A Well Dressed Corpse

by Jo A. Hiestand

  Of course he was joking, but it was comforting that he wouldn’t let me fly solo.

  “And what’s with the age of the grandmother bit? So she’s a grandmotherly age. What difference does it make if she’s in her sixties or eighties?”

  “A lot,” I said while we walked up the road. “I wonder if grandmother had anything to do with Vera’s disappearance. Even though she left for London the year prior to Vera going missing, Gran could have come back.”

  “And done what?”

  “Been responsible for Vera’s disappearance…or death,” I added when Mark stared at me wild-eyed.

  “You’re totally round the twist, Bren. Why move all that distance—or make a pretext of doing so—and come back a year later? If anyone in the village saw her, they’d remember doing so. Anyone can easily confuse remembering what day he saw the vicar or the publican, for example, because they’re seen daily. But someone who’s moved out and returned a year later?” His head shaking said it all. “Gran would be taking a hell of a risk being seen. They’d call out to her, rush up to her, wanting to know how London life is, how she is, what she’s doing back in Cauldham. No, Bren. You’re barking up the wrong tree with this one. The grandmother’s a non-starter.”

  “Just keeping an open mind, Mark.”

  About a half-mile down Old Mine Road we found Vera’s house. Comprised of the same gray stone and dark slate roof as the other buildings in the village, the dwelling did indeed look deserted. Dirt splayed across the windowpanes, fallen branches littered the ground, and the front garden had grown wild years ago. Exuberant Virginia Creeper clung to and in the gutters, nearly smothered the southern face of the house. What may have begun as a modest clump of daylilies had now multiplied into a colorful ground cover. I paused at the front gate, my hand on its curved top, and wondered where the front path was.

  “And me without my Boy Scout pocketknife,” Mark said, his breathing in my ear. “Should have brought a machete, but who knew?”

  “At least it will be easy to trail someone.” I pushed the gate open, then leaned against it, mashing down weeds and flowers in an effort to make room for us. Flecks of paint came off on my hand and I wiped them against my trousers.

  “That works both ways. We’ll leave our calling card when we battle our way to the front door. The coppers won’t have to look too far to find the burglars; all they’ll have to do is look for clothes shredded by thorns and covered in white shit.” He shook his leg free of a creeping thistle. A handful of white, down-like fibers sailed into the air as Mark brushed past a clump of cotton-grass, swirling into his eyes and against his nose.

  “We have a legitimate excuse to be here,” I said, gingerly pushing aside a thistle and holding it until Mark passed.

  “Without the owner’s permission? I’d hardly call that legitimate. Try convincing the magistrate.”

  “We’ll be in and out before anyone spots us.”

  “That’s if no one’s camped out in the back garden or inside the house.” He would have said more, I’m sure, but he sneezed and I walked ahead.

  We came to the front door, a weathered plank of wood with more bare areas than painted ones. I turned to Mark, asking what he thought would be the best way to enter, when he turned the doorknob and the door opened.

  “Simple ways are always the best, Bren.” He walked inside.

  I refrained from saying simple methods fitted his mentality and followed.

  If this were what the front room looked like in daylight, I’d hate to be here at night. Despite the sunny day, light barely penetrated the perpetual dusk of the interior. The dirty windows accounted for some of that, but half of the curtains were drawn and dust-covered. In fact, dust and cobwebs coated nearly everything. I tried not to breathe deeply, afraid of mold and bacteria from mouse droppings, and walked slowly around the room.

  “Doesn’t look as thought she left in any particular hurry,” Mark said, shifting the magazines on the table. “Looks normal to me.”

  “What do you want, chairs knocked over and a lipstick scrawled message on the wall?”

  He snorted and poked through the contents of the desk drawers. I leafed through the address book and a fabric-covered stationery folder. An envelope addressed to Harding Lyth was stuffed into the front sleeve. I took it out and pulled the contents from the envelope. It was a greeting card proclaiming thanks, signed by a capital V and underlined. I showed the card and envelope to Mark. “What do you think?”

  “From Vera.”

  “We don’t know; we assume it is.”

  “Who the hell else around here has a name starting with V?”

  “Maybe that’s what the sender wants Harding to believe.”

