Bones Behind the Wheel

by E. J. Copperman

* * *

  Calls to Darlene Menendez were not answered and messages were not returned so I couldn’t confirm any of Sheila Morgenstern’s story or ask about the things Sheila said she didn’t know. By the same token, Paul was not able to get in touch with Harriet Adamson via Ghosternet messages. Some nights even dead people have other things to do.

  There was nothing left for us to do but sit around and guess, although I did ask Paul to watch through the French doors on the odd chance that Bill Harrelson showed up in my backyard again. Why not? I’d gotten so used to having the crew out there it felt weird when Bill, Jim, Ernie or somebody wasn’t out there. But so far, that particular brand of weirdness was proving to be the case tonight.

  “I still think it was Mrs. Fitzsimmons,” Melissa said. We’d moved to the den so Paul could take up his station near the back of the house. Josh and I were on one of the sofas, Melissa was lying on the floor looking at the ceiling—she said it helped her think and she’s smarter than me, so who was I to argue?—and Maxie was trying as hard as she could to get me to look at the designs on her sketchpad. And I swear, I was looking. The drawings had gotten much closer to being an actual kitchen than before, but still needed some toning down. “She had access to the gun that killed her husband and the medical examiner’s report showed that he didn’t shoot himself. She could easily have been sitting on the floor or on their bed when she shot him.”

  “Anyone could have gotten into the house and stolen the gun,” Josh said. “I’m not saying you’re definitely wrong, Melissa. That’s a real possibility. But I think Paul will agree that it doesn’t prove that’s what happened.”

  “That’s right,” Paul said, texting to Josh directly. “If the gun were all that was needed, Lt. McElone would have made an arrest already. She has that information.”

  Josh got the text and smiled. “I think we need to figure out why Mr. Harrelson’s blood is in the car. He doesn’t seem to have a reason to want to kill Herman Fitzsimmons. What was he doing in the car the night Fitzsimmons died?”

  “Why did the car get moved both those nights?” I said, throwing another topic into the mix. “If there was something there the killer didn’t want seen, I can understand dragging the Lincoln away. But why bring it back the next night?” I looked at Maxie. “The cabinets still need to be accessible and we can’t afford to recess them into the walls. That would require constructing false walls and making the whole room a lot smaller than it is now.”

  “What if it wasn’t about taking out something the killer didn’t want seen,” Josh suggested.

  Even before Maxie could protest that I was stifling her artistic expression everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at my husband. “What do you mean?” Melissa asked. “What else could it be?”

  Paul, stroking his goatee furiously, said quietly, “It’s possible.”

  “It could be that the killer was putting something into the car that they did want the police to see,” Josh said. “Maybe they couldn’t do that on the scene. Maybe they had to take it elsewhere to plant some evidence in the car that would implicate someone else.”

  “Like what?” Maxie asked. Yes, Maxie.

  Josh looked up and for a moment I thought he might have heard Maxie. It was not a pleasant thought; I needed at least one person who was ghost-free in my life. But he didn’t answer her directly. It was more like he was continuing his thought.

  “For example, we don’t know which blood stain in the pictures is from Harrelson. Do we know for sure that the second person’s blood—the sample that was identified as William Harrelson’s—was in the car before it was taken away for one day?”

  That made me blink a couple of times. “I don’t see how it makes sense,” I told Josh, but I saw Paul nodding in agreement out of the corner of my eye. “If Bill’s father was involved with this it would have been more than thirty years ago. Do you think someone held onto a sample of his blood for all those year just in case someone found the car they buried?”

  Paul was already in full Sherlock mode, head down, right hand at the goatee, moving back and forth in a style of pacing that Arthur Conan Doyle would never have imagined (although maybe he would, because he was a serious believer in spirits). He didn’t say anything but he was clearly in deep thought about what Josh had proposed.

  “The blood sample was marked, ‘William Harrelson’?” Melissa asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Phyllis wasn’t that specific, but she said that’s whose blood it was.”

