by Edie Claire
Leigh exhaled with a groan. "Aren't you at least going to flinch?"
Maura kept scribbling and replied without looking up. "You would prefer hysterics?"
"Well yes, actually," Leigh retorted, coming closer. "How many bodies have you seen before, anyway?"
"More than you care to know about. Did you touch this hat?"
"Of course I touched the hat! I thought it was a dummy. I only knew it was real when I saw the head.”
Maura lifted the brim of the hat with her pen and slid it off the face.
It was a man's face, no doubt about that. An old man. Wrinkled skin hung loosely off his facial bones, and his head was bald except for a few short wisps of gray hair. He might have looked like any other old dead man, but he didn't. His skin was unnaturally dark and shriveled, the folds above his collar looking dry enough to crumble off his neck.
Leigh stepped back again and waited. Maura said nothing, but began a rhythmic tapping of her pen against her notepad. Leigh waited some more.
"Well?" she finally asked. "Is there a dead man in Cara's hammock or isn't there?"
The tapping ceased.
"Oh, yes," Maura answered in her police voice, sliding the notebook back into her pocket. "That's a dead man all right."
"So," Leigh continued, "What do we do about it?"
Maura clucked her tongue. "We don't do anything. I make some calls." She left the body and started up the stairs. Leigh followed, trying to catch up.
"Don't you need to dust for fingerprints or collect hair samples or something?"
Maura snickered. "That's not my job, Koslow."
"Well it's somebody's job isn't it?" Leigh stifled her irritation. Maura had an annoying habit of not saying whatever she knew Leigh wanted to know. "This is a possible homicide, right? The man is dead. I'm no coroner, but I don't think he just keeled over while taking a snooze. He looks to me like he's been dead longer than he's been in that hammock."
"Ooh..." Maura answered, pursing her lips. "You're right about that one. Mr. Vaudeville there didn't die last night."
They reached the patio, and Leigh stepped around to face her friend. "Well then, how long do you think he's been dead?"
"Hard to say," Maura answered. "They decay a lot slower after they've been embalmed."
Chapter 2
Cara greeted them by the kitchen door, anxiously twirling a lock of strawberry-blond hair between her fingers. Her face was pale, her pupils wide. She was doing an excellent imitation of a damsel in distress, but Leigh knew better. What Cara wanted was information. Pronto.
"Is it true?" Cara asked in a stage whisper. "Is there a body in my backyard?" Maura assumed a calm, professional demeanor Leigh hadn't seen before. "Yes, there is a body. I know that's alarming, but from what I can tell at this point, the individual appears to have died some time ago. Quite possibly of natural causes."
Cara took a deep breath and nodded, her normal complexion returning. Whether she was relieved or disappointed, Leigh couldn't tell.
"So what happens now?" Leigh asked, looking at Maura with new respect. Police procedure, outside of detective shows and mystery novels, had never interested her. She presumed Maura spent most of her time writing traffic tickets and bouncing drunks. A cop's life suddenly seemed more intriguing.
Local Woman Stops Graverobbing Ring: Police Grateful.
"Koslow? Did you hear what I said?" Maura's stern gaze implied she knew what Leigh was thinking, and wasn't amused. "This is what happens. First, nobody goes near the body again. Second, I make the necessary contacts. Third, you two relax and get ready to answer some questions."
Cara nodded cooperatively. Leigh did the same, but Maura eyed her skeptically. "Could I use your phone, please?" she asked Cara.
Leigh frowned. She had been looking forward to hearing both sides of the conversation. She tapped a finger on the two-way radio clipped to Maura's belt. "Why can't you use this thing?"
Maura's eyes narrowed. "This 'thing,' as you so eloquently put it, is for communication between on-duty officers. Chief Mellman is not on duty this morning. In fact, I have a pretty good idea he's sitting on his fanny in the Chuckwagon Cafe, stuffing down pancakes and sausage with Vestal Fields. But he gets beeped for all unusual deaths, and this qualifies. The phone?"
