A Berry Clever Corpse

by WINTERS, A. R.

  On one side of Mike’s home was the park where the four homeless people had been living. On the other side was a ranch-style home a little smaller than Mike’s, and it was owned by Mike’s infamous neighbor.

  “Think Tina’s home?” I asked.

  “Her curtains moved. She’s home.”

  For some reason, knowing that she was over there peering at us from out of sight made me feel exposed. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t even gotten out of Zoey’s car yet.

  “What do you think we should do first, check for the homeless people first or talk to Tina?”

  “Homeless people,” Zoey said. “If things get weird with Tina—and everybody says it will—could get awkward heading next door to the park afterward. If she turned homicidal on us, it would leave us exposed as well.”

  Good points.

  We got out of the car and headed into the park. There was a run-walk path covered with what looked like shredded bark. There were a few park benches beneath a tree big enough to be seen from outer space. A tin-roofed, no wall shelter provided cover for a set of four picnic tables and what looked like an outdoor grill.

  It wasn’t a very big park, but it looked like it was loved. It was well cared for, even if it did look cold, stark and lonely in the gloomy winter light.

  In addition to the other park features, sitting unobtrusively to the side was the small cinderblock building that offered his-hers bathroom options. It was the spot the four had turned into a makeshift home. And as makeshift homes went, I had to admit, one with running water, a solid roof, and built-in toilet facilities wasn’t too bad. Definitely could be worse.

  The small building looked deserted, but there was only one sure way to find out.

  Zoey and I headed over. Zoey crinkled her nose when we got near. I couldn’t smell anything, but maybe she could.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said. “Guard against a surprise attack by Tina.”

  I wanted to believe that Zoey’s comment was said fully in jest, but I wasn’t sure it was.

  I headed in. Choosing the ladies’ side first, I called out softly, “Hello? Anybody home?” I didn’t get an answer, and due diligence had my hand on the door to take a peek inside. Which is what I did.

  There, to my horror, was a wrinkly old man naked from the waist down. He had a foot thrown over one of the sinks and the water was running.

  I gasped, clenched my eyes shut and turned to go back out. But I misgauged where the door frame was and bashed the side of my head into it. That made me open my eyes, and I really wished I hadn’t opened my eyes. I was no longer looking at the man’s backside—I was looking at his frontside!

  “Oh! No! I’m sorry!” I said, closing my eyes again and holding my hand up as if to further shield the old fellow from my sight.

  “What in tarnation. Git. Git!”

  I got. I stumbled and bounced my way back out of there, or at least I tried. Zoey charging in had us both scrambling and covering our eyes, tangled together and turning around in circles.

  “Git! Git outta my home!”

  We both forced our way out the door at the same time. I almost went down on my knees, but Zoey caught me. “Open your eyes!”

  “Oh yeah!” I’d forgotten that it was now safe to see. The old man was inside, behind inches and inches of concrete block. But that did nothing for the image of him seared onto my retina. I grabbed Zoey by her shoulders. “I can’t unsee it, Zoey. I can’t unsee it.”

  Zoey thunked me—hard—with the flick of her middle finger on my forehead.

  “Hey!” I jerked back and rubbed the spot she hit.

  “Not thinking about him anymore, are ya?”

  “Well I am now,” I complained, but she was right. Somehow she always knew how to put things in perspective.

  The door to the ladies’ bathroom opened and the old man emerged. Thankfully, he was clothed on both his upper half… and his lower half. “Can a man bathe himself without hooligans like you barging in where ye ain’t wanted?”

  He was incredibly bowlegged. His feet were maybe six inches apart from one another, but his knees looked more like a full twelve inches apart. He had a dark gray toboggan on his head and a thickly padded, oversized tan coat wrapped around his torso. His pants looked as though they might have once been considered business slacks, and his shoes were sneakers, one of which had a little help from duct tape.

  “Hygiene, that’s what these johnny-come-latelies don’t get. It’s hygiene. It’ll make or break you out here.”

