Bones Behind the Wheel Read online

  Ernie’s opinion of me, not stellar to begin with, seemed to take a hit. “There was no map,” he said. “They were all of the same crew, they all saw where it was buried, and they all didn’t get far afterward. So the treasure stayed here until this week.”

  “How come the gems didn’t all get found?” I asked. “All you got was a Lincoln Continental with a very undernourished passenger in it.”

  Ernie looked impassive and shrugged. “Probably the real booty is near the site we found,” he said. “I think there were a couple of pretty big emeralds in the hole that got dug.”

  If he thought that he might come back for a better look when nobody was watching. “So is it worth searching the rest of the beach?” I asked. I didn’t expect him to confess but his answer might be telling.

  “Probably not,” Ernie said. “Anything we found would probably be held up in court for years anyway. Nobody knows who really owns it. I just started digging because Jim said there was metal under the sand and that didn’t make sense.”

  Jim said that, huh? “Why was Jim looking for metal in the beach?”

  “It’s just something he does.” Thanks, Ernie. That says a ton.

  “Do you think Jim came back that night and took the car, and then brought it back the next night?” Maybe if I couldn’t get Ernie to confess I could get him to snitch on a friend. That was what I’d come to.

  “I don’t know. I have to get back to work.” He pulled on his hair again in a vain attempt to get it looking neat. He took two steps toward his dormant earthmover.

  I figured I’d get it in while I could. “You didn’t move the car, did you, Ernie?”

  He looked at me like I should be restrained and given medication. “Of course not. I don’t think there’s emeralds. Besides.” I knew it was coming. “My wife would never let me.”

  * * *

  “My husband—my late husband—didn’t have any enemies.” Darlene Fitzsimmons sat on a very tasteful sofa in her Spring Lake home overlooking the beach. This was not cheap real estate and it was far from a cheap house. I had instinctively wiped my feet before entering, but she was not putting on airs. She had some money (or more to the point her second husband Bernard Coles did) and she didn’t see any problem with spending it. Other than the wage gap between us there wasn’t much that had put me off about Darlene. She hadn’t even objected when I’d asked if I could record the conversation. I’d shown her my driver’s license but she seemed to think I was researching a book on her first husband’s death. She seemed relatively down-to-earth otherwise.

  Paul was not along on this trip because he’d insisted on being dropped off near the Harbor Haven police station where he could eavesdrop once again on McElone, which I thought was kind of cruel (and was me technically breaking a promise), but which wouldn’t matter because the subject herself would never know it happened. What McElone didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.

  “I don’t want to be indelicate,” I said, which was a sure signal I was about to be indelicate, “but someone did shoot him and bury him in a Lincoln Continental.”

  “Yes, and that was especially rude,” Darlene said. “Putting him forever in the competition like that. I mean, it’s clear he had an enemy. That was somebody who really didn’t like Herm, but I can’t begin to guess who it might have been.”

  Darlene had, being the next of kin, been notified when her extremely late husband’s body had been identified by the medical examiner. Being more then thirty years later, it probably hadn’t come as much of a shock that Herman Fitzsimmons was deceased. It was more the cause of his demise that had been a surprise for her. “I always just figured he’d had a heart attack somewhere and wasn’t carrying his ID,” Darlene said. “I guess that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you think about it, but I needed something that I could use as an explanation.”

  I was sitting in a very comfortable side chair that I was afraid blocked Darlene’s view of the ocean, but I figured she had it memorized by now and anyway she didn’t seem to mind. Between us on a small table was the voice recorder, which so far had not immortalized one word that Paul could possibly find useful when I played it for him. Herm, as she called Fitzsimmons, had vanished into thin air. She’d been distraught at the time, but it had been all these years now. No, she had no idea who might have offed a reasonably successful Pontiac dealer in his prime.