Cara threw Leigh an admonishing glance and led Maura inside to the kitchen. Leigh followed, but her attempts at eavesdropping were unproductive. Maura called several different people, but she talked to all of them in numbers. Her radio conversation with the dispatcher was no help either—all Leigh heard was static. When the squeal of brakes finally sounded, Leigh trailed Maura outside. Perhaps now someone would speak English.
A dilapidated sedan sat parked in the drive, its chassis springing up a foot as two hefty occupants scooted out.
Donald Mellman, recently named chief of police after a lifetime of playing second fiddle to Maura's father, stood up with an automatic tug at the waistband of his uniform pants. He was a large man, over six feet tall with a roundish midsection and slightly oversized head. His nose, large even for his head, was distinctly crooked. Leigh watched him run a pudgy hand through his graying hair and stifle a belch with a fist.
Sausage. No doubt.
Vestal Fields, owner of the Fields Funeral Home, rose quickly to his feet and adjusted his tie. Vestal missed Mellman's six feet by a fair margin, but in weight, they were about even. He scrambled immediately to Maura, rubbing his hands anxiously. "You've got a body you think's already been embalmed, eh?"
Maura let out a barely perceptible sigh. Vestal was trying hard to act somber, but his glee about being a "police consultant" was poorly contained. "The body's in the hammock in the back yard," she replied. "You can take a look at it yourself and see if it's anyone you recognize. But don't touch anything!"
Vestal nodded soberly while his baby-blue eyes danced. He turned on one heel and started around the corner of the house.
Chief Mellman ambled slowly up to Maura. He looked at Leigh as though he thought he should recognize her, but didn't. She wasn't surprised. Almost a decade had passed since her days at the Koslow Animal Hospital. Then, she had seen him frequently. Whenever a dog was hit by a car or a crazed raccoon wandered into somebody's yard, Officer Mellman—the animal lover—got the call.
"County's on the way, Chief."
The stiffness in Maura's voice was hard to miss. Leigh sympathized. It couldn't be easy to have a man you'd grown up calling "Uncle Don" suddenly become your boss. Especially if you'd always considered him a nincompoop.
Mellman nodded once. He smiled politely at Leigh and lumbered off after Vestal.
***
Leigh drummed her fingers impatiently on the patio table to which Maura had threatened to chain her.
A secured scene, indeed. I found the damn thing, didn't I?
Cara, incapable of idleness, made coffee. Finally, the privileged trio of Maura, Mellman, and Vestal climbed up from the terrace and were persuaded to sit down for some java. Cara buzzed hopefully about with her pot until Leigh, still worried about her cousin's stress level, made baby-rocking motions with her arms. Cara scowled, but went inside.
After Maura's stoic reaction, Leigh hadn't expected either of the men to be upset by the corpse. Mellman had been a cop ever since he graduated from high school, when he and Maura's dad had joined the force together. Vestal, who had inherited the family business, had been pickling friends and relatives even longer. It seemed odd, therefore, that he should now be pale as a ghost.
Maura and Mellman both looked at Vestal with concern. "Take it easy there, old buddy," Mellman said nervously, giving a hearty slap to his friend's back.
"Is there a problem, Vestal?" Maura asked, studying him carefully. "If the body isn't familiar, is there something else about it that concerns you?"
Vestal waved off her concern and swiped at the beads of sweat forming on his upper lip. "No, no. Delores's white gravy didn't agree with me, that's all." He reached out a shaky hand and grabbed t
he coffee cup in front of him. Some of the brown liquid sloshed out over the rim. He turned to Leigh. "Straight?"
"Decaff," she replied.
He brought the cup to his lips and drained it without putting it down, then looked better. He wrenched a handkerchief out of a tight pocket and cleared his throat. "I can tell you a few things," he said in a steadier tone, mopping his brow. "The body's been embalmed, no doubt about that. But it's desiccated. It's been around a while."
Leigh's eyebrows rose. "A while? How long is a while?"
Vestal turned to look at Leigh, and a dash of color returned to his cheeks. The spotlight must have suited him, because the more he talked, the more animated he became.
"I'd say that body was embalmed, oh, at least five years ago. Hell—it could have been twenty years ago! You can't tell without knowing how it's been stored, you see."
