by Gale Borger
He jumped out of the way and into the back of Dad’s newly-scratched and dented pickup truck. He was still recovering his balance when the cars slid to a stop and the drivers’ doors flew open.
J.J. jumped over the side of the truck and stood his ground in front of the ladies, explaining why they were not allowed to enter a crime scene.
His cries fell on deaf ears, and in the case of Mary Cromwell, really deaf ears. He had to jump out of the way again to avoid being run over by the stampede of three little old ladies wearing back packs and wielding casserole dishes and Jell-O salads. They waddled, shuffled, and toddled over to where the body still waited in its cardboard box. They stopped and stared as if they were paying their respects. Not wanting to interfere with such a solemn and personal moment, yet needing to know if they could shed light on Carole’s death, I stepped within hearing distance and calmly eavesdropped.
“Would you look at that? Gerry wasn’t lying!”
“A real live croaker, right under her house!”
“Just like John Wayne Gacy!”
“No, not just like John Wayne Gacy, you old fool. You think that Bill is stashing bodies under the house now?”
“Did you say that Bill stashed the body under the house just like John Wayne Gacy?”
“No! Listen to me! John Wayne Gacy was from Illinois. Stuff like that doesn’t happen in Wisconsin!”
“Can you say Ed Gein? Jeffery Dahmer?”
“Don’t play know-it-all with me, Joy Broussard! I know my serial killers.”
“Ahem, ladies?” I said.
They all raised their heads and looked at me with innocent expressions. They turned as one and bustled over to the picnic table by the back door. Looking as if they had rehearsed, they worked in complete harmony setting up a buffet on the picnic table.
Folding chairs appeared out of nowhere, and Moe, Shemp, and Curly abandoned the crime scene in favor of unsuccessfully setting up a canopy to keep the sun off the elderly partygoers. Larry was still fanning Al and patting her hand. Al was giving her best impression of the dying cockroach, a must in every Drama Queen’s repertoire.
My mother chose that moment to bustle out the back door carrying paper plates, utensils, and napkins, followed by Dead Butts carrying soda, beer, and brats. He fired up the grill and to my amazement, began grilling lunch for everyone. Dad followed, grumbling about his truck, and carrying buns and condiments. He gave Ted a scathing look and said, “Hope he don’t burn the sausage.”
“Don’t worry Bill,” Mary chimed in. “Handling his sausage is probably the only thing my boy knows how to do well, heh, heh, heh!”
All grey heads turned toward the grill. Ted turned red and tried to look busy.
J.J. put his hands on his hips, looked at the debacle and shouted loud enough to startle even Mary. “What in the name of Sam Hill is going on here? Are you people going to have a tailgate party right here in Miller’s back yard? Have you no respect for Miz Graff? Moe, Larry, did you find my crime scene camera?”
Mary popped out of her seat “Woo-Hoo, J.J.! I have just the thing here!” She proceeded to dump the contents of her backpack on the picnic table.
Self-sealing evidence bags, nitrile gloves, forceps, tweezers, and disposable scalpels clattered across the table. Crime scene tape, hemostats in three sizes, and another box followed. Inside were fiber brushes, an ink pad, silver and black fingerprint powder, clear lifting tape, silver tape, scissors, a magnifying glass, diaper wipes, a high powered clip light, and both black and white latent fingerprint cards.
J.J. looked at Mary like she was a nut. She smiled smugly. Digging deep into her backpack, she pulled out a new Nikon D3X digital SLR camera.
J.J. slapped his forehead and stumbled back a step. “Holy crap,” he whispered reverently.
Mary plopped the camera into J.J.‘s hands, closed his fingers around the case and said, “Okay Sheriff Green, you run along now and take your photos of Carole, God rest her soul.”
“But Miz Cromwell, Mary, This is an eight-thousand dollar camera…before the lens!”
“Don’t you worry none about that old camera James Green. I bought it to replace your old one, which by-the-way, my illustrious son damaged while taking pictures up at Parfrey’s Glen during the 2008 flood.”
“Uh, I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Then don’t. But to make a long story short, your camera went bye-bye in the flood waters.”
Mag nudged me. “Too bad sonny boy didn’t follow the camera.”
Mary cackled. “Turns out, he did! They had to air lift his sorry ass out of the Wisconsin River floodwaters! They asked him not to come back to help with clean-up.”
