Bones Behind the Wheel Read online

  “I haven’t hit anything I didn’t expect yet,” I told Vic.

  “That’s good, right?” he asked. Tony was the college graduate in the family.

  “Yes, it’s good.” I tried not to think of the kind of creatures that might inhabit such a space near the beach. I’m hardly an expert on the local ecosystem and could imagine everything from a garden snake to a lobster under my house. So far, though, nothing living had made its presence known.

  “If somebody was hiding something under there, I’m willing to bet it’s not too deep,” Tony said, no doubt trying to prevent his brother from asking me another question. “They’d want to get back in and get it out. In fact, they might have done that already.”

  But my fingers had found what they were looking for and I was already sorry I didn’t own a supply of the latex gloves McElone and her crew have on them all the time. I withdrew my hand quickly.

  Vic looked at my hand, then my face. “So can we move the fridge back now?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “We need to call the lieutenant. Again.” She was going to love this.

  “Why?” Tony asked. “Is there … somebody else down there?”

  “No,” I assured him. “But I think I found the gun that shot the guy in the car.”

  Chapter 27

  “You rent rooms here, right?” Lt. McElone asked. “Because I’m thinking it might be a better use of my time if I just stayed here until we figure this whole thing out.”

  I almost started to quote her a discounted rate when I realized the lieutenant, standing in my kitchen while Officer Lassen knelt on the floor with his latexed hand in the cutout, was exhibiting her sharp sense of humor. Her tone was so dry you could start a fire with it.

  “I didn’t think you’d want to hang around with all the ghosts in the house,” I said.

  McElone gave me a warning look. I thought I was being jocular; she thought I was disparaging her in front of a subordinate. It’s all a question of perspective, really. “What do we have there, officer?” she asked Lassen.

  “Ms. Kerby is right. It’s a gun, okay. It’s stuck between the beam and the insulation so it’s going to take a little time to get it out without contaminating the evidence.”

  That had an ominously familiar ring. “This means I can’t have my kitchen back yet, doesn’t it?” I asked McElone.

  “Go to the head of the class.” That was payback for the ghost comment. “This room is going to be sealed off for us to run thorough tests on the floor and the fixtures. There might be fingerprints or footprints. It could take some time.”

  “This is a thirty-year-old murder,” I said. “This is the coldest of cases.”

  McElone regarded me as she would any dimwitted person who was trying to play with the grownups. “And someone is going miles out of their way to put us off the track,” she said. “There’s something they don’t want us to find. I’m guessing whoever killed Herman Fitzsimmons is still alive and wants very badly to stay out of jail.”

  “You know anybody who doesn’t?” I muttered. I was still smarting from the head-of-the-class remark and simultaneously worried I’d actually acted too familiar with the lieutenant when another cop was in the room. That was bad protocol.

  Luckily Tony was there to jump in and divert the bullet. “So we finished our work in here just in time, huh lieutenant?”

  McElone’s attention was indeed redirected, but I’m guessing Tony wasn’t that happy about it. She looked at him with a suspicious look in her eye. “You don’t know where this hole in the floor came from?” she said, breaking one of Paul’s rules about not giving the person you’re interrogating an answer they can use.

  Paul didn’t comment on it because he pretty much worships McElone and was busy observing her procedure from a perch near the ceiling. It wasn’t like he could leave fingerprints or anything.

  “No clue.” Tony sounded completely relaxed. McElone had met him a number of times before when I was involved in something that demanded her attention. But everybody is a suspect until the case is solved, so past experience wasn’t going to buy him any special consideration. “We found it just like that when we moved the refrigerator out of the way.”

  Maxie, because she has perfect timing whenever she can possibly be inconvenient to me, floated down through the ceiling, for once not carrying anything the observant police officer might see drifting around in thin air. You have to be thankful for whatever you can manage around my house. I’m thinking of putting that in the brochures. “What’s she doing here?” Maxie pointed at McElone as if she were a rampaging Visigoth. I don’t think Maxie ever did anything seriously illegal in her life but she doesn’t have a high opinion of the police.

  “Alison found the murder weapon under the kitchen floor,” Paul explained. He thought he was being helpful, and was as giddy as a six-year-old on Christmas Eve. “The lieutenant is questioning the witnesses.” Nothing could please Paul more than that.

  “Why were you moving the refrigerator?” McElone asked.

  “The space looks open without it,” Maxie observed. That wasn’t helpful but I couldn’t glare my disagreement at her just now.

  Besides, I was wondering why McElone was asking what seemed a question with a fairly obvious answer. I was started to get a feeling about her intention and it wasn’t a good one. “They were doing work on the ceiling beam with the bullet in it,” I reminded the lieutenant. “So they had to move the fixtures out of the way to avoid damage.”

  McElone cocked an eyebrow. “I was asking him,” she said, gesturing toward Tony. One little remark and the woman turned vicious. Of course, I knew she was nervous about the ghosts even though she didn’t technically know they were in the room.