  I studied the man a little more closely. He was somewhere between sixty and ninety, was roughly five-foot eight, and had the hair of a man marooned on a deserted island for the last twenty years. His hair was a mix of dark gray and white, and his scraggly beard looked as though it could double as a bird’s nest.

  But… he looked clean. Even his clothes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was looking for the people who were staying here before you.”

  “Before me? Before me! That riffraff moved in on my place two months ago when I was out collecting cans. I got back home—to my home,” he said, jabbing his thumb into his chest, “and they wouldn’t give it up. But now I finally got it back, and you ain’t takin’ it!”

  I waved my hands in front of me. “No, sir. We don’t want it. I promise. I’m sorry that you lost your home, and I’m happy that you’ve gotten it back, but do you know by any chance where the people who had been staying here have gone?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  I wanted to scream in frustration. I was never going to find out who made those cookies! And, my little café had never done so well. I needed those cookies. It could mean the difference between being able to keep everything or losing it all by going financially under.

  “Old man,” Zoey said, shifting her hip bag, “you said you used to live here until up to two months ago. How long did you live here?”

  The old guy shuffled his feet like he didn’t want to answer.

  “We’re not going to tell anyone,” Zoey said.

  “I’ve lived here for a couple of years. Yeah, I gotta clear all my stuff out during the good months, months when people come here. I take all my stuff out so it don’t get in anybody’s way and so they won’t call anybody on me, then when everybody’s gone for the night, I move my stuff back in.”

  “Where do you go when you move your stuff out?”

  “Sometimes I go get something to eat down at the mission. Sometimes I hang out here.” He stood up straighter. “Because I’m clean, people don’t avoid me so much. They’re friendly. In the summer, almost every day somebody’s out here grilling or having a picnic, and they almost always offer me a plate, too.” There was pride in his voice.

  Guilt filled me. It wasn’t summer, spring or fall, and every time we’d been out here to check this park for my phantom cookie maker, it had been empty. I wondered when it was that the old man had last had a hot meal… or any meal.

  Zoey must have been having similar thoughts because she spoke up. “We could take you to the shelter. Get you out of the cold.”

  The old guy shifted, planting his feet. “I ain’t leavin’ my home.” Then he seemed to mellow. “And I sleep good and warm. I got a sleeping bag and I wrap myself in one of those tinfoil like space blankets and then get in that bag. I put another space blanket around my head. Little babies don’t sleep as good.”

  “Did you know the guy who lived here?” Zoey asked, pointing behind us toward Mike’s house with her thumb.

  The old guy looked past us before he focused on Zoey again. “I told ya. I weren’t here. Them others were here. Not me. I didn’t do it.”

  “So you know he’s dead?” Zoey asked with all the tact of a Sherman tank.

  “Yeah, it’s what I heard.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “I kept to myself. He didn’t call no one on me.” He shuffled his feet. “I guess that made him an okay guy.”

>   There was something about the way that he said it that made me need to ask. “Was he not an okay guy otherwise?”

  “He had himself a lot of ladies. Always comin’ and goin’, those ladies. Didn’t respect ‘em, though.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well! It’s like I said, all them ladies, comin’ and goin’. If you got a revolving door on your love life, you’re not treatin’ somebody right.”

  That logic sounded spot on to me. The old guy had a clue or two about life, which of course made me wonder what had led him to be here, on his own.

  “Do you know the lady who lives next door to this house?” Zoey asked.

  He scowled. “She’s a funny one.”

  Wow. It was unanimous. Every single person we’d asked about Tina had described her as being someone outside the norm.

  “How’s she funny?”

  The old guy narrowed his eyes. “Is harassing old men the only thing you got to do?”

  “We could just call someone,” Zoey said, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. “The cops maybe?”

  “Now, now. No reason to get testy on me. Put that thing away. I’ll tell ya what you want to know.”

  Zoey put the phone away. “I’m listening.”

