Bones Behind the Wheel Page 12

  I knew he was about to ask me to contact Phyllis, who has a contact at the ME’s office. Their relationship is … well, I know Phyllis never pays anybody for information and she’d never do anything truly untoward, but she really seems to like this particular guy and what happens between asking for a report and getting it is none of my business. But now I felt the need to say what if felt like I’d been saying nonstop for days now.

  “I’m not involved in this one, Paul.” I made a point of looking down at my dinner and not up at the ghost. “You’re not getting the ME’s report through Phyllis unless you ask her yourself and personally I would pay cash money to see that happen.”

  “I could do it,” Josh mumbled. I didn’t answer him because I couldn’t think of anything.

  The ghost who had been trying to sniff everyone’s plate had gotten grumpy about it and taken to picking people’s napkins off their laps and dropping them to the floor. He was reaching out toward my mother’s when she looked at him and said, “Now, stop that.” She swatted at his hand although she couldn’t really make a physical impact. The ghost looked astonished and pulled his hand back. He stared at Mom and decided to deflect his attention toward another table.

  “My intention was to plead Melissa’s case,” Paul said. “She could do a bit of online research without putting herself at any risk, and you could monitor her time very closely if you think it might infringe on her studies. That has to be her first priority.”

  “I’m not letting my daughter get involved in this case, Paul,” I said. “Deal with it.”

  “I’m right here at the same table with you,” Melissa reminded us. She waved a hand. “See?”

  Josh did not reach for his phone—he knew better—but he did lean over and talk quietly to Liss out of my earshot. Then she looked at Paul. “Since this is a forty-year-old case, isn’t there less information you might be able to find? We don’t even know who the victim is and that means we don’t know who the suspects are.”

  “She’s so smart,” said my mother, who apparently doesn’t know a husband making an end run when she sees it. She has no basis for comparison; my father is so transparent, in any number of ways.

  “It’s true that we know very little,” Paul answered, and Melissa immediately began relaying the words to Josh. “But much of what we can find out should be simplified by the time that has gone by. The property records can lead to possible identities for the victim, as can the registration on the car if that can be found. A medical examiner’s report will indicate what kind of bullet, if any, was used to shoot the person inside the Continental. That can be traced to gun records.”

  “Do I have to put my fingers in my ears and start humming?” I asked. “How will I eat?”

  Of course that was when the phone in my pocket buzzed. Thinking the message might be from one of my guests, who were not used to having me out of the house at this time of the evening, I grabbed it and took a look quickly. And naturally the person getting in touch was Phyllis, who had probably put a reporter in the restaurant on the odd chance that her name was mentioned, ever.

  “Oh, what is it?” I sort of groaned to myself.

  Melissa, looking concerned, turned toward me at the same time Josh did. “What?” they said in unison. Honestly, it couldn’t have been better if they’d rehearsed.

  I waved a hand. “Nothing important,” I said, hoping I was being truthful.

  I was still deciding about that when I read Phyllis’s text message:

  Got preliminary ME report on body in car—man shot 4X. C me.

  It took me three readings to understand what she meant. “I have to go see Phyllis,” I said. Looking up at Paul I added, “I hope you’re happy.”

  He was disingenuous enough to look stunned. “Happy?” he wondered aloud.

  “Do we have to skip dessert, then?” Melissa asked.

  “Don’t be crazy,” I told her. “They have ice cream from local dairies.”

  Chapter 17

  “We don’t know who your victim was yet, but he was definitely male and he suffered four separate gunshot wounds from a pistol or handgun of some kind.” Phyllis Coates rarely engages in small talk. No. The fact is, for Phyllis, this was small talk. “No definite determination of the caliber yet.” I thought the newfound bullets might be a help in determining that, but McElone would never use evidence she couldn’t authenticate.

  “This place is a fire trap,” my father noted, his eyes wide. “How does she manage to keep getting approved to run a business here?”

