A Body in the Backyard (23 page)

“You know, I really do appreciate that, Dr. Bass. But my teeth seem to be doing all right.” Myrtle mentally knocked on some wood. All she needed was dental problems right now. “What I wanted to do, though, was ask you some questions.”

Now there was a wary look in Dr. Bass’s eyes. “Some questions?”

Myrtle nodded. “You might not know this, but I’m an investigative reporter for the
Bradley Bugle
.”

Dr. Bass gave Myrtle a smile that he probably intended to show interest, but only succeeded in displaying condescension. “You mentioned that before.”

“Oh. Well anyway, I’ve been looking into these murders and now I feel that I’m very close to putting the final pieces of the puzzle together. Once I do, I’ll naturally go to Red and let him know I’ve solved the case.”

Dr. Bass’s lips pressed together into a thin line.

“But I am trying to tie up a few odds and ends. Take, for instance, your involvement in this case,” said Myrtle.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that I have any involvement in the case,” said Dr. Bass brusquely. “After all, this is a man that I knew back in high school. I’m sorry that he’s dead, naturally.”

“Dr. Bass, I know that you have more involvement with Charles Clayborne than that.” Myrtle noticed the smirky smile of his had finally been wiped off his face. “I’ve learned that when you graduated from high school, you both moved away to the same town, went to the same college, and were even roommates while you were in medical school and afterward.”

Hugh Bass shrugged. “It’s a way of saving money, that’s all.” His gaze was sharp as he studied Myrtle.

“It just all flies in the face of what your position was—that you hadn’t seen Charles for a number of years. You lied. I’ve also heard that you had an argument with Charles Clayborne a few days before he was murdered,” said Myrtle.

Dr. Bass crossed his arms on his chest in a defensive posture. “We may have argued. I didn’t kill the man, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“What was this argument about?” asked Myrtle.

He still looked as though he was wavering, trying to decide how much to tell Myrtle. “None of this is going in the newspaper, right?”

“Dr. Bass, right now I’m just trying to figure out what happened.” That was the truth, after all. No need to scare the man off before he gave her information.

 “We argued, because Charles was trying to force me into investing in this shady-sounding business deal that he was setting up,” said the dentist with a sigh. “It was obviously some kind of scam or a pyramid scheme or something like that. Of course, I didn’t want anything to do with it. And Charles was convinced that
this
time, this deal was going to be the one to finally make him rich. I told him that the best way to get rich was to pick something you’re good at and invest a whole lot of time and sweat into it every day. It wasn’t the kind of advice that Charles liked to hear,” said Dr. Bass. “He started letting me have it. That’s probably what your witness saw—Charles arguing with
me
, instead of the other way around.”

“Why did he think that he could persuade you to invest in something you so clearly wanted nothing to do with?” asked Myrtle innocently. Would he tell her that Charles was trying to blackmail him?  A past incarceration and a revoked dental license, even in another state, certainly wouldn’t be easy for the town of Bradley to swallow.

The wary look was back on Dr. Bass’s face. He grew suddenly busy digging his car key out of his pocket. “We grew up together, remember?  There were plenty of instances of youthful immaturity that I’m sure Charles could use to persuade me.”

He clearly still wasn’t inclined to talk about the past. “Did you finally convince him that you weren’t going to invest?” asked Myrtle. “How did you leave it?”

The dentist said, “No, Charles was the kind of guy who was never convinced. He was going to keep talking to me about the scheme, for sure. He told me even this really straight-laced, retired cousin of his was planning to invest.”

Finally, some confirmation why Charles was trying to talk to Miles. Charles had clearly presumed he could sucker Miles into investing in the scheme. Who knows if Miles would have been able to, if that meeting had happened?  Miles could be a real softy.

Back at home that evening, Myrtle tried to relax, but a wave of excitement kept streaking through her. She’d done a great job spreading the news around town today that she was on the verge of solving the case and telling Red the name of the culprit. She’d set herself up for an intruder tonight. Plus, she’d been smart and covered her bases. She had pepper spray, a pot of coffee to keep her awake, and a friend coming over. She was in good shape.

