A Body in the Backyard

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  Chapter Four

  Unfortunately, Erma was lying in wait for her. She must have had that long nose of hers pressed up against the window, watching for Myrtle to come out. Myrtle’s cane was only halfway out Elaine’s door when Erma came galloping out of her house. Myrtle groaned.

  For years, she’d come up with a range of polite excuses to be on her way instead of engaging in conversation with her next-door neighbor. She’d say that she had a pot boiling or that she was expecting an important phone call. Erma was one of those rare people who were completely oblivious to polite excuses. She kept right on bulldozing through a monologue of the confusing dream she’d had the night before or the rash she couldn’t seem to get rid of. Erma wasn’t the type who even picked up on rudeness.

  “Myrtle!” said Erma, grabbing her arm and pulling her along to her house. “Come with me and sit down for a while. You must be in shock from finding a body in your backyard. I was in shock one time. It does funny things to you. Makes you feel like you can’t breathe, makes your chest hurt. Makes you go numb….”

  “Aren’t those the symptoms of a heart attack?” asked Myrtle irritably. “If you’re feeling any of those now, you should get over to the emergency room.”

  “No, this was from a long time ago. When I won the sweepstakes. Not the really big prize, but it was a lot of money. A lot! And I was in shock, that’s what the doctor said.”

  Myrtle pulled her arm away. “I can’t talk now, Erma—I’ve got to make some phone calls. To Puddin and Dusty, for one.”

  “Those two! I don’t know why you put up with them.” Erma gawked in horror at Myrtle’s yard, which admittedly did look pretty horrible with the half-mowed grass and the weeds sticking up around all the gnomes’ heels. “If my yard looked like that, then I’d be firing my yardman right away. And Puddin….” Her voice trailed off as she became uncharacteristically speechless.

  Myrtle said, “Yes, well, if I got rid of them I wouldn’t be able to find anyone else, would I? You know how Bradley is. The only other yardman around here is so booked up that he can only mow every other week at all of his customer’s houses. Same with the housekeepers—all the good ones are booked solid. Puddin is a disgrace, but at least she’s available to work.” Most of the time.

  “Whatever. What I really wanted to tell you, Myrtle, is that I know who is behind this! I was awake last night around ten or eleven and kept hearing noises and seeing things. That awful cat of yours was making so much racket that I turned on my oscillating fan to drown out the sound so I could sleep. Now that I know about the murder, though, everything is clear to me.” Erma smirked at Myrtle in a secretive, smug way.

  “Who’s the killer then, Erma? Who did it?” asked Myrtle.

  Erma leaned close enough into Myrtle that she could smell the onions on her breath. She whispered, “It was Miles. I know it for a fact. Miles killed the man in your backyard. You should watch out for him—he’s a very dangerous man. He lives close. The victim was related to him and reportedly wanted his money. And Pasha hates him. Yes, it was Miles. He’s a killer.”

  Myrtle snorted. “I’ll take that under advisement, Erma.” She walked away from her as quickly as she could, cane thumping on the ground as she went.

  “It’s true,” she yodeled from behind Myrtle. “I have clues! And I’m telling Red about them!”

  “You do that,” hollered Myrtle as she hurried away. Madness. She was always surrounded by complete and utter madness.

  She closed the door behind her and locked it—not because Red had told her to, but because she was scared spitless that crazy Erma Sherman would come barreling through the door to tell her all her clues and theories about Miles being a killer. Miles. On the bright side, though, if she blabbed coyly to enough people that she knew who the murderer was and that she had clues, then she, herself might end up as a body in the backyard.

  Myrtle walked to her small desk and pulled out a notebook and pencil. She was going to need to talk to suspects and she needed to ascertain whom these suspects might be. She tapped the pencil against the notebook. There was Lee Woosley, for one…the guy who’d been fighting with Charles at a poker game just the other night. Could he have killed him out of rage? But why would he have followed him over to Myrtle’s house to kill him?