  “Of course,” Tony said. “Alison is right. We didn’t want any drywall or wood or other materials to fall from the ceiling onto anything breakable, so we moved everything we could to the other side of the room.”

  “And you didn’t notice the hole when you first moved the refrigerator out of the way?” McElone sounded skeptical. “You were working in this room for a few days; I saw you here.”

  “Took their time about it, too,” Maxie observed. “I could be half done with this room already.”

  “I can’t say for sure, Lieutenant,” Tony said. “We didn’t move the fridge until yesterday, but I can tell you the hole wasn’t there then and it was today.”

  “How do you account for that?”

  I wondered why Tony should account for that, but Lassen interrupted her before Tony could answer. “I’ve got it, lieutenant.” He stood up holding a pistol by the grip with two gloved fingers. He dropped it into an evidence bag and sealed it. “I’m guessing a thirty-eight. Six round capacity. Currently with one in the cylinder.”

  “Where’d that come from?” Maxie wanted to know. Served her right for missing a staff meeting.

  “It was discovered in the kitchen floor,” Paul said again.

  “Gives me all sorts of opportunities with the floor,” Maxie said. She sounded pleased in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  McElone walked to Lassen and examined the gun closely. “That seems about right, officer,” she said. Then she turned back in Tony’s direction. “You don’t have a carry license, do you?”

  Not a flicker on his face. “No, as a matter of fact I don’t. Because I don’t own a firearm.”

  I didn’t care for the direction this questioning was taking. “Lieutenant, you can’t possibly imagine that Tony killed Herman Fitzsimmons in the Eighties and is trying to cover his tracks, so can you give us an idea of what you’re driving at?”

  “I really don’t think I will, no,” she said. “My best guess is the person who did the shooting is dead or quite elderly, because it’s been more than thirty-five years since it happened. But that’s just a guess. In the meantime, I think I’ll leave Officer Lassen to finish his work. Can we go into another room to discuss this?” She gestured toward the kitchen door.

&nb
sp; I wasn’t in much of a mood to accommodate McElone at that point, but there was something in her voice that told me not to challenge her. That, and Paul, who said, “Don’t challenge her, Alison. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

  “Fine,” I said to one or both of them. “We can go into the library.”

  “Does it have a door?” McElone asked.

  That seemed like an odd question. “Sure. It was windows, too, and a rug on the floor. Come see for yourself.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Maxie said. “Give me some time in here.” Like she hadn’t spent the better part of four days just staring at my kitchen. But if it kept her out of our meeting in the library I had no objection.

  The lieutenant did not comment. She followed Tony, Vic and me through the door and into the hallway that leads to my library. Paul took his shortcut through the wall because he can.

  McElone was certainly interested in the library’s door; she closed it as soon as all of us—including Paul—were inside. “Now, let’s discuss exactly how that weapon could have made it into your house, your kitchen and the floor underneath,” she said to me. “Someone had enough time to come in, move your refrigerator, cut a hole in the floor, secure the gun and then move the refrigerator back into place.” She looked at Tony. “How long would it take to create a hole like that in the floor?”

  “I’m not sure he should answer that without an attorney present,” I said before Tony could answer. “His offering an opinion might just make you believe he’s the person who did it.”

  “I don’t mind,” Tony said.

  At the same time Paul was saying, “You’re not observing the situation, Alison.” But he stopped talking when Tony spoke.

  “What do you mean, you don’t mind?” I said. “She’s trying to make it look like you hid the gun in my floor.”

  “I didn’t, so I have nothing to worry about,” Tony said. He looked at McElone. “I think if you had the proper tool, like a Sawzall, it wouldn’t take more than ten minutes. It’s not a very sophisticated job from what I could see.”

  “How about moving the refrigerator?” the lieutenant asked.

  Vic shrugged. “People think it’s harder than it is,” he said. “They’re on wheels. This was easier because there wasn’t anything heavy in it. Just some soy milk and an orange.” Like that was relevant. I saw McElone give me an amused glance.

  “So that wouldn’t add much time to the work either,” she said to the two contractors.

  “No. You’re in and out in twenty minutes, tops, and probably less,” Tony said.

  McElone nodded. “Thank you. You guys can leave. I’m sure you have another job you need to get to.”

  Tony gave me a confused look as he and Vic hightailed it out of the library. McElone closed the door again after they left. “I don’t suspect your friend,” she said. “I never did.”

  “So what was all that about?” I asked.

  “Consider, Alison,” Paul said, hovering just to my right. “She wanted you out of that room and in here with the door closed. What does that tell you?” Paul has an annoying habit of leading me to information when he could just tell me and save time and aggravation.

  “It wasn’t about us,” I said to McElone, realizing what Paul had been driving at. “You were concerned about what Officer Lassen might hear. You wanted him to think you thought Paul had come in and planted the gun. Why would that matter to you?”

  McElone, as was becoming her habit, did not respond to the question. Much like Paul, it seemed she was leading me to finding my own answers. Apparently the two sleuths, while not sharing the same level of life, were conspiring to annoy me by making me be smart.