  The old guy cleared his throat. “What is it you’re wantin’ to know?”

  Zoey pointed over her shoulder again. “The lady living in that house. What can you tell us about her?”

  The old guy shrugged. “I can tell you that she was one of them ladies goin’ through Mr. Pratt’s revolving door.”

  I needed to clarify. “You’re saying that Tina—the lady who lives in that house—and Mike Pratt were having an affair.”

  “Mmm, used to be that way. Not so sure anymore.”

  Mike was dead and buried in the ground. I sure hoped there wasn’t an anymore.

  “How recent?” Zoey asked.

  The guy shrugged his shoulders. “Not sure. I think maybe they were on again, off again. I see her creepin’.”

  “Creepin’?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she’d go over to his place in the middle of the night wearing nothing but one of them shiny, short nighties. Sometimes but not so often, I’d see Mr. Pratt leaving her place right when the sun was coming up. They’d carry on for a while, then Mike’s girls would start back up, then him and the neighbor lady would be going back and forth, then Mike’s girls would be back again. Don’t know if they were creepin’ when he got himself choked.”

  As risqué as all that was, that didn’t qualify Tina as a “funny one.”

  “Why don’t you like Tina?” I asked.

  “Never said I didn’t like her.”

  Zoey saved me, understanding what I was trying to ask. “How’s she odd?”

  “Oh,” he shrugged. He thought a moment. “Ever been called to the principal’s office, then sat there in front of his desk while he stared at you without saying a word?”

  I hadn’t, but I nodded my head anyway.

  “It’s like that.”

  “Huh,” Zoey said, sounding as though she knew exactly what the ol’ guy was saying. “Thank you for your time. We’ll let you get back to your…” She wagged a finger at him and let her sentence trail off.

  “Have you had dinner?” I asked, blurting out the question. I saw Zoey roll her eyes in the corner of my vision.

  “Vienna sausages out of a can.” He looked at me speculatively. “You got somethin’ better?”

  “I might. I could send somebody by with some baked spaghetti meatballs.”

  “Cold… or hot?”

  “Hot. Good and hot. I could send some hot coffee, too.”

  The old guy blew out a breath. “Coffee.” The word was said with pure reverence, and I knew I’d found somebody I could help.

  “I don’t have a thermos—”

  “I do. I got a thermos,” the old guy said, cutting me off. “I could get it for ya. It’s clean!”

  I smiled. “That’d be great.” The old man had made me a happy girl. I was going to get the chance to feed someone for whom a good, hot meal really mattered. I was a happy girl indeed.

  Chapter 24

  You can’t keep him,” Zoey said. Her expression was impassive.

  “What?” I was playing dumb.

  Zoey remained impassive.

  “I wasn’t going to keep him.”

  Still impassive.

  “I wasn’t.”

  No emotion whatsoever.

  “Ahh, come on! He’s so sweet!”

  “He’s been alive a long time. He’s got baggage. You don’t need his baggage. You’ve got your own baggage.”

  “But Henry’s so cute,” I whined.

  “See, now you’ve named him. You’re getting attached already.”

  We were walking across the yard of Mike Pratt’s house on our way to his neighbor’s house. I had Henry’s thermos tucked under my arm, and as promised, it was clean. I’d send Sam back with a big plate of food and a thermos of hot coffee later. It was a bit outside his job description, but I didn’t think he’d mind.

  Together, Zoey and I stepped over a low-growing hedge that marked what I assumed was the boundary of Mike’s property and the beginning of his neighbor’s property. The grass was brown from the hard freezes of late, but despite that, her yard was immaculate. It was landscaped with defined areas of mulch and stone that I was sure would sport colorful flowers in the spring.

  The house was well-kept, too. The ornamental shutters on the windows were painted a vivid blue, a color that popped against the soft, delicate pastel of the house. Between the care given to the house and the yard, I could easily imagine it gracing the cover of a beautiful-homes magazine.

