by Mike Ashley
“It’s true. We found his body in one of the coffins Gunther’s crew dug up.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s not.”
“Look here, Sam – you’re the last one I’d expect to believe in any sort of supernatural business. Maybe Earl Gunther’s crew added the body after they dug up the coffin.”
“I was there all the time, Randy, never more than a hundred feet away.”
“Do you think Spring Glen could face any sort of liability from the Mullins family?”
“I don’t know how much of a family there is, and he was clearly murdered. We just have to figure out how.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Freed told me as he hung up.
The next call came from Dalton Swan, advising me that he was calling an emergency meeting of the cemetery board for the following day. “We have to get to the bottom of this. The board has to issue a statement of some sort and we have to pick someone to fill his place.”
The latter didn’t seem that urgent to me, since we only met quarterly. “Whatever you say, Dalton. I have some hospital visits in the morning but after that I’m free till afternoon.”
“Let’s say eleven o’clock, then. I’ve spoken with Virginia and that time is good for her.”
“Fine.”
Mary Best came in as I hung up, returning from a late lunch. “What’s this business of two bodies in one coffin?” she asked immediately. “Is Spring Glen getting that crowded?”
“I suppose the news is all over town.”
She sat down at her reception desk. “All I know is, it’s another impossible murder with you right in the centre of things again.”
“Believe me, I didn’t plan it that way. Until now, being a cemetery trustee was about the easiest position I ever held.”
“The creek’s the problem there. Maybe they should have gone in with Shinn Corners after all.” The nearby town had wanted to develop a new regional cemetery serving both communities, but before anything could be decided the land was sold to a private college now under construction for a September opening.
“I never knew a thing about that till it was over,” I admitted. “I don’t know that anyone on the board did.”
Mary had a way of thinking things through to their basics. “Would Earl Gunther have any reason for killing Mullins?” she asked.
“I can’t imagine what it would be. The old man just sat there at the meetings, never said a word about Gunther or anyone else.”
“Still, you don’t think Gunther could be involved?”
“Maybe. But I don’t picture Mullins going out to the cemetery to meet him at the crack of dawn. And even if he did, how would Gunther have gotten the body into a coffin buried six feet deep in firm, undisturbed earth?”
“Let me think about that while I type up the bills,” she said. Marry was never one to admit defeat.
I waited around the hospital that afternoon until Doc Prouty completed the autopsy on old Hiram. There were no surprises. “Fully dressed except for collar and tie,” he said as he washed up in the autopsy room. “It was a large, deep wound that encompassed the chest and heart. Went in under the rib cage, slanting up.”
“What could make a wound like that? A broadsword?.
He chuckled. “Northmont isn’t quite that far behind the times. There must be a lot of gardening tools around at the cemetery. I suppose a hedge trimmer could have done it.”
“Can you estimate the time of death?”
“He’d eaten breakfast maybe an hour before he died.”
“Breakfast?”
“Looks like toast and scrambled eggs.”
“I was out there before nine.”
A shrug. “People the age of Mullins, living alone, sometimes eat breakfast at four in the morning. I’d say he could have been killed anywhere between five and nine a.m., judging by the body temperature and such.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
I was halfway out the door when he said, “One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“With a wound like this, there’s no way the killer could have moved the body without getting blood on his clothes.”
I phoned Sheriff Lens with the advance word on the autopsy results. I also told him about the blood. “Didn’t notice blood on Gunther or any of his workmen,” was his comment.
“Of course not. The killing couldn’t have happened while I was there.”
“Hiram Mullins drove a fancy Lincoln. Had one long as I can remember. We found it parked in his driveway.”
“Well?”
“How’d he get out to the cemetery, Doc? He sure didn’t walk at his age. Not in the dark.”
It was only a couple of miles, and certainly walkable, but I admitted it was unlikely for someone like Mullins. That meant he’d probably been driven to the spot by his killer. It had been someone he knew and trusted to get him out that early in the morning. Would Earl Gunther have called him? One of the board members?
I finished talking to the sheriff and told Mary she could go home. I stayed awhile longer, puzzling over the life and death of a man I’d barely known, a silent man I’d seen four times a year and barely nodded to. I wondered if that ignorance was his fault or mine.
“Dr Hawthorne?”
I looked up at the sound of my name and saw a young woman standing in the doorway. The light from the hall was at her back and it took me an instant to recognize Linda Gunther, Earl’s wife. “Can I help you?” I asked, certain the reason for her visit must be medical.
“I just wanted to speak with you about Earl, and about what happened this morning. I hear there’s a meeting—”
“Sit down. I was just closing for the day.”
“I know my husband has been in trouble with the cemetery board before. He was worried about losing his job. Now, with what happened this morning, he’s afraid of being arrested.”
“We have no reason to believe Earl is implicated in the killing. I was there the whole time the coffins were being disinterred. If he’d done anything unusual, I’d have noticed.”
“But some of the others have never liked him.”
