by Dale Mayer
Just the thought exhausted her. And she’d already worn out the animals. They’d crashed on the lawn earlier and slept now.
She stepped from the backyard into the front yard, peering first to make sure nobody was there to take pictures of her. A short gate separated the ugly section from the pretty lawn in the front yard. And now, of course, it needed to be mowed, which was something she hadn’t ever tried to do.
But, as she looked at the height of the grass in the front yard, she knew it wasn’t something she could ignore any longer. She headed to the little shed where Nan had kept all the gardening tools and found a lawnmower. The good news was, it was electric. The bad news was, despite that, it was still large and awkward.
She pushed it around the side of the house, through the little gate, plugged in the cord, and pushed the button. A horrific noise filled the air, but it sounded like the same horrific noise she’d heard before. She moved cautiously around and, after a couple moments, found it was actually an easy thing to do. She smiled in delight as she moved it back and forth, the handle easily flipping from side to side. The only thing she had to watch out for was that darn electric cord.
Life would be a lot easier if she wasn’t always in peril of running over it. It took her a bit to get the hang of it and to keep it always on one side, but it only took ten minutes to mow that little piece in the front. And, with that done, she stood back and admired her grass. It was actually lovely. What she hadn’t thought to do though was put the grass catcher on the side, and now the little pieces would have to be raked. Still, it was cut, and that was something.
She carefully wound the lawnmower cord and took it back to the shed. Then she saw the grass catcher. Groaning at her stupidity, she took it off the wall hook and laid it on top of the mower for next time. She glanced around the backyard and knew she needed to mow it soon. But first, she snatched a rake and grabbed her compost bin and moved it closer to the front yard. Then she raked up the bits of grass she’d cut. There was a surprising amount because the grass had grown pretty high. Using the rake and a shovel, she loaded it into the compost bin. With that done, she headed around to the back and sighed heavily. Then she brought out the lawnmower, hooked on the grass catcher, and mowed once more.
At this point she saw no sign of her animals. Smart. When there was work to be done, they’d gone into hiding.
When she was done though, it looked very nice. Still uneven but with fresh-cut grass to a certain length. It took a lot of the rough edge off her backyard garden and gave it a really nice and pristine look. Of course, the other side of the garden was still ragged and rough, and she needed to work on that next.
She looked back to the side she’d finished and smiled, feeling proud. But then looking at it reminded her to set up watering. There was no irrigation and, from the looks of it, no hoses either. She checked through the shed and found what looked like two soaker hoses. She connected them, and they almost made it down one side to the end of the garden. She hooked it up to the house and turned on the water. And then, with a bucket, she went down to the creek, filled it with water, and gently watered the end of the garden where the soaker hose didn’t reach. What she needed was a third or fourth hose to wind through the shrubbery because the garden beds were deep.
At the moment, she only had them lying up against the plants. But they should twist around them all. And now that she had done this much, she thought about all the bulbs still in the shed which she could plant. They would spruce up the early spring with color. She walked back and collapsed on the small deck. Every time she came out here now, the deck irritated her.
The minute Mack had tantalized her with the idea of building a bigger deck, she couldn’t let it go. As she sat here, she thought she heard somebody in Richard’s backyard. She called over, “Did you know Manny Pollock?”
The voice called back, “No. Not many of us did.”
“What about her mother, Jenny Pollock?”
“You mean, his mother?”
“Oh. Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
“Yes, she’s very involved in the church.”
“All that stuff we found in your garden belonged to Manny,” Doreen called out. “Of course you already knew that.”
Dead silence.
Chapter 15
Sunday Late Afternoon …
The silence extended until Doreen suddenly heard something banging up against the fence. It turned out her neighbor stood on something so he could pop his head over the edge. He had a look of complete astonishment and maybe almost fear on his face. “Are you serious?”
She nodded. “That’s the IDs you found. You saw the name, I’m sure. I think the handcuffs and the ring belonged to her too, but Mack’s still trying to connect all of it to her disappearance.”
“That’s not good,” Richard said. “I didn’t hire him. No way would I do that. I don’t use anybody like that.” He shook his head so wildly that wisps of white hair flew everywhere.
Doreen smiled at him. “Finding the items doesn’t mean you did. How long have you lived there?”
“About eleven years.” Then he stopped, looked up at the sky, and said, “Make that twelve.”
“You might have been here when all that happened, but we think somebody stole Manny’s purse from an evidence box that was being cleaned out at the police station. How it ended up in your garden, I don’t know. Likely kids, but I doubt we’ll ever find out for sure.”
Relief crossed his face, and he bobbed his head.
Doreen watched in fascination as the same wisps of hair now changed direction and flew up and down.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “That must be what happened.”
She felt sorry for him. “I don’t think anybody really thinks you hired Manny for his services.”
“They better not,” he growled. He looked toward the road and said, “Are they gone?”
She nodded. “Yes, they’re gone. They didn’t stay much longer than you did.”
