Coco Butternut Read online

  I explained a little more to him, and then I picked up my personal cell and called Chance.

  “They still there?” I asked.

  “They didn’t come out this end.”

  “You can go home now.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m out of coffee.”

  We thought if Marvin found the prosthetics and I said that Scanner was wearing that rig when we gave him Farmer’s money, it would be good enough and over with.

  But it wasn’t like that, and of course, thinking back on it, there was no reason it should be.

  Marvin came over late afternoon, and sat at the table finishing off coffee with me and Leonard, Chase and Brett.

  “We can’t go to the DA with what we got. We know the little bastard was in on it, probably his mother too, but we can’t prove it. The rig he had, all you can say is you think he was wearing it. You didn’t think that until you saw it in the storage building, and I can’t say you were there, as they would get your asses in trouble for breaking and entering, and I kind of encouraged that. I mean the fire is suspicious as it is, but it did get us in the shed and we did find the prosthetics, so it’s something. But, not enough. We didn’t even take the stuff or them into custody. We got a free look, and that helped, but that’s the end to it. Have to give me more, if you’re up for it, and frankly I don’t know what more is, but if you say I asked you for more, I’ll deny it.”

  “Like the way you didn’t ask us in the first place,” Leonard said.

  “Just like that,” Marvin said. “Here’s the thing, this isn’t really your problem, and you could let it go. It’s really my job to figure this out.”

  “Don’t have sympathy for Farmer,” Leonard said, “but I don’t like us being saps in all this.”

  “I don’t like we were handing Scanner money and in the meantime, Farmer was getting his brains knocked out, and right now, I’m figuring Jackie did that herself,” Brett said. “If it was Scanner at the graveyard, then Jackie was most likely the muscle. She looked stout enough to swing a tire iron or a bat and make it count.”

  “You got a bother about it all, then you got to come up with more proof,” Marvin said. “And let me tell you, that setting fire to Scanner’s trailer was an iffy idea. That could have gone way wrong.”

  “But it didn’t,” Leonard said.

  “Still, try and play it a little safer, okay? We had Jackie and Scanner come in and fill out some papers, you know, and the general consensus was that juveniles broke into the trailer and set the fire.”

  “That isn’t far off,” Brett said.

  “Ha, ha,” I said.

  “Wow,” Chance said. “Meeting people in a graveyard to swap money for a corpse. Murder. Arson. Bad language from my father and uncle, a stakeout. I certainly have been living a sheltered life. I like this one better.”

  After Marvin left we mumbled about this and that for a bit, but didn’t come up with anything constructive, but after we poured ourselves more coffee, Chance said, “I got an idea. It might not be a good one, but do you want to hear it?”

  “Right now even a bad idea might sound good,” Leonard said.

  “In our case, they usually do,” I said.

  Leonard said, “Wait a sec,” got up and pulled out the stash of vanilla cookies we keep for him in the cabinet and put them on the table. He opened the bag and stacked a half-dozen cookies in front of him and started dipping one in his coffee. “All right, I’m ready,” he said.

  “Okay,” Chance said. “From what’s been said, it appears Jackie is worried about someone digging up that other body in the graveyard. She told the law they had to get a warrant. Right so far?”

  We agreed she was.

  “She may not be hiding anything. That might just be good business, trying to keep the graves intact. She wouldn’t want her customers to think that whoever, animal or human buried there, will be excavated at the drop of a hat, so she makes a stand. But if she doesn’t want them digging graves up for another reason, could that reason be she knows there’s something in the other grave, the one with the boyfriend in it, that might somehow tie her to the murders?”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “That’s where my plan falters a bit,” Chance said. “I don’t know. But that could be it, couldn’t it? And if we got to the grave before she did, that would be good, because if there’s something there, she’ll try and get to it before a court order goes through. She might fight it off a few days with a good lawyer, but she’s got to know in the long run the law is going to win out on this one. Those graves are going to be investigated. She may have dug up the one she needs to check already, but you know what I’m thinking is she’ll wait until late tonight so as not to be so conspicuous. She’s stirred up by today’s events, and by the law’s request to dig up some graves, so she knows that fire wasn’t merely an accident. She’s bound to suspect the law did it so they could snoop. She knows they want in that graveyard bad, and she’s got to figure that court order is coming soon, so that means she’s got to get to it and hide whatever evidence she believes might be in the coffin. She would most likely want to go there late at night to make her move, dig the grave up when fewer people might notice. What we need to do is beat her at her own game.”