“I don’t know that that’s true. He’s always done his job.”
“Is there anything I can do to help him?”
“Just tell the truth if Sheriff Lens has any questions. Did anything unusual happen this morning, for instance?”
“Nothing. Earl got up around seven and I fixed him breakfast. Then he walked over to the Brewster gravesite.”
“What did you two have for breakfast?”
“Juice, cereal, toast, coffee. He has the same thing every morning.”
“No eggs?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondered. You didn’t hear any unusual noises during the night or early morning?”
“No. Should I have?”
“If Hiram Mullins was murdered in the cemetery he might have screamed or cried out.”
“We didn’t hear anything.”
I remembered what Doc Prouty had said about the blood. “What was your husband wearing when he went out?”
“His work overalls, like always.”
“Did he have more than one pair?”
“He keeps an extra down at the tool shed.”
I tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Mrs Gunther. We’re having a special meeting of the cemetery board in the morning, but it’s not to take any action against your husband. We’ll be talking about a replacement for Mullins.”
“And Earl—?”
“—has nothing to worry about if he isn’t involved in the killing. He won’t be blamed just because it happened in the cemetery.”
Linda Gunther allowed herself a cautious smile. “Thank you, Dr Hawthorne. I appreciate that.”
After she’d gone I decided for the first time that she was a fairly attractive woman. Surely she could have done better than Earl Gunther for a husband, but then the ways of love and marriage are sometimes strange.
I
had two hospital patients to visit in the morning, both recovering nicely from mild heart attacks. Then I checked in with Mary at the office and told her I’d be driving out to the cemetery for the board meeting. “I thought that wasn’t till eleven o’clock,” she said.
“I want to get there early and nose around, especially in the tool shed.”
“Do you know how it was done?”
“Pure magic,” I told her with a grin.
When I arrived at Spring Glen the morning sun was filtering through the spring leaves, bathing the place in a soft, inviting glow. I was an hour early for the meeting and I was surprised to find I wasn’t the first to arrive. Virginia Taylor’s sporty convertible occupied one of the parking spaces, though she was nowhere in sight.
I avoided the red-brick superintendent’s house where Gunther and his wife lived and headed down the gently curving road toward the tool shed. Off in the distance I could see a couple of workmen removing some limbs from a tree ravaged by winter storms. The shed was unlocked, as it usually was when there were workmen about. I searched around among the tools for Earl’s extra pair of overalls but found nothing.
Just as I was about to give up my search I spotted a large pair of hedge trimmers that seemed to be hiding behind a piece of canvas. I pulled them out, not thinking about fingerprints, and examined the blades for bloodstains. They appeared to have been wiped clean, but near the juncture of the blades were rust-colored spots that would be worth examining. I wrapped them in an oily cloth, trying not to damage fingerprints any more than I already had.
I was leaving the shed with my find when I saw Virginia Taylor walking toward me. “What have you got there?”
“Hedge trimmers. Could be the murder weapon.”
“I always forget that you’re something of a detective.”
“Just an amateur.”
“I wanted to see the spot where Hiram’s body was found,” she explained. “They seem to have removed all the Brewster coffins now.”
“Did you know Hiram well? I only saw him at the meetings.”
“He handled some real-estate transactions for my family years ago. He was good at making deals.”
“A man of few words.”
She smiled. “He could keep his mouth shut. Sometimes that’s a valuable asset.”
“Did he still work?”
She shook her head. “He’s been retired for a year or so, ever since he put together the parcels of land for the new college in Shinn Corners.”
“He was probably an interesting man. I’m sorry I never got to know him better. I remember last summer’s party at Swan’s place. Even out there I never saw him without a stiff collar and tie.” It was still the era of highly starched detachable collars and men like Mullins and Swan wore them regularly. I preferred a shirt with an attached collar, as did younger men like Randy Freed.
We strolled back toward the small office building where the board held its meetings. A part-time secretary helped Gunther with the bookwork when she was needed, but most days he was there alone unless he was supervising a work crew. Today, as always, he gathered up his papers to leave us in privacy.
“Stay a few minutes, Earl,” I suggested. “We’ll want to talk with you about what happened.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” He stayed at his desk rather than join us at the board table. Almost at once two more cars pulled up outside and I saw that Swan and Freed were arriving.
The lawyer was first through the door, all business. “We’ve got a serious problem here, Gunther. I’m worried about the cemetery’s liability.”
Dalton Swan took his seat at the head of the table, running a hand through his thinning hair. “We’ll get to that later, Randy. Let’s everyone sit down and go over what we know. Have you been able to learn anything, Sam?”
“Not much,” I admitted. I ran through the autopsy report for them and then turned to Gunther. “Earl, you usually keep a clean set of overalls in the tool shed, don’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I was just looking for them. They’re not to be found. I did find this hedge trimmer, though, with what looks like traces of blood.”
Virginia Taylor made a face. “Sam thinks it could be the murder weapon.”