  “So someone was going to send some thank you card indicating it was from Vera? Stop reaching, Bren.”

  “I guess she might sign her name like that, among friends,” I admitted. “Looks like it’s been here a while.”

  “Wonder when this dates from.”

  “Wonder why she never gave it to him.”

  “A falling out?”

  “Could do. There’s no mention of what she thanked him for.”

  “Maybe she didn’t get that far. You know,” he said, shutting the desk drawer, “she was going to add it but changed her mind about the card.”

  “She’d have written a message before she signed her name. Most people do. The name’s like the last thing before they address the envelope and post it.”

  “I’m not a mind reader, Brenna. Maybe Vera was going to add a personal message later, only she didn’t get around to it. It’s stuffed into the sleeve of a stationery folder. Doesn’t that give you a hint?”

  “Hint?”

  “Stationery, Bren. I’d assume she was going to write something on a piece of stationery and inset it inside the card.”

  “Well…”

  “It’s logical.”

  I mumbled that it was very inconsiderate of Vera not to have at least started writing the note, and returned the card and envelope to the stationary folder.

  “Lets check the upstairs,” Mark said, and I slowly followed after him.

  Three bedrooms, the bath room, and the separate toilet occupied most of the upper level, with a small room hardly larger than a wardrobe—this served as a storage room for old luggage, a dressmaker’s mannequin, several cardboard boxes and an old wooden barrel. Mark stood in the half-light from the dirty window, scratching his head. “Wonder how they got that up here.”

  “Maybe it was here when they moved in.” I opened the boxes and looked at the contents. “It’s certainly dusty enough.”

  Mark shrugged and brushed his hands on his trousers. “If I spent all the time it would take to lug that thing up the stairs, I wouldn’t want to abandon it when I moved out. It’d be like leaving an old friend behind.”

  I snorted and walked over to the luggage. Opening the first one, I said, “If I spent all the time it would take to lug that thing up the stairs, I’d never want to see it again.”

  “It’d remind you of your aching muscles.”

  “Very funny. Well, nothing in this room,” I said, straightening up from the luggage. “Let’s look in the bedrooms.”

  The rooms held nothing suspicious, either in what items still remained there or were absent. “Anything speak to you?” Mark leaned against the doorjamb of one of the rooms.

  “No. There are some items a woman would never leave behind, if she’s leaving under her own volition.”

  “And?”

  “Everything I’d expect to see gone is gone. No jewelry lying in the drawers, no family photos, no old letters.” I shook my head. “I don’t think Vera was dragged kicking and screaming from here, at any rate. She took everything that meant something to her when she left.”

  “Unless her killer is a woman and she went through Vera’s things, taking just those items to throw off suspicion.”

  “But we’ve got Vera’s farewell note,” I reminded him.

  “Sure, w
e do. But did she write it willingly, or did someone force her to do it?”

  I stared at Mark, this new theory chilling me. “Let’s do the rest of the house,” I said, trying to sound braver than I was. The trapped summer heat of the house no longer held its warmth. I rubbed my forearms and hurried down the stairs.

  The other rooms held no clues, either, to Vera’s sudden departure. No half-eaten meal or unwashed pots littered the kitchen. I knew after all this time there would be no food remains, but plates and utensils might still be on the table. The tool shed was straight, and the gardening tools were hanging neatly in the garage. “No car,” I said, unnecessarily, to which Mark replied that if Vera left for London, she might have driven, or sold her car for the extra money.

  “Did the original investigating team follow that lead?” I asked as we returned to the kitchen.

  “Yes. I remember reading that in the report.” Mark leaned against the edge of the worktop, shaking his head. “This looks like a blind alley, Brenna. Nothing indicates she didn’t leave of her own accord. Her grandmother’s things are cleared out, so she evidently left the previous year, as Clayton mentioned. Some of Vera’s clothes are in the wardrobe, but that doesn’t mean someone abducted her. She could have taken a few things with her, not knowing exactly where she’d be staying in London. She could have thought she’d be back to close down the house. Trouble is, we don’t know.”

  “Still, it looks odd that she’d leave the house furnished.”

  “Maybe better than having to deal with selling everything. That’s a huge job. It could have taken months to find a buyer. If Vera were in a hurry to leave, for whatever reason, she’d not want to stick around to sell the house. She might have thought she’d be back to do that.”