  “Well,” Brett said, “it’s some kind of plan.”

  We didn’t go there when it was fresh dark, but we tried not to wait too long. When the sun was solid set and the stars were high and bright, we drove out there.

  Brett was the only one of us that could drive a backhoe, as she had worked for the street department when she was young for a summer, and claimed she could make that machine purr, shit, and call other machines bad names. I was her partner in the venture.

  Leonard and Chance went in Leonard’s truck, parked at the same place where Chance had waited to keep a look out before. Since the lot was empty, they parked close to the building there to look as if the truck might belong to the owner.

  They had a good view of the turn off to the cemetery as long as Jackie or Scanner came from that direction. It seemed the most logical path for them to take. It was the most direct route.

  Driving past the cemetery, me and Brett scoped it out. There were lights in the front building and behind that was the dog graveyard, and beyond that was a long building where the backhoe should be and there was a tall booger light on a pole.

  We parked down a ways and walked back. I had a crowbar in my hand and a flashlight in my coat pocket. Brett had a flashlight in her hand, one of those big heavy cop things, but had yet to turn it on. We could see clearly enough. It was a bright starry night and the moon was near full. The air was cool and crisp as a starched collar and the air smelled like pines and it tingled in the nose and throat. As always, doing something like this, I was nervous and excited at the same time. In the sky bats were flying, chasing insects. You could see the bats well enough, and if you looked hard you could see the insects flying in the celestial light with the bats swooping down on them.

  When we got to the cemetery the gate was locked. It was one of those tall, iron bar things with the bars pointed at the top, and there was a big lock where the gates closed and hasped together. I got out my lock picking kit and couldn’t do shit with it. Brett took the kit and went to work. It took awhile, but she got it. We swung the gate open slightly with a haunted house creak and slipped inside and pulled it closed with the same creaking sound. It locked when it snapped together.

  The wall around the cemetery was made of worn stone and mortar. It wasn’t real high, but it was damn sure solid. It had most likely been built by the WPA during the Great Depression. Where we were had certainly contained something other than a cemetery back then. I think I had heard somewhere about there had once been a school in this location, but it was torn down in the sixties and eventually the acreage became the cemetery.

  We eased along the drive, past the front building and the outside light that was on a large telephone pole, and then we started across the graveyard towar
d the long, high, storage building.

  It wasn’t that long a trek, but out there in the bright celestial light it seemed a long ways. I felt as if I were on a hike to Antarctica. You could see us easy from the road, and in fact maybe from the moon.

  “If the keys aren’t with the backhoe,” Brett said, “we get a shovel and I can watch you dig.”

  “Hoping for keys,” I said.

  The shed had a padlock on the great doors that were chained together. Brett made quick work of it with the lock picking kit, and then I pushed the doors open and we went inside. Brett took her light out of her pocket where she had tucked it, and turned it on, flashed it around the shed. It was really more a warehouse than a shed. The roof was tall and the room was wide. On the walls we could see all manner of gardening tools hanging, but the thing that interested us was what was in the center of the building, resting on a concrete floor like a dinosaur. A yellow backhoe, and an orange bulldozer, both of good size. They had cabins surrounded by glass. I guess if you’re going to scrape ground and dig holes, you needed the right equipment. More interesting was a big white truck, and even without its spots, I felt certain that was the truck I had pulled the coffin out of. I went over and looked at it and was even more convinced.

  “You know we are breaking so many laws right now,” I said.

  “Yep,” Brett said. “I have become as gangster as you.”