J.J. took the camera out of the bag and popped off the lens cover. “Well thank you Mary. I shall guard this with my life.”
I was fading fast. I always do after a vision as powerful as the one I just had, and all I wanted to do was to finish up and get home. “J.J., can we finish up here?”
“Oh, yeah.” He spoke into his recorder. “R.O. is Sheriff James J. Green, twenty, September, 2009 at 1326. Investigation into the murder of Carole Graff.” He clicked off the recorder and began to take pictures.
Jane’s head spun around and she piped up, “Did you say that was Carole Graff over there? Damn! She still owes me two dollars and fifty three cents for those melons I bought her when they were on sale over at the Food Palace last week.”
* * *
I jumped on that statement. “You saw her last week? When last week, Jane?”
“Uh, that would have been last week on Monday. I know because my son Joey was up from Chicago and planted the spiderwort and butterfly bush this past Wednesday that I bought from Carole last Monday.”
I didn’t mention to her that Joey was the son who lived in Albuquerque, and Harold was the son in Chicago. I also didn’t mention that Graff’s was closed on Mondays, so she probably got her plants on Tuesday, but she was on a roll, and I wasn’t going to be the one to stop her.
“I told her about the melon sale and asked if she wanted a couple. She said sure, so I gave her the ones I had with me. Yes. I remember it as clear as a bell. We spoke when she loaded up the butterfly bush and the spiderwort.”
“Hey, Jane, who’s got an open fly and warts on her tush?” Mary yelled. She turned and yelled the same thing to Ted, who was standing at the grill, less than two feet away from her. “Was that Carole, Sonny”
Ted turned and bared his teeth at his mother. “Not tush, you deaf old bat, BUSH! And don’t call me Sonny.” He angrily flipped the sausage.
Mary looked horrified. “Warts on her bush? Oh my! I never heard of that before, and since you’re my son, I’ll call you Sonny if I want.”
Everyone laughed except Ted, who was becoming more embarrassed and angry by the minute. Mary prattled on. “It’s those young singles, you know. ‘Warty Bush’ must be one of them new S.T.P.s they been talking about on Oprah.” She shook her head. “Damn them kids and unprotected sex.” We all stood open mouthed and staring, watching her polish off her beer.
Red faced and quivering like Jane’s Jell-O mold, Ted gestured wildly with the tongs. “Ma, it’s S.T.D., not P., for Christ’s sake! They aren’t talking about oil!”
“Well, how else did she get warts on her bush? Maybe they had one of them wild Mazola oil parties they talked about on Jerry Springer last week!”
“Not her bush, you wacky old broad, they were talking about flowers! FLOWERS! Geez, what does it take to make you hear?”
Her button eyes brightened. “Beer? Why thank you, Teddy dear, yes, I will have another.” With that, she scuttled over to the cooler and snagged a Miller Lite.
Turning back to the grill, Ted stabbed a sausage and muttered, “Shoulda put her in a nursing home years ago.”
“We heard that, Theodore Edward Puetz!” Ted turned to see four sets of faded eyes shooting daggers in his direction. Mary, Joy, Jane, and Mom stuck their chins out and glared at him until he ducked his head and a
pologized.
I poked Mag. “Taking on those four geriatric hellions one at a time is not for the faint of heart, but I don’t think even Ted is stupid enough to tackle them as a united front.”
“You’d better believe it!”
Regaining my composure was more difficult than I thought as I watched Ted sputtering and Mary smiling slyly. I faced the ladies and began the interview process. Slowly a story emerged. I was able to piece together some of Carole’s last days alive. I scribbled notes and recorded the conversation with J.J.‘s mini recorder.
I was about to begin individual interviews when I was alerted to the ambulance arriving on scene. Shouts of “The meat wagon’s here!” and “Here comes the body snatchers!” rose from the partygoers as the ambulance rolled to a stop. A bewildered Assistant Coroner, Ivan Sligorsky, gazed upon the scene before him.
Hands on hips, he said in his slow accented speech, “Hope you cooked up a brat for me, Ted.” He nodded at the still incensed women. “Ladies, you are looking lovely today.” They preened and he turned toward the body. “Malcolm, Sheriff Green, Miz Buzz.”
