Marja McGraw - Bogey Man 01 - Bogey Nights (22 page)

“No
. We’re at the restaurant. The dogs dug up a bone and it’s human.”

Not surprisingly, it was quiet for a moment while she digested what I told her.

“How do you know it’s a human bone? And where did they find it? Not in the basement, I hope. We didn’t miss something, did we?”

“As to who looked at the bone, I have an expert here and he took a look at it
. And we found it in the back yard. Can you come over here? Now?”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can
. Pamela, you realize that if there’s another body we’re going to have to do a thorough search of that property.”

I took a deep breath
. “I know. I sure am feeling like we made a big mistake when we bought this place.”

“If you hadn’t, someone would have gotten away with multiple murders.”

“There is that,” I said.

Chapter
Twenty-four

J
anet showed up in record time, and not long after her arrival the technicians pulled up to the curb.

Big D had convinced Sharon that she should probably stay out of the way
. She planted herself in the front yard and wouldn’t budge any farther away than that.

Once again I called Constance and asked her to pick Mikey up at school
.

“Of course I will, but why?” she asked.

“We found a bone at the restaurant
– out in the yard. It’s human.”

“Pamela, knowing you is better than watching a soap opera
. The darnedest things happen to you and Chris. I’m making that sound light, but I don’t mean it that way.”

“I know,
but I sure wish this would stop. All we want to do is open our restaurant, and instead of that we keep finding bodies.”

“Are there more than two?” Constance asked, with some kind of awe in her voice
. She did watch a lot of crime shows on TV, and now her friend, me, was involved in a real life crime drama.

“I sure hope not, but you know that this means the coppers are going to tear up the yard here
. We were going to hire someone to landscape anyway, but now it’s going to be a major undertaking.”

“Is that all you’re worried about?
I mean, Pamela, you’ve bought a piece of property where people have been
murdered
. It gives me the willies.”

“I know, but it’s easier to think about landscaping than deaths
. Besides, if it gives
you
the willies, what do you think it’ll do to our future customers? If we have any.”

“I see your point.”

Constance assured me she’d pick Mikey up on time and that she wouldn’t let him know what was going on.

I thought about that
. It would be in the newspapers, and once again the kids at school would have a field day with the news. I’d have to try to figure out a way to do some damage control before I received another call from Mikey’s teacher, Mrs. Stanhope. I decided the best thing to do would be to call her first and let her know what to expect. I wondered if she’d ever called my friend to come talk about what’s it’s like to be a private investigator. I figured she hadn’t since Mikey hadn’t mentioned it.

“Pamela,” Janet called, breaking me away from my thoughts, “would you come here, please?”

“Coming,” I replied.

Sharon started to follow me, but I gave her a look that said
don’t you dare
. She read my face and stayed in the front yard, moping and mumbling to herself.

Janet and I
walked to the backyard together. Chris was already there, talking to one of the techs, who seemed unable to take her eyes off of my husband. Sometimes I wished that Chris didn’t look like a famous actor. Life would be so much simpler – although I never would have met Chris if it weren’t for the resemblance. I’d met him at a costume party where he’d shown up, uninvited, as Bogey. At that time he actually wanted to be a P.I., and he’d been following a real private eye in the hopes of learning from her.

But I digress.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened?” Janet asked.

“The dogs dug up the bone and dropped it at my feet, almost like they were giving me a gift
. They weren’t excited though; they seemed upset. Whiney, and almost sad.”

I glanced at the techs and they were carefully digging in the spot where the dogs had found the
tibia – the leg bone.

“Have they found any other bones?” I asked.

“Yes.” Janet didn’t say more than the one word, and I didn’t ask questions.

I heard the sound
of the dogs scratching on the office door.

“I found one of the boarders,” Janet said
. “I gave the information to Chris.”

“Already?”
I was surprised that she’d run someone down so fast. “Who did you find?”

“A guy they called Smokey Joe
. I’ve already talked to him, briefly, on the phone. He’s expecting you two to contact him.”

“I thought he lived there
after
Blakely died.”

“He did, but it wasn’t long after
. I was talking to him when you called about finding the bone. He said he has some information about the boarding house.”

“Pamela,” C
hris said, “I think it might be a good idea to take the dogs home. They’ve had enough for one day, don’t you think?”

“You’re right
. And I can call Constance and tell her that she doesn’t have to pick Mikey up after all.”

“No, let her pick him up
. Ask her if she can keep him entertained for a while. I think we need to get busy and try to find the boarders. I’ll call the guy Janet found, and I think maybe you’d better go talk to Chance. I know I’ve got the guy’s information somewhere.” Chris dug through his pockets, looking for the note Janet had given him.

“She said she doesn’t want me to come until tomorrow.”

“So surprise her. She’s got to know more than she’s telling us. She was the landlord, and she
has
to know something. The stiff count is up to two. That tells me there was a lot more going on than we thought.”

“Do you think I should try to get John to meet me over there?” I asked
. “Maybe she’ll talk more with him around.”

“Uh uh
. I think she’ll dummy up if he’s there. She plays him like a fine-tuned fiddle, and she’ll try the pity party angle if he’s listening.
Poor little me, being badgered by bad ol’ Pamela
.”

“Actually, you could be right
. I won’t be badgering her though. I don’t know if she even
has
any information. I have a feeling that her life was all about her and no one else. She may have been oblivious to what was going on with the boarders.”

Janet turned to face us.
“I couldn’t help overhearing you two. If she was the landlord, she knows something. Trust me. It was a house, not a hotel. I’m sure she heard everything that went on in this place. The only question is, how good is her memory?”

