Bones Behind the Wheel

by E. J. Copperman

  Josh was certainly sensing my anxiety. He made certain to be at the door ahead of me and looked like he was planning to push Bill out of the way, but the foreman, who looked pretty formidable, simply let him pass. That left me.

  Bill made no menacing move at me as I approached the kitchen door. But he did move toward me just as I attempted to walk through and back into the front room. I flinched a little and the sound of my foot skidding on the floor made Josh turn around, looking like he’d realized he’d made a terrible mistake. I stopped in my tracks, sure this one was going to cost me. There was no sign of Maxie or Everett to come and stop Bill as he approached.

  But all he did was lean in toward me and whisper in a barely audible voice, “Don’t do this to me. They’ll kill me.”

  Chapter 33

  Bill moved out of my way before I could whisper back. He did not put his finger to his lips but it was quite clear he could not discuss his situation—whatever it was—in a normal conversational volume. Josh looked at me with the obvious question in his eyes and I had no facial expression that would communicate the answer he needed. Instead I simply showed him that I was all right and moved into the front room, intending to make a left turn toward a hall that must have led to a bedroom.

  That was the moment that Everett rose up out of the basement, making me think of Paul, who always rises up out of the basement. For a second the incongruity made me stop and that was long enough for Everett to say, “Ms. Breslin is not in the basement, Ghost Lady. I have been in every room in the house and have not seen her. Maxie is currently checking the garage.”

  I stopped my progress to the hallway and Josh, sensing I’d gotten some new information, stopped behind me. With what I’m sure was a confused expression on my face I turned to face Bill. “She’s not here, is she?” I said.

  Bill must have gotten the wrong impression. Seeing me stop and turn so soon after his strange statement, I’m guessing he thought I was now playing along with his bogus scenario. “That’s right,” he said, “Katrina took an Uber home like I told you. There’s no reason to worry. So if you want to get back to your house …” He just let his voice trail off like that, suggesting in the most polite terms he could that Josh and I should get our butts out of his house.

  “No, I don’t think so.” I didn’t want Bill to have the wrong idea; I still wasn’t on his side and I wasn’t just going to pack up and go home because he said so. “I think you’ve either taken her somewhere or she’s just someplace we haven’t looked yet. So why don’t you tell us why you were seen forcibly putting Katrina into your car.”

  What flashed through Bill’s eyes was not anger or betrayal. He wasn’t appalled at what I’d said or my audacity in saying it. What I saw there at that moment was fear, pure and simple. I was going to force his hand, he thought, and that was not something he could afford to do under the current circumstances.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  But I wasn’t feeling especially charitable toward him at the moment. I feel responsible for my guests while they’re staying in my house, and he had at the very least played with the emotions of one of them and at most … I didn’t want to think about at most.

  “Yeah, you do,” I said. “You met Katrina at a restaurant called Deep Dive. You had dinner which I assume consisted mostly of fish.” I managed not to shudder at the thought. “Then you went out into the parking lot, you had some sort of argument with Katrina and you grabbed her forcibly by the wrist and made her get into your car. You drove here together. Am I about right so far?”

  “I did not force her into the car,” Bill said. “I’m not that guy. We didn’t have a disagreement about coming back here, just about her taking her own car. I thought it was best if I drove because I knew the way, that’s all. I didn’t force her to do anything.”

  “That’s not the way my witness saw it. But I’m still trying to figure out why you lied about seeing Katrina at all and more importantly, where she is right now. You want to start by answering that one?” Josh closed in behind me. He was letting me conduct the interrogation but he wasn’t going to be left out if Bill proved to be dangerous.

  Bill spoke very slowly. “Katrina. Isn’t. Here. You have to believe me on this.”

  “As far as I can tell, he’s being truthful, Ghost Lady,” Everett said. “But I am prepared to defend you if necessary. There is a fireplace in the den with several implements that would make excellent weapons.”

  Josh didn’t back off at all. He hadn’t heard Everett, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had.

  “But you sent me a text threatening me about the gun, didn’t you?” I said to Bill. “You were the only one who could have walked in and planted that gun and those bullets. You panicked when it was obvious the gun had been found and you threatened me.”

  Bill said nothing, so I was right.

  My phone buzzed. No doubt Melissa wanting an update. I did not take it out of my pocket.

  As much as I wanted to push Bill farther, there had been something about the way he’d said, “They’ll kill me” that was holding me back. That was real fear, not some ploy to gain time or sympathy. The question was how to maneuver without asking who “they” might be.

  I heard a voice behind me say, “Ask him about his father.” I didn’t have to turn around. Paul’s voice is as familiar to me as anyone’s after four years. But I also didn’t want to alarm Bill by acknowledging the voice he didn’t hear or the man he didn’t see. I was annoyed that he’d left Melissa in the truck by herself—she wasn’t behind me too, was she? No. She wasn’t—but this wasn’t the time to scold Paul about that, either.

  “Your father rented some earth moving equipment to the person who shot Herman Fitzsimmons in 1983,” I said to Bill. “Is that how you got involved in all this?”

