I Still Dream About You: A Novel (25 page)

“Oh, all right. If you’re so scared, Robbie has a drawer full of surgical gloves; I’ll go get you a pair. Okay?”

“Well … if,” said Maggie, “and this is just a hypothetical if … but if we
were
to remove it, we would have to do it at night.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t move something like that in broad daylight.”

“Okay. Then let’s just move the whole trunk.”

“What? You and I can’t carry that trunk; it weighs a ton. And we certainly don’t want an accomplice.”

“You’re right; they always squeal in the end,” Brenda said. “We’ll just take it out of the trunk, wrap it in a blanket, and move it ourselves. We can do it.”

“But it just sounds … so illegal. I just don’t think I can.”

Brenda looked at her. “Wrecking ball?”

It was a persuasive argument. Maggie said, “All right … let’s just say that if we
were
to remove it, where we would move it to?”

Brenda thought for a moment. “How about your place?”

“My place! Where?”

“What about under your bed?”

“Brenda, do you
really
think I’m going to sleep with a skeleton under my bed? Besides, people are coming in and out all the time to show the unit, and Lupe cleans under the bed every week.”

“Hey, I know: we can put him in storage. Robbie and I have a storage bin over at Vestavia Mini-Storage, and she never goes in there; it’s mostly my stuff.”

“Are you sure she never goes in there?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay, say we do sell the house, what then? How are we going to explain how he … it … got all the way to Vestavia Mini-Storage … that he walked?”

“No. We get someone to bring the trunks over to storage, and then after the house sells, we put him back and say we just opened the trunks and found him.”

“Yes, but
why
did we take the trunks to storage in the first place?”

“Simple. We were clearing the house out for showings. Nobody’s going to question that.”

“No, I guess not,” Maggie said, beginning to be persuaded; she had stored things when she had been staging houses before. “But before we decide to do anything, I need to make a call first.”

Brenda handed her the phone, and Maggie dialed and closed her eyes while she waited, preparing herself.

“Hello, Mrs. Dalton, it’s Maggie Fortenberry. I’m so sorry to bother you, but my partner, Brenda, and I are over at the house, and it appears we don’t have all the keys … and I was wondering … do you happen to have a key to the attic?”

“The attic?” asked Mrs. Dalton.

“Yes, ma’am, on the fourth floor … up the little flight of stairs?”

There was a long silence.

“Oh! I know what you’re talking about. No, I’m sorry, I don’t have a key. We were never allowed up there. Mother said those stairs were off-limits to us, and back then, what Mother said went.”

“Ah … well, do you know who might have a key?”

“I don’t.”

“I see. So, you don’t know what’s up there?”

“No, I’m sorry, dear, I have no idea. As I said, when I was a child, what Mother said went. Not like how it is now; back then, when Mother said, ‘Eat your vegetables,’ you ate your vegetables.”

“Well, no problem, but thank you anyway.”

Maggie hung up and felt a little better. The last living resident of the house had no idea there was a dead man up in a trunk in the attic. That was some good news. The bad news was that if they were going to move it, they had to do it tonight. In her excitement over selling Crestview, she had called and made an appointment with the building inspector to come first thing in the morning, and now that Brenda had knocked the door open, he was sure to go in and look around. This was one of those times she was going to have to make a decision and pray it was the right one.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT, SCARED TO DEATH, MAGGIE DROVE OVER AND
honked twice. Brenda came out carrying a blanket, dressed completely in black, and when she got in the car, she handed Maggie a pair of surgical gloves. “Here, put these on.” Then she looked at Maggie and made a face. “Where did you get that pink coat?”

“It’s new.”

Brenda was surprised. Maggie usually had better taste in clothes than that, but she didn’t say anything. As they approached Crestview, Maggie turned off the headlights and drove up the driveway in the dark and parked. Inside, Brenda used her small flashlight to help them find their way back upstairs. When they got to the attic, they laid the blanket out on the floor, and Brenda reached inside the trunk and tried to pull the hanger out, but it was stuck. “It won’t come out. You’re going to have to help me.” Maggie closed her eyes and reached in and pushed aside some clothes to make more room, and it worked. But when Brenda jerked the hanger out of the trunk, they heard something drop.

Maggie asked, “What was that?”

“I don’t know, but we got him.” Brenda carefully laid the skeleton out on the blanket on the floor, and as she did, it made an eerie clacking noise. Maggie felt as if she might faint. Brenda then wrapped the
blanket around the skeleton, picked it up, and threw it over her shoulder, where it rattled with each step. When they got outside, Maggie opened the car door, and Brenda put the bundle in the backseat.

As they drove to Vestavia, Brenda turned around in her seat and checked it out with her flashlight to make sure it was all right. All of a sudden, she frantically started flashing the light all over the backseat and then yelled, “Oh, my God.”

“What?” said Maggie, almost driving the car into a lamppost.

“You’re not gonna like this—there’s a foot missing!”

“What?”

“There’s a foot missing. We lost a foot somewhere!”

“A foot?”

“Yes. The thing only has one foot.”

“Are you sure it’s not on the floor?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Turn around. We have to go back for it.”

Maggie did as she was told, and the next thing they heard was a siren, and then they saw the blue lights flashing behind them. Brenda stopped breathing. Maggie pulled to the curb.

“Good evening,” said the officer.

