Dead Body Language

by Penny Warner

  Two, I’d hired his troubled son to help out around my office, and Sheriff Mercer appreciated the respite from his single-parenting duties. Three, on occasion I brought dinner to the station and we shared a pastie or corned beef sandwich while we talked about our favorite cop shows, mystery writers, or hockey teams—“How about them Sharks!”

  And four, we both had severe computer fixations. We shared our latest software and sent jokes back and forth via E-mail messages. I sent him stupid criminal stories and he sent me stupid newspaper headlines. It was a sort of competition. He was ahead, three to one.

  “I called your name. Guess you didn’t hear me.” I poured orange juice into his chipped “Fifty Isn’t Old If You’re A Tree” coffee mug. The caffeine residue inside the cup turned the orange juice the shade of burnt sienna.

  “I was in the W.C.” He lifted some papers from his desk, then catching a glimpse of himself in the window reflection, he patted his chin and neck. “Do you think I’m getting, you know, kinda fat?”

  “Naw. You look good. Especially on TV—I saw you.”

  “Guess you heard the news, huh, along with everyone else in Calaveras County?”

  I shrugged. I’d learned not to be too eager when trying to pull information out of a mouth that’s supposed to stay shut. I took the “who-cares” approach. I’m sure he saw right through it, but he didn’t let on. It’s a game we play.

  “It’s certainly a shock,” I agreed. “I can’t believe Lacy Penzance is dead. I just saw her yesterday. So what happened?”

  “Mickey videotaped the broadcast. I looked kinda puffy around the eyes.” He tapped the puffiness.

  “No. You came across great. Really natural and poised. Very professional.” Truthfully, I hadn’t noticed how he’d come across. I’d only caught the ending. But he’d been complaining about feeling old lately, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to tell him what he needed to hear.

  The sheriff, in his midfifties, was basically trim except for the impending middle-aged spread and the beginning of a slumped and burdened set of shoulders. There was a sprinkling of gray around the ears and in the tangled eyebrows. His smooth, even mouth was easy to read when it wasn’t smoking, chewing gum, or eating the muffin he had just popped in.

  “Gotta cut down on these muffins. My cholesterol’s up again.” He sat down at his desk, grabbed a handful of papers in one hand, and finished the rest of the muffin without even looking at it.

  The sheriff is not your typical stereotype of a macho law enforcement officer. He’s patient, caring, hardworking, fair, and even a little neurotic about his job, as well as his appearance, and his personal life. He buys self-help books to help him deal with his divorce. He sees a therapist to help him work on his relationship with his son. And he attends singles events at the community college, hoping to meet the right woman.

  His only real flaw is a bad habit of abbreviating words. When he shortens a word or uses only the initials, I really have to struggle.

  “You look ten pounds lighter on TV, really.”

  He tried not to smile. It was time to push the fat aside and chew on something solid. I sat down in the chair opposite him and leaned back, my hands folded across my chest.

  “Sheriff, what happened to Lacy Penzance?”

  “Don’t know exactly. Kind of odd circumstances. Won’t know anything until we hear from the M.E. Don’t tell me you’re thinking about writing something for your newspaper. This isn’t your usual stuff.”

  I fluffed my hair, attempting to appear nonchalant. “Maybe not. But I’m getting tired of reporting the occasional untimely amphibian death. I thought I might look into it, see if I can give it a personal slant. She was well thought of in this town, wasn’t she?”

  Sheriff Mercer shrugged, took another sip of orange juice, a bite of a second muffin, and talked with the wad of food shoved to one side of his mouth. He was nearly incoherent, but I turned up my hearing aid and caught the main thrust. The trouble with being deaf is you have to keep your eyes on the speaker. It’s tough to do that and appear only mildly interested in the conversation. That constant eye contact comes across as intense to many hearing people.

  “Well, it looks like—and I do mean ‘looks like’—Lacy Penzance may have committed suicide. Right there on her husband’s grave.”

  “What?” I said, losing my poker face. “I can’t—that’s not—” All I could do was open and close my mouth.

  Sheriff Mercer washed down the muffin with a giant gulp of juice and jotted down a few notes.

