A Body in the Backyard (22 page)

“I’ll be good,” said Myrtle. It was more of a mantra than a promise. “I’m actually rather impressed that she showed up to clean of her own volition.”

“She and Dusty must have run completely through their money on their vacation,” said Miles dryly. “I think I hear the mower starting up in your backyard.”

“Thank goodness. The grass was higher than my knees!” Myrtle slammed the car door behind her and thumped with her cane over to where Puddin was now on her hands and knees, looking around for the key.

“Lose something, Puddin?” growled Myrtle.

Puddin glared at her. “The key. Did you take it away?  I was trying to clean up and your door was locked.”

“No, I did
not
take it away, but I certainly would have if I’d known. Puddin, you do realize that anybody could see you out here taking a key and putting it back, don’t you?  So, if someone wanted to break into my house, you’re giving them an easy way to do it.”

Puddin looked down at her stubby fingers and started picking off her nail polish. “But you gave me a key so’s I could clean up if you weren’t here.”

“I thought you’d put the key on your key ring!” Myrtle had a brain wave. “You did know that I could tell Red about this.”

Now Puddin’s expression was wary. She apparently had a couple of minor incidents some years ago, that made her watch her step around law enforcement. “How’s that?” she asked, squinting her eyes in the sun.

“When you so conveniently put my key out on public display, someone took advantage of it. This individual has been entering my house, whenever he likes, for the past week. What you’ve done is aid and abet this criminal,” said Myrtle.

Puddin looked as if she was puzzling out the vocabulary in that last sentence.

“You could get in trouble for helping out the person who broke into my house. Maybe Red would even think that
you
were the person who broke into my house. You’ve very familiar with my stuff, after all. And my valuables.”

Myrtle’s valuables consisted of a chipped Wedgewood bowl of her mother’s, and an always-tarnished sterling porringer. But Puddin wouldn’t know that.

Puddin turned even paler than her usual pasty complexion. “Don’t tell Red, Miz Myrtle. What do you want me to do?”

With difficulty, Myrtle kept a straight face. “You could start by never hiding my key anywhere again. Not that you really hid it last time—you had it right out in the open.”

Puddin nodded her head solemnly and crossed her heart with a pudgy finger.

“And you could start to really take some
effort
when you clean my house. Don’t just push dust from one part of the table to the other. Don’t just vacuum the very middle of the floor. Start putting your glasses on when you’re cleaning…yes, I know you’re doing housework half-blind! And sometimes I’m sure you didn’t do a lick of housekeeping in a room—you just sprayed lemon furniture polish everywhere to make it smell clean.”

Puddin looked somewhat abashed.

“And tell Dusty to be more pleasant to be around, while you’re at it. And you be nice, too!” said Myrtle.

That old, familiar sullen look was stealing across Puddin’s face, so Myrtle stopped while she was ahead. 

Puddin considered Myrtle’s words for a second or two, then nodded. “Okay. Dusty’s out back cutting the grass.”

If Myrtle had only known how easy blackmailing Puddin would be, she’d have done it years ago.

Chapter Eighteen

Peggy Neighbors was next on Myrtle’s list of suspects to talk with. Myrtle was positive that it had been Peggy that Silas had seen the night Charles was murdered. 

Peggy worked most days as a waitress at Bo’s Diner in downtown Bradley. Myrtle waited until it was the middle of the afternoon, figuring that would be the slowest time at the diner, then made the short walk over.

A bell rang on the door when Myrtle pushed it open and the aroma of fried vegetables greeted her. Myrtle had lived in Bradley her whole life and one constant had been the diner, which never seemed to change. It had the same dark wood-paneled walls, the same green, Formica-topped tables and lunch counter, and the same scrubbed-clean look. The only change had been that young Bo took over the diner when his father died.

As she’d hoped, the diner was very quiet at almost three o’clock in the afternoon. And Peggy Neighbors was working today. Myrtle sat down and another waitress came up, so Myrtle asked if Peggy could possibly wait on her.

Peggy immediately came over. “Hi there, Miss Myrtle. How are things going?  Clarisse said you asked for me to take care of your table?”

