This Old Souse

by Mary Daheim

  “Is that for the Blands?” she asked.

  The driver, who was a good-looking black man of about thirty with close-cropped hair and a tidy mustache, nodded. “Excuse me, it’s kind of heavy. I’ll be right back with you.”

  With bated breath, Judith watched the brown-clad young man go up the path. She noticed he didn’t use the knocker, but leaned the parcel up against the wall on the opposite side of the door from the milk box. A moment later, he was back on the sidewalk.

  “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “Ah…do you have any supplies on the truck?” Judith inquired.

  “Sure,” the young man replied. “What do you need?”

  “Some forms—a half dozen will do,” Judith replied. “And a half dozen of the standard overnight letter-size envelopes.”

  The deliveryman nipped back inside the truck, then reappeared with the forms and envelopes. “Here you go. Anything else?”

  “Thanks. Actually, I do have a question. My name’s Judith, and I’m a…neighbor. That is, my uncle is a neighbor,” she amended for fear that the deliveryman might someday show up on the Heraldsgate Hill route. “Uncle Al is worried about the Blands. He heard they were very ill.”

  “I’m Kevin,” the deliveryman replied with an attractive smile. “Gosh, I wouldn’t know. I’ve been on this route almost four years, and I’ve never met them.”

  “Do you come by here often?” Judith queried.

  Kevin chuckled. “No. As a matter of fact, they get one delivery a year, always around this time. They’ve waived the signature, so they never have to come to the door. Frankly, I worried a bit about them last year. While I was driving along Moonfleet, I noticed that it took three or four days before the parcel was removed from the porch. But before I got around to checking on them, the next time I came by, it was gone. Maybe they’d been out of town.”

  “That’s kind of odd, though,” Judith commented. “Are the parcels always so big?”

  Kevin nodded. “Pretty much. They come from Austria.”

  “Really.” Judith tapped at her chin. “Are they from a business or a person?”

  Kevin made a face. “I can’t tell you that, Mrs….Judith.” He winked. “You’d have to find out for yourself.”

  “Yes,” she responded in a musing tone, “I suppose I would. Thank you, Kevin.”

  Judith waited for the UPS van to pull away before she went back to her car to slip the mailing supplies onto the floor on the passenger’s side. Hesitating only briefly, she walked back down the street. Gazing up at the house, she waited to see if anyone was watching from the windows. There was no sign of movement. No sign of life, she thought. That seemed more apt. In fact, all of Moonfleet Street seemed deserted. But, as Morty the Mailman and the others had mentioned, most of the homeowners worked.

  As a precaution, Judith decided to move her car. She drove it around the corner and backed up onto the dirt track just enough to keep the sidewalk clear. Then she walked around the corner and boldly approached the house. If she got caught, she’d have an excuse. Judith could invent a dozen pretexts on short notice.

  She reached the porch. The parcel was at least a yard long, two feet wide, and four inches in depth. It was wrapped in plain, heavy brown paper with plenty of strapping tape. Judith bent down to read the return address on the UPS shipping label.

  The sender’s handwriting was hard to decipher. Judith surmised that the cramped, somewhat shaky printing had been done by an older person. The name was Bachman; the place of origin was Kopfstein, Austria; the air bill was for second-day delivery, dated Monday, June 17; the signature was illegible.

  Judith was about to read the rest of the information when she was startled by a noise that seemed to come from inside the house. As fast as her hips would take her, she hurried down the path and moved out of sight behind the shrubbery next to the sidewalk.

  Judith searched for an opening in a big rhododendron bush. With any luck, she might be able to spot someone removing the parcel from the porch. At last, she managed to part some of the glossy leaves, allowing a silver-dollar-size view of the front door.

  The parcel was still there. A car went by on Moonfleet, but apparently the driver paid no attention to Judith. A second noise, very close by, gave her another start. A moment later, she saw a squirrel dart from under some blackberry vines and dash toward the house. The small gray animal climbed up a tall cedar tree and disappeared.