  And there was Hugh Bass—Myrtle’s dentist. Elaine’s picture of Charles and Hugh together had been pretty interesting. Dr. Bass wasn’t a particularly grim man, but he’d sure looked serious in that picture. Charles’s face had been telling, too—he had a very knowing expression. There’d also been a touch of unholy glee present on his features.

  So she definitely wanted to talk to those two. And neither one sounded particularly likely to go to the funeral to pay his respects. Myrtle reached out for the phone.

  “Yes, I’d like to make an appointment please, Pam. For a cleaning, if I could. I’m sure I’m probably due for one. What? That long ago? Tomorrow morning will be fine, if you can fit me in. This is with Dr. Bass, right? I don’t want to see anyone else. You still don’t have any other doctors in the practice, right? Okay, thanks.” At least she could have a chance to talk to Dr. Bass by himself. If she could get rid of the hygienist, that is.

  Lee Woosley. Hmm. Well, she wasn’t prepared to start playing poker in order to hang out with Lee for a while. What on earth did the man do for a living? She tapped the pencil against the paper as she thought. Didn’t he do repairs of some kind? That’s right—he was a handyman. She glanced around her living room. There had to be something that needed to be repaired around here. The problem was that Red was always messing in her business and popping over with his toolbox to fix things. But that meant that he’d know what still needed fixing.

  She hesitated, then picked up the phone again.

  Red answered, sounding hurried. There were voices in the background that had an official edge to them. “Mama? Hey, what’s going on? I’ve got the state police here, talking over the case.”

  “In your tiny office? Shouldn’t y’all meet out somewhere or something?” asked Myrtle.

  “It’s not exactly a conversation to have at the ice cream parlor, Mama. Or Bo’s Diner. What’s up?”

  “Do you know, offhand, what kinds of repairs I need to make to my house? You know—the honey-do type stuff?” asked Myrtle.

  “Why do you have to know this right now? I’ve been asking you to take care of that stuff for ages or to make me a list so that I could help you with it. Is there a problem at your house?” Myrtle could tell by his voice that he was getting worked up. He always thought her house was some kind of deathtrap. If he had his way, she’d have been at Greener Pastures retirement home for the last couple of decades.

  “No, no problem. I’m just trying to be proactive,” said Myrtle.

  Now Red sounded suspicious. “Proactive? About repairs in your house? This is Myrtle Clover that I’m on the phone with, right?”

  “Don’t be so sassy, Red. Now think. What repairs are needed at my house that you know of?”

  “There’s the towel rack in the hall bathroom for one—it’s coming off the wall.”

  “Okay,” said Myrtle, jotting that down on her notepad.

  “And your tub needs to be caulked,” said Red.

  “All right.”

  “Your garbage disposal doesn’t really work—I think it may need replacing,” said Red.

  “Hmm.”

  “The light in your closet has some sort of short or something in it that needs to be checked out. I don’t want you stumbling in your closet in the dark,” said Red.

  “Fine,” said Myrtle in a tight voice, starting to feel irritated.

  “The planter on the back wall of your house pulled off the wall and needs to be put back up,” said Red helpfully.

  “I think that’s probably enough.”

  “A grab bar in your tub would be very useful, Mama. And I don’t really know where to get started with your dock. One day it’s just going to come loose fr
om its moorings and start floating away on the lake with the boat still attached.”

  Myrtle fumed, tapping the pencil on the paper again.

  “The toilet paper holder in the hall bath is also trying to come off the wall,” said Red. “Oh, and you could use a door stop on your backdoor—your backdoor keeps hitting your kitchen counter whenever it swings open too far.”

  “Enough!” said Myrtle. This would cost her a mint. “Good luck with your case,” she said and hung up. For heaven’s sake.

  Myrtle walked back over to her desk and woke up her computer. She typed in Lee Woosley’s name into the local business listing page and pulled up his phone number.

  “Lee?” she said, minutes later. “This is Myrtle Clover.”