  “He’s the officer you were keeping the evidence from,” I said. “It wasn’t Sgt. Menendez at all, was it?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” McElone said, but there was a hint of a twinkle in her eye. Or it might have been the way the light from the window was hitting her. Knowing McElone, bet on the window. “Right now, what I want you to do is nothing. This is a police matter and you have no skin in the game.”

  “I had bones in my backyard,” I reminded her. “That’s something.”

  “They’re thirty-year-old bones. I already heard about you talking to Fitzsimmons’s widow. Keep away from my witnesses and let the police do our job.” McElone had given me this speech so many times (with the names changed) she might have been better off printing it on a card and just handing it to me when she needed it. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’ll leave this alone.”

  “So far I’ve had a car pulled out of the ground, bullets found in my kitchen ceiling, that same car moved in and out of my backyard at night, and a gun discovered in the floor under where my refrigerator should be, and you think I’m the one who’s making it about me?”

  “The lieutenant doesn’t have to know that we’re investigating,” Paul suggested, which is what Paul always says right before we investigate and McElone finds out. Except she doesn’t so much think of it as we investigating as she does me investigating. It’s a subtle difference but it has juice.

  “I’ll do my best to keep it out of your house,” McElone said. “But this is more dangerous than you think it is, and I have enough to think about without you stomping all over my investigation, okay?”

  That was a touching sentiment, certainly, but between my ghost friend and my husband it seemed unlikely I’d be able to stay on the sidelines. Still, the easiest way to get McElone to leave me alone is to agree with her. “You’re right,” I told her. “This is none of my business. But I do feel a little picked on, if the truth be told.” Sorry about that last phrase.

  “I get that, but nothing more is going to be centered around you or the house,” McElone said with a great deal of certainty in her voice. “You’re not in any danger as long as you let me keep this outside.”

  Officer Lassen, whatever his faults (and I had no idea what those might be), had an impeccable sense of timing. He knocked on the library door and opened it to stick his head inside. “I’ve finished with the firearm and the others are looking for fingerprints and signs of foot traffic,” he told McElone.

  “And that’s all that was there?” she asked.

  “As far as I can tell. Depends on how much you want me to tear up the floor to look. We don’t have the budget for a lot of this kind of equipment.”

  McElone looked at me and must have seen the panic flash across my face. “I don’t think we need to do any more excavation unless we get a clear indication there’s something else down there.” I put the lieutenant back on my Christmas card list. Which reminded me I’d better get a picture of Josh, Liss and me in the next couple of weeks; we didn’t have one for our cards yet.

  “I’ll head back then,” Lassen said. McElone nodded her permission and he withdrew from the library.

  And that, I am sorry to say, is when my cell phone buzzed.

  I didn’t recognize the number sending the text and almost deleted it as spam. But something made me glance, and then I was partially glad and partially sorry I did.

  If you know what’s good for you don’t call the police about the gun. Someone might be coming to see you.

  Make that mostly sorry.

  Chapter 28

  Well, the boat had sailed on me knowing what was good for me so I showed the text to McElone, who looked—as was her tradition—displeased.

  She immediately got out her cell phone and called someone at Harbor Haven police headquarters, asking for information on the phone number displayed on my screen. She waited for what seemed like a long time while my heart pounded. I don’t care much for threats but then, who does?

  “Okay,” McElone said into her phone and then she disconnected and stashed it in her pocket. “It’s what I suspected. A burner phone. We’ll probably never find out who bought it and if we do, it’ll have been thrown away or destroyed by then.”

  “You’ll forgive me if that doesn’t make me feel better,” I said. “What I’m w
orried about is that they warned me not to call you and I called you.”

  “First, that’s the right thing to do,” McElone answered. “A crime has been committed, even if it was a long time ago. And your duty as a citizen is to notify the authorities when you have information that could lead to solving that case.”

  I snorted. I’m not proud of it. “Thanks for the civics lesson, lieutenant. There are people out there who have killed at least one person and are now ticked off at me for disobeying orders I didn’t even get until after I’d already done the opposite of what they’d said. Now what about the idea that somebody might be coming here to hurt me or people I love?” I hadn’t even considered the guests. Getting one of them killed: Is that a bust or a boon for a haunted guesthouse? I didn’t want to find out.

  “I don’t think that’s a serious threat,” McElone said.

  “It’s not a funny threat.”

  “Easy, Alison,” Paul said. “Trust the lieutenant.”

  I forgot the situation for a moment because my stomach was doing the backstroke in my abdomen and it wasn’t because of the sandwich I’d eaten. I pivoted to face Paul, a foot and a half or so above the floor, and said, “Will you stop taking her side? People are coming after me!”

  McElone looked downright stricken. It always bothers her that there are ghosts around my house and I think it’s more because she doesn’t like being watched than anything dealing with the fact that they’re dead. If invisible live people were there she’d be just as—please pardon the expression—spooked as now, but that’s silly. There’s no such thing as invisible live people.

  She gathered herself, straightened her shoulders and looked at me. “Don’t. Do. That.”