A Body in the Backyard

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  Chapter Eleven

  Not this again. “I know. But if I find out who’s responsible for these killings, then I won’t be in danger anymore, will I? Can’t you help me out?”

  The appeal seemed to sway the woman. She sighed. “Don’t know if it’s important. But that Peggy? She had a past with that Charles.”

  “Charles Clayborne? Your cousin? She used to be involved with him romantically, you’re saying?” asked Myrtle. She remembered seeing Peggy crying at Charles’s funeral.

  “Used to be. Still wanted to be,” said Wanda coolly.

  “But she was practically telling me she didn’t know who Charles even was!”

  “Came to his funeral, didn’t she?” asked Wanda. “Cried over his body, too.”

  That she had. “And you’re saying that she still wanted to get back together with Charles?” The two seemed like an odd match to Myrtle. Charles, slick as he was, was still a fairly attractive man. Peggy was pleasantly plump and looked older than her thirty-six years.

  Wanda nodded. “That’s what I heard. She was trying to hitch back up with him and he wasn’t wanting to. Hurt her feelings.”

  Hurt feelings were understandable. But would that be enough to kill someone? And she certainly hadn’t appeared to know anything about her father’s death. It was hard to picture Peggy being responsible for killing her own father. Could there possibly be more than one murderer afoot?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Lieutenant Perkins. “Mrs. Clover? Could I speak with you for a few minutes?” Myrtle had forgotten that she was probably a person of interest to the state police. How many times could you have a body in your backyard without attracting attention?

  They stepped off to the side and the sergeant with Lieutenant Perkins flipped to a fresh page in his notebook and looked at Myrtle expectantly. He had such an eager expression on his face that she felt sorry to have to dash his hopes.

  Which she did almost immediately. “Lieutenant Perkins, I would love to be able to help you out. But I’m like the little monkeys who saw and heard no evil. I’m completely useless to you. As far as I can tell, I had a body in my backyard for hours and had absolutely no idea that it was there.”

  Lieutenant Perkins retained his same thoughtful expression, but she did see the sergeant’s face fall.

  Perkins said, “So when you returned from the funeral service, you didn’t notice there was another victim in your yard?”

  “No. Wish I had, though.” Myrtle could tell her irritation at that fact was seeping into her voice.

  “There appeared to be a small memorial set out in the yard that was directly under the victim. Could you give me an idea when you set that out?” asked the police officer.

  “It’s probably not going to help you out much. I put those flowers out there early this morning; right after the sun came up. Clearly he was murdered sometime after the flowers were placed outside, but I already knew that he was still alive this morning.” Myrtle abruptly slammed her mouth closed. He wouldn’t have spoken to Peggy Neighbors yet, and if she filled him in, it was going to make her look nosy again. The police warnings did wear thin after a while.

  But her comment hadn’t escaped notice. “How did you know that Lee Woosley was still alive this morning?” he asked. The sergeant was beginning to look excited again and had his pencil poised once more over the notebook.

  Myrtle sighed. “Lee’s daughter, Peggy Neighbors, talked to him on the phone this morning. She told me about it a few minutes ago.”

  As expected, Lieutenant Perkins gave Myrtle a disapproving look. Before he could offer her his standard police warning, Myrtle decided that the interview was entirely too one-sided and that she needed to turn the tables. “It looked like someone had smacked Lee on the back of the head with a shovel—is that right? Could a woman have done it?”

  Perkins seemed to be mulling over how much to disclose.

  Myrtle said, “Don’t you think you could share just a tad bit of information with me? These murders are happening directly in my yard. If I know what you know, maybe I can avoid being the next victim. Knowledge is power, after all.”

  “In some situations, maybe,” he answered finally. “I can’t think how it might help you in this one. But I can confirm that the blow with the shovel killed Lee Woosley nearly instantly. It looks like he was probably killed during the funeral service while he was about to finish some home repairs for you. It’s likely that he never saw his murderer.”

  It sure wasn’t much to go on. She’d learned more from talking with Wanda.

  “What about Charles Clayborne’s death?” she asked. “Have you found out any more about it?”

  “Only that the murder probably occurred somewhere around ten-thirty,” said Perkins, coolly. “And that unfortunately, none of the neighbors heard anything. You’ve said you were showering around that time. And apparently your cat was upset and they turned on various noise-making devices to drown out the cat.”

