Marja McGraw - Bogey Man 04 - Awkward Moments

A Bogey Man Mystery

by

Marja McGraw

AWKWARD MOMENTS, 2014, A Bogey Man Mystery, Copyright 2014 Marja McGraw

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews. For information, email address: 
[email protected]
.

 
           First Edition, 2014

 
           Cover Design by Marja McGraw,

Silhouette by Andy Kohut

Editing by Marja McGraw

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

In Memory of Betty Sullivan LaPierre who helped inspire this story.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Al and Dorothy Bodoin for their help and support, which seems neverending. Special thanks, and In Memory of, Andy Kohut, my inspiration for this book cover. I don’t want to forget Sugar and Murphy who grace the cover.

Awkward Moments

When you’re digging a hole to bury a body –

And you find another body already buried there.

Unknown

Chapter One

“Mother? I think you’d better come see this.”

I glanced up from a book I was reading because my eight-year-old son’s voice had a note of urgency to it
and he’d called me Mother, not Mom. I didn’t hear the tones mothers worry about, like panic or fear, although I did hear something akin to surprise. “What is it, Mikey?”

“I found something you need to see.” He was bending over a hole he’d dug in the dirt under an old oak tree.

“Coming.” I set the book down and stood.

By the time I walked across the yard to the tree, Mikey had settled himself on his stomach next to the hole and his arm was
dangling over the side. I could see dirt in his dark blond hair. How deep had he dug? He stood up with a leather bag in his hand.

“What
did you find?” I asked. Anything was possible when my son was involved.

“Look what I found.” The expression on his face was serious. He was biting his lip, not something Mikey did often
, and the small dimple on the right side of his face wasn’t in evidence.

I stopped next to the hole and peered into its depths. Mikey started out digging a hole in which to bury a dead bird he’d found, but apparently he’d
gotten carried away and dug fairly deep, about two feet, maybe a little more. I could see something off-white at the bottom of the hole and I bent over to get a better look.

“
Chris!
” I yelled. “
You’d better come out here.
”

My husband
ran out of the farmhouse after hearing my voice, realizing something was wrong. “What’s going on, Pamela?”

Our two
yellow Labrador Retrievers followed Chris out the door, and Mikey immediately dropped the bag he was holding and picked up the box with the dead bird to put it out of their reach. He set the box on the barbeque table, pushing it as far to the center as possible – as if that would stop Sherlock and Watson.

Chris stood over Mikey’s new hole in the ground and studied the contents. He glanced first at me, and then at Mikey.

“Is it what I think it is?” I asked.

Chris nodded before glancing at Mikey
and mumbling, “Talk about your awkward moments.”

“Ace, I think you’d better go in the house for a few minutes.” Chris’s nickname for Mikey was Ace, and it had caught on. Other than me,
most people called him Ace.

“But, Dad,
I
found it. Can’t I stay?”

I rolled my eyes, Chris sighed, Mikey bounced from foot to foot, and Sherlock whined. Watson sat down next to the hole and lowered her head.

I walked around the hole and placed my hand on Mikey’s back. “Honey, these are bones, and I don’t think they belong to someone’s pet. They look like human bones to me. I think you should probably go inside.”

“But Mooother, I’ve seen bones before. It’s not like I found a body or something.”

“It
is
a body,” Chris said.

“But I mean it’s not like it was just buried or something. It’s
bones
.”

“Mikey, don’t argue with your father. Go inside and we’ll let you know when you can come back out.” I understood Mikey’s argument, but his attitude was too blasé about finding
human remains. I wanted him to understand that a body is a body, whether it’s just been buried or it’s been in the ground for a long time.

After picking up the bag he’d found, our son stomped off toward the house, calling to the dogs to accompany him.

They ignored him. Sherlock seemed to be trying to figure out how to climb down into the hole, and Watson continued to sit with her head down.

“Why did he di
g so deep?” Chris asked.

“I don’t know. Little boys just seem to like to dig. He got carried away, I guess. What are we going to do?”

“We’ll have to call the police and make a report. I don’t believe this. We can’t even take a vacation without finding a body.”

Chris and I own an upscale restaurant called
Bogey Nights
. When renovating an old house into the restaurant, we’d discovered a body buried in the basement and we’d also found the killer. Prior to that, Chris had helped solve a couple of murders, which is how we met, but that’s a long story I won’t go into.