  It was a fair question. Phyllis appeared to have kept every single piece of paper she’s come into contact with since she’d left the New York Daily News more than twenty-five years earlier. And maybe some from before that. They were spread around her office in piles from floor to Phyllis’s reach, which was about six feet off the ground. Phyllis is a huge personality, but she’s not tall.

  I had tried—believe me—to talk my mother into going home from Harvest. I had, in fact, attempted to talk my husband and daughter into letting me drop them off at home before I came to the already-cramped offices of the Harbor Haven Chronicle to have what I hoped would be a brief meeting with my friend. I knew there was no chance Paul would be left out, but he takes up remarkably little space in a car or an office.

  Suffice it to say, the whole gang was here now and breathing space in Phyllis’s little office, filled to bursting with paper and, as my father had pointed out, a danger to all those who entered it. I had successfully convinced Phyllis to talk to us (when she’d been expecting only me) in the bullpen area of her workspace, which made it possible for all of us who were still doing so to continue breathing.

  “What more can you tell us?” I asked Phyllis. I wanted Paul, Josh and not as much Melissa to get the information they wanted so I could go home and tend to my guests, and maybe even sit down for a few minutes. It’s a dream, I know, but I keep striving toward it.

  “A few things, nothing huge.” Phyllis tends to talk in nips rather than bites. She is an advocate of punchy, terse prose. She talks like a newspaper would if a) people still read newspapers and b) one of them came to life. “For one, the victim was probably between thirty and fifty years old. About five-ten. Maybe two hundred pounds, maybe a little less. From a few cloth fragments they found, probably dressed in jeans and a denim shirt. Definitely not expecting to end his day buried in a Lincoln Continental. Shot from a low angle. They’re actually exploring the idea that the shooter was standing in the hole before the car was lowered in, but that’s probably too deep. Still, someone near the floor, lying down, maybe.”

  “Are they running a DNA test to see if they can identify the remains?” Josh spent a good deal of time watching police procedural shows on TV before he was foolish enough to marry an innkeeper. Who has time for television?

  “The ME sent out some samples, but those could take weeks. And if the guy in the car didn’t have a record and wasn’t in the FBI’s database, which didn’t exist in the seventies anyway, there’d be no way to trace it. The best they can hope for is to find some relative with similar DNA and identify this guy that way, but it’s the definition of a long shot.”

  Josh frowned. That’s not the way it works for the team at NCIS. “How about records of people who were reported missing around the time the car was buried?”

  Phyllis pointed at him to indicate he’d said something smart and Josh smiled. He doesn’t know Phyllis very well, but he respects her journalism and he really likes being told he’s smart. “If we can narrow down the dates that the guy might have been shot we have a better chance to nail that down,” she said. “They can analyze the rust in the car and see what tapes were in the 8-track player—oh yes, there was an 8-track player—to at least determine the year. Then I can go through police records to see if there’s a likely match.”

  “What tapes were there for the 8-track player?” That was the one area of the mystery so far that I found interesting. My musical taste, aside from the stuff Melissa t
ells me I’ll find interesting, runs to the oldies.

  “What’s an 8-track player?” my daughter asked.

  “I couldn’t find that out from my friend at the ME,” Phyllis answered. “He doesn’t have the evidence they took out of the car. He just has the bones. Anita would have the stuff from the car; you should ask her.”

  Trying to get more data from McElone was definitely not at the top of my to-do list. “Anybody who wants to find out is welcome to try,” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” Melissa piped up.

  “No, you won’t.”

  Melissa’s mouth flattened out into a horizontal line. That’s teenager for, “I am displeased.” So are most expressions.

  My mother, who had been uncharacteristically quiet up until now, said, “I’ll be happy to talk to the lieutenant.” I gave her a look with numerous questions included in it. “Nobody puts a dead body in my daughter’s backyard and gets away with it.”