“Good. It’s a darn shame when I can’t even go outside my own house.”
“It’s not your house they’re photographing,” she said drily. “It’s mine.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t be such a media hound.”
“I’m hardly that,” Doreen cried out in outrage. “It’s not my fault I managed to solve a few cold cases.”
“If it isn’t yours, who else’s is it?” he snapped.
“Hey, I’m not seeking the publicity but some answers for these poor families,” Doreen stated.
Then his gaze caught sight of her backyard, and his eyebrows shot up. “Wow, you’ve done a lot here.”
“I’m trying,” she said grudgingly. “The garden alongside your fence is done, but I haven’t done the other side yet. I just managed to find a few hoses to get some water to the garden. I don’t have enough though. I need to buy more.”
“Nan had lots of hoses,” he said.
“Maybe, but I could only find two.”
“Keep looking,” he advised. “I think she had enough to go all the way to the creek on both sides.”
Doreen jumped to her feet. “That is exactly what I need. I was also hoping to maybe put in a bigger deck back here.”
He studied the deck and said, “You should. That one’s pretty rotten.”
She turned to look at it suspiciously. “Is it?”
“Yeah, it is,” he said. “Sooner than later you will fall through. It’s not like you’ll fall deep, but you can cut yourself pretty badly on the wood.”
“That’s not good,” she said. “I just don’t have any money to hire somebody.”
“You don’t need to hire anybody. It’s not hard.” And, with that, he disappeared.
She raised both hands in frustration. “Well, thanks for that,” she snapped. “But it’s not very helpful. I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You didn’t know how to solve cases either,” came the answer. “But you managed to create enough havoc with that. So get on your deck. I’m sure yo
u’ll cause all kinds of chaos through that process too.”
She glared at Richard through the fence, but he was right. She hadn’t had any training to solve these cases, but she’d figured it out. So maybe she didn’t need too much help on the deck either. But first, she needed to find the rest of Nan’s hoses. She went back to the little shed and searched top to bottom. A box in the back had a jug on top, and, as she opened it, several spiders crawled out. She jumped back, shaking her hands.
“Okay, we don’t need that,” she said. She turned to call Goliath, and he darted inside. “How do you feel about spider chasing?” she asked.
Worse than she expected, he just looked at her and lay down in the middle of the cobwebs.
She groaned. “Well, now you’re not getting in the house until you get that all cleaned off first,” she snapped.
Thaddeus, who’d been on the veranda railing asleep, hopped to the ground, came over, and then hopped up onto the box. His head bobbed into the box, and he came back up with a squirming black eight-legged thing in his mouth. Then he hopped down, and Goliath chased him. Thaddeus dropped the spider with a squawk and took off.
This had Goliath looking gleeful and arrogant at the same time. Arrogant in the way a cat would play with its prey. He swiped at the spider left and right, then made more swipes. When the game then looked dull and boring, he stepped on the spider. A soft crunch made chills go up and down Doreen’s back.
But maybe it was safe to check out the box now.
She dragged the box outside and carefully, with gloved hands, upended it. It was full of hoses. There was one hose with a hand-watering wand. Also several soaker hoses were coiled up. She quickly washed off all the coiled hoses. She’d found six soaker hoses in all, so she spread out three to use on the right side and added one to the other two along the left side.
With that done and water now thoroughly soaking the garden right to the creek, she came back, looking at the other two. “Might be enough to do the front yard,” she said with a frown.
Dragging the two hoses to the front, she set one to wrap around the garden. However, she soon realized it wouldn’t do anything for the front lawn. But, if she set up a sprinkler somewhere in the middle, she could probably get almost everything watered. She headed back to the shed, took a look, and, sure enough, found sprinklers. With one of them attached, she set up a sprinkler in the front lawn too. Now, she had to remember when to shut everything off. She set a timer on her cell phone and let everything get a good soak. That took care of all the hoses she’d found. Good thing Nan was a gardener. She loved her plants too and wouldn’t have let them die of thirst.
With that all done, Doreen put everything else back in the shed, leaving the empty cardboard box outside for the spiders to do their thing and to hopefully disappear. Then she closed up the shed. Back in the kitchen, she put on coffee while she admired her backyard. That brought her back around to Richard’s comments about how everybody knew Jenny and how Jenny was really big in the church. So big in the church she hadn’t wanted anything to do with her daughter. But then, not everybody was okay with their children’s choices. And apparently her neighbor did understand what Manny had done for a living. She wondered if she could talk to him again. Just then her timing for the sprinklers went off.
She headed out into her backyard, shut off the water, and called out, “Are you still outside?”
“Yes,” he growled.
“Do you know any of Manny’s friends I could talk to? Nobody’s ever found him in all this time.”
“Maybe he headed back East,” he said.
“Maybe, but he would have had some friends here still.”
“Peter,” he said. “Peter Callahan.”
“And how do you know he’s a friend?”
“Because his father, Jeremiah Callahan, is a friend of mine. Peter was also a heavy drug addict, ended up working the streets, and never could get out of it.”
