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“Terrific. Grab a shovel and let’s go.”
“Hey, Melvin,” Simon Diggery yelled into the dark trailer. “We got some unrecorded graves to dig. Put your pants on and let’s go.”
Simon and Melvin followed us in a pickup that was in worse shape than their trailer. It was eaten up with cancerous rot, spewing black smoke, its tailgate held on with clothesline.
“It’s never gonna make Route 1,” Lula said. “I think I just saw the muffler fall off.”
I was praying that the truck would hold together long enough to get to the cemetery because I really didn’t want to put Melvin and Simon in the Buick.
We turned in to Sunshine Memorial Park and the truck was down to fifteen miles per hour, lurching and belching fire from the undercarriage. We made it to the unmarked graves, the truck gasped to a shuddering stop, and Simon and Melvin jumped out and got shovels. All excited. Ready to go.
“Jeez,” I said. “Sorry about your truck.”
“What about it?” Simon said.
“It sounded like there might be a mechanical problem.”
“It’s just tempermental,” Simon said. “It gets ornery when we go a distance. Where’s these graves you were talking about?”
“There are three of them in this area. Two on this side of the road and one on the other.” I showed him my file picture of Geoffrey Cubbin. “I’m looking for this guy. If you find h
im he’s mine, but I’ll give you his jewelry if he has any. The others are all yours.”
“Sounds fair,” Simon said. “Let’s get to work.”
“We’re going to hell for this,” Lula said. “This here’s sacrilegious or something. I’m pretty sure it’s a sin.”
Thirty minutes into the dig Simon yelled out that he’d found something.
“I think this might be your man,” he said. “Come take a look.”
“I’m not looking,” Lula said. “I get nightmares about these things. I get chased by boogeymen all the time. Sometimes they look like people I know.”
I walked over and forced myself to look beyond the pile of dirt Simon had accumulated. I caught a glimpse of a black body bag partially unzipped, and what was in the bag wasn’t in perfect shape.
“He’s still pretty good,” Simon said. “I’ve seen a lot worse. Sure he’s a little wormy and all, but you could see he’s got the right color hair. Some of that’s left. And I took a ring off him that had his initials on.”
“Good enough for me,” I said. “Zip him up and get him in my car.”
Simon and Melvin lugged the body bag to the Buick and shoved it into the trunk.
“He don’t all fit,” Simon said. “He’s not at that stage yet where he bends easy. Problem is as you can see he’s a little gassed up.”
“Maybe I could borrow your clothesline to hold the lid down,” I said to Simon.
Simon took the clothesline off his tailgate, the tailgate fell onto the road, and he picked it up and tossed it into the back of his truck.
Simon and Melvin tied the lid of my trunk to the bumper so Geoffrey Cubbin wouldn’t slide out onto the highway, and we were good to go. I gave Simon and Melvin each a twenty and they thanked me profusely and went back to digging.
“I have to say I admire your determination to get the job done,” Lula said when we were back on Route 1. “I’m freaked out about it all, but I gotta hand it to you, you got guts.”
“Hey,” I said. “No guts, no glory.”
“That’s so true,” Lula said. “I say that all the time. That’s practically my motto.”
I turned off Route 1 onto Olden and slowed down. “Keep your eye on Geoffrey in case he bounces out when we go over the railway tracks,” I said to Lula.
“He seems like he’s okay,” Lula said. “I think a lady just run her car up on a curb looking at him, but he’s holding tight.”