  “Pasha was probably trying to protect me by giving an alarm,” said Myrtle. “The feral, furry love.”

  “And now, Mrs. Clover,” said the detective smoothly, “I suggest that you keep out of this investigation. There’s a very dangerous person on the loose and he appears to be sticking very close to your home. If he thinks you’re learning too much about his identity….” He trailed off suggestively.

  “My concern is simply staying safe, Lieutenant,” Myrtle said quickly. And it was—it just wasn’t her only concern. She saw Miles sternly watching her from several yards away. He was always able to read her mind.

  It felt like a long time before she was able to go back to her house. When she finally got inside, she let Pasha out. (The cat gave her a very reproachful look as she did.) Plopping down on her sofa, Myrtle realized she was worn absolutely slap-out. She wasn’t sure whether her exhaustion was due more to the appearance of a second body in her backyard, or the stress of hosting a funeral reception for what had ended up being the entire town.

  When her doorbell rang, she was very tempted to just turn the volume of her soap on louder and ignore it. “The food’s all gone!” she hollered in case it was a returning guest looking for seconds. “No more ham!”

  “I’m glad it was such a success,” called Elaine’s voice through the front door.

  Myrtle decided that Elaine was definitely worth the trip to unlock the door. She received the bonus reward of a visit from her grandson. Jack grinned at her and handed her an ambulance.

  “It’s Jack’s way of saying hi,” said Elaine dryly.

  “After today, I’ll just about need that ambulance,” said Myrtle. “Too bad I can’t even fit my pinky toe in there.”

  They settled in the kitchen and Myrtle poured them all lemonades. “I’m surprised that Red is even letting you and Jack in here,” said Myrtle. “He was pretty convinced earlier that my house was some kind of death trap with murderers leaping out at every opportunity.”

  “Oh, well, he doesn’t know we’re here,” said Elaine in a breezy voice as she took a glass of lemonade from Myrtle. “But I can’t say that I’m surprised by his thoughts on the matter. Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us for a while? Just until the murderer is caught. You’d probably sleep a lot better at night.”

  “I don’t sleep at night as it is,” said Myrtle.

  “Maybe I’d sleep better then,” said Elaine.

  “Besides,” said Myrtle, “Lee Woosley wasn’t even murdered at night.”

  “Even worse,” said Elaine. “That means that there’s no pattern to his behavior so you’re really always in danger here.”

  “I’m not all that worried about it,” said Myrtle. “But I reserve the right to suddenly and irrationally become very concerned about the murderer and take you up on your offer later. In case I think Red is harboring some good information on the case and I want to have more opportunities to squeeze it out of him.”

  “This time maybe I’m the one with all the information,”
said Elaine, looking unusually smug.

  “Oh right! The pictures from the funeral service,” said Myrtle. “I’d almost forgotten about them.”

  “And not only that, but during Jack’s nap I also took my camera out and trained it on all your reception guests as they were waiting to talk to Lieutenant Perkins.” Now Elaine was looking seriously pleased with herself.

  Myrtle clapped her hands with glee, spurring Jack to stop what he was doing and clap too. Myrtle beamed at him.

  “Can I see what you took, Elaine? How many pictures did you take?”

  Elaine was peering deeply into her purse, and rummaging for the camera. “Probably around three-hundred. The camera wouldn’t hold anymore, actually, and I had to stop shooting.”

  “Three-hundred?” It seemed like an awful lot of pictures, but there were two events, after all…still.

  As soon as Myrtle held the camera, she could tell the process of looking through the pictures was going to take a while. Poor Elaine didn’t appear to have any kind of internal editor at all. She’d take a picture of just about anything that moved. There also looked to be a whole lot of photos of Elaine’s finger. Myrtle suppressed a sigh.

  Elaine was still smiling eagerly. “I’m really enjoying this hobby, Myrtle. In fact, I was wondering when I can stop treating it like a hobby and start treating it like a profession. I’m taking pictures for the paper, after all.”

  Surely, Sloan Jones wasn’t going to find time out of his editorial duties to comb through three-hundred bad photos to pick out a couple for his newspaper. And Elaine looked so happy, too.