  But now I was about to take the conversation in another direction and that might possibly provide Paul with some relevant material. “Were you aware that your husband—Mr. Fitzsimmons—was having an affair at the time he disappeared?” I asked. In my sort-of-business, you have to ask people things that they’re not going to like answering. But I did find myself involuntarily leaning back in the chair as if waiting for a recoil.

  “I wasn’t aware at the time, but I found out a little later,” Darlene said, as naturally as if I’d asked her what her wedding China pattern might have been. And I’ll bet she would have remembered that, too. “The woman—what was her name?—Harriet Adamson contacted me while the police were still searching for Herm and not finding him. I guess she thought I’d gotten wind of what was going on and might have done something to my husband. But it was news to me.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I guess it’s always news to the wife, right?”

  I could write a whole book on the subject. Perhaps one day.

  “Were you angry?” I asked.

  “Sure. It never occurred to me Herm wasn’t being faithful. I was. Faithful. And it wasn’t because there weren’t opportunities, you can believe me. I might not be much now but I was something back in the old days.”

  I thought she looked pretty good now, for a woman in her sixties or any other decade. If she’d had plastic surgery it had been done very skillfully. She had stayed trim. She dressed fairly demurely but did not look like a frump. Her legs were up on the sofa, feet hanging off because she was wearing shoes that I probably would have to book three guests for a week to afford. “I believe that,” I said.

  “Believe it.” Darlene gave me a significant look but one with humor in the eyes. “It didn’t matter, though. Herm was gone and I couldn’t even yell at him. It took me years with Dr. Maples to get past that.”

  “Dr. Maples?”

  “My therapist. The woman’s a genius. After Herm went poof, you know, I didn’t have much left over. The insurance wouldn’t pay off because he hadn’t been declared dead yet. The business was in his name but he couldn’t run it. I had to sell the dealership to pay the mortgage and raise our daughter. Wasn’t a whole lot left over so I took a job at a construction company doing the books and a little light forklift work.”

  “Forklift?” I didn’t want it to sound amazed, but there you go.

  “Yeah. I did a little bit of that before I met Herm and gave it up, but I still had the skills.”

  Okay, that was nuts. First, I couldn’t picture this woman behind the controls of a heavy piece of equipment, but what was more important was that she was saying she could operate the kind of earthmover someone used to bury her husband in a car.

  “Could you still do it today?” I asked. Someone sure as heck was running at least a tow truck service back and forth from my house this week.

  “Sure. You never really lose it. But I wouldn’t want to risk losing my manicure.” That was Darlene joking. She must have known what I was getting at but she wanted to have me think she didn’t.

  “Any other pieces of equipment you’re certified in?” I said. Might as well get it right out there.

  “You mean like something that would make a hole big enough to put a car in with a man in the front seat?” Her tone couldn’t have been friendlier, which was weird. “I can run a backhoe, if that’s what you’re asking. But I think the police would have been a little suspicious if I was seen digging up a piece of the beach on the same day I reported my husband missing, don’t you?”

  She had a point. “I didn’t mean to imply anything,” I said. At least, I didn’t mean for you
to figure it out.

  Darlene waved a hand. “Don’t think a thing of it. I’d suspect me too after all you’ve heard. But I was frantically calling around that day trying to find Herm.”

  “It must have been disturbing to get the news, even all these years later,” I suggested. Paul would undoubtedly get on my case about not pressing the point, but I doubted Darlene was gearing up to confess.

  “I guess,” Darlene said. “The thing is, I had gotten so used to the idea that Herm was dead that it didn’t really make that much difference to find out for sure. When they told me somebody shot him, well, that was something of a shock. Who’d want to shoot Herm?”

  An excellent question. “Was there something about his business at all? Was he getting ready to diversify or move in on someone else’s territory? Start selling Buicks?” I’d sort of asked this already, but getting more specific might unearth some information Darlene hadn’t thought of before.

  Darlene’s mouth curled a little; I took that for a sign she was thinking. “Nah. Herm was doing fine and he wasn’t that ambitious. Nobody could have felt threatened by Herm.”