“If you could, Peggy. I was hoping to have a chance to ask you a few questions. Oh, and I’ll have a pimento cheese dog.” Myrtle had a fondness for this particular hot dog—coated with pimento cheese and served with a side of the diner’s salty shoestring fries.

“Let me put that in for you and I’ll be right back,” said Peggy. A minute later, she was back and sat across from Myrtle in the booth. “I told Bo you were wanting to talk and he said it was okay for me to take a break. There’s really no one in here now, anyway.”

Bo had probably thought Myrtle was lonely and needed an ear. Fine. Whatever was going to get Peggy a break to talk to her for a minute. “Peggy, I don’t know if you know this, but I write stories for the
Bradley Bugle
. I’m doing an investigation for the paper on Charles Clayborne’s murder and I’m really making some progress. In fact, I’m putting the last pieces of the puzzle together, then I’m hoping to go to Red with it tomorrow.”

Myrtle was pleased with the way she was spreading news of solving the mystery around. The murderer would come after her tonight, for sure.

Peggy had paled at the mention of Charles. Was that because she missed Charles so much, or because Myrtle said she was figuring out who killed him?

Peggy said, “No, I didn’t really know that. Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?” Her brows were knitted in confusion.

“I did. Because while I was investigating, I heard one witness say that he saw you with Charles near the scene of the crime the night he was murdered.”

Now Peggy’s face was completely pale. “They must have been mistaken, Miss Myrtle.”

“They were pretty positive,” lied Myrtle, crossing her fingers under the table.

“I told Red and the state police that I was home with my daughter that night,” said Peggy,  but she didn’t look Myrtle in the eye when she said it.

“And I’m sure that Natalie would back you up on that, too. You’re her mama. But do you really want to put your child in the position of lying for you during a murder investigation?” Myrtle filled her voice with as much reproach as she felt she was able to pull off.

Peggy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring down at the table as if trying to figure out what she was going to say. “Okay. I was out there with Charles the night he died. But I didn’t have anything to do with his death, Miss Myrtle—you have to believe me!”

“Why didn’t you just tell the police that you were there?  It doesn’t look good to have lied about it,” said Myrtle.

“Think about it,” pleaded Peggy. “I’m a single mom. My mom has been dead for years and now Daddy is dead. Who would take care of Natalie if I were in prison?  I decided not to say anything about it. After all, I knew I wasn’t involved. And what would happen if the police just didn’t believe me?”

“What happened that night?” asked Myrtle.

“I was trying to convince Charles to go out with me again,” said Peggy in a small voice. “We’d dated back in high school and he’d told me back then that he planned to marry me after graduation. But he didn’t,” she continued bitterly. “Once we graduated, he moved away and left me behind in Bradley.”

“With a baby,” added Myrtle in a low voice.

Peggy gave her a startled look. “How did you know that?”

“Don’t worry; it’s not a rumor going around town or anything. I specifically talked to someone who knew the situation,” said Myrtle.

Peggy relaxed, but her expression was still guarded. “So I had joined him at the bar where he’d been the last few nights. He wasn’t really that friendly toward me—kept interrupting what I was trying to say to him to talk to somebody else. When he looked at his watch, he looked surprised at how late it was. Probably because he was so tipsy. He said he had to go and I followed him out. I wondered if maybe he was going to be meeting with another woman.”

Myrtle cleared her throat. “I’m surprised you really wanted to get back together with Charles, Peggy. After all he’d done to you. And I thought you were starting to go out with Dr. Bass and starting on a new relationship.”

Peggy gave a hoarse laugh. “No, Hugh and I weren’t going out. That’s just something my dad wanted for me so much that I half-started believing it myself. Even back when I was in high school, my dad kept telling me not to date Charles—that Hugh had a better head on his shoulders. Daddy told everybody that Dr. Bass and I were dating—even Charles. But there were no dates…just once when I sat down with Hugh in a booth when he came here to eat…just like we’re doing now. Daddy was pleased as punch when he found that out.”

“So Dr. Bass was even an eligible bachelor in high school. Sounds too good to be true.” Myrtle knew how high school kids were from her teaching days. She was always suspicious of reports of angelic teenage boys.