  “At this point in the P.I.—preliminary investigation—we’re tentatively calling it a suicide, and I do mean tentatively. She was found on her husband’s grave, dressed to kill you might say, with a knife stuck in her middle. There was no sign of a struggle. It could have been self-inflicted.”

  I leaned in toward the sheriff, my hands gripping the edge of the desk. “But, Sheriff! A woman doesn’t stab herself when she wants to commit suicide! She takes pills. She turns on the exhaust. Maybe she jumps off a bridge. But she doesn’t use a gun or a knife. You know that.”

  He patted his chin again. “I know, I know. But it appears she was U.I.—under the influence. She reeked of it. The M.E. will tell us more.”

  “Still, how can you think it might be suicide when—”

  He looked at me directly for the first time since he’d sat down. “She left a note.”

  I fell back in my chair, flabbergasted. “A suicide note?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Apparently she was despondent over the death of her S.O.”

  “S.O.?” This one stumped me.

  “Significant Other. Isn’t that the P.C. term? Reuben, her hubby. Maybe she had a few too many mai tais, took a stroll to the cemetery, and decided to join him. Maybe she sat down, said her good-byes, set out her note, and poked a knife into her gut. Hard to say for sure, but that note’s puzzling. We’ll know more when the D. and C. comes back from the M.E.”

  “D and C?”

  “Dice and culture. The autopsy.”

  I had a little hot flash at the mention of the autopsy. Lacy Penzance was going to be cut open and—I shook away the visual that loomed in my mind. God, poor woman. First on display for the television viewers, then the final invasion of privacy.

  “What about that note?” I asked. “What did it say?”

  “Can’t comment on it until next of kin have been notified. If she has any.”

  While the sheriff’s attention was called to the blinking red light of the telephone, I took a deep breath and tried to think where to go with all this disturbing information. Lacy Penzance had been in my office yesterday, asking for help in locating her long-lost sister, Risa Longo. Today she was dead, an apparent suicide. Presumably she’d stabbed herself to death in the cemetery.

  From what I knew of her, that wasn’t her style. First of all, what woman would use a knife to commit suicide when pills were so much gentler, kinder? Why would she do it in such a public place, a reserved woman like her? And why did she change her mind about running that newspaper ad about her sister, if she was so anxious to find her? The whole thing made no sense. Granted the sheriff was experienced in things like this, and he wasn’t stupid, but—

  The sheriff hung up the phone and turned back to me.

  “Sheriff, Lacy Penzance came to see me yesterday. She wanted to put an ad in my paper …” I stopped. She hadn’t wanted me to say anything. Was I betraying a confidence, now that she was dead?

  “What for? Wanna sell her car or something?”

  “No. More of a want ad than a for-sale. She was … searching for something. Sheriff, would it be all right if I went over to the cemetery and looked around a little?”

  The sheriff puffed up a little, trying to look official. “Sorry, C.W. I’ve got a line there right now and you can’t cross without an escort.”

  I figured he meant some sort of police line. “Haven’t you already investigated the scene?”

  “A prelim., yes, but we may nee
d more. I’d take you but I’m overwhelmed with paper work this morning. Until we hear from the M.E., it’s off limits. Maybe later.” He looked searchingly around his desk. I pointed to the envelope of snapshots. The sheriff eyed me suspiciously, then opened the envelope and spread the photos on the desk.

  They were difficult to look at. But they were also a little unreal. Lacy looked almost posed, lying in front of the gravestone. There was little blood in the picture—just a small spot where one of her hands lay near the knife in her abdomen. The other arm lay limp at her side. Her legs were spread open, a rather unladylike stance for a woman who cared so much about appearances.

  The sheriff gathered up the pictures and returned them to the envelope. I stood up and headed for the door, unable to shake the feeling that Lacy’s body language was odd, even in death. When I glanced back to say good-bye, I caught the tail end of a comment.

  “What?” I said.

  He patted his stomach. “Thanks for the muffins. What were they—tree branch?”

  “Bran. They’re good for you. No fat, no sugar, no salt.”