  She seemed to be leaving no alternative but to think that this was a crime of passion. “You said you spoke to Harriet Adamson after your husband was gone,” I reminded Darlene. “Was she angry with him?” There’s no better way to get a wife going than to suggest that her husband’s mistress might have shot and killed him. How Harriet might have gotten access to heavy earth moving equipment would be another topic for another time. If Darlene was a forklift operator, maybe Harriet worked on skyscrapers. Anything’s possible.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Darlene said, shaking her head. “Mostly she seemed puzzled. She couldn’t figure out why Herm never showed up to wherever he was supposed to meet her. But I’ll tell you who must have been pretty steamed at them. Her husband.”

  Whoa! Back up a couple of steps there, lady. “Harriet was married?” No, genius, she had that other kind of husband where you’re not married. Sometimes I astonish even myself.

  “Oh yeah,” Darlene said, looking at her shoes. I thought that move was designed to keep her from making eye contact with me and betraying her delight at the situation. “And when all this stuff came up with Herm being gone, that came out in the wash. Nat was not a happy man.”

  I was processing a lot very quickly. “But you’re saying that Nat … Adamson?” Darlene nodded, so I went on. “He only found out about the affair after your husband disappeared?” If that was the case he had no motive to put Herman Fitzsimmons into a very chrome-bumpered grave.

  “Well, that’s what he said but I don’t know if it’s necessarily true,” Darlene answered. “I mean, that could cover up a lot, don’t you think? I didn’t really connect the dots at the time but now that I know somebody shot Herm, it makes you reconsider. Why don’t you ask Harriet about that?”

  Was it possible she didn’t know? “Harriet Adamson passed away a few years ago,” I said.

  Darlene Fitzsimmons smiled. “Isn’t that a shame,” she said.

  “What about her husband?” I asked. “Is he still alive?”

  “I didn’t know she was dead so I’m probably not the person to ask.”

  “Well, thank you for your time,” I said. I stood up to leave, having concluded that this was the best I was going to do with Darlene. “I appreciate your putting up with my questions. It can’t be easy even after all this time.”

  “No, it’s true.” Darlene stood up too and I was taken again with how tall she was, easily three inches over my head. “Dr. Maples and I will have what to talk about this week. When my daughter told me I was absolutely stunned.”

  My jacket, which was halfway to my shoulders, stopped without any decision made on my part. “You daughter told you about your husband’s murder?” I asked. How did that make sense?

  “Oh, sure,” Darlene said, spreading her hands. “She found out about it before anybody else. She’s a police officer in Harbor Haven, you know.”

  Somehow I knew the answer to the question before I asked it. “Really? What’s her name?”

  “She took her stepfather’s name,” Darlene Fitzsimmons told me. “Theresa Menendez.”

  “Of course she did,” I said. “Of course she did.”

  Chapter 25

  “Of course I know that Sgt. Menendez is the daughter of the victim.” Lt. Anita McElone stood behind her desk in an unsuccessful attempt to convince me she was not going to sit down and explain. She might not sit down, but she was sure as heck going to explain. “That’s why she’s been taken off that case. As soon as we had a positive ID on the victim, she was no longer eligible to work on it.”

  I sat down in the chair in front of McElone’s desk. Just because she wanted me to go was no reason to let my feet hurt. “But that doesn’t mean she’s not involved in some way, does it?”

  Grunting with what I assumed was frustration, McElone took the executive swivel chair behind her desk and looked over at her computer screen, still intent on making sure I knew she was busy. I assume the lieutenant is always busy, but that didn’t mean she could get out of talking to me. “The woman was all of two years old when her father vanished,” she said without much inflection. “I think it’s unlikely she shot him and then drove an excavator over to bury him in a Lincoln Continental.”