Vestal went on to describe the effects of humidity on decaying tissue, but Leigh's mind drifted. She tried to imagine where a body might lie for twenty years without being noticed. Other than a grave, nothing sprang to mind. Why would anyone rob a grave? She didn't think scientists bought off the street anymore, but didn't medical schools keep embalmed bodies in stock? She ran through a mental list of twisted acquaintances who had wanted to be doctors. There were several. "Some medical student's idea of joke, perhaps?" she interrupted.
"Now, let's not get carried away." Mellman said in his usual, even drawl. "We won't know anything for sure until the coroner's had a look."
Vestal, now thoroughly full of himself, glared at Mellman indignantly. "You don't think I can tell when a man's been embalmed?"
Leigh sensed an argument coming on, but Maura broke in. "The county detectives will notify the coroner. If it's a homicide, it'll be out of our hands anyway. If it's not... Well, we'll see what they report."
Mellman stood up. "Let me give you a lift back to the Chuckwagon," he said to his friend. "Once the detectives get here, I'll be tied up for a while." Vestal nodded impassively and rose. He smiled at Leigh and handed her a business card. "Anytime I can be of service, my dear."
Leigh took the card, colorfully embossed with the slogan "Grateful to serve you."
Charming.
Mellman nodded to Maura. "I'll be back in a few." He and Vestal walked around the side of the house, their departure confirmed by a series of squeaks and groans from the sedan. Maura leaned forward and took a swig of coffee. Leigh watched her.
"What are you staring at?" Maura asked.
"I'm just enjoying seeing you in action." Leigh smiled. "All those criminal justice classes. Now you're the real thing. And here, on my first day in your jurisdiction, I bring you a body. Am I good, or what?"
Reluctantly, Maura smiled back. "You'll get yours, Koslow. Be prepared for a grilling when the detectives get here."
Leigh's brow wrinkled. "They won't have to question Cara, will they?"
"Of course they'll question her. Why shouldn't they?"
Leigh's fingers tapped nervously on her coffee cup. "She's having these abnormal contractions. Her OB said she's supposed to restrict her activity and avoid stress, or she could go into premature labor."
"Oh." Maura was out of her element. "I'll ask them to go easy."
The sounds of arriving vehicles echoed around the side of the house, and Maura rose. "That'll be the county. Why don't you go back in the house and stick with Cara for a while? I'll let you know when we need you."
Leigh chafed at the dismissal, but collected the coffee cups and headed back inside. The door swung open for her. "Just put them in the sink," Cara said, a little too pleasantly.
***
"Sit down and have another donut. We need to talk."
Leigh winced, but complied. A donut sounded good, bribery or not.
"I've been good so far," Cara began, lowering herself into a chair on the other side of the table. She was using her debating tone, which was bad news. Leigh was good in an argument; Cara was better. "I haven't looked at the body, and I've let you handle the gory details with the police. My obstetrician would be proud. But you can't expect me to forget all this. A body is in my back yard. I need to know why, because not knowing is more stressful than hearing the truth. Did he drown and wash up on the bank? Did he trip and roll down the cliff? Did he OD sucking gas out of my grill? What? "
Leigh propped her elbows up on the table and sunk her chin into her hands. What could she say? It wasn't just the pregnancy. Protecting Cara had been a childhood mission; now it was habit. Cara was everything Leigh wasn't—naive, tender hearted, optimistic, and drop-dead gorgeous—in other words, a disaster waiting to happen. Leigh was amazed her cousin had survived this long. Yet survived Cara had—through a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and the building of an illustrious career in graphic design. Not to mention marriage to a handsome husband and the conception of a much-wanted baby.
Lucky breaks.
Leigh sighed. Cara had a point. Being too secretive might make things worse; the quest for information could become a game in itself. But the mystery aspect had to be played down—one shred of encouragement and Cara would be crawling around the terrace with a magnifying glass.
Leigh looked away, reached for a strawberry-frosted, and tried to think. "All right. I'll give you the short version. A man died, probably of natural causes. He was embalmed. His body took a wrong turn on the way to its coffin and ended up in your hammock. The police will find out who it is and give him a proper burial. End of story."