“It’s possible.”
Dalton Swan now shifted his gaze to the cemetery superintendent. “Isn’t that tool shed kept locked, Earl?”
“Sure, most of the time.”
“Was it locked night before last?”
“Well—” Gunther looked uneasy. “See, we had all this work to do in the morning, digging up those coffins for reburial. I thought some of the workmen might arrive early so I left the shed unlocked for them. Nobody dug up the graves before we got there, though. Doc saw that for himself.”
“That’s right,” I agreed reluctantly. “The coffins were still underground when I got there.”
“Do you have any idea how Mullins’s body could have gotten in there?” Swan asked.
“None. It’s like a miracle.”
“All right.” Swan waved him away. “Leave us alone for a few minutes.”
Earl left the office and walked across the driveway to his house.
“Who do you have in mind as Hiram’s replacement?” Virginia asked.
It was Randy Freed who answered. “I spoke to Dalton on the phone and made a suggestion. Milton Doyle is—”
“Not another lawyer!” Virginia exploded. “Cemeteries are about families, not lawsuits, for God’s sake! How about another woman?”
“We have a woman,” Swan answered quietly.
“Then how about two women? You men could still outvote us.”
“It’s worth considering,” I agreed. “I suggest we adjourn until after the funeral. In the meantime maybe we can come up with some good women nominees.”
Virginia Taylor gave me a smile of thanks and Swan agreed to adjourn until the following Monday. As we were leaving, Freed said, “It doesn’t seem the same without old Mullins.”
“He never said anything.”
“But he was there, right in that chair! With those popping eyes and that bull neck he always looked as if his collar was strangling him.”
Something occurred to me. “Randy, where would the records of real-estate transactions for the new college be kept?”
“Shinn Corners. At the courthouse.”
It was just a hunch, but it was worth a drive to Shinn Corners. On the way over I started putting the pieces together in my mind. There was a way it could have been done. I saw it clearly now. Sometimes killers set out to create impossible situations but that hadn’t been the case here. The killer had only wanted a safe way to dispose of the body, a way that would keep it hidden for another twenty years.
The courthouse was a big old building dating from the turn of the century with a stone fence already grown dark and weathered. In a big room I found maps and deeds, records stretching back a hundred years and longer. A girl in her late teens, a part-time clerk, came to my assistance at once. “The new college? We’re very excited about it. I’m already enrolled for September.”
“That’s great,” I said, meaning it. “I need to see the deeds on the various pieces of property that make up the college land. Would that be difficult?”
“No, not at all. It’s a matter of public record.”
There were so many individual parcels of land involved that the task seemed hopeless at first. Then I spotted Hiram Mullins’s name and started concentrating on the deals he’d handled. I turned over the page of one deed and found the name I’d been seeking. After that it was easy.
I phoned Mary at the office and told her to postpone my afternoon appointments till the following day. “That’s easy,” she said. “There’s only the Kane boy, and his mother says he’s feeling fine now. The spots are all gone.”
“Tell her to keep him out of school the rest of the week. He can go back on Monday.”
“Sheriff Lens has been looking for you.”
“I’ll ca
ll him.”
A moment later I had the sheriff’s familiar voice on the other end of the line. “Where are you, Doc?”
“Over in Shinn Corners, checking the real-estate transactions regarding the new college.”
“Why the college?” he wondered.
“It was the last deal Hiram Mullins worked on before his full retirement.”
“Find anything?”
“A motive, I think.”
“We’ve got something too. My deputies came up with a pair of bloodstained overalls. Earl Gunther admits they’re his. Had his initials inside.”
“Where were they found?”
“On the bank of the creek. Looks like Earl rolled them up and tossed them into the water, only they fell about a foot short. There’s a collar and tie with bloodstains, too. Remember, they were missing from Hiram’s body.”
“I remember. What are you going to do now?”
“Arrest Earl Gunther for the murder, of course. Those overalls are the proof we need.”
“Look, Sheriff, you can bring him in for questioning but don’t charge him yet. I’ll be at your office in an hour.”
I covered the back country roads in record time and arrived at the sheriffs office just as he was starting to question the cemetery superintendent. Linda Gunther was outside in the waiting room, looking nervous, and I tried to comfort her.
“Earl’s in trouble, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but he could be in lots worse trouble. Try to relax until we finish talking to him.”
Inside the office Sheriff Lens was talking with Gunther while a deputy made notes. “I never wore those overalls to kill Mullins,” the superintendent was saying. “Someone found them in the tool shed.”
“Come on, Earl – you expect us to believe that?”
“I’m innocent!” He turned to me for help. “You believe me, don’t you, Dr Hawthorne?”
I sat down across the table and chose my words carefully. “You didn’t kill Mullins, but you’re hardly innocent, Earl. You’d better tell us the whole truth if you expect to get out of this with your hide.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how the body got into the Brewster coffin.”
“I—”
“What you gettin’ at, Doc?” the sheriff asked.