At nine o’clock, Myrtle realized she should turn off her lights. What intruder would try to attack her when all her lights were on?  And the intruder that she strongly suspected would arrive tonight was definitely not stupid. She also made sure the motion detector lights were still turned off. And she locked her door—she didn’t want the murderer to realize she’d laid a trap.

Then Myrtle unlocked her front door so that Miles could come quickly in at eleven and so that she could quickly
exit
, if she needed to. She put some pillows in her bed to make her appear to be under the covers. Then she pulled the covers over the pillows. It
sort
of looked like a sleeping figure. In the dark, she thought it would pass. She certainly didn’t want to be in the bedroom with the killer, though—there really would be no way out.

Instead, Myrtle took a large cup of coffee into the living room with her and put a chair right outside the kitchen door. That way, she could hear when someone was coming in through the back door.

Myrtle wasn’t quite ready to stand guard in that chair yet—it was still very early. She figured she’d sit on the living room sofa and read her book with a book light until Miles came over, then she’d move to her guard post.

At ten o’clock, she thought she heard a scraping sound outside her back door. She frowned. Miles was supposed to be coming in through the front. Besides, it was too early for Miles to be coming over.

Myrtle froze as she strained her ears to hear. Sure enough, the metallic, scraping noise came again.

Someone was trying to unlock her back door in the dark.

Chapter Nineteen

Myrtle grabbed her pepper spray at the same moment the back door creaked open. She carefully peeked around the kitchen door and saw the intruder entering her bedroom—clearly someone who’d become familiar with her house from previous break-ins.

She thought about picking up the phone to dial Red…or Miles, but knew there wouldn’t be enough time. Those pillows in her bed wouldn’t fool Hugh Bass for very long.

There was a slashing sound coming from her bedroom and Myrtle’s breath caught in her throat. It sounded like stabbing.

There was a frustrated cry and Hugh Bass bolted from her bedroom…and saw Myrtle on the other side of the kitchen island. He held up his knife and charged at her. Myrtle waited, blood pounding in her head, until he came close. Then she lifted the bottle of pepper spray and directed a steady stream right at his face.

With a howl of pain, Dr. Bass dropped to his knees, digging at his eyes with his fingers. Myrtle quickly grabbed the knife and threw it across the room. She desperately looked around her—looking for something that she could use to knock the dentist unconscious before he charged her again.

Then she jerked open the freezer, pulling the fifteen pound, rock-hard ham to the very edge of the bottom freezer shelf with some difficulty. Then she dropped it right on Dr. Bass’s head.

It was a knockout punch.

Myrtle ended up calling Miles next. She still had so much adrenaline coursing through her that apparently whatever she said to him was quite garbled. He interpreted it as, “Call Red and come over,” which is exactly what he did.

It was good, for once, that Red lived so close to Myrtle. That’s because Dr. Bass started stirring after only a few minutes. She retrieved her cane from the living room and perched on a kitchen stool, ready to strike with the cane if he should stop being groggy and start attacking her again.

But once Red and Miles ran in, she decided that she’d take to her favorite chair in the living room. She appeared to have a case of the shakes. She poured herself a sherry—just to steady her nerves. As an afterthought, she brought the bottle with her into the living room.

The state police weren’t far behind. There were pictures taken in the kitchen and samples of things taken outside. They found a key to Myrtle’s door in Dr. Bass’s pocket, where he’d hastily stuck it before entering Myrtle’s bedroom. Myrtle told the police where they could find the knife he’d tried to kill her with. Then, of course, there was the fact that Dr. Bass was curiously dressed completely in black, even with a black cap and black gloves.

None of those things would have pointed to evidence that Dr. Bass had broken into Myrtle’s house. But fortunately, something had loosened Dr. Bass’s tongue. He might have been tired of his secrets and relieved to tell them—or it might have been that the frozen ham had made him temporarily lose his mind. At any rate, he was confessing to the police, who hastily informed him of his rights.

Miles was drinking sherry out of one of Myrtle’s bathroom cups, since the kitchen was occupied by police. “I guess we miscalculated when Dr. Bass would arrive. By the way, were you expecting
him
?  I mean—had you already figured out that he’d killed Charles and Lee Woosley?”