  “Great,” Phyllis said. “Anita will talk to me but she knows I’m going to publish what she says so she’ll be careful. With you she won’t be as guarded.”

  Candidly, I figured McElone wouldn’t talk to Mom at all. My mother does not even live in Harbor Haven. McElone doesn’t really want to talk to me, but Mom comes with layers of irrelevance to the lieutenant. As long as I didn’t have to have the conversation, it was okay with me. Besides, if I’d said any of this to Mom she’d have given me six arguments pointing out how I was wrong, and Dad would admonish me for “sassing your mother.” I acted against my usual instincts and did not speak.

  “Is the car still in your backyard?” Phyllis asked.

  “Allegedly,” I told her. “With this car there are no guarantees. For something that last got gassed up when they were still putting lead in the Amoco, this thing gets around.”

  Josh smiled. He finds me amusing, which is one of the reasons this marriage is going to work out. My first husband found my humor—what’s the word he used?—oh yeah: “Annoying.” Not so much now. My current husband looked at Phyllis and said, “We’re told it will be towed away tomorrow morning.”

  “Get a flashlight inside there tonight,” Phyllis advised. “It’s probably been picked clean by the cops and whoever took it for a joyride in the middle of the night, but it’s worth checking one more time. Mostly look for pieces of plastic or teeth.”

  Mom looked a little distressed. “Teeth?”

  “Yeah. The guy had three missing and there was no bullet that seemed to have traveled in that direction.” Phyllis noticed something on a filing cabinet besides the seemingly mountainous pile of papers on it—whatever happened to that paperless society we were promised?—and brushed at it. Whatever it was fluttered its wings and flew to the ceiling, out of sight. “It’s possible he just had some major dental problems, which might make identification easier, but it’s also possible the person who killed him did a little quick orthodontia on him as an incentive to talk about something before pulling out the artillery.”

  Melissa’s jaw tightened a little bit. She’s a feisty girl, but she is still a girl, not a woman. I’ll admit this wasn’t my favorite mental image, either.

  “And the police didn’t find the teeth?” Josh asked. He wasn’t any less squeamish than the rest of us, but seemed to be channeling his inner Columbo at the moment so he was diving right ahead.

  “Nope. Not a trace of one as far as they can tell. But they weren’t a hundred percent certain they had a homicide on their hands then. They might look a bit more thoroughly when they get the car back.” Phyllis gave me a sideways glance. “Or they might leave it there longer to be sure they don’t jostle anything that hasn’t already been jostled.”

  “Bite your tongue,” I said.

  “What about the emerald?” Mom asked, no doubt to get the conversation away from teeth. “Is that what all this business, the shooting all those years ago and the car moving around, has been about?”

  Phyllis made a who knows face. “It depends on the quality of the emerald,” she answered. “Size, clarity and inclusions will all make a difference.”

  “Inclusions?” Melissa asked, largely because none of the other living humans in the room go there first.

  “Yeah.” Phyllis brushed some dust off the papers on the cabinet and the dust met up with other dust on the cabinet surface itself. It was a dust redistribution effort rather than a cleaning of any kind. “Inclusions are things that might become stuck in a stone while it’s being formed. Air bubbles, tiny drops of water or a grain of sand. That sort of thing. The more there are, the less pure the emerald is and that makes it less valuable.”

  “How much money can you get for a fairly large emerald?” I asked when Paul forced me to do so by suggesting it.

  “No way of knowing without getting a reliable appraiser to see it, which I what I imagine the cops are doing now,” Phyllis told me, and by extension, Paul. “Emeralds are rarer than diamonds but they have no industrial use so they’re not as valuable stone-for-stone. You have a big one that’s pure, you can be looking at some serious change.”

  I shook my head in wonder. “How do you know all this stuff?” I asked Phyllis.

  “I’m a reporter,” she reminded me, as if her entire lifestyle didn’t scream that. “I know a little bit about everything and a lot about nothing.”