There was enough publicity to make the Bogey Man a well-known figure about town. My husband bears a striking resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, and he occasionally walks the walk and talks the Bogey talk. Thanks to all the publicity, people have asked Chris to solve cases for them, although we prefer not to call them cases.

We’re just ordinary people who live a not-so-ordinary life, try as we might. Somehow our son occasionally finds himself in the middle of things, and that’s not acceptable to me.

My first husband died of cancer at a young age and I’d been raising Mikey by myself when I met Chris. The two men in my life
had formed an instant bond, and Chris started adoption proceedings about a year after we married. This led to a well-deserved vacation – we were supposed to be celebrating the adoption. Instead, we were staring into a hole at human remains.

Sherlock tentatively dangled one of his front paws over the edge of the hole.

“No,” Chris said.

The dog
pulled back his paw, but watched the hole with longing.

“Pamela, why don’t you go inside and bring back the cell phone
? You might as well let Ace come outside, too. Like he said, this isn’t the first time he’s seen a body.”

“Well, really it is. I mean, we didn’t let him look at the bones we found at Bogey Nights.”

“You think he didn’t sneak a peek? Think again, Pamela. You know your son better than that.”

“Yes, I guess I do. Why do you always refer to him as
my
son when we’re talking about something like…? Oh, never mind.”

I turned on my heel and headed for the house, stopping on the porch steps.

Cupping my hands around my mouth, I called, “Mikey, come on outside and bring the cell phone with you.”

He was out the front door in a flash, cell phone in hand, and ran to the hole. I turned to follow him.

I heard Chris talking to him while I walked back to the hole.

“Now, Ace, you have to understand that someone
, a real person, was buried here. You have to remember that this was a man who lived and breathed and had a life, just like us. I don’t know how he ended up here, but he did.”

Mikey listened while studying the depths of the hole. “How do you know it was a man?”

“It’s just a guess, but probably a good one.”

“And why would that be your guess?” Mikey can be persistent sometimes.

“Because of the length of the bones we can see. They look too long to be a woman. Although we can’t see
all
of the bones, these look like the arm bones of a large man. And I think they’re thicker than the bones of a woman would be.”

“Why don’t you uncover the rest of the body?”

“We’ll leave that up to the police. That’s not our job. Now, let me ask you a question. Why did you dig so deep?”

“I don’t know.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I was sure Mikey really didn’t know why he’d dug such a deep hole for a very small bird.

Mikey handed Chris the cell phone, and my husband sat down at the barbeque table to make his call.
When the dispatcher answered, he explained who he was and where we were. “My son was digging a hole to bury a dead bird and we found a body buried in the yard. Apparently it’s been here a long time because it’s bones. I don’t even see any shreds of clothing or anything.”

He paused and listened.

“No, it’s not someone’s pet. I guarantee you, it’s a human being.” He glanced at Mikey before continuing, softly. “I can see part of the skull.”

He nodded, as though the person on the other end of the conversation could see him. “Okay, we’ll be watching for the officer.” He set the cell phone down on the table and sat quietly.

“What did they say?” I asked.

“Not much. Whoever I spoke to didn’t seem to feel a sense of urgency since what we found is
just bones
. Those were her words, not mine. Someone will be out soon.” Chris leaned his elbows on the table.

Oh, good grief! We were being as blasé as Mikey. I’d hate to think we were becoming accustomed to finding dead people. I shivered and took another look at the bones
, taking note of the partially exposed skull. I hadn’t noticed it before. Somehow a sense of sadness seemed to settle over me. The realization that this was a grave struck me and I sat down next to the hole. Watson looked me in the eye, knowingly, and lay down with her head on my lap.

Dogs seem to have a sense of death, and it can sadden them, too. Sherlock and Watson were actually the ones who’d found the body in the basement of the restaurant, and I recalled their angst at the time. I ran my hand gently down Watson’s head and back.

Sherlock had quieted down and he sat next to me, wanting his attention, too.

Mikey had become somber. Maybe reality had finally sunk in.

Chris noticed and came to the rescue. “Come on, Ace, let’s hit the bricks and go in the house until the coppers come. Somebody bit the dust, but for all we know this stiff could be in his honest-to-goodness grave. Maybe his ticker just quit tickin’.”

Mikey smiled and I knew Chris’s old time slang had put him at ease. “Dad, he’s not in a coffin.” Our son was smart, too.

“Good point.”

“I’ll fix lunch,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was eat, but maybe it would take our minds off of the
contents of the hole for a while.

H
earing the word
lunch
, the dogs perked up and followed us inside.