  “No flavor,” he said, and went back to his work.

  I closed the door and spotted Mickey Arnold walking toward the sheriff’s office. The deputy’s mouth was shaped as if he was sucking up a straw. I figured he must be whistling, even though I didn’t know what whistling was exactly. Someone explained it to me once as air blowing out and making a high-pitched sound. Didn’t help. Looked stupid.

  “Hey, Mickey. I was just heading for the cemetery. Have you been over there yet?”

  Mickey smiled and signed “good morning” as stiffly as an arthritic in a high wind, but I appreciated the attempt. I signed it back, then retrieved my mountain bike from the side of the sheriff’s office.

  “Thought maybe you could tell me what you figure happened over there. I was thinking about writing something for the paper. Maybe I could give it a slant, you know, like how a sheriff’s deputy investigates an unusual death in a small town.”

  Mickey had been responsible for a recent drug bust that I’d featured in the Eureka! He’d caught the Penryn brothers growing pot in their bathroom.

  “Uh, sure,” he said, standing a little taller. Then he glanced at the door to the station and his shoulders sagged a bit. “Just let me check in first …”

  “Okay, but be warned. The sheriff’s not in the best of moods. There’s an awful lot of paper work on his desk he’s looking to pass out.”

  Mickey thought about it a moment, sucked in his lips, then fell in behind me as I began walking my bike down the street. I turned around, gave him my sweetest smile, and let him catch up.

  “All right, I guess I’ve got a few minutes. But you can’t touch anything. And you better watch your step. The medical examiner said there might be some more evidence we haven’t found yet, so we can’t go walking all over …”

  His jaw kept on moving as we headed toward Pioneer Cemetery. I haven’t a clue what he was babbling on about. I was too deep in thought to pay attention.

  The cemetery still bore a few stragglers, although the media vans were nowhere in sight. No doubt they were on the hour-long drive back to Sacramento, anxious to edit their video footage for the evening news. How would Flat Skunk appear to the public after some creative “packaging” by the editing techs?

  That’s all we needed. The kind of publicity that would bring in the borderline nuts and maniac militia. If nothing else, perhaps an honest and thorough report on Lacy Penzance’s death in the Eureka! could equalize the sensationalism of the tabloids and talk shows.

  Flat Skunk is an interesting town. I appreciated it every time I walked from one end to the other. As the deputy and I headed for the cemetery at the edge of town, I couldn’t help scanning the rustic storefront facades that had been built decades earlier by what looked like a Hollywood set designer. Reuben Penzance had wanted his town to retain the look and feel of the old mining camp it once was. He’d hired a prop constructor to “authenticate” the buildings by creating false fronts, horse hitching posts, wooden sidewalks, and brick streets. Behind each westernstyle facade stood ordinary structures, hidden by bravado from public view.

  I glanced over at Mickey and caught him midsentence as we neared the cemetery.

  “… and you know why I like your mystery puzzles, Connor?”

  “Because you’re a cop?” I offered.

  Mickey used meaningless hand gestures to illustrate his explanation. “Huh-uh. I like them because at first, no one has a motive for the crime. At least, that’s the way it looks. Then you start uncovering their secrets and you find out everyone has a reason to kill the victim. Secrets. That’s why I like ’em. Nothing is as it appears. That’s why I love police work, too.” He ended his speech with his palms turned up, a childlike open-mouthed grin on his face.

  “Thanks, Mickey. Glad you’re enjoying them. I think my next one will be a takeoff on Dick Lupoff’s comic book killer. Someone comes in and steals a valuable Little Lulu.”

  “I remember Little Lulu! I used to love those comics!” He stopped in his tracks as he spoke, as if stunned by this mutual interest.

  “My favorites were the ones with Witch Hazel,” I said.

  “Yeah! She was great. Always scaring Little Lulu. God, Connor, we have a lot in common.”

  I smiled and walked on. Always scaring Little Lulu. Ha. Nothing could scare Little Lulu. Not even Tubby. I looked back and started to offer a retort, but Mickey had turned away. He seemed to be calling to the meager crowd at the cemetery, waving his arms and shaking his head.