  After at least five more minutes, there was no activity on the porch. A car, a pickup truck, and a gas-company van drove along the street. Judith shifted from one foot to the other. She was about to give up and go back to the Subaru when she heard what sounded like a door being closed. Hastily, she again looked through the shrubbery. The parcel hadn’t budged. Could the sound have been made in the house? Maybe someone was coming to the porch. Another three minutes passed. Nothing happened.

  Discouraged, she gave up. Moving quickly beyond the path, she walked to the end of the block and turned the corner. Telling herself she hadn’t completely wasted her time, she got into her car and eased it down the dirt track and onto the street. At least she’d learned a few things about the residents of the Spanish house. And the yearly parcel from Austria was certainly intriguing.

  But heading back to Heraldsgate Hill, her mood shifted back into gloom. She should stop at Falstaff’s Grocery to shop for Mike and the boys. A cut-up fryer with extra drumsticks—Mac and Joe-Joe both loved drumsticks—along with fresh corn on the cob, an orange punch drink, and chocolate-chip ice cream were on her mental list. Those were all her grandsons’ favorites. She had potatoes on hand, but decided to get some special Yukon golds. And, since it was on the way, Toys-O’-Joy might have some items the boys would like. They were probably tired of the stash of playthings their grandparents kept for them at Hillside Manor.

  Judith had to drive around the block four times before a parking space opened up near the toy shop. Heraldsgate Hill had grown in population the past two decades, making for crowded streets and sidewalks in the commercial area. But twenty minutes and a hundred and fifteen dollars later, Judith was satisfied with her purchases of the primate zoo, the freight train, and the battery-run fire engine complete with siren and flashing red lights. With a small smile, she put the toys in the backseat and drove on to Falstaff’s, two and a half blocks away.

  It cost less but took almost as long to finish her shopping there. Kippi, the freckled courtesy clerk who had often helped Judith, carried the groceries to the car.

  “It’s going to rain again,” Kippi said with a frown. “As soon as school gets out, it always rains. Darn.”

  “But never hard,” Judith pointed out.

  “Right.” She smiled at Judith, revealing new braces on her teeth. “What do you think? Do I look too totally geekish?”

  “Of course not, Kippi,” Judith assured the girl. “And you’ll look downright gorgeous when you get the braces off.”

  They’d reached the Subaru. “There’s only three bags,” Kippi said. “Do you want them in the car or the trunk?”

  Judith considered. “I’ve got a bunch of toys for my grandsons in the car,” she said. “We’d better put them in the trunk.”

  “Sure.” Kippi waited for Judith to turn the key.

  “This lid’s a problem lately,” Judith remarked. “We’re getting it fixed. It’s at an age where little things go wrong with it every now and then.”

  “But not nearly as old as Mr. Flynn’s MG,” Kippi noted. “He really loves that car, doesn’t he?”

  “Oh, he does indeed,” Judith said, struggling a bit to open the back of the Subaru. “The problem is, it’s hard to get replacement—”

  The lid of the trunk sprang open with a labored creaking noise. Judith and Kippi both screamed.

  Someone was lying inside the trunk, curled up in an awkward manner. Kippi screamed again and dropped the grocery bags.

  Judith clapped a hand over her mouth and stared. There was blood by the man’s head,
not much, but just enough to scare the wits out of Judith. The man didn’t move. As she kept staring, she was overcome with a feeling of horror. She knew the person who was stuffed into her trunk. She recognized the blue jacket and the striped overalls.

  Vern Benson, the milkman, looked to Judith as if he were dead.

  FOUR

  JUDITH KNEW SHE shouldn’t tamper with evidence, but she slammed the trunk shut anyway. Kippi was shaking like a leaf, her plump body huddled over.

  “I’m calling 911,” Judith said, taking out her cell phone and putting a hand on the girl’s back. “You go back into the store and tell the front end manager what’s happened. After that, you may want to lie down in the employee break room.”

  Kippi looked up, tears in her blue eyes. “Do you know who that is?”

  “No. Yes.” Judith motioned for Kippi to go as she heard the 911 operator’s voice on the line. “I’d like to report an…accident. There’s a milkman in the trunk of my car. I’m parked at Falstaff’s—”

  “Excuse me,” the female voice interrupted. “Did you say there was a milkman in your trunk? What’s he doing?”