“I think it’s better than she lets on,” Chris said.

“This case could come off the back burner now that we’ve found a second body. I hate to admit it, but we’re so short-staffed that I can still use your help. You two can do some of the leg work for me.” Janet’s eyes roved, moving from me and Chris to the tree, and to the hole in the ground. I could see that she was thinking, and her thoughts were probably jumbled. Too many things going on in her life would be my guess. High priority cases, cold case, and other cases taking precedence over the cold one – not to mention trying to juggle a dog and a boyfriend. And those were only the things I knew about.

“Can you just imagine the flack that’ll come down if I find a ninety-some-odd year old killer?
People will be sympathetic just because the guy is old.” She sighed and turned back to the digging.

“How much of the yard do you think they’ll rip up?” I asked.

“Most or all of it,” she said over her shoulder.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said
, more to myself than anyone else.

“Before we leave, Pamela has a proposition for you,” Chris said.

Janet turned to me with a questioning expression on her face.

“Chris and I were thinking that, if you want to, maybe you could start leaving Friday with us while you’re at work
. We can train her for you. Besides, she needs the socialization with other dogs.”

“You’d do that for me and Friday?”
Janet was obviously surprised.

“We would.”

“I think I might take you up on that, but let’s wait until we get this case out of the way.” She smiled. “At the very least, these bodies seem to have caused a friendship to form. Who woulda thought?”

***

Chris took the dogs home in his car and I drove over to Chance’s apartment. The door was closed and locked. I walked to the recreation room, but there were only a few people there playing poker.

“Has anyone seen Chance Murphy?” I asked.

“She’s gone out,” one elderly man answered.

“Do you know where?” I asked.

“Don’t know and don’t care,” a woman said. “That old bat can
stay
away as far as I’m concerned.”

I grabbed a chair from another table and pulled it over to the card players
. They had opinions and I wanted to hear them. Maybe Chance being gone would work to my advantage.

“Hi,” I said
. “Any possibility you could tell me a little about Chance?”

“Buy
-in is fifty cents,” the man on my right said.

“Buy
-in?”

“If you pay you can play, and we’ll talk to you
. No play, no talk.” This came from the lady who didn’t care if Chance ever came back. She was holding the cards, ready to deal, but waited to see if I was in or not.

I rooted through my purse and plunked two quarters on the table
. “By the way, my name is Pamela.”

“We play for pennies,
honey,” said the man on my right. He very slowly counted out fifty pennies and traded them for the quarters. “Now deal those cards, Shelly.”

And the game began.

Shelly, the elderly woman, dealt the cards as though she’d been doing it all her life.

I glanced at my hand
. Two queens. Good start. “I’ll take three,” I said, when it was my turn.

Shelly slapped three cards in front of me and pointed at Stuart, the man on my right
. He held up two fingers and this time she slammed the cards down.

“I win a lot,” Stuart said quietly, smiling behind his cards.

Glancing at my new cards, I discovered that I now had three queens. I let the first hand finish before asking questions. Stuart’s three fours beat my three queens because I didn’t let on that I had a good hand. I turned my cards face down and frowned like a loser should. I wanted to stay on the good side of these people.

“So whadda ya want to know about Fancy Shmancy Chancey?” Shelly asked.

“Guess I don’t need to ask what you think of her, huh?” I smiled at Shelly. She didn’t smile back.

“That woman has been a pain in
my posterior since she moved in. She thinks she’s better than the rest of us because she has money. I don’t know what she’s doin’ livin’ here if she’s so all-fired rich. I think she made it up.”

“She is a looker though,” Stuart said
. “If we were both a bit younger… ”

A second man at the table finally spoke up
. “I knew her in the day,” he said. “She was quite a doll in those days. The kinda woman that could make a man sing for his supper, not to mention a few other things.”

Shelly
lightly slapped his hand, knocking his cards on the floor. “Jim, you ol’ coot, you never told me you knew that woman before.”

“Well, I did,” he said, bending over to pick up his cards
. “She used to sing at a gin mill in the old days. Voice like an angel, but the personality of a rogue elephant.”

“I think you’v
e got her mixed up with someone else,” Stuart said.

“No, I don’t
. Her real name was Mildred, and when she began warblin’ at that place she started going by Chance.”

Shelly began to laugh
. “Mildred? Now that ain’t no high and mighty name for a songbird
or
a rich lady. Mildred. Huh.”

I knew I was on to something since he knew her given name
. He wasn’t making up a story.

“What else do you remember about her?” I asked, smiling at Jim.

“Oh, she ran a boarding house here in town. She was real selective about who she let live there though.” Jim looked up at the ceiling, as though seeing the past there. “She didn’t want no bums livin’ in her house. I do recollect one guy who got mad at her when she wouldn’t let him move in. Course, she mighta turned him down because she found out he was married.”

Stuart laughed at that one
. “Wives do tend to get in the way sometimes.”

“Does she remember you?” I asked.

Jim frowned. “I doubt it. I was kind of a… What do they call it? Oh yeah, I was a wallflower, in those days. I was kinda quiet. Women didn’t usually notice me, at least until I met my Helen, God rest her soul.”

“Do you remember how old she was when she sang at the bar?” I asked.

He glanced back up at the ceiling and rubbed his chin with his thumb and index finger. “Ohhh, I’d guess mebbe twenty to twenty-five. She was quite a looker back then, too. Still is, jus’ like ol’ Stuey says.”