I Still Dream About You

The Big Caper

LATER 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.