  “Nothing,” Judith gulped. “I think he’s dead.”

  There was a pause on the line. “Is this Mrs. Flynn?” the operator asked.

  “Well…yes,” Judith admitted. “And it’s not a joke. I—”

  “Of course it’s not a joke,” the operator broke in, sounding resigned. “You never joke about finding dead people. We’ll have someone there right away.”

  Judith felt like an idiot. Customers were coming out of the store; a couple of cars pulled into the lot. Not wanting to attract attention, she picked up the Falstaff bags and managed to fit them onto the backseat floor. So far, no one had noticed anything out of order. She was about to get into the driver’s seat to wait when Phil Erickson, one of the store managers, came striding out of the side entrance.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked, keeping his voice down. “Kippi said you’ve got a dead body in your trunk. Is it one of our customers?”

  Judith grimaced. “Of course not. It’s a milkman.”

  Phil’s face had gone red. “You mean one of our delivery guys?”

  “No,” Judith answered, beginning to feel indignant. “Not unless your milk deliverers also do residential routes.”

  “They don’t,” Phil said, looking relieved. “You didn’t run over this guy, did you?”

  “Of course not!” Judith glared at Phil.

  “Okay.” Phil sighed and put a hand on Judith’s arm. “I’m sorry. Like any business, we worry about all our people.”

  And your liability insurance, Judith thought. But her reaction was harsh. She could empathize with Phil after the death in her own kitchen sink. If the Flynns had been liable, they would have been sued into oblivion.

  “Really,” Judith said, “this has nothing to do with your store. I wish I could move my car out of your lot, but that’s impossible.”

  “You ought to know,” Phil retorted, then attempted a commiserating smile. “That is, with your husband being an ex-cop, and telling you all sorts of war stories.”

  “Yes.” Judith knew that Phil was avoiding mention of her own involvement in several homicides on Heraldsgate Hill. The manager wasn’t about to offend one of his best customers.

  The cops, in fact, were driving into the parking lot. They hadn’t turned on their siren or their lights. As Heraldsgate Hill grew in prestige and affluence, discretion had become a byword except for obvious emergencies or when drivers didn’t move their brand-new Beamers out of the way.

  The patrol officers were unknown to Judith. A husky dark-skinned male and a copper-haired female got out of the police car and walked tentatively toward Judith and Phil. So did two women who had just come out of the store and were staring with curious eyes.

  “Do you need me?” Phil whispered.

  “No,” Judith murmured. “Only for customer control.”

  “Got it,” Phil said, blocking the women’s passage. “Hi, there, Ms. Farris, Ms. Ryan. Nothing to see here, nothing to see here. By the way, did you sample the local strawberries in the kiosk? They just came in this morning.”

  “Mrs. Flynn?” the female officer inquired. “You reported a corpse. Where is it?”

  Fortunately, Phil had drawn the two women back toward the store. Judith noticed that there was an eager gleam in the young officer’s hazel eyes. Her first body. But not mine. The broad-shouldered Samoan didn’t look any older than his partner. He, too, seemed to be keeping a taut rein on his excitement.

  “In there,” Judith said, pointing to the trunk. “I know I shouldn’t have closed the lid, but I didn’t want to upset people coming through the parking lot. So many parents shop here with their children.”

  The Samoan officer, whose name tag read JASON PAOLUSOPO, looked curiously at Judith. “I see.”

  Judith wondered how much he saw. She caught a quick glimpse of the redhead’s name tag: COLLEEN O’-DONAHUE. She had her hands pressed to her sides, as if bracing herself. But she didn’t speak.

  “It may be hard to open,” Judith warned Jason. “We’ve had a problem with the trunk lately.”

  “I guess,” Jason said under his breath. But he was young and strong. The trunk opened on his first attempt.

  “Oh!” Colleen cried, clapping her hands to her cheeks. “It is a body! Ohmigod!”

