N
   obody cried when Denny Johnson died. My dad, however, got a good laugh out of it. And being my dad, he couldn't wait to call me.
   "I have news."
   If the tone of his voice was a clue (it always was), somebody had done something incredibly stupid. My money might have been on one of my brothers. But even though dad wasn't beneath enjoying one of his kids breaking a leg trying to hang Christmas lights, he wouldn't have sounded that pleased. So I didn't say a word. I waited him out. Under different circumstances the wait might have been quite a bit longer. My dad is the only guy on the planet who calls you on the phone, then doesn't say anything.
   This wasn't one of those calls. This was the Denny call.
   "You know the expression 'somewhere a village is missing its idiot?'" Dad was just barely containing himself. "Well, we are officially in need of a new idiot. Your asshole uncle got blown up." Gales of muffled laughter came from the room behind him— most likely the kitchen.
   I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is where Maggie is shocked, stunned, and doesn't think she heard him right. Nope.
   "You're shitting me. What did he do?"
   "He was digging clams in the closed flats out there on Massacre Island and stuck his spade into an old mine." Dad was wheezing, now. His sentences were bubbling out in percolated chunks, chopped up by hysterical laughter. "Dumbass wouldn't be told. He-he-he ahhaaah— ass-ho-ole we-he-ent out there—" Dad took a big, long breath. "Dumbass went out there trying to make some money when they closed the Crow Point flats." He pushed it out in a rush, then started howling again.
   Two of my brothers were losing their minds close by. I was pretty sure I could make out Jackie and Joe.
   Most people would have been surprised. You had to know Denny Johnson. He was one of those guys who fell out of trees trying to cut off "just the top." He was one of those guys who couldn't quite explain how his car managed to catch fire in the driveway while he was putting a new battery in it. He was one of those guys who, when he said "watch this," you ran like hell for shelter. He was also a miserable son-of-a-bitch, which was why it was perfectly fine with me that the men in my family were wetting their boxers laughing. Because Denny was not a lovable asshole. I hated his guts and couldn't have been happier to hear he was finally rotting in hell. But my Grams would expect me for the funeral, and my mother would make my life hell if I skipped it.
   "I know those mines show up now and then, but I've never heard of one actually—"
   "I know!" Dad interrupted, his glee sparkling along the line. "The guys at the maritime museum in Scituate came down and everything. Lots of 'em have washed up, but only asshole-Denny has managed to poke one hard enough to blow it."
   Thus it was that I, Maggie Gallagher, had to ask my boss for time off to attend the funeral of what was left of my uncle Denny. My boss laughed pretty hard, too. Everybody at The Federal Bureau of Investigations' Behavioral Science Unit, in fact, got a big charge out of me needing to take personal time for a funeral, back home, for an asshole who was blown up by an antique, World War II harbor mine, on an old smuggler's island, while trying to steal clams.
   Yeah. Say it ten times fast, you could win a Buick. This kind of shit never happens to the guys on TV.

***

   I hate getting out of Logan, but the drive through Boston and southward has always been a pleasure, even in traffic. I'd rented a car for the week. Borrowing a vehicle from somebody in the family would not have been an issue... only it would have been. Everybody would have eagerly tossed me the keys to their truck or SUV (they were all trucks or SUVs). But every offer, while generous and in good spirits, would have been accompanied with bizarre instructions like "just punch the dash right where the red tape marks the spot if it starts smoking."
   I didn't go to school for a million years to get a job that paid well, only to be punching dashes on my week off.
   They'd ride my ass, anyway. My brothers would make comments about people being "too good" for old trucks. My father would ask if they were out of American-made models at the rental place. My mother would look wounded that I didn't want to borrow the same 1982 Blazer she'd offered my boyfriend on prom night. She'd looked wounded, then, too. And she'd deliberately whined about the expense of a limo to my grandmother, even though my date had paid for it.
   Oh yeah, this was going to be a fun week.
   I smirked as I thought it, though. It would be great to see my family. I hadn't come home for Christmas or Easter. Once upon a time I'd driven up to Heron's Harbor from DC a few times a year. But my career as a forensic psychologist had been in its infant stages, then. These days I was busy, traveling quite a lot to do workshops and lectures on language and literary forensics, or to promote my book, Slip of the Tongue: A Guide to Discovering Hidden Clues in Speech Patterns.
   Yeah, it's a stupid title. But it led to a promotion, a raise, and a lot of opportunities. It also meant I spent a lot less time around my family. I missed the days, not so long ago, when I would have cruised up in my own car, slept like the dead, and woken to dad frying an entire pound of bacon just because he could never get it to go back into the plastic envelope once it had been breached.
   I was coming up on the Braintree split; traffic was getting thick and sluggish. The Dropkick Murphys were screaming out of the speakers. Thank god for smart phones. I had my music, my schedule, my entire world, really, plopped into a cradle on the dash. Ken Casey's growl was interrupted by an incoming call.
   "Gallagher."
   "You got in safe." It was my boss, Leo Trevino.
   "I did. I'm on my way south. What's up?"
   "I'm giving you a heads-up, Maggie. I'm assuming you haven't seen a newspaper or the local news—"
   "What's going on, Leo?"
   "They found a few sets of remains on Massacre Island when they went in to look for more mines."
   Old harbor mines were a fact of life in New England. They survived World War II in scattered places, washing up every now and then. Local crews would go in, make sure they were dead, and remove them. Denny's accidental destruction of a mine that had, somehow, remained live was an anomaly. In fact, I'd been wondering about it since I'd started packing to come home.
   "What else are you not telling me?"
   I could see Leo's face in my mind as the silence hung there for a moment: prematurely gray, dark eyes in an olive-skinned face dominated by a strong, straight nose and dark brows.
   "I think you were right about the mine, Maggie. Those things are never still live. The ocean corrodes them. I think you may also have been right about a few other things. I'm asking you to let local authorities do their job. You're not on the clock. The guys in Boston will probably get a call. But you need to stay out of it."
   "Sets of remains. Bodies. Plural." It was all I could think to say. I'd known he was a pedophile. I'd wondered if he'd been a murderer. But bodies... plural...
   "Maggie?"
   "Yep."
   "I need you to listen to me. You're out of this, Maggie—"
   "Sorry, Leo, you're breaking up— I gotta go."
   I plucked the phone from the blue-tooth cradle and shut it off, tossing it onto the seat beside me. Since my dad's call yesterday, I'd had his greasy little face in my head: Denny Johnson. Twitchy, pinch-nosed, always smiling. Everybody liked Denny... at first. He was ingratiating, stupid— but eager to please, and he tried so hard. People accepted Denny in a "he's harmless" way, convinced he was only a danger to himself. People tended to look past him, not knowing why he made them uncomfortable. That had been his true power in the world: nobody did like or trust him, not after they got to know him. But nobody could really say why. So nobody looked at him for too long, feeling somehow guilty about their true feelings. Why should anyone feel a little creeped out by poor, stupid, clumsy Denny?
   Because he was a liar. Because he was a thief. Because he was a pedophile. Because he was a murderer.
   And this time I was going to prove it.
   I pulled off the highway in Hingham, grabbed an iced latte and a newspaper, and took a few minutes to pull it together. I'd need to swing by Walmart and pick up a cheap burner phone, too. Glancing down, I read the headline.
   BODIES FOUND ON MASSACRE ISLAND
      Local Man's Accidental Mine Death Now Ruled Suspicious
   Can I get a "no shit, Sherlock?"

©Chrissy Olinger    Coming this summer!