  We reached her burgundy-brown front door. It had a narrow windowpane on each side, with a frosted, swirling designed etched into the glass.

  Zoey knocked.

  No answer. No sound from within, but I thought that I saw a shadow move from somewhere deep inside the house through the side window.

  Zoey knocked again.

  No answer. No anything.

  “I think she’s stonewalling us,” I said. I lifted my closed fist with my knuckles poised to bang on the glass rather than the door, then screamed and jerked my hand back in surprise when a woman’s face materialized right at the spot where I’d been about to knock. Her eyes bulged out of her round little face. She looked like a pug.

  The infamous Tina, no doubt. True to everyone’s word, just from looking at her, I got the impression she was odd.

  She opened her door and wedged herself into the space between the frame and the door itself. Her body was small and lithe, like that of a teenage ballerina, but her face wore the miles of her worried, harried life—whether those worries were imagined or otherwise. As for the rest of her, she wore jeans and a plain green V-neck.

  “What do you want?” she asked. She spoke fast enough to gain the respect of a high-speed narrator, maybe even an auctioneer. It was unnerving, and completely threw me off guard. Everything about her felt aggressive.

  “We want to know how long your affair with Mike lasted,” Zoey said.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Again with the lightning-speed speech.

  It was my turn to find my voice. “We have an eye witness. You and Mike were having an affair.”

  “I don’t know who you are or why you’re talking to me. Go away.” She tried to close her door, but Zoey wedged her booted foot against it. Tina looked down at Zoey’s foot, then up at her. “I’ll call the police. You killed that guy a few weeks ago. You tased him. Now you’re harassing me. You’ll go to jail.”

  Zoey moved her foot and Tina started to slam her door shut, but instead it met with the sudden, explosive resistance of Zoey’s boot slamming into it. The door flew open all the way, and Zoey took her taser from her hip bag. Blue sparks shot between the tips of its two metal prongs. “He didn’t die from my taser. I’ll show you.” Zoey extended her arm, and Tina jumped bac
k, leaving her doorway completely vacant and open.

  Zoey walked in, and I followed, closing the door behind us. My brain was doing mental acrobatics trying to figure out if what just happened would be considered breaking and entering, or at the very least unlawful entry.

  “I’ll call the police,” Tina said again, but she wasn’t making any moved to do so.

  I looked at Zoey. “I don’t think they were planning on picking her up until tomorrow, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind moving up their schedule.”

  “Picking me up? What are you saying? What are you talking about?” We had Tina’s attention, and she was finally on the defensive instead of the offensive. We had the upper hand.

  “The police,” I said, “they’re coming for you tomorrow. They found your fingerprints all over Mike’s house.” If Tina had had an affair with Mike at some point, it made sense that she would have left fingerprints at his house.

  “You’re lying. That’s a lie. A big, fat lie. The police don’t know anything.”

  Zoey pounced. “Don’t know what, Tina?”

  “Nothing, because there’s nothing to know.”

  It was my turn again. “That’s not what their witness said. Their witness said that there was a lot to know.”

  “There’s nothing to know!” Tina shouted.

  I kept my voice calm, level and soft. “When did things sour between you and Mike? When did you stop getting along?”

  “You don’t know anything!” Tina shouted again.

  “Then tell us,” I urged. “If we’re getting it all wrong, then set the record straight. Tell us what it is that we don’t know. Tell us about how he died.”

  “He was strangled. By his shredding machine. An accident.”

  Zoey’s turn. “Then you didn’t mean for it to happen?”

  “Mean for it to happen? I wasn’t even there! Why aren’t you talking to one of those skanks he hooks up with?”

  “But that was you,” I said. “Mike was hooking up with you.” I honestly thought she was going to hit me after those words left my mouth. I thought she was going to launch herself from where she stood and fly across the foyer to rip my eyes out. Her eyes were practically rotating in her head. There was a spot of spittle on her lip. She was unhinged.