  We all stood around for a moment contemplating that and then Phyllis raised her hands and wiggled them to shoo us out the door. “You have your assignments,” she said. “Get out there and find me a story.”

  Melissa, who has an agreement with Phyllis to work as an assistant in another year, sidled up to me on the way out. “She knows we don’t actually work for her, right?” she asked.

  “There’s really no way of knowing.”

  Mom and Josh led Liss out the door and toward Mom’s Dodge Viper, which had more seats than Josh’s truck. My Volvo wagon was being given the night off due to good behavior.

  Phyllis stopped me at the door after everyone else was outside. “Be careful with this one,” she said quietly.

  “I’m not working on this one,” I reminded her for what seemed like the millionth time but was probably only somewhere slightly north of a hundred thousand.

  “Right,” she said. “But be careful anyway. There’s something I don’t like about it.”

  “You mean besides the guy with the missing teeth being shot four times and then buried in a car outside my back door?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Phyllis said. “This isn’t ordinary.”

  I could have told her that, but clearly there was something that had rattled her, and rattling Phyllis isn’t easy. “What didn’t you tell the rest of them?” I asked her.

  “The ME tells me that the guy might not have been a hundred percent dead when the car was buried. He wasn’t sure, but his guess was the victim was bleeding and in pain and they put him in a car and buried him sort of alive.”

  “Thanks for that, Phyllis. I’ll sleep so much better tonight.”

  Chapter 18

  Suffice it to say the rest of the evening was not exactly a nice warm snuggle under a blanket on the sofa. Mom dropped Josh, Melissa and me (and by extension Paul) off at Josh’s truck, which was parked at Harvest. She and Dad, who promised to come supervise the end of the Mandorisis’ work in the morning, took off for home and then Josh drove us back to the guesthouse, where he dutifully found a large flashlight that was brighter than the app on his phone and went out to take another look in the Continental, presumably looking for dental refuse. I did not follow him outside to search for teeth in the dark, which might make me a bad wife but I believed showed off a level of rationality that was not being exhibited elsewhere.

  Melissa and I went inside to check on the guests. Katrina was out and Steve, who was with Adam in the movie room again (this time watching Topper) told me she’d had dinner plans with none other than Bill Harrelson. Go, Katrina! So we left the guys to Cary Grant and company and walked back to the den to watch from the safe dista
nce of the French doors.

  To be honest, all I could see from there was some general movement in the area of the car—which strikingly was still where it had been left, indicating to me that the people behind this whole goofy plot were not as inventive as I’d hoped—and Josh’s flashlight moving around in odd patterns. I wasn’t actually all that worried about my husband because after all it was just a car and he was being guarded by a very earnest ghost, even if I couldn’t actually see Paul from this far away in the dark. The motion-activated lights were closer to the house, and weren’t showing me much except for a keen view of the hole, which I had memorized.

  “None of this makes any sense,” Melissa said next to me in her very thoughtful voice.

  “What?”

  “The whole thing. Somebody kills a man and buries him in a car. Why? Why not just bury the man? It would take up much less space and they could use regular shovels instead of heavy equipment. It would be much faster. Less chance they’d be found.”

  I almost interrupted, but I could tell my daughter was just warming up. She has an incisive mind and usually comes to conclusions that are worth hearing so I just waited and listened.

  Sure enough, she went on. “Then forty years go by and the car is found by accident. Okay so that’s a big coincidence. But then the car is taken away and brought back. How could somebody from the nineteen seventies even know that happened? And why would they bring the car back if they wanted it that bad?”

  “Those are good questions,” I said. “You understand why I want you away from this one?”

  Melissa looked at me, her lips pursed. “Not really. You’ve let me help with other cases before.”

  “There was always a good reason to take those cases. Somebody needed our help. I didn’t think it would be dangerous. This one’s different. It doesn’t make sense, like you said. And someone is definitely taking an interest in it. I don’t want you near it. I don’t want me near it.”