  “Mrs. Clover?” Lee had apparently been napping and her name was enough to startle him out of his sleep. “Wow, I haven’t talked to you since English class about thirty years ago.”

  “Yes. Well. Hope you’re doing well.” Myrtle was a retired English teacher and was used to former students being bumfuddled in her presence. “Listen, I was hoping you could help me out with some projects I need to get taken care of around my house.”

  “Oh, I see. You have some home repair projects that you need help with,” said Lee, sounding relieved.

  “That’s right.”

  Lee laughed ruefully. “I kind of had a flashback there for a moment. Thought you were going to ask me to come in for extra tutoring in English or something. You know how that wasn’t my subject.”

  Had he had a subject he was good at? Myrtle doubted it.

  “Want me to come out tomorrow?” asked Lee.

  Myrtle started to agree, but remembered she’d just set up that dental appointment for the next day. Since she hadn’t made it over there for a while, who knew how long it would take? “Maybe the next day will be better, Lee.”

  “What kind of stuff do you need done, Mrs. Clover?” asked Lee.

  She glanced at the list she’d made from the talk with Red. There was no way she was going to get him to do all these things when she really just wanted to talk to him about Charles. “Nothing too exciting. I have a towel rack and a toilet paper holder that are pulling away from the wall and a tub that needs caulking,” said Myrtle. “Oh and there’s a planter that I’d really like hung back up to the side of my house. It pulled off and I can’t get it to stay back on.”

  They arranged a time for a couple of days out and Myrtle hung up, feeling pleased with herself. This was coming along nicely. At this rate, she’d know who the killer was before Red had even started questioning suspects.

  After all the excitement of a body in the yard and all the activity that followed it, Myrtle decided to put her feet up for a little while. Most of the time she really didn’t feel her eighty-odd years, but when she did it was always her feet that gave her away.

  Her insomnia from the night before had apparently had more of an impact on her than she thought. A few minutes after she’d started her recording of her soap opera, Tomorrow’s Promise, she dropped off to sleep. Later, this would irritate her because she wouldn’t know where exactly she’d left off and would need to find the spot.

  The sound of her doorbell usually would make her jump into life but this time the sound didn’t jar her into awareness because she thought she must be hearing it on the television. By the time she realized it actually was her own doorbell, her caller had taken to rapping on the door. “Coming!” she called loudly, reaching down to fumble for her cane. The cane developed a mind of its own and scooted away from Myrtle under the coffee table. “Shoot! Hold your horses, I’m coming!”

  She finally got to the door and peeped out to make sure there wasn’t a maniacal killer on her doorstep. It was only Sloan Jones, her editor at the local newspaper and another former student of hers. He was ordinarily a little intimidated by his former teacher but had lately gotten more comfortable in Myrtle’s presence.

  Her irritation at the past minute of scrambling must have showed on her face, though. “Uh oh. Did I wake you up, Miss Myrtle?” His big face with its ever-expanding forehead was anxious. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” said Myrtle, motioning him in and closing the door behind her. “I hadn’t planned on falling asleep anyway. I’ve got things to do.”

  She sat down on the sofa, but Sloan walked straight through her living room and kitchen to peer out her back window into the backyard. He had his camera with him. “Miss Myrtle,” he said, squinting through his viewfinder and lining up a shot through the window. “Is it okay if I take a few pictures from inside your kitchen and right outside your back door? Of the tragic scene—you know.”

  “To put in the paper? Isn’t that sort of morbid for the Bradley Bugle, Sloan? We’re talking about the kind of newspaper that reports the number of Girl Scout cookies sold by the local troop as a major news story,” said Myrtle.

  He turned to look at her. “No, I won’t run the picture. That’s too lurid for us. But I want to be able to accurately describe the scene for my story. It helps me out if I look at a picture while I’m writing it.” He looked back through the viewfinder and took a couple more shots.

  “Your story?” Myrtle frowned. “No, this is my story.”