  The foreman’s attention seemed to focus, and not in a good way. He snapped his gaze toward me with some anger in his eyes that made Josh tense up. “What do you know about my father?” he said in a low voice.

  “Just what I said. He owned a business that dealt in rentals for heavy equipment. There’s a really good probability that he was the guy who leased the backhoe or another earthmover to whoever wanted to bury Herman Fitzsimmons behind my house in a Lincoln Continental. Is your father still alive?” We knew perfectly well he was not.

  “That’s good,” Paul said. “You’re getting a reaction.” I didn’t see how the reaction I was getting was good, but I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Mine was from that of someone who could still be hurt and killed, and Paul was beyond that sort of thing.

  “My father passed away in 2009,” Bill growled. “You can’t pin anything on him.”

  I didn’t want to pin anything on Bill’s father but a medal for helping me stay alive, but there was still work to be done in that area and besides, being dead wasn’t always a deal breaker in my world.

  “I’m not trying to accuse him of anything,” I said, despite that being what I’d done a few seconds earlier. “I’m just trying to understand. What’s your interest in all this?”

  Bill, it should be noted, was not holding a weapon of any kind. In my corner I had my husband, Everett and Paul. So I felt fairly secure challenging him a little bit. It was the “they’ll kill me” comment that had me worried because he could have talking about literally anybody.

  “I just got the call to come and work on the dunes,” he insisted. “Jim Constantine said there was treasure buried in the ground and then he found that car down there. Before that I didn’t know anything about my dad renting anybody any equipment thirty years ago.”

  Maybe Jim was one of the “they” he’d mentioned. For somebody whose name I couldn’t remember he seemed to have played a central role in digging up Henry Fitzsimmons and his off-brand coffin. “Did Jim know the car was there?” I asked.

  “Look, I’m not pushing it,” Bill said. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant but his tone was final. “I don’t
know anything about this whole business. Katrina isn’t here. Why don’t you go looking for her somewhere else?”

  And that was when Maxie appeared, as usual, through the ceiling. “I found her!” she shouted. “She’s in a shed in the backyard!” Everything in this whole disturbing affair was taking place in a backyard.

  Given my new information I turned on Bill just as Everett said, “I should have looked there,” and vanished through the back wall.

  “So you don’t mind if I look in your shed behind the house?” I asked Bill.

  He went absolutely pale and for a moment I thought he was going to pass out on the floor. “What made you say that?” he asked. Then he looked around like people do when they know about the strange circumstances surrounding my house. “Are there ghosts here?”

  Of course Bill had been hanging around my house long enough to recognize the signs, but there was an odd urgency in his voice that made me think it wasn’t what he meant. “Why do you ask that?” Josh said. “We can look out the window and see the shed back there as well as anyone else. Maybe I should go back there and take a look.” He took a step toward the kitchen, where there was a door to the backyard.

  “No!” Bill shouted. “Look, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “So tell us,” I suggested. “Then we’ll know.”

  But Bill had obviously turned a corner. He walked to a side table and opened a drawer, from which he extracted a small pistol.

  I should have been expecting that; this was about the time a gun usually appeared in my experience.

  “You want to see the shed?” he said. “Okay. Let’s go see the shed.”

  Bill gestured with the gun toward the kitchen, indicating Josh and I should walk in that direction. We hesitated for a moment and he yelled, “Move!”

  “Go ahead,” Paul said. “Maxie and I will be right behind you.”

  “I’ll be in front of you,” Maxie said, and shot herself through the wall in the same direction Everett had gone.

  Josh looked at me; of course he hadn’t heard the ghosts. “Don’t worry,” I said very quietly, and started moving in the direction Bill was insisting on. Josh’s face, angry and anxious to do something to stop Bill, did not change, but he bit on his bottom lip and walked with me through the kitchen and out the back door into the yard.

  “If you’re going to shoot us, taking us outside isn’t really the smart move,” I said to Bill as he held the gun discreetly on us. Actually it didn’t seem that stupid a plan, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. The yard was surrounded by a stockade fence, so any neighbor seeing us would have to be at least one floor up and have a burning desire to see into Bill Harrelson’s backyard. Besides, it was getting dark and the yard wasn’t lit very well. We couldn’t count on a call to the police from someone watching Bill’s property.

  “I’m not going to shoot you if I don’t have to,” our captor told us. “That’s really not who I am.”

  “From here it looks like exactly who you are,” Josh said out of the corner of his mouth. My husband isn’t great at suffering gun-toting fools gladly.

  “Shut up.” Eloquent as well as charming.

  In case you’re wondering, it doesn’t take long to walk from the back door of a suburban New Jersey house to the far reaches of the yard, even a fairly large one like Bill’s. We found ourselves at the shed, which was fairly large and sturdy, in less than half a minute.

  Bill reached into his pocket and found a ring of keys, one of which he managed to isolate even while holding the gun (although to be honest, he wasn’t actually aiming it at Josh or me the whole time—it just felt like rushing him would be a very bad plan). He used it to open a padlock on the latch to the shed door and then maneuvered Josh and me to one side as he opened the door.

  “Don’t worry,” Paul said. Easy for him to say.

