The Case of the Disappearing Corpse
Page 11
Jack’s foot, wedged in the doorway, came perilously close to being cut off at the ankle when the door slammed.
Evidently not…
“Maybe I should go to the police with my theories,” I told the closed door. “They might think you had something to do with Frank’s death.”
The door opened slowly and Mrs. Murch, greasy blonde hair now hanging around her shoulders, poked her head out.
“I didn’t kill that man,” she said, her voice trembling. “I swear I didn’t. And I haven’t slept a wink this past week with the worry of it all.”
Putting myself in her shoes, I could see why she’d have trouble sleeping. But what I still couldn’t work out was why she’d shifted the body at all?
Tayla looked the woman up and down, apparently checking out her scrawny physique. “Frank must have been heavy,” she said.
“Oooh, he was, dear. Far too heavy for me. I actually pulled a muscle dragging him to the car and my back’s been troubling me ever since.”
“How did you manage?” Tayla persisted.
“Squashed the body into two large plastic bags, one for each half. Then, while Patsy was inside phoning the police, I backed my car down the driveway.” She shook her head, evidently looking for sympathy. “Almost broke my back, getting that dead weight into the boot of my car.”
Eeeuuw!
“But why hide him?” put in Sarah, still confused.
The woman sniffed and her shoulders slumped. As she let the front door swing open wider, her hands fluttered to her sides in surrender. “I thought I’d killed him.”
“Killed him? But how?” asked Sarah.
And I still couldn’t figure out the why…
“I was bringing over a sack of potatoes from our garden for Patsy and Zoë and I spotted this man peeping in the front window, so I…I bopped him on the head.” The woman breathed a strangled sigh. “Next minute he toppled off the veranda, banged his head on a garden gnome and ended up in the middle of the pansies—out cold.” She wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve and sniffed again. “So I panicked and ran away.”
“And what? You came back later?” Jack, still trying to bring life back to his squashed foot frowned up at her.
“Didn’t want to…but felt so bad about leaving the poor man just lying there. I was scared he’d get up and do something terrible to me for hitting him on the head. But when I got back he was still lying in the pansies. Only now he was looking up at me with this awful accusing face—like he could really see me.” She gulped, wrapped her arms around her body and swayed back and forth. “I felt for a pulse—and—and—there wasn’t one. So I had to hide him.”
Jack straightened up. “Couldn’t you see he’d been stabbed?”
“No. I just panicked. He was lying on his back and there was no knife stuck in him when I dragged him to the car.”
I guess Patsy had already kicked Frank with her Doc Martens by then…
“What about later when you found out the guy had been stabbed?” Jack queried.
“At first I didn’t know what to do,” Mrs. Murch wailed. “I knew I hadn’t killed him but was scared no-one would believe me. So when the police left the crime scene, I decided to get rid of the body. It was awful. I couldn’t even drive to the shops in case I was stopped and the police discovered his body in the boot of my car.”
This story was getting wackier and wackier.
“Is that when you decided to hide Frank in Patsy’s shed?”
I was starting to feel a bit squeamish thinking about what Tayla and I found in that shed.
“Yes. My husband pulled a sheet of iron off our fence and helped me carry the body through. He didn’t want to but I was getting hysterical. Later, he fitted the sheet of iron back, so the police wouldn’t notice.”
“Did you know Tayla and I were in the house?”
“Oh, no! We thought the house was empty. I almost had a heart attack when I heard you and your friend talking in the kitchen—knocked over the rubbish bins in my hurry to get away again.”
“And left us to find the body!”
My sympathy for Mrs. Murch took a sudden nose dive. She knew we were there and still left a rotting corpse for us to discover.
The woman pulled at a loose thread on her blouse.
“How did you know it was me?”
“You told me! The police didn’t reveal where Frank’s body was found. But you knew. When you came out of the hairdressers that day and saw me standing in the doorway, you said how sorry you were to hear I’d found a body in the shed.”
“Oh.”
Leroy rolled over on his back in the ‘tickle my tummy’ position. Of course this didn’t present a very professional image but I guess he deserved a scratch.
“So…what are you going to do now?” I asked, pretending tickling a dog’s tummy was all part of my P.I. job description.
“Trevor, that’s my husband, he’s been telling me to go to the police. But I’m scared they’ll think I’m the murderer.”
“Frank’s murderer is behind bars, Mrs. Murch. But I think your husband’s right. It must be hard to sleep at night with something that big on your conscience.”
She nodded.
As I turned to go I pulled the pink handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her. “I believe this belongs to you. You must have dropped it when you hit Frank on the head.”
I poked Leroy with my toe. “Okay, let’s go, guys. There’s chocolate cake waiting for us at Krystal’s place.”
Leroy staggered to his feet, a sloppy grin on his wrinkled face. He snorted his excitement, sending whirls of slime over Mrs. March’s pink bunny slippers, then waddled down the path behind us.
Linking arms with Sarah and Tayla I skipped along the street, not caring that I was too old to be seen skipping in public.
“Now I can say the two words I’ve always wanted to say,” I squealed. “Guess what they are?”
“Chocolate cake?” Tayla said walking sedately beside me. Tayla had officially stopped skipping in the street on her fifth birthday.
“Nope.”
Sarah grinned as she poked me in the ribs. “Murder sucks?”
“It sure does,” I answered. “But that’s not it.”
Jack stomped along behind us. “Okay, we give up,” he said. “What are the two words you’ve always wanted to say?”
I took a deep breath and pulled my P.I. cloak around me before shouting at the top of my voice.
“Case Closed!”