  Sloan turned around again. “Red told me you didn’t need to have any more crime stories to work on, Miss Myrtle. He’s worried you’re going to get hurt. You’re supposed to just write your helpful hints column and maybe fill in as a writer for some of the other columns if somebody goes on vacation.”

  “Pooh on Red! Sloan, he has no business getting involved in my affairs. No business at all. You’re the editor of the newspaper. Actually, you’re the publisher of the paper. What you say goes. You know I do an excellent job with all the stories I write for the paper—especially those crime stories.”

  Sloan shifted his weight uncomfortably. “The problem, Miss Myrtle, is that it’s important that I have a good working relationship with Red—with him being the police chief and all. Sometimes he’ll give me information for stories…you know.”

  Myrtle did know. And she didn’t like it.

  “That might well be. But I’ve got the inside scoop, Sloan, and I’m going to keep it to myself unless you give me this story. The body was in my backyard after all, and I had a front row seat for all the investigating. I also have a source with some pictures of the victim in the days preceding his death,” said Myrtle. Never let it be said that she was a pushover. If you wanted something badly enough, you needed to go for it.

  Sloan thoughtfully rubbed his balding head. “Well...okay. I guess it makes sense for you to cover it. I might run a short story on the blog, though, to report on the murder until we get the print edition out. You don’t need to investigate the murder, though. All I need for you to do is to write up the story as it unfolds—I don’t need you to solve the thing.” He followed Myrtle back into her living room and they sat down on her sofa.

  “Naturally,” said Myrtle. “I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing!” Sloan looked vastly relieved. It was interesting how gullible a newspaperman could be.

  “I’m going to cover it from a human interest standpoint, too,” said Myrtle. “I’ll talk to some of the people who knew him and get some reactions to his death. Murder is so rare here that everyone is probably in shock and would like to talk it out.”

  Sloan said, “Actually, the murder rate in our little hamlet is astonishingly high, Miss Myrtle. I can’t for the life of me figure it out.” He shook his head, then looked at her closer. “A source? You said you had a source with pictures of the victim before he passed?”

  “That’s right. Oh, I don’t know if we need to publish those pictures or anything, but it’s nice to have them available. Did you know anything about the victim, by any chance? I don’t think he was in town for very long before he died,” said Myrtle. “I’d like to talk to anybody who might have a connection with him. Just for the human interest side of the piece,” she added in a hurry since Sloan look
ed suspicious again. He clearly didn’t need to know that she was going to be investigating.

  “As a matter of fact, I did see the guy around town. Not that I really knew who he was at the time, but you know how new people stand out. Although he did grow up here, so I guess he wasn’t all that new,” said Sloan.

  Sloan was fond of hanging out at the local tavern after work and was likely to have run across Charles more than most people. “Did you have a chance to talk to him? What was he like?”

  “He was a pain in the rear end,” said Sloan in a rueful voice. “When I saw him he was either arguing over cards or being a real ugly drunk. And then there’s his little dalliance with Annette Dawson.” He raised his eyebrows at Myrtle.

  “A dalliance? I thought the man had just gotten into town. He must move fast,” said Myrtle.

  “I don’t think he’d just moved into town, no. I think he’d been here a couple of weeks.”

  “That seems pretty recent to me,” said Myrtle, having been in Bradley for over eighty years.

  “I saw him one night when I was at the tavern. Annette Dawson was sitting real close to him at the bar and laughing at every little thing he said. She was still wearing her scrubs from her shift at the county hospital, so I guess that’s why she was out that late,” said Sloan.

  Myrtle frowned. “But Annette Dawson is married. She’s been married to Silas Dawson for ages, hasn’t she?”

  “Pretty much. For about twenty years, I’d say. She’s a lot older than Charles, too. But she’s still real nice looking.” Sloan looked wistful. His love life had consisted of scattered and unsuccessful dating and a long period where he lived with his mother before the newspaper started showing a modest profit.