Peggy nodded emphatically. “It
was
too good to be true. I kept telling Daddy that Hugh was just as wild as the other boys. He wasn’t any better than Charles. He’d go out and play pranks just like they would—bashing mailboxes in, toilet papering the trees, egging houses and cars. It wasn’t like Hugh was perfect or anything.”

“Back to the night that Charles was murdered. He was on foot—is that right?” asked Myrtle.

“Yes, he hadn’t wanted to stay with his mother, so he was in that motel just a few blocks away from downtown. But he wasn’t heading in that direction. At first, I just stopped him in the parking lot of the bar. I told him that I wanted to make some kind of a future with him—to at least have him be involved in Natalie’s life.” Peggy’s face fell. “He didn’t want to listen. He just stomped right off. I followed him, still trying to get him to listen.”

She hesitated, and Myrtle wondered if she were editing her story before she told it. “Like I said, I followed him to see where he was going. I wasn’t thinking real straight. I was pretty far behind him so he wouldn’t see me. I guess I thought that if I saw him meeting with another woman, I’d really tell them both off.”

“By the time I caught up to where he was, he was in someone’s backyard. It was your yard, Miss Myrtle. I knew that because of all the gnomes.”

“You know I have a gnome collection?” asked Myrtle, raising her eyebrows in surprise.

“I think everybody in Bradley knows that, Miss Myrtle,” said Peggy with the first hint of a smile that she’d shown since she sat down with her.

“Once I saw where he was, I wasn’t so worried.” Peggy flushed. “What I mean to say is that I knew that you and Charles weren’t involved in a relationship or anything.”

Myrtle gave a shudder. “Indeed not.”

“Charles stood in your yard for a while, kind of swaying on his feet and staring at your house and the houses next to you. He almost looked like he was confused or didn’t know which house he was going to. Then he walked from your backyard down the hill to your dock. He sat out there for a while. He had a bottle with him—a beer that he’d started drinking at the bar. The moon reflected on the lake and I could see him sitting there, drinking, and looking at the water.”

Now it made sense why he’d been in her backyard. She’d wondered why Charles would have gone up to talk to Miles from the
back
. Even though he was drunk, it still seemed as if he’d have staggered up to his front, not his back door. He probably sat down at the lake, drank a little more, and finally screwed up enough courage to go up and persuade Miles to invest in his scheme.

“Somebody came up to join him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from where I was. But it looked to me like they were having an argument. They were both waving their hands around like they were mad,” said Peggy.

“It was a man?” asked Myrtle, leaning over the table to listen closer. It must have been Peggy’s father. Wanda had told her she’d seen them there.

“I don’t know who it was,” said Peggy hurriedly, looking away. “But I know that it was a man. I figured Charles was trying to do one of those business deals he was bragging about to everybody. Seems like that’s all Charles wanted to talk about once he came to town—money.”

 “Did you see anybody else while you were near my house?” asked Myrtle, thinking of Silas. “Anybody coming, going or lurking?”

Peggy thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Now I’ve really got to go,” she said quickly. “Things are starting to pick up in the diner again.”

If
picking up
meant one additional customer, it was.

Myrtle had one more task she wanted to complete today…talk with Dr. Bass. She knew Miles wasn’t planning on seeing Hugh Bass again, preferring to go to a dentist in another town. She rolled her tongue over her teeth. There didn’t seem to be anything chipped, breaking off, or needing rearranging. She’d just go walk over to his office and wait in the parking lot for him to leave. The office always closed promptly at five-thirty.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to loiter too long in the parking lot. There had already been a couple of concerned dental patients who’d come over to see if she was all right and needed anything. One of them seemed to suspect that she might be suffering from dementia and was determined to drop her off at Red’s house. Myrtle finally dispatched her by being just a wee bit more caustic that she might ordinarily have been. That display of temper had been the only thing that convinced the Good Samaritan that Myrtle hadn’t lost her faculties.

When Myrtle saw Pam-the-hygienist leave, she quickly ducked out of sight. Pam would call Red just to be mean, faking concern all the while.

Finally, Dr. Bass came out of the building, carefully locking the door behind him. He lifted his eyebrows in surprise when he saw Myrtle. “Mrs. Clover?  We’re closed right now. Are you having a problem? Why don’t you call Pam tomorrow morning and make an appointment. Tell her I said I’d fit you in.”