“It was,” admitted Myrtle reluctantly, “a miscalculation. It’s lucky I was prepared for trouble the way I was. I was expecting Dr. Bass, yes. But I didn’t realize he was coming by boat. If I’d thought about it, then I’d have pushed back the time that you were to join me. Oh—and Dr. Bass didn’t kill Charles.”

Miles’s mouth gaped open and closed. It wasn’t an attractive look for Miles.

Myrtle wasn’t sure which part of her statement he was reacting to. “You see, Dr. Bass also lives on the lake. He wouldn’t want to risk being seen approaching my house from the street, then cutting through someone’s backyard. He did that one time and all Erma’s motion detector lights went off. By arriving in a small boat, he just quietly pulled up to my dock and came up through the woods, directly to my backyard.”

Miles had finally regained his speech. “Okay, I’ve got that. But…Dr. Bass didn’t kill Cousin Charles?”

“Oh no. Lee Woosley killed Charles. Then Dr. Bass killed Lee Woosley.”

“But why?  I mean, I understand why Lee would murder Charles—he’d treated his daughter horribly in the past and was treating her just as poorly when he returned to town. I just can’t see why Dr. Bass would want to kill Lee, though,” said Miles.

“I’ll tell you what I think happened, Miles. Then Red will be able to confirm my deductions, since it sounds like Dr. Bass is confessing to everything he can think of in there. Peggy Neighbors had tried to get Charles back in a relationship with her. She told him about their daughter. He wanted nothing to do with Peggy or his daughter. His daughter is finishing up high school and Peggy probably needs the financial help to get her through college. That’s exactly the kind of problem that Charles wouldn’t have wanted. Peggy was upset and told her father what happened…I guess she must have phoned him. Lee decided to confront Charles,” said Myrtle.

Miles nodded. “That all makes sense. But where does Dr. Bass come in?”

“I’m getting there! So Lee has an argument with Charles out on the dock. Wanda saw it with her own eyes. In the course of the argument, he tells Charles that Peggy doesn’t need him anyway—he’s not good enough for Peggy. Peggy is, in fact, going to start dating the most eligible bachelor in town…Dr. Hugh Bass.”

Miles looked doubtful at this. “Peggy Neighbors and Dr. Bass?  I don’t really see the two of them together. Peggy is very
nice
, but….”

“Exactly. So Charles’s reaction to this, when the two men are down at the dock having this discussion, is to laugh. He not only laughs at Peggy’s prospects with Dr. Bass, but he laughs at the fact that Lee thinks he’s so eligible. Charles would have sneered at that, telling Lee that Dr. Bass was actually a former convict and even had his dental license revoked.”

Miles nodded. “So the men, as you mentioned, are down at the dock. They’re arguing. How does Charles end up dead in your yard?”

“At some point, Charles walks away. His plan is to talk to you about some kind of scheme he wants you to invest in. He’s been drinking a lot remember. So he staggers off to your yard, although he ends up in mine. Lee follows him up, still furious at the entire situation and enraged by what Charles has told him. Charles is an expert at enraging people,” said Myrtle.

“And he bashes Charles over the head with your Viking gnome,” said Miles.

Myrtle said, “Breaking it with the force. It was the only heavy object available to him at the time. I think Peggy even saw her father there—she must have, since she was following Charles. I bet she’ll end up telling Red and the state police what she saw.”

Miles took a thoughtful sip of his sherry, draining the bathroom cup. “So, let’s see. This means that somehow Lee talked to Dr. Bass. Almost immediately. Did he try to blackmail the dentist, do you think?  Squeeze some money out of him?  I’m sure that, as a handyman, he couldn’t have been bringing in much income. He probably helped support Peggy and his granddaughter, too.”

Myrtle shook her head. “Well, I don’t know for sure. Red might, since Dr. Bass is spilling everything in there. But I can’t imagine Lee Woosley caring about money enough to blackmail. He was sort of a softie, I think. And old-fashioned. I think he was affronted that Dr. Bass was practicing dentistry in Bradley after what he’d done in West Virginia. I believe he approached Dr. Bass about it, the day before he was murdered. Maybe he even gave him an ultimatum—get out of town or I’m going to tell Red about this.”

Miles said slowly, “Then Lee returned to your house during the funeral to finish up the job he’d started for you before everyone came by for the reception.”