Still looking at the body, Ivan held out his hand and Ted dropped a bratwurst in it. Taking a large bite, Ivan seemed immune to the smell of the corpse or the crowd. He finished the brat in three bites and methodically went about rifling through the Coroner’s van, gathering materials he needed. Malcolm helped Ivan unfold a humongous body bag–big enough for box and all. He silently nodded to Malcolm, and the two of them, with the help of J.J. and me, moved the box onto the bag.
Ivan removed his gloves and held out a hand. Another bratwurst dropped. I heard a strange noise and looked at Ivan. He was observing an arm hanging out of the box and humming ‘Sentimental Journey’.
I shook my head and smiled. Ivan is a special character. Very large of stature, his lab jacket reaches about four inches above his wrists. He has a quiet way about him and speaks in a Russian accent. I think he plays up the gouly-stuff for the benefit of the little old ladies.
The seniors call him Igor and pronounced it ‘Eye-Gore’, after the Marty Feldman character from the movie classic, Young Frankenstein.
The beer flowed freely and the atmosphere had deteriorated to silly tittle-tattle and outrageous speculation from my mother and her cronies. I turned off the recorder and sat back to enjoy the repartee.
Jane chortled, “Hey, Igor, what hump? Ha-Ha-ha-ha!” She was joined by the others as they belted out lines from Young Frankenstein.
“What Knockers!”
“Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you…”
Mary looked her son dead in the eye and said, “The nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind…”
He smiled back at her and said, “You Mother, are sooo Abby…Normal.”
“Give him the sed-a-give,” Mom yelled and they all cracked up over that one. Like I said, never take them all on at once, because you will lose.
Joy looked uneasy and suddenly leaned forward. In a stage whisper we could hear across the yard she said, “I’ll bet it was that husband of hers, Glenn. I always thought he had shifty eyes.”
Gerry clapped. “Maybe she was some gun moll for the Mob.”
I rolled my eyes. “Geez, Mom, get real.”
She put her nose in the air. “Al Capone had a house on Lake Geneva, and another over on St Mary’s Road in Libertyville!”
Mary twirled the hair growing out of her facial mole. She narrowed her eyes and poked out her chin. “I wonder if she was in one of them wild sex cults to get them warts down there.”
“Mary,” my mom shushed.
“Maybe someone got tired of her owing money to everyone in the county and put a bullet in her,” Jane grumbled.
J.J. tried to help. “But Jane, did she owe anyone else two dollars?” Jane slapped her purse on her lap and pursed her lips primly.
Mom leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “Probably had a Mexican lover–remember she went there last month on vacation, you know.”
“Mom, you watch too much television.” I said Now we’re getting somewhere.
Mary looked at her aghast, “Ain’t no one gonna do the hinky-dinky with a woman with warts on her bush!”
“Oh, Mary,” an exasperated Joy and Jane shushed.
Joy brightened up. “I remember now, Gerry, and you’re right. She was gone on some plant exploration thing. She was gone the tenth, because I went in that day to buy mulch, and that snippy little Jill Greyson tried to tell me it wasn’t on sale. I almost had to pay full price, and I had a coupon! Of course I demanded to see Carole, but Jilly told me that she had gone to Mexico.” Joy put her head down but we all heard her mumbling to herself, “Sure, she could afford run off to Mexico on a whim but she didn’t pay her bills before she left!”
“JOY!”
My mother picked delicately at her macaroni salad as she calmly added her two cents. “That mulch was not on sale that day Joy, the sale ended on the ninth, but you bullied that poor girl into giving you the sale price. Her mother told my niece’s husband’s brother that little Jilly cried all afternoon after you got done leaning on her like some mobster thug.”
“I wonder if someone gets warts down there from some rare Mexican disease. You don’t think she drank the water, do you?”
“Geez, Mary,” they all yelled in unison.
Joy sat stiffly in her chair and sniffed. “She should have used all that extra money she made off of poor old women on fixed incomes to pay her debts, that’s what I think! Lord knows you should have the decency to pay for your melons before you croak!”
Mary looked perplexed. “Who paid to see whose melons?”
Even I joined in this time. “MARY!”
Joy was no longer paying attention; she was getting on a roll. “Thug! Who does that Molly Greyson think she is, calling me a thug? I’ll give you thug! I’m 78 years old. I’m more of a bug than a thug! I didn’t push Jilly around!”