  “She didn’t specify senior or junior,” Josh said. “We’ve just been assuming it was the father.”

  Okay, it took me a moment. “You think it might have been Bill’s? But he was a little kid when the murder took place.”

  “It’s never the crime that gets you,” Paul said. “It’s the cover-up.”

  “Okay,” Maxie said. “Suppose we just build the wallboard out a little to make the cabinets look recessed?”

  “The cover-up?” I said to Paul as Melissa leaned over toward Josh. “Why would Bill have anything to do with covering up a murder that took place before he was out of grade school?”

  “His father seems to be the person who leased out the backhoe that helped bury that car in the backyard,” Josh answered when he was up to speed. “If there was involvement beyond that, Bill might be especially interested in protecting his father’s reputation. When did Harrelson, Sr., die?”

  Melissa got out her phone. “That one’s easy,” she said. After less than a minute she announced, “William Harrelson Sr. of Tinton Falls passed away in 2009.”

  “This could be about saving his good name,” Paul said. He looked at Josh. “He’s very good at this. Is he absolutely sure he wants to run a paint store?”

  I was about to point out that as an investigator I’d never once been paid in actual money but I didn’t have time. In a true Hollywood moment Everett flew in through the front wall at a very high speed, looking as close to frantic as I’ve ever seen Everett look.

  “Come quickly, Ghost Lady!” he said. “Ms. Breslin is with the construction manager, and I think she’s in great danger!”

  Chapter 32

  Anyone who passed by Josh’s truck on Rt. 34 that night would have thought it was comfortably inhabited by two adults and a young teenager. From my perspective, however, the truck was stuffed with six people, three of whom—Paul, Maxie and Everett—weren’t exactly there, but were making enough noise to be audible in space, where no one can hear you scream.

  “They met at nineteen hundred thirty hours at a restaurant called Deep Dive in Hazlet,” Everett reported. “The establishment specializes in the local seafood and is dedicated to using only those items produced locally.”

  “Ugh, fish.” I have a problem with eating things that swim. It’s not ethical; it’s more in the area of hating fish.

  “What about fish?” Josh asked.

  “Let it go,” Melissa told him. “It’s not important.” Josh nodded.

  “It had obviously been agreed upon ahead of time,” Everett continued as if I hadn’t just been incredibly juvenile. “And Mr. Harrelson arrived first, so he was waiting for Ms. Breslin when we arrived in her car.” Everett had hitched a ride with Katrina, the best way for him to get where she was going at the same time as she did.

  “Was there trouble right away?” Paul asked.

  Everett looked serious, which he usually does, but more on edge than I was used to seeing. “No. They seemed quite pleased to see each other. I did not approach so closely as to hear their conversation, but they appeared cordial throughout the meal. It was afterward that there appeared to be some change in the mood.”

  “What happened?” I asked. We were racing toward the scene as Everett had directed but we hadn’t yet been told why he’d been so agitated when he’d arrived (via another car that had come through Harbor Haven after a bus that had left Hazlet in our direction and then finally through sheer Everett power, the equivalent of running) back at the guesthouse.
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  “They left the restaurant together,” he reported. “I did not notice anything disturbing but when they were in the parking lot it was clear there was some disagreement about the next part of the evening. Ms. Breslin was trying to walk to her own car but Mr. Harrelson appeared to be insisting she come with him in his own.”

  “How does that translate to great danger?” Josh asked when he heard the transcription from Melissa.

  “Mr. Harrelson was becoming angry or frustrated,” Everett answered. “He grabbed Ms. Breslin’s wrist and would not let her leave in her vehicle. At that point I determined she needed some assistance but I was not carrying anything I could use as a weapon and could not create enough force with my body to physically stop him from forcing her away.”

  “Did she get into his car?” I asked.

  “She did, but not happily,” he said. “Not happily.” He shook his head. “I was too far away to get to the car before he drove it away.”