“Good evening,” said Maggie with a big smile. “Is there something wrong?”

“Ma’am, do you know you made an illegal U-turn back there?”

“I did? Oh, I’m so sorry. But I just remembered something I forgot and had to go back and get it, and I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing.”

“May I see your license and registration, please?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Have you had anything to drink tonight, ma’am?”

“No, sir. I never drink and drive.”

As the officer was examining her license, Maggie continued, and said in a matter-of-fact way, “And I’m sure you must be wondering why there’s a skeleton wearing a Scottish kilt in the backseat, but there is a perfectly good explanation.”

At that instant, Brenda thought about jumping out of the car and making a run for it, but she was now frozen in her seat and couldn’t move.

The officer looked at Maggie and said, “Excuse me?”

“I said, I’m sure you’re wondering about the skeleton wearing a Scottish kilt we have in the backseat, but there’s a perfectly good explanation.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes. The Scottish Society had its big Halloween bash last weekend, and my friend and I are on the decorating committee, and we were just returning it.”

The officer shined his light in the backseat and saw the skeleton’s head sticking out of the top of the blanket. “Is that thing real?”

Maggie laughed. “Well … it certainly looks real, doesn’t it? But no, it’s just plastic. One of the members is a chiropractor, and he lets us use it as a decoration every year, and my friend Brenda just noticed that a foot was missing, and I was going back to get it—that’s why I made that sudden turn back there. I had that foot on my mind and, again, I am so sorry.”

“Well, I’m going to let you off with a warning this time, but you ladies be a little more careful, okay?”

“I will, and thank you so much, Officer. I really appreciate all the good work you do. I know your job is not easy, is it?”

“No, ma’am … it’s not easy.”

“Well, thank you again, and have a good night.”

Usually, if he had stopped someone with a skeleton wrapped up in the backseat, he would have been a lot more suspicious, but he figured the story was so crazy, it had to be true. And besides, he hated to give such a pretty lady a ticket if he didn’t have to.

As they drove away, Brenda looked at Maggie with brand-new admiration. “You’ve got more nerve than God. How did you think up that story?”

“I don’t know, but never mind that; what about the foot?” Maggie asked.

“Forget the foot; we can find the foot in the morning, but … I swear, you deserve an Academy Award for that performance. Honey, Meryl Streep has nothing on you!”

Although she enjoyed the compliment, Maggie figured she had probably offered the officer far more information than she should
have. Still, she had seen too many episodes of
Cops
not to know that if you had something in your car you shouldn’t have, it was best to tell the police before they found it. Of course, she
had
lied to an officer of the law about it being plastic, but it had kept them out of jail. For the moment, at least.

They managed to get over to the storage bin without another mishap and stashed the skeleton behind a chest of drawers.

After Maggie dropped Brenda off, she couldn’t help but wonder about life. She was certainly not a philosopher by any means, but the fact that the very day she was planning to jump in the river was the exact same day she found out that the house she had loved all of her life was for sale was ironic, to say the least. Of course, finding that skeleton had certainly been a shock. She just hoped that she and Brenda were doing the right thing.

Now, the big question was, who
was
that dead man and what was he doing in the trunk? Who or what had killed him? And where in the world was his foot? What had they gotten themselves into? She hardly slept all night, worrying about the missing foot. And just when she had been sleeping so well, too.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, MAGGIE WAS BACK UP AT CRESTVIEW BY SEVEN A.M.
, looking for the foot, and the first place she looked was the bottom of the trunk, where she found a shoe, but no foot. Brenda arrived by a quarter to eight, and together they retraced their steps from the attic to the car and back again. They then looked all over the yard, but no luck. Maggie was worried, but Brenda said, “Look, as long as the foot’s not in the house, we’re all right. Besides, we don’t know for sure if he ever had one. Maybe he was put in there without a foot. And even if it did fall off in the yard, a dog has probably gotten it by now and already buried it. So, we have nothing to worry about.”

Maggie didn’t like the idea of a dog trotting around the neighborhood with a foot, but what could she do? She was relieved when the building inspector’s report was finished. Other than a few minor things, the house was declared to be in great shape. No mold, minimal termite damage, no corrosion in the pipes, no moisture in the walls of the basement.

“They don’t build them like they used to,” the inspector said.

Later that afternoon, after he left, Maggie had to run back down to the river and pick up all the things she had hidden. There was no telling how long it would be until the house sold, and she couldn’t
take a chance on anyone finding them. It took her two trips to drag all the things back to the car, and the mud ruined her brand-new Ferragamo shoes in the process. When she got back home, she remembered something else she had to do and called Dottie Figge and told her that the unit in her building she had thought would be for sale would not be available as soon as she had thought.

In keeping with Hazel’s method, Maggie wanted to put Crestview’s best face forward and get it sparkling clean and ready for next week’s showing; the last thing in the world she wanted was for it to linger on the market. Thanks to Mrs. Dalton, the gardens were in great shape; the ivy on the side of the house was green and healthy; the English box hedges that lined the driveway were strong and sturdy. All it really needed was a good cleaning. As she stood on the terrace, Maggie tried to imagine what it must have looked like when it was the only house on the mountain. She knew a Scotsman named Angus Crocker had built it in 1887 for his son, Edward, and that Edward had been lost at sea, but that was about all she knew.