  Seeing the young woman sway slightly, Judith put a steadying hand on her back. “It’s all right. There’s not much blood, at least as far as I can see. I didn’t touch anything, of course.”

  “Gosh.” Jason had removed his regulation cap and held a hand to his short black hair. “Shouldn’t we have medics here? I mean, maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he just passed out.”

  “Yes,” Judith said, “medics as well as firefighters should have been sent. I imagine a homicide unit has been dispatched, or soon will be. In fact,” she went on, hearing the rumble of a heavy vehicle coming along the avenue, “here come the firefighters now. If you have crime-scene tape, you’d better cordon the area off at once. We’re already drawing a bit of a crowd.”

  At least a half-dozen people, including two young children, had stopped to see what was going on. Taking a deep breath, Colleen walked over to them and asked that they move back. Jason apparently had gone to the squad car to get the tape.

  “Sorry,” one of the firefighters apologized as he jumped off the truck. “We had a heart attack victim on the other side of the hill. The medics should be here any minute. What’s going on?”

  Once again, Judith offered an explanation. She recognized two of the firefighters. They recognized her. After checking the body, one of them shook his head. “Man, how do you do it, Mrs. Flynn? Do you find them or do they find you?”

  Judith was spared an answer by the arrival of the medics. She also recognized one of them, a woman who had shown up at Hillside Manor when the movie producer had been killed two years earlier. It was no wonder that Jason and Colleen were staring at her. Judith figured that they must feel as if they were at some kind of macabre homicide reunion.

  “You’ve done this before?” Colleen whispered in awe.

  Judith nodded.

  “We haven’t,” Jason said. “This is our first. No wonder you’re so calm.”

  “I’m not, really,” Judith protested. “If you could see my insides, they’d look like boiling pasta. But I do know the drill. My husband’s a retired police detective.”

  “Wow,” said Jason.

  “Golly,” said Colleen.

  “Drat,” said Judith.

  As she’d predicted, an unmarked city car entered the parking lot, where minor chaos was erupting as customers tried to leave and newcomers were waved off. Phil reappeared, looking distressed.

  “How long will this take?” he asked one of the firefighters.

  “An hour, maybe two,” the young man replied. He explained to Phil that the car would be towed after the detectives and the crime-scene experts
checked it out. Photographs would have to be taken. Shoulders slumping, Phil went back inside.

  “We can give you a ride home when they’re finished here,” Jason offered.

  “Thanks,” Judith said, “but I really have to leave before then. Maybe they’ll let me go as soon as I answer some questions. By the way, I want to get my belongings out of the car. I hope that’s not a problem.”

  If only, Judith thought, Woodrow Price, Joe’s former partner, or one of the other detectives she knew would show up. But Woody and his wife, Sondra, were vacationing in Quebec. As the doors to the unmarked police car opened, she didn’t recognize either of the men who got out. One was tall and slender, forty or so, neatly dressed and moving with precision. The other was a little older, but short, pudgy, and his shoes didn’t match.

  They brushed past Judith and went straight to the Subaru. “What have we got here?” the taller man inquired in a brisk manner.

  “Deceased male, forties, Dairyland logo on back of jacket,” one of the medics replied. “I think he’s been dead for less than an hour, Glenn.”

  “We’ll let the ME decide that,” Glenn snapped. He turned to his partner. “Camera ready?”

  The other detective grunted a reply before producing the camera from under his rumpled raincoat. “Where the hell are the regular photographers?” he groused. “They get vacation—I don’t, not until August.”

  Glenn beckoned the patrol officers. “Who found the body?” he inquired.

  Jason pointed to Judith. “She did, sir.”

  Glenn’s cold gray eyes rested on Judith. “What’s your name?”

  “Judith Flynn,” she said.

  “Address?” He turned to his partner, who was clicking off pictures at a rapid rate. “Get out your notebook, Trash.”

  “Hold your water,” the man called Trash shot back. “I’m doing all the work. As usual.” Clicking off a few more pictures, he unfolded the camera strap and slung it over his left shoulder. “Okay, okay, let’s do it. What did you say your name was, lady?”