  I heard Paul make a discontented noise. He’d told Everett to get close enough to hear the conversation and did not agree with his argument about respecting Katrina’s and Bill’s privacy. Everett, if he noticed, did not react.

  “How are we going to find them if they drove away?” Melissa asked Everett.

  “I rose up high enough to gauge the direction in which Mr. Harrelson was driving, and Maxie has zeroed in on his home address through her research,” Everett said. “We believe he was driving that way and I hope we are right. It should be about two clicks ahead.”

  Maxie gave the address she’d found to me and I programmed it into my phone’s map app. There was no further conversation while Josh followed the directions toward Bill Harrelson’s address. It took about three minutes to get to the house. Exactly three minutes. But it’s not like I was tense or anything.

  The house was a small but well-tended split-level on a rise, with a fenced-in backyard and an attached garage whose door was closed. From the street where Josh was parking, there was no way to see if Bill’s car was inside it or not.

  “I guess I’ll go up to the front door and knock,” I said, given that the ghosts couldn’t knock and Melissa, who no doubt would have volunteered, was lucky I’d let her get into the truck. “Anybody want to run some reconnaissance for me?”

  “I will,” Liss said, of course.

  “Someone who can float through walls?” I clarified.

  “I am on my way,” Everett said with great force. I noticed that as he quickly pushed his way out of the truck, Maxie followed directly behind him with not so much as a word. Impulsive Maxie was taking a back seat to Loyal Maxie.

  I took my time getting out of the truck after making it plain to my daughter that there was no way she was joining me on this adventure. Josh got out on the driver’s side and instructed Liss to keep a close eye on her phone. We’d get in touch immediately if we needed backup, and if we did, it would not be in the form of a thirteen-year-old girl. Liss looked grumpy but didn’t argue. She knows all my tones of voice and recognized this one as meaning she had absolutely no chance of changing my mind. Besides, we left Paul behind to keep her from forgetting my tone of voice. I promised that if there was something to detect I would text him.

  And then I opened my message file, picked out Paul’s contact info and typed in the letters SOS. If I needed him all I would have to do would be to hit Send.

  Maxie made it back to Josh and me even before we made it all the way across the street. “There’s a car in the garage,” she reported. “Everett says it’s his.”

  “It’s Everett’s car?” I asked.

  Maxie sighed to indicate that I was not amusing if I was attempting to be, and stupid if I wasn’t attempting to be amusing. “It’s the construction guy’s car, the one Everett saw him driving before. He’s—Everett—inside looking for the two of them.”

  “Okay.” I looked at Josh. “Let’s play this calm, like we’re just looking for Bill because … why?”

  “Let’s tell him one of the backhoes is missing and see how he reacts to that,” my husband suggested.

  “That’s pretty good,” Maxie said. “Maybe Paul is right about the whole paint thing.”

  I decided not to respond to that and climbed the steps to Bill Harrelson’s front door. Josh wanted to be in front of me, I could tell, but the odds that somebody was going to shoot first and ask questions later just because we knocked were probably pretty bad. And I had at least some experience doing this sort of thing, no matter how enthusiastic Josh was about this investigation. I would be the face and the voice for the person who answered the door, whom I assumed would be Bill.

  Long story short (if that’s still possible), I knocked.

  It took a while for him to open the door. You know how in movies someone knocks on the door and immediately the person inside opens it and the scene begins? Makes you wonder if that person just stands on the inside of their entrance all day waiting for someone to knock. But I digress. In this case, it was close to a full minute and two more rounds of knocking before Bill Harrelson opened his front door and looked at my husband and me.

  Bill’s professional smile immediately lit his face. “Alison. Josh.” He did allow himself to look confused. “How did you guys get my home address?” Then Bill remembered he was trying to be the helpful guy who by no means forced one of my guests to get into his car and come to his house. “What can I do for you?”

  Now, you’ll recall that we had a perfectly good plan in place for this very moment. And Josh was in the process of opening his mouth, having noted a momentary pause, when I just blurted out, “We’re looking for Katrina Breslin and we think you brought her here against her will.”