  “The only thing that’s really a problem,” said Elaine, knitting her brows, “is searching through all the pictures for the perfect shot. Whenever I’ve sat down to try to do it, Jack has some kind of radar that goes off and makes him need me for something. I’ve got to get the pictures that I need off the camera, especially since I don’t have more room on it to take more.”

  Myrtle took a deep breath and said, “Would you like me to go through them for you? All I was going to do for the rest of the afternoon was sit in my chair and relax. Might as well look through your pictures. I could jot down the ones on a notepad that look the best. Doesn’t each picture have a number assigned to it, or something?”

  Elaine frowned with concern. “They do. But you were going to sit in your chair and nap, weren’t you? I’m pretty sure your plan for the afternoon didn’t involve fishing through photos on a camera. The screen is super small, too.”

  There was that. “Can’t you hook up the camera to my computer or something? You’re right—I won’t be able to really see anything on that tiny screen.”

  “But your computer is on your desk. You don’t want to sit at your desk for that long, do you?”

  Not particularly.

  “How about if I bring by my laptop and hook it up to the camera? Then you can sit in your chair and look at the pictures. Then I can go back and make some supper—I think Jack is probably starving. Want me to bring you over some food after I’m done cooking? Then I can pick up the laptop and camera at the same time?” asked Elaine.

  Myrtle was about to say no, but then her stomach growled. She remembered that she hadn’t even gotten a chance to eat at her own reception. In fact, she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Elaine was a great cook. Her tummy growled again.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Elaine with a grin. “And thanks so much, Myrtle. I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to stay up all night, looking at those pictures after Jack had turned in. I know Sloan is ready for them.”

  Myrtle was ready for them, too.

  Once she’d settled into the chore of sorting through the photos, she found that the pictures weren’t all as bad as she’d feared. Yes, there were lots of close-ups of Elaine’s finger, but did it matter? You could still see most of what she’d been pointing her camera toward.

  She’d gotten a nice shot at the funeral service of a tearful Peggy Neighbors—when Peggy had only been upset by Charles Clayborne’s death and not her father’s. Her picture of Annette Dawson hadn’t been as good—too blurry—but you could still see that Annette had a combination of sadness and determination on her face.

  There appeared to be quite a few pictures of Myrtle, too, which Myrtle couldn’t completely understand. She noticed that she had a fairly nosy look on her face in all the pictures and that her surreptitious glances weren’t quite as surreptitious as she’d hoped.

  She sighed and continued on. The pictures that Elaine had taken at the beginning of her reception showed a line of bored people waiting to get inside Myrtle’s house. As they stayed in line, the pictures showed the guests looking more irritable. Myrtle made a face. Just as well she couldn’t hear what they’d been saying. In one of the photos, everyone appeared especially grim, and she marked that one in her notebook as a good one for Sloan. They could just as easily be responding to news of the murder instead of worrying over whether there’d be any food or beverages left.

  Elaine had apparently shifted her grip on the camera when Miles came over to report the murder. She had several pictures of her entire palm before finally getting the camera pointed at the people instead.

  The people in the photos changed as everyone left the house showing various stages of confusion, panic, and dismay. There was lots of talking in small groups, and watching as the police cars arrived and the forensic team went around to the back of the house. But there was nothing particularly unusual about any of it. Annette Dawson looked shocked, but she’d seemed shocked earlier, too.

  There were several pictures of Wanda looking directly at the camera. This, even though Elaine was taking these pictures from inside her house on a bright, sunny day. Myrtle shivered. It was a good thing that Wanda was working for the good guys and not for the forces of evil.

  And then Myrtle paused. There was a picture that showed her dentist, Dr. Bass, standing off to the side and looking intently at the proceedings. What was he doing there? He certainly hadn’t been at the funeral or the reception.

  There was also another picture, clearly taken days earlier, showing the elusive Dr. Bass having a conversation with Lee Woosley outside a downtown barber shop. Dr. Bass had a tired expression on his face.

  It was time to find out what exactly Dr. Bass’ss connection to Charles Clayborne was. And why had he been talking with Lee Woosley, who was now victim number two? Myrtle decided then and there that Miles needed a trip to the dentist. With a supportive friend tagging along.