to ask Maxie how she gets the information she gathers. As the living person in the equation it would be worse for me if I knew how things are done. They’re not going to arrest Maxie. “Is this Sheila? I’m just asking for some information on something I’m looking into.” I wasn’t going to say there was no chance Sheila would get into trouble because for all I knew she was a mad killer who liked to move buried sedans around in the middle of the night.

  “I’m Sheila,” she admitted. “I’m not giving you any money.”

  “I’m not asking you for any,” I said. “I’m calling about Herman Fitzsimmons.”

  This time the pause was considerably longer and more awkward. “Herman?”

  “Yes. I’m sure you remember him.”

  “You could say that. I didn’t like the guy.”

  Finally, someone who would admit to having negative feelings about Herman Fitzsimmons. “You and he were in the Elks Club together?” That was the only connection I knew of between the two.

  “Oh, no,” Sheila said. “The Elks was an all-male club until the Nineties. I applied because I thought that was stupid. And I think most of the members would have been fine with applying to national about letting in the first woman.”

  I could see where this was going. “But Fitzsimmons was against it.”

  There was a distinct growl in Sheila’s voice. “You guessed it. He said the traditions in the lodge went back to the nineteenth century and there was no reason to smash that all to pieces just for, and I’m quoting now, ‘one little lady who thinks she’s an Elk.’ I’m asking you.”

  “So it probably didn’t bother you when he was murdered,” I said. It was a calculated gamble. I wanted to see her reaction, given that she wasn’t shy about voicing her dislike of the victim. Paul nodded his approval but Josh’s eyes narrowed with concern.

  But Sheila’s reaction was not one of anger. “He was murdered?” she said. “I knew he disappeared but I figured he was just on the run from his wife because he was always making passes at other women.”

  Always? “He made advances at multiple women?” I said, just to give the room the same information I already had. Then it occurred to me to ask, “Did he approach you?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Like it was a given. “I owned my own dealership and I guess he thought that was sexy, or something. Weren’t that many women owners at that time. He hit on me maybe four or five times at dealer conventions, product announcements, that sort of thing. I told him to his face that I wasn’t even a little interested but that didn’t seem to make any difference to him. He just kept trying. But he never got anywhere. With me.”

  I had to ask. “I assume that means he did with other women?” Okay, so that’s not exactly asking, but my inflection made it a question. Don’t quibble.

  “Oh, yeah,” Sheila answered. It was her go-to response. “Herm had something going with at least three women I knew about, and then there was his wife.”

  “Darlene,” I said, not so much to Sheila as to myself.

  “Oh, yeah.”
No, it wasn’t her go-to response; it was her credo. “She was a piece of work, that one. The scary part is I’m pretty sure she actually loved him. But we never met so it’s hard to say. Herm wouldn’t come to events with his wife because it’d slow him down, if you know what I mean.”

  A piece of unfinished teak would know what she meant. “Did Darlene find out about Herman’s … activities?” I was watching my words. My daughter is thirteen and has been involved in a number of murder investigations, but that doesn’t make me comfortable discussing absolutely everything in front of her. I know she understands. I just don’t like to admit it to myself.

  “I don’t know,” Sheila said. “It never got beyond the go-away-Herm stage with me so I didn’t have to tell her anything. One of the others might have called her up one night but I never heard about it.”

  “Did you hear anything after he vanished?” I asked. Paul had suggested the question.

  “Like I said, I figured he found himself some new babe and just took off. He never really seemed to care about selling Chevys too much so it’d be easy for him to get in the car and start a new life, I guess.”

  That was news to me, although nobody had said Chevrolets were Herman Fitzsimmons’s life. “He didn’t like selling Chevys?” I repeated back.

  “No, not really. He was always asking me about how I’d gotten the Honda dealership, even though Hondas weren’t that big a deal back then. He kept showing up at some of the product presentations even when he wasn’t invited and talking to the people from corporate, like he wanted to get a dealership deal. But they liked me and didn’t want the competition nearby, I suppose. I never asked.”

  “Did he ever check in with people from Lincoln?” I asked. Maybe being buried in a Continental was Herman Fitzsimmons’s last wish after all.

  “Not that I know about. Why?”

  I saw no harm in telling her. “His body was found buried in a Lincoln Continental.”

  I think it’s possible Sheila Morgenstern is still laughing.