  McElone had agreed to see me only because we’d played this game enough times for her to know I wasn’t going to leave without a conversation. The truth of the matter was that I’d come to pick up my ghost, who was hovering just over her head and to my right, McElone’s left, as we spoke. “Isn’t that a pretty big coincidence?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. But the thing about coincidences is that they happen sometimes.” McElone let some breath out through her lips and looked at me. “Is there something you need that I can answer really fast so you’ll go away?”

  “Who was the investigator on the original disappearance of Herman Fitzsimmons?” I asked her. She was a cop; she could answer cop things. Paul nodded approvingly.

  “I looked it up. His name was Anthony Blanik. He died in 2002. I don’t think he’s going to be a lot of help.”

  I didn’t necessarily agree with that statement; I looked up at Paul and he held up his hands. Yes, he’d try to get in touch with the late Anthony Blanik. We’d have to wait until he got back to the guesthouse for that.

  “Did he file a report? Can I see it?” I had no idea what I thought I’d see in a decades-old police report about an unsolved case but it seemed like something I should ask.

  “I’ve seen it,” Paul told me. “If you can get a hard copy we can talk about it later.”

  “It’s public record,” McElone said. “If it wasn’t so old you’d probably find it on the internet. I’ll print out a copy. You can pick it up on your way out.” She pointed casually toward the door, the subtle little minx (none of which McElone is).

  “Thank you, lieutenant. Now tell me what you’re holding back about all this that I should know.” The direct approach sometimes works with McElone. Sometimes it doesn’t, but you might as well give it a shot.

  “I’m not holding anything back,” she said. “What I’m doing is investigating the murder of Herman Fitzsimmons.” But she couldn’t just stop there. “At least.”

  “Aha! So you’ve figured out about the second person’s blood in the car!” So this was a double murder after all.

  McElone’s eyes iced up. “How do you know about that?” she grumbled. She didn’t even give me time to tell her I wouldn’t tell her. “Phyllis Coates. I should have figured.” You don’t get to be chief of detectives for nothing in Harbor Haven.

  “You know whose blood it is?” I asked. I didn’t see any utility in letting McElone stew on my getting information from my friend the reporter.

  “Not yet. It doesn’t match anybody in the system as far as the initial tests can tell us but in a couple of weeks we’ll get something more complete and that might show more. Now. About you leaving �
�”

  “Let’s go,” Paul said, floating toward the door. “The lieutenant is busy.”

  It’s one thing when a police detective tells you sarcastically that you’re wasting her time. It’s another when a ghost you’ve housed for years takes her side over yours. I was just a little irritated.

  Unable to take my frustration out on Paul without letting McElone know he was there I decided to do what I do best, which is to act as an annoyance and see how far that will take me. “So what about the cloth pouch you took out of the hole in my backyard and didn’t slip into an evidence bag?” I asked McElone. “How does that fit into all this?” I folded my arms and made sure it was clear I wasn’t leaving until I had an answer to that question.

  “Alison!” Paul admonished.

  McElone looked at me with a combination of anger and respect. She didn’t think I’d be good enough to notice something like that, and she was right. Paul had seen it and told me. But I could take credit if I wanted to, I figured.

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

  “Yes, you do. It was a little pouch, maybe velvet, just like the one that had the emerald in it up in my ceiling. You had it along with the other items you took out of the car and the crater it was buried in, but you didn’t put it in an evidence bag. Why didn’t you?”

  McElone stood up, which was a little scary, given how tall and strong she is. If I’d annoyed her enough she might lose control and hit me with the heaviest thing on her desk, which was probably a paper clip. And I had no doubt she could kill me with it if she wanted to. Paul, given his admiration for the lieutenant, might not even try to save me.

  “I think it’s time for you to leave,” she snarled. “If you think you can sit there and accuse me of stealing evidence.”

  I held up my hands as if she were pointing a gun at me. I have, alas, had guns pointed at me a number of times since I met my mostly dead friends, so I know the proper protocols. Luckily that was not the case in this instance. “I’m not suggesting anything like that,” I said. “I have absolutely no doubt that you are the most honest of police officers.”