“Is Peter alive?”
“Sure,” he said, “but he’s probably still doing the same old thing.”
“He’s got to be close to what, forty by now?”
“Probably somewhere around there. Maybe closer to fifty. Maybe he’s moved on to be a pimp, or maybe he’s just homeless and sitting on a street corner, looking for his next fix.”
“Okay. I’ll see if I can find him.”
There was a shocked silence on the other side of the fence, and then, all of a sudden, her neighbor’s head popped over the top of the privacy fence again. “You don’t mean that, do you?” he asked.
She nodded. “How else will I find out what happened to Manny?” she said reasonably.
He thought about it for a moment and said, “I’m sure Peter can tell you about a bunch of other friends.”
“I want to know who she might have been with that night.”
“The cops should know about it.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but we have to consider the fact she wasn’t reported missing for a couple days. Nobody seemed to notice she wasn’t around right away.”
“True enough,” he said. He continued to look thoughtful as he studied her lawn. “You do good work,” he said grudgingly. “Maybe you can find Manny after all.”
“I hope so,” she said gently. “Everybody deserves justice, even somebody who had a troubled life, like Manny did.”
And, with that, her neighbor disappeared on the other side once more.
But she felt better knowing Richard understood where she was coming from. She walked back inside to look up Peter Callahan and his father, Jeremiah, who’d been her neighbor’s friend. After some searching, she found Jeremiah ran one of the secondhand stores downtown. He had to be already in his late sixties, if not older, but this was like a charity secondhand store. Raising money for the homeless shelter, it said on the website.
While she was always up for a road trip, she looked down to check the time, then realized it was probably closing time already, as it was already a quarter to five. But then, she might have time for a quick trip. With Mugs not too happy with her lack of attention, she put a leash on him and took him out to the car. As she opened the door, Goliath ran in. Thaddeus stood on the step and squawked, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
“Really, do you all have to come?” But the answer was evident as Thaddeus flew into her front seat. She lifted him up and placed him on her shoulder, then got in behind the wheel. “Goliath, you’re wearing a harness.”
Not giving him a chance to argue, she slipped the harness she’d been keeping in her purse over his head. She didn’t clip on the leash, figuring she might get him to wear the one first. But she’d keep the leash close, in case she needed to get control of him. Just the thought made her chuckle.
In typical Goliath fashion he lay here and stared at her. The only response she got was a flick of his tail.
She opened the garage door, loving the simple opener, then headed downtown.
At the secondhand store she walked inside, holding the door open for Goliath and Mugs. Most of the time Goliath stayed close anyway. But this was a store. And one that could potentially hold a lot of breakable items. She quickly scooped him up before he ran from her.
The man by the counter looked up and said, “We’re closing in a few minutes.”
“Thank you.” She gave him a winsome smile and said, “You’re not Jeremiah Callahan, are you?”
He frowned and nodded. “That I am. Who are you?”
Doreen identified herself.
“I know you. Should’ve recognized you by the animals.” He snorted and said, “Well, I don’t know anything about no cold cases, so you don’t need to be asking me nothing.”
“Except that you do,” she said.
He straightened, and his gaze narrowed. “Who are you talking about?”
He was gruff but straight to the point. She kind of liked that. “Manny Pollock,” she said. “And I believe your son, Peter, was a good friend.”
Chapter 16
Sunday Late Afternoon …
Jeremiah’s face shifted as myriad emotions whispered across so fast it was almost hard to identify. Doreen still caught sadness and grief, anger and frustration, and then acceptance.
“Maybe I do know of a cold case then.” He sagged into the chair on the other side of the counter, his face sagging a bit too. “Is that all you came for, or did you come to buy something?” He motioned around the store. “Take a good look,” he said. “I need to make a sale today.”
Her heart lurched at that. “Is business that bad?”
He shrugged. “Well, it sure ain’t good.”
As luck would have it, she spied a couple mugs right in the front of the store. They were a matching set, nice for coffee, with a handmade pottery look to them. She picked them up and admired them. “How much for these?”
He looked over and said, “Fifty cents.”
She beamed and said, “I’ll take all four.” Then she picked up the four and put them on the counter. But now she was hooked, and she looked around, wanting to take some time and see if she needed anything else. Not that she needed much, but still …
“What can you tell me about Manny?” she asked, her voice pitched ever-so-slightly higher so she could continue to look around. Vases and all kinds of stuff were here. She didn’t think she had a vase at home. She couldn’t remember. Mack had helped her go through her entire kitchen stock, weeding it out to something much more manageable. There might have been a vase, but she didn’t remember and didn’t want to buy one if she had one.
She wandered through until she found a lovely serving bowl that would do for one of her salads. Thaddeus chirruped at her shoulders. She picked up the bowl, studied it carefully, checked it for chips, and contemplated its size.
Thaddeus’s head bobbed up and down as he looked at it beside her.
Jeremiah called out, “That one’s a dollar.”