Mom piped up. “Bug my sweet patootie, Joy Renee Broussard. You’re not only a thug, but a cheapskate too, and you know it! You should have paid full price instead of weaseling a lousy fifty cents off with an expired coupon and making that little girl cry!”
With her nose in the air, Mom got up and moved over by Al, pretending to be concerned over her delicate constitution. Al smiled weakly at her and laid her head on Mom’s shoulder, playing up the drama. It was all I could do to keep myself from strangling her.
“Well, I never!” Highly insulted and fit to be tied, Joy stomped over to the picnic table, picked up her seven-layer salad, which Bill was in the process of digging into. She snatched it, Dad’s spoon and all. Lettuce flew and a pea bounced off Dad’s bald head. Joy stalked over to her Bonneville and tossed the salad through the back window.
Mom said out of the side of her mouth, “Joy’s going to regret that move in the morning!” Mary and Jane nodded their heads in agreement.
Revving the engine, Joy peeled out of the driveway, spraying gravel across the front fender of Dad’s new truck.
Dad jumped out of his chair (although he more resembled a beetle trying to crawl up the inside of a glass jar), looking like he wanted to kill something. “Damn, damn, damn old women! I am tired of you all playing free and loose with my new truck! You all can learn how to drive or stop coming over here to wreck my stuff!” He attacked the nearest thing to him Unfortunately, it was Ted.
Arms flailed and sauerkraut flew out of the bun as Dad poked Ted in the chest with his bratwurst. “My truck! My damn truck! You! You little sawed-off excuse of a political hack! Do your job and arrest that old broad! Go on,” he poked him again. “Go get her! She wrecked what you didn’t of my poor new truck. Throw her in jail and throw away the key! Get that crazy broad off the streets!”
Ted stumbled backward, trying to avoid the attack of the now-krautless sausage. Heedless of how idiotic he looked, dripping mustard, and sauerkraut hanging off his tie tack, he began to backpedal away from the livid 80 year old man. “But Bill, wait! I�
�ll pay, wait! Stop! Sheriff Green! Mrs. Miller! Call him off!”
Not knowing whether to scream or cry, he mewled like a wounded kitten while scrambling backward away from my father. We all watched helplessly while his butt hit the food-laden picnic table full force. He floundered and teetered, realized he was trapped. He tried to regain his balance, tripped over his feet, and fell face first into the potato salad.
“Two salads down, two to go,” yelled Mary, as her son picked a piece of celery out of his ear. “I haven’t had this much fun since me and the mister thought that the swinging singles ad we answered was a dance club! I remember when we walked into that place dressed in our square dance outfits; the place went up for grabs. That ruffled skirt of mine never got such a workout!”
“MARY,” everyone yelled. She smiled her Mona Lisa smile and settled back into her chair, quiet for the first time all day.
Ted took advantage of the distraction and exited, stage left. He jumped into his squad and hightailed it out of there. Last seen was a cloud of dust settling in the driveway, and a trail of potato salad, kraut, and mustard scattered across the yard.
“Hey, Sheriff, we got everything all ‘wrapped up’ here!” Ivan waved his fifth brat in the air and smiled. He slammed the back of the ambulance closed.
J.J. scowled at him as he signed off on the paperwork. “Sick joke, Ivan. Get on downtown now so Malcolm can work his magic. Hey, Buzz, you’re going in with me and Malcolm for the autopsy, aren’t you?”
“Sure, J.J. You go ahead back to your office. Just let me make sure my folks are okay and I’ll be right along.”
“I don’t think it’s your folks you have to worry about. Ted just got beat up by an 80 year old man and a naked bratwurst.”
“Uh, yeah, Dad’s a little touchy about his truck.”
J.J. ruffled the hair on top of my head. He knew I hated that. “See you later, pal. Thanks for the entertaining morning.”
I sighed. “Later, J.J., Unfortunately it wasn’t unusual by Miller standards.”
J.J. smiled and shook his head. He pulled out behind Mee-Me’s car. Moe, Larry, Curly, and Shemp quit the softball game they were involved in and sped off down the driveway after him. Mag printed the pictures she had taken on the computer and gave me a set for the investigation. I looked back on the scene as I pulled out of the driveway. Aside from the nasty smell hanging low in the air, it seemed like a friendly neighborhood gathering. If people only knew…
