A Body in the Backyard (5 page)

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 looked 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.

Chapter Five

Myrtle could tell it was going to be one of those nights where she couldn’t sleep. As soon as she lay down, her mind became fixated on things she needed to do to prepare for the little reception after the funeral. She’d tell herself to relax, take deep breaths, gradually stretch her muscles and feel that she was about to drift off…and some other detail would pop into her head and mess it all up again.

When she finally did fall asleep, her dreams were of that weird, am-I-awake-or-am-I-asleep, quality that played with her head. She kept glancing at her clock, convinced it must almost be morning but saw instead that it was only fifteen or twenty minutes later from the last time she’d checked. Finally, she gave a frustrated bellow, untangled herself from the tangled bed sheets, and propelled herself out of the bed.

It was two o’clock in the morning. This was her usual time for being awake and it wasn’t that she was unprepared for it. Ordinarily, she’d putter around the house—start a load of laundry, put away the dishes from the dishwasher, read a few chapters of a book. Sometimes she’d take a walk down the street. Her neighbors had grown accustomed to seeing a tall, white-headed person in a bathrobe navigating down the sidewalk in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, Red, if he were the one to see her, never missed the opportunity to remind her that Greener Pastures retirement home was an excellent, safe place for wandering octogenarians.

The thought of Red made Myrtle settle docilely in her armchair and turn on the TV for the rest of her
Tomorrow’s Promise
soap opera that she’d fallen asleep during earlier. Five minutes into the show, though, she became uncharacteristically annoyed by it. Melaina was in the hospital
again
?  That woman had been in the hospital the past few months with every illness known to man—cancer, rehab, a car crash, a gunshot wound. Couldn’t the writers come up with something new for her to do? 

Myrtle turned off the TV, feeling restless again. Sleep wasn’t going to happen, so she might as well stretch her legs. Red should be sleeping soundly after all the excitement of the murder. She brightened. Maybe Miles would be awake. He frequently had insomnia himself. She put on her robe, pulled out a bag of cookies and hung them from a plastic bag on her wrist, grabbed her cane, and headed outside the door. She even remembered to lock the door behind her.

Myrtle wandered down the sidewalk, then peered at Miles’s house. There were lights on, all right. They didn’t look like nightlights, either. Myrtle walked up his front walk and rang Miles’s doorbell.

Miles answered the door. “I figured you might come over. I set the coffeemaker to perk at one-thirty.”

Myrtle grinned at him, delighted to have someone to talk to in the middle of the night. “I’m late, then! Let’s get started. I brought some gingersnaps.”

Miles smiled back at her. Minutes later, they munched on cookies and drank milk and coffee. Myrtle said thoughtfully, “You didn’t set an alarm for yourself or anything did you?  Because you thought I might come over?”

“Nothing like that. I just anticipated that you might have insomnia tonight—I know your mind starts getting real active when you have a new case to mull over,” said Miles.

Myrtle gave a satisfied sigh. “I like the way you put that, Miles. A case. That’s what I’ve got. A new puzzle to solve.”

“Although more dangerous than any of your crossword puzzles,” said Miles. “You weren’t worried about walking over here in the dark?  You did have a murder right in your own backyard last night, after all.”

Myrtle shrugged. “It had nothing to do with me, did it?  Seems like it had more to do with you. I’m only trying to get to the bottom of it, that’s all. Why would someone want to kill me?”

Miles wisely bit his tongue. Myrtle looked suspiciously at him.

Miles quickly said, “So what, in particular, is on your mind, Myrtle?  What kept you up tonight?”

“Oh, I was mulling it all over. I was also planning the reception in my head,” said Myrtle.