  Myrtle was thoughtful. “Silas doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would let his wife carry on a flagrant affair with another man.”

  “He’s a tough guy,” said Sloan with a shiver. “He’s real wiry and strong. He wasn’t happy to find his wife with another man.”

  “So he did find out?”

  “Of course he did, Miss Myrtle. This is Bradley, after all. He found out just days later. I was at the tavern when he came in to take Annette back home with him. He took Charles by surprise and punched him right in the gut.” Sloan put a protective hand over his own substantial gut. “He couldn’t talk or anything. While he was trying to get his breath back, Silas gave him a real piece of his mind and told him to stay away from his wife.”

  “I wonder if Silas could have murdered Charles,” said Myrtle. “He must have been furious at being made a fool of.”

  “Lots of people are talking about it,” said Sloan.

  “Do you think Red knows about it?” asked Myrtle.

  “Well, the fight wasn’t reported to the police, so he didn’t find out about it that way. It wasn’t really much of a fight, since it was just a single blow. Besides, Bill—that’s the bartender—he felt sorry for Silas and thought Charles got what was coming to him…so he didn’t call Red. Red might have heard some of the gossip, though.” Sloan gave Myrtle a reproachful look. “I’m giving you all these juicy details and you’re not telling me anything about what happened here this morning.”

  And she wasn’t going to tell him much, that’s for sure. It was her story, after all. “Well, Dusty and Puddin were here, doing yard work and cleaning the house.”

  “Were they?” Sloan stared doubtfully at the dust on the end table next to the sofa.

  “They didn’t finish doing the yard or cleaning the house because of the body,” said Myrtle with a sigh. “I’ve got to call them and get them both back over. I’m having the family reception after the funeral.”

  “Are you?” Sloan looked startled. “You’re serving food?”

  Myrtle scowled at him. “What is wrong with everyone? Yes, of course I’m serving food! I swear to goodness, we need to have some more deaths here in Bradley. There’s a serious lack of education when it comes to funeral protocol here.”

  “Sorry,” said Sloan. He covered up his mouth and Myrtle was suspicious that he might be smiling for some reason. “Go on with your story please, Miss Myrtle. You were saying that Puddin and Dusty were here.”

  “Yes. Dusty discovered the body and left to get Red, Puddin started screaming, and Miles came over to identify the victim as his cousin,” said Myrtle.

  “I thought I heard that the man was killed by one of your gnomes,” said Sloan, again with some unidentified emotion tugging his lips into odd shapes.

  “That’s right. He was hit over the head with my Viking gnome. It was very vexing to me, too,” said Myrtle, still fuming over the thought of her favorite gnome being used as a weapon…and getting broken. “The police ended up taking it away to analyze it.”

  She swore he was trying to stifle a laugh. “That must be very traumatic for you,” he said in a muffled voice.

  “Hmm. Well, it was,” she said. After a moment, she said, “By the way, I wanted to let you know that my daughter-in-law is now doing photography. She has—some very interesting photos that she’s taken around town. Elaine and I thought there was a possibility that you might like some pictures sometimes and she’s out in Bradley enough that she’ll likely have plenty. Just to let you know,” said Myrtle.

  Sloan said, “If she wants to act as a freelance photographer, then I’m sure I’ll be interested in buying some of her pictures from time to time. I can’t hire anybody else on staff, though. If she wants to upload pictures to the blog, that might be the best idea. That way if she has a great picture of downtown Bradley with kids selling lemonade on the corner, she can put it up on the blog and that gives me easy content. Folks always comment on that kind of stuff, too. ‘Bradley is the best town ever! I feel like I’ve stepped back into the 1950s!’ That kind of thing.”

  “I’ll let her know, then,” said Myrtle. If Sloan knew the kind of photographer he was dealing with, he’d want to preview those pictures before they went up on the blog. He’s going to end up with lots of pictures of Elaine’s finger or blurry pictures of unidentifiable objects.