  “Wow,” Maxie said. “I’ll get Everett.” She vanished into the house.

  Among the living there was a stunned pause from both men and if I’m being honest—which I am—I’ll admit I was pretty taken aback at my own behavior as well. Then Bill broke the silence by rasping, “What?” It wasn’t original but nobody else was coming up with anything better.

  “I think you heard me,” I said. “Where’s Katrina? And this time, don’t tell me you never asked her out. We have witnesses.” Okay, only one witness, and he was dead, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  I’m not sure whether Bill or Josh looked more astonished. But there was a subtle difference between the two expressions: My husband seemed amazed that I had scrapped the plan and spoken so boldly to the construction foreman.

  Bill looked more like he had been caught in a lie and was trying to determine how to get out of the situation.

  “She was here for a little bit but she left,” he stammered. “How did you get this address?”

  I wasn’t in the mood to tell him about my deceased hacker friend or to listen to what was so obviously not true. “How’d she leave?” I said. “You made her come here in your car. There isn’t much we don’t know about this, Bill. But one thing you haven’t told us yet is where Katrina is and that’s key. So if you’ll allow me …” And I walked right past him into his house. Now even I was amazed at my brazenness.

  Josh, rather apologetically, followed behind me. Bill made some sounds but none of them were recognizable words. Whatever was going on here, he wasn’t very good at improvising and that was the weakness to exploit, I was sure Paul would say.

  Before we could even take in the whole of Bill’s front room, which wasn’t very large, Maxie phased through the ceiling. “She’s not upstairs,” she reported. “I haven’t looked down here because I figured Everett was around but I don’t see him.” Then she was gone just as quickly through a wall that must have led to the kitchen.

  “She took an Uber.” Bill had just managed to come up with an answer to my question. It was a lie, but at least he was back in the game. “It just wasn’t working out so she called for a car and it came and took her home. You should call and leave a message with her.”

  “Wow, you’re really bad at this, Bill.” It seemed like Josh was catching some of my sas
s and using it as his own. “You just told us you know for a fact that Katrina won’t answer her phone if we call her right now. So why don’t you stop trying so hard to come up with a plausible lie and tell us the truth?”

  “I’m telling you the truth …” he began.

  “Don’t waste our time,” Josh said. He gestured and the two of us took separate routes around the room and toward the door at its far side. “We know your blood was in the Lincoln that was taken out of the ground with the dead man in it. We know you’ve been stringing Katrina along but we don’t know why. What we’re concerned about right now is her safety. So just tell us where she is and we can sort the rest of it out later.”

  I cringed a little at the info dump Bill had just been given. Telling him we knew about the blood in the car was a mistake; it took away a weapon we could use and increased Bill’s sense of danger at the same time. Neither of those things was good.

  “She’s not here,” Bill said, but his eyes had definitely bulged at the mention of the blood.

  “I texted her four times on the way here,” I told him. “She hasn’t answered and I was clearly worried when I got in touch. I don’t know Katrina well, but I’m certain she would have gotten in touch if she could. So you’re not fooling anybody, Bill. You’re just putting off a bad end to this scene.”

  It wasn’t a large room so Josh and I met at the door quickly. I pushed on the door and it swung open into what was a medium-sized kitchen with a tiny breakfast nook in one corner. I was hoping Maxie wasn’t taking notes. Josh watched Bill as I walked in.

  Katrina wasn’t there, either. I had no plan beyond going into every room, opening every closet door and looking under every possible piece of furniture until I found the guest I’d inadvertently sent to this house. All I could have told you at this point was that she definitely wasn’t under the kitchen table.

  The problem was, there was no other way out of this room than the door we’d just used and Bill Harrelson was standing in the doorway. He didn’t look threatening as much as he looked threatened but there is that saying about a cornered animal, and I could look it up to complete that for you if I managed to get out of the kitchen, and then the house, alive.