  It was mostly kids on skateboards, Roller Blades, and bikes, a couple of older women talking, nodding, and pointing, and some of the good ol’ boys, chewin’ and spittin’. I spotted old Sluice Jackson on a small knoll, tending some bushes outside the police line. His rheumy eyes locked on us as we approached the barrier.

  Deputy Arnold told the kids to get lost, with quite a lot of official bluster and self-importance. They ignored him and kept on staring at the police line up the hill. I felt a little sorry for Mickey—he didn’t command the same respect as the sheriff. But he was a dedicated police officer who took his job seriously, and I respected that. I just thought he should lighten up a little.

  A kid, maybe ten or eleven, ran out from the corner of the roped-off section of the cemetery. Spotting the deputy, the boy dropped to the ground in an effort to hide himself.

  “Get on out of there, Brian Hurley, or I’ll throw you in the slammer,” the deputy said, his face tight, his arms waving. Brian Hurley got up and walked toward his friends, who gave him a hero’s welcome. They all took off down the street to celebrate his victory of crossing the police line without getting arrested.

  “Stupid kids,” Mickey said, tucking in his shirt in an effort to recapture his composure. “That area there is full of possible evidence, not to mention poison oak. They’ll be itching and scratching by tomorrow.” The deputy scratched his arm vigorously in empathy, and led the way up the hill.

  The front of the park was dramatically different from the older part of the grounds beyond the ridge, where the early settlers were permanently settled. Pioneer Cemetery had begun its career as a traditional burial place for the forty-niners and their families, with large stone markers, fancy engravings, and poetic dedications. The mounds were uneven, the gravestones chipped, broken, weathered, and discolored, and the plots were as varied as the clapboard houses in Flat Skunk. It was here that silent history could be heard, if you listened the right way. I paused to read a headstone before following Mickey up the hill.

  Here lyes a loving, caring wife,

  A soft and tender mother;

  A friend who’s free from pain and stryfe,

  There never was another.

  The old Pioneer Church that had originally welcomed the citizens of Flat Skunk had long since been torn down. According to Mickey, after French McClusky bought the property to add to his Memory Kingdom chain, the massive and unused front acreage ha
d been converted into a modern memorial park with expansive lawns and immaculately tended grounds, complete with benches, a children’s playground, and picnic tables. The newer area featured flat marble-veneered markers instead of the upright headstones found in the older section. This was a park for the living as well as the dead. If you gazed at it from a distance, you almost couldn’t tell it was a cemetery at all.

  We walked up the hill to a section in the older part of the burial ground where the police line had been erected. Mickey ducked under the barrier and held it up for me. I followed him into the silent city.

  “Over there is the Penzance plot,” Mickey said. “Watch where you walk. We’ve pretty much covered it, but you never know.”

  We tiptoed carefully along the border of the Cornish dead. Nearly one-half of the population of Flat Skunk was descended from Cornwall, England. The rest were a mixture of European and Asian ancestry. Their early settlers all had one thing in common: the lust for gold.

  Septimus Penzance’s monument was in the center, a dark and weathered obelisk that stood seven feet tall, with softened engravings on each of the four sides. The rest of the family lay around him, enclosed in a foot-high stone fence.

  “Baby Penzance, born September 26, 1864, died September 28, 1864,” was nestled in a marble crib. “Blenda Penzance, our loving daughter,” had died just short of her third birthday in 1898. The family plots were filled with children who hadn’t survived the harsh conditions or contagious diseases of the era.

  Reuben Penzance’s tombstone at the edge of the plot was the traditional upright granite marker. It was fresh and unmarked by time, weather, or vandals, but the dark stain of what I imagined was blood at its base made me shudder. Next to it stood Lacy’s stone, marked only with her name and birthday, the final date yet to be inscribed. She had probably purchased it when she had bought her husband’s stone—they were identical in design, lettering, and wear.

  “Ever read Pet Sematary, that book by Stephen King?” the deputy asked as he glanced around, breaking the pensive spell. “This old section kinda reminds me of that book. Creepy, you know.”