Cara's eyes grew wide. "You've got to be kidding. Somebody stole a body?"
Leigh stuffed the rest of the donut in her mouth and chewed as slowly as she could. Cara waited politely for a moment, then stretched a foot under the table and kicked Leigh's chair. "Where was it before? Who took it? Why did they leave it here?"
After recovering from a melodramatic choke, Leigh shrugged her shoulders.
"Don't be ridiculous. You know more than that! And I'm going to find out everything soon anyway." She looked out the window over Leigh's shoulder. "The detectives will want to speak with me. Those men wandering around out there are detectives, aren't they? As in homicide?"
Leigh swallowed and cleared her throat. "Calling detectives is standard procedure for any discovery of a body, homicide or not," she said authoritatively. She had no idea what she was talking about, but it sounded good. "They'll remove the body, identify it, bury it. It's not a big deal to them. And if Maura's methods are any indication, they'll ask a heck of a lot more questions than they'll answer."
Cara studied her cousin, then tried another tactic. She leaned closer, eyes beaming, voice conspiratorial. "Come on, Agent L. It's debriefing time. You do remember The Agency, don't you? Mrs. Peterson's missing cat? The bicycle speedometer?"
Sentimentality—Leigh's Achilles' heel! She felt herself beginning to weaken and stood up. "We were just kids then," she answered, pushing images of bowler hats and spy rings out of her mind. "Now we're adults, in case you haven't noticed, and we know better. You're a twenty-eight-year-old artist on the mommy track, not a private eye. Just stay out of it and concentrate on the baby. I'll work with Maura and take care of anything that needs to be done."
Cara swept some table crumbs into a napkin. "Last time I checked," she said smoothly, "you weren't a private eye either. What exactly makes an advertising copywriter more qualified at assisting the police than a graphic designer? And even a thirty-year—"
"Don't say it!" Leigh interrupted. "I'm not there yet and you know it."
Cara smiled smugly.
Someone knocked softly on the back door.
It would be a long morning.
Chapter 3
Leigh's nocturnal activities had never been considered so fascinating by so many people. Nor had Mao Tse's digestive problems. The questioning was almost fun—for about fifteen minutes. Then the monotony began. By midmorning, Leigh had described the figure on the bluff so many times she was tempted to embellish the story just to amuse herself. Cara h
ad hung on every word, disappointed at not having a story of her own to tell and annoyed at not having heard Leigh's earlier. Then, much to Leigh's chagrin, Cara had insisted they play brunch hostesses to the army of public servants and journalists streaming in and out of the yard. By the time the body was removed and the crowd gone it was almost twelve-thirty, and even Cara was drained enough to lie down for a nap. It was around this time that Leigh remembered she had a job.
Deciding against a phone-in apology, she grabbed some low-fat breakfast bars from the pantry and took off in her Cavalier. The more disheveled she looked for this explanation, the better.
She practiced. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Lacey, but there was this corpse, you see, on the hammock, and what with the police and everything I just clean forgot about the deadline on the DecoDripless account..."
Oh, sure. That'll go over in a big way.
Leigh pulled into her usual spot in the stadium lot and walked across the Sixth Street bridge to downtown. It wasn't a bad day for a walk—warm, but not too humid. Perhaps the fresh air would help her think.
It didn't. When she reached the lobby of the USX building she was tired, but no more inspired. She boarded the elevator to the fifth floor, where for the past four years she had worked more or less happily at the offices of Peres and Lacey Advertising, Inc. She loved her work, but the advertising climate in Pittsburgh was fiercely competitive, with certain undesirable consequences for a young copywriter. She had lost two jobs already—one to a merger, one to bankruptcy. And although Peres and Lacey was a relatively stable mid-sized firm, the last six months had not gone well.
Although everyone on Leigh’s team agreed that she had done an excellent job of making the patented Twist-it Rim sound exciting, they had lost the account—by far their most lucrative—anyway. Apparently the Carttran Milk Caps CEO had a relative who was starting up her own agency, and what else could he do? Leigh considered herself fairly powerless against nepotism; her boss hadn't agreed. She'd been busting her butt to make up for the loss, but this morning's no-show would create problems. Big ones.