  Inside the shed, illuminated by a single light bulb in a ceiling fixture, was Katrina. She was not tied to a chair or chained to the shed wall. In fact, once the door was opened she tried to rush out but was stopped by Bill and his trusty pistol. Then she saw Josh and me.

  “Oh no,” she said. I get that a lot, but Josh?

  “Get inside,” Bill said, mostly to my husband and me. He waved the gun.

  As the door opened wider I saw Everett inside the shed. He was reaching for a shovel hung on the wall, but I knew he wasn’t wearing anything large enough to conceal it, so he wouldn’t be able to get it outside the shed. I had to buy him a few seconds.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I feel safer out here.”

  Bill looked more exasperated than anything else. He pointed the gun directly at Katrina. “You want me to kill her?” he said. “If not, get in.”

  Katrina, even after all this, looked shocked. “Me?”

  I bet on my ghost friends. Even if we were locked inside, they’d find a way. And I really didn’t want Bill to shoot Katrina. I walked into the shed and Josh followed me. If you can think of what we should have done please feel free to get in touch and let me know, but that was the best option I could see at the moment.

  “It’s all right, Alison,” Paul told me. “Let him lock you in. We’ll have you out very soon.”

  Josh, who hadn’t heard, asked, “Is this what investigating is like all the time?”

  “I don’t think for everybody, but for me, yes,” I told him.

  Before Everett and his shovel could make it back out the door to clobber Bill, our captor had closed the entrance solidly without a word. We could hear him putting the lock back on. Everett went through the wall, sans shovel but with something in his pocket I couldn’t see as he flew by. Paul was already out there.

  “What are you doing here?” Katrina said. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  It seemed like a good question, but how could I have called the Hazlet cops and said I knew a woman was in danger because a ghost had seen her forced into a car? Also, until we’d arrived and Bill decided to be armed, we hadn’t known anything for certain. But this wasn’t the time to justify what had clearly been a mistake.

  At least the light stayed on. Being in here in the dark would have been intolerable.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Bill forgot to take my phone.” I reached into my pocket and pulled it out.

  “Don’t you think I thought of that?” Katrina said. “I can’t get a signal in here.”

  That was odd. There was no reason the simple shed would block a cellular signal unless …

  “He must have some kind of a signal jammer he’s using to block it or he’s insulated the walls and ceiling with something that would stop it from getting in here,” Josh said. “This might not be the first time he’s kept someone in here. That’s why he didn’t care if we had our phones.”

  Swell. I couldn’t even text Melissa, who was definitely wondering where the heck we were by now. Of course Paul or Maxie could go to the truck and get her up to date, but I was hoping they were working on that lock.

  “What happened?” I asked Katrina.

  “I don’t know,” she answered with a slight sniffle. “Everything was going so well and then he said let’s go back to my house because it’s right nearby. And I said I’d take my car and follow him so I could just go home whenever I wanted, and that’s when he got crazy.”

  Josh immediately looked concerned. “Crazy?”

  “He said no, he wanted to drive and he’d just bring me back to my car later. That sounded a little strange to me, so I said again that I’d just follow him. And he grabbed my arm, tight, and told me to just get in the car.” Katrina showed us her left wrist, but in this light I didn’t see any mark on her arm. I took her word for it.

  I was about to answer her when I heard something going on with the lock. Maxie, who had stayed in the shed with us, said, “I’ll check,” and flew through the front wall. There was a definite scraping sound that I thought might be metal on metal. Was Everett trying to chop the lock off with an ax or something?

&nb
sp; “What did Bill want?” Josh asked Katrina. “Why was he so insistent that you come back here with him and not take your car?”

  Katrina looked at Josh with wide eyes. He’s very easy to talk to and exudes trustworthiness without trying to do it, which means he really deserves the trust. “At first I thought he was trying to get me to spend the night, you know,” she said. “I mean, I wasn’t totally against the idea but I wanted to be able to leave if I felt like it. But once we got here it was obvious that wasn’t on his mind at all.”

  “What was?” Josh said.

  “He wanted me to talk to the police,” she answered. “I didn’t know about what, but he wanted me to say that I’d been … with him … for two nights this week.”

  “The two nights the car was being moved around?” I asked.

  “I guess so. I’d seen him earlier in the evening the first time but we didn’t … I mean, we just went to dinner.”

  “He wanted to use you as an alibi,” I said. “It must have been Bill who towed the car out and back so he wanted you to tell Lt. McElone you were with him so he wouldn’t be a suspect.”

  “Then why would he deny he was seeing Katrina at all?” Josh asked.

  Katrina’s jaw opened and hung a little. “He said we weren’t seeing each other?”

  At that moment the metallic sound from outside stopped and I heard something hit the ground. The door swung open to reveal Everett, holding a metal file he’d found in the shed, with Paul and Maxie behind him. Everett was grinning broadly.

  “I told you we would get you out, Ghost Lady,” he said.

  Chapter 34

  The first thing I did when we were out of the shed was text Melissa. I wanted that girl out of the area as quickly as humanly possible, and since I had no idea whether Josh or I would make it out that fast (or, if Bill and his pistol found us, at all) she absolutely did not need to wait for us.