  We looked around a bit and I took some photos on my phone. They might not be legal photos in a court of law, but they would certainly show Marvin that mother or son owned a big white truck and the camper in their backyard would conveniently snap together over it.

  Brett climbed up on the backhoe, slid back the glass door and looked inside.

  She called down to me. “Key’s here.”

  “And you’re sure you can drive it?”

  “I said I could.” She was already settling herself onto the seat.

  “I know, but that’s been a long time ago.”

  “It’s like giving a blow job, you just don’t forget something like that.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “By the time you and I got together I had perfected the art.”

  “Ouch again.”

  “It’s not like I was doing it for pay.”

  “Ouch even again.”

  “I’m not making this any better am I?”

  “Not much.”

  Brett turned the key and the backhoe growled to life.

  “Climb on up,” she said.

  The backhoe had a lot of controls. Brett buckled her seat belt. That made me nervous. I didn’t have a seatbelt. Why did a backhoe have a seatbelt?

  Brett released the parking brake and shifted the transmission into forward. The bucket was already up. She drove us through the open doors and the backhoe rumbled us out into the cemetery.

  It seemed obvious to us that if there was another body out there under a dog, it would most likely be next to the grave of Coco Butternut. If Farmer had to get rid of the boyfriend too, it seemed natural and simple that he would do them side by side and be done with it.

  Brett stopped the backhoe, said, “Which grave are we digging up, one on the right or left of Coco Butternut?”

  “It’s a crap shoot,” I said. “Go for either.”

  Brett chose the one on the left and started working the scoop. She had a delicate touch. I knew that already, but it was interesting to see it applied to a backhoe. She dug down a few scoops, and we were already there. I could see a coffin.

  I climbed down with my crowbar and jumped into the grave and stuck the bar under the coffin lid and pried. It came open easy. There was a dry, musty smell. I could see right away that the dog inside was resting on the bottom of the coffin. I climbed out of the hole and stood there, shaking my head at Brett.

  She went back to work. Two scoops and she scraped the top of the coffin in the other grave. I got down in that grave and did what I had done before. The dog lay high in the coffin and I used the tip of the crowbar to move the false bottom back. There was a human corpse underneath.

  I looked up at Brett and nodded.

  No sooner had I done that than I heard a roaring and looked toward the sound and saw the bulldozer come out of the warehouse at the end of the cemetery.

  “Shit,” I said.

  Brett leaned out the side of the open backhoe, said, “You better come up.”

  I clamored back inside the backhoe.

  “Looks like our watchdogs failed,” Brett said.

  “Whoever it is, they came in another way,” I said. “Leonard and Chase wouldn’t have missed them.”

  “I don’t intend to fight a bulldozer,” Brett said.

  I figured the bulldozer driver had come in to do what we thought they might. Dig up the grave, but we had beat them to it, and then they had fooled us by coming earlier than we expected. That’s how it goes. You can’t assume shit.

  Brett whipped the backhoe around and we started heading for the closed and locked gate. Bulldozers run faster than I thought they might, and it was closing on us. As we came closer to the gate, Brett said, “Hitch up your nuts. We’re going through.”

  “The gate? Really?”

  “Easier than the wall.”

  She gave the backhoe all the juice she could, and away we went. She used the bucket like a knight’s lance. It hit the gate and there was a noise like someone skinning a cat, and then the gate buckled a little, but held. We were pushing so hard at it the tires began to smoke. I looked back.

  The bulldozer was coming fast, whirling onto the drive, and inside its glass cabin I could see Jackie. She had a look on her face that I can only describe as goddamn unpleasant.

  The back of the backhoe lifted up and the front tires smoked like a bonfire. Brett changed gears, and the rear end settled. She went at it again. The gate groaned like someone who had just had their knee capped, and then it snapped open. Brett gunned it through, but the bulldozer was as tight on our ass as a hemorrhoid. It hit our rear end and pushed us through and off the drive and onto a patch of grass beside the main road.

  Brett turned the backhoe deftly. We bumbled across the patch of grass and then we were shooting onto the road, the dozer banging against the back of the backhoe as we did.

  Another move by Brett, and we swung wide and to the right. The dozer was surprisingly dexterous in its moves, but not as swift as the backhoe, and with that maneuver we got away from the dozer, at least by a few paces.

  We raced away, but the dozer was back on track and coming fast. There was a crack in our windshield where it had hit the gate and cold wind came through the crack to add to our misery. I looked back.

  Behind us, the dozer dropped its blade so that it skimmed over the road. I knew what that meant. Jackie was going to try and scoop us from the bottom and flip us. Seemed like a good plan that I didn’t want any part of. I felt a turd loosen inside of me and thought it might be surfacing soon.

  Down the road toward us came a pickup. It was Leonard and Chase. I didn’t know why they were coming, but they were. Leonard’s truck was bent up in front and I could see there was a third person in the cab with them.

  Chance was driving the pickup. Leonard was sitting on the passenger side, and then they were so close I could see who was in the middle. Scanner. It wasn’t so much that I could make out his features in detail, but I could see him well enough to know it was him. They were heading right for us at what one could politely call an accelerated rate of speed, and we were on their side of the road. So, there we were, the backhoe flying along as fast as it could go, the bulldozer right on top of us, and Leonard’s pickup heading straight for us. It was like me and Brett were about to be made into a sandwich between them, and then—

  I hurt a little.

  I could smell gasoline.

  I woke up in a dry ditch and I could see the stars through the boughs of a pine that draped over me. I couldn’t remember how I got there or why I was there, and I don’t know if I even knew who I was for a
moment without checking my driver’s license. That’s when I realized I was lying in a ditch. I didn’t normally lie in a ditch. Why was I in a ditch?

  And then I thought about Brett, and that got me moving, slowly, and then I thought about Chance and Leonard, Jackie and that goddamn bulldozer, and by then I had rolled over and was pushing up with my hands and climbing up out of that ditch. It wasn’t a deep ditch, but I felt so damn weak it might as well have been me scaling Mt. Everest.

  Chase was driving right at us, and then she veered, and when she did, Brett tried to take the backhoe to the right, but the bulldozer climbed up our butt, and the backhoe did a crazy slide and there was the sound of metal against metal and the sound of our machine blowing a tire; it was like some kind of weird music for the damned, and away the backhoe went, spinning.

  When it came to a stop, the dozer hit the machine in the rear, crunching it a little, since it was pushed up against that brick wall that ran for a long ways at the edge of the cemetery. We really hadn’t gotten that far.

  I remembered the dozer blade being lifted and being smashed down on the back of the backhoe like a giant fist, and then I remember the glass cab shattering and me flying. My moment as Superman, but the landing was my moment as a mortal. Next thing I knew was I was waking up in that ditch. As I climbed out and stood on the road, I moved my parts to make sure they were all there, and they seemed to be. Nothing fell off. I could feel blood seeping at the knees of my pants and my hands were scraped and so was my face.

  The dozer had the backhoe pushed across the road and up against the long stone fence, and it was pushing it and crushing it, and I could see Brett still in it, slumped over in the shattered cab.

  I tried to dart toward the dozer, found I wasn’t darting too well. In fact I was limping like I had one foot in a bucket of solidified concrete. I saw the crowbar I had been holding lying in the road and picked it up.

  I glanced right and saw Leonard’s pickup was turned over in the same ditch I had been lying in, only a little farther up the road. Gasoline was leaking out of the busted gas tank, and my heart sank. Then I saw Chance slip out of an open window, and behind her came Leonard. They were staggering about like drunks, but they were all right. That’s all I needed to know. I didn’t give a flying damn about Scanner. I came up the back of the dozer and scrambled up it as it eased back for another run at the backhoe. My pain seemed to go away. I was on top of the dozer and I could see Jackie. She had her back to me and she was shifting gears and the dozer was lurching forward.