  “Only, she hit the big time in London, decided to make a fresh start with new clothes and a palatial residence, and figures she can’t be bothered with the ratty cottage anymore and abandons it.” I eyed him, mutely daring him to dispute the scenario.

  “Not what you or I would necessarily do, but she could have done.”

  “So, if she’s so rich and famous and has a yacht in every cove, where is she?”

  “If you’re going to be facetious about this, when I’m trying to help—”

  I threw up my hands. “Fine. She changed her name, she’s living in Outer Mongolia; she has amnesia. Whatever fits your conditions. I still say something happened to her and those are her bones we found in the wood.”

  “Conveniently close to her house,” Mark suggested as we walked outside and closed the door behind us.

  “Meaning?”

  “It’s close to her house. If she was killed here, or in her garden, the killer didn’t have far to move her body.”

  “He’d still have to move it, Mark. Doesn’t make much difference if it was one mile or a hundred. He’s still got to transport it somehow—in his car, in a bag slung over his shoulder, on horseback…” I turned to stare at the house and garden.

  “What?” He bent over, trying to brush flower pollen from his trousers.

  “Just thinking. I hope that missing person report will tell us the investigating team checked the house, garage and grounds for blood traces.”

  “If they’re anything like Graham, they will have done. Come on. This is a waste of time.” He tugged at the gate, pulling it closed. It hung at a crazy angle, not quite shut, its upright post sagging inwardly. A strip of trampled and broken plants marked our trip to the house. Several leaves and snapped stems littered the front porch and a clod of mud clung to the lowest step where Mark had scraped his shoe. Other than that, no one would know we’d been there.

  * * * *

  We stopped at the vicarage to ask Harding about the greeting card. He looked as astonished as anyone I’d ever seen, shaking his head in puzzlement.

  “I have no idea why Vera, or her grandmother, if it’s from her, would send me a card,” Harding said, the fingers of his right hand scratching his chin. “Trying to recall something that may have happened twenty three years ago is rather difficult. I have no idea,” he repeated, blinking rapidly.

  “No big birthday, then,” Mark suggested. “You didn’t give Vera something particularly nice.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t believe I did. I certainly never made a habit of doing so. Once started, it’s expected the next year, isn’t it, and I didn’t want that to start.” He grimaced, evidently embarrassed at the lack of money or emotional detachment this suggested. “Oh, I liked Vera, don’t misunderstand. I don’t think there was a soul in the village who didn’t like Vera. But as to why she’d be writing to me, especially when we lived so close…” He rubbed his lips and shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest. Sorry.”

  “Nothing like first communion or joining the church, then.”

  “No. Now that I can definitely rule out. Vera never joined the church.”

  “Do you know why? Did you ever talk to her about it?”

  “I tried to get her into the confirmation class when the others of her age group were taking their lessons—”

  “What age is that?”

  “Pardon? Oh,” he added, his eyes widening as he thought. “Twelve, thirteen. Around there. But she didn’t want to. I didn’t push her. It takes some people a little longer to decide on things. I assumed she would join when she felt the spirit to do so.”

  “So you didn’t try to talk her into it, or meet with her privately. That wouldn’t account for the greeting card.”

  “I don’t see that it would. No. As I said, I can’t think of any instance that would call for such a card. Sorry I can’t help.”

  We were too.

  * * * *

  We returned to the incident room. Mark and I read the missing person report again, hoping for a new angle to follow, but the report confirmed what we had just concluded—the investigating officers had questioned everyone connected with Vera and corroborated that no one had seen her after Clayton Warson stated she left the village. No blood, skin tissue or unaccountable prints were found in the house or garage. No signs of soil disturbance marred the garden or adjoining land. Neither had the Secretary of State received the registration document indicating a sale of Vera’s car.

  “So that ends that,” Mark said, tossing the report onto the table.

  “You look displeased about the note Vera sent Clayton,” I said. “Don’t you want to clear a fellow cop?”

  “Sure I do. It’s the principle of the thing, Brenna.”

  “You want a thread to chase.”

  “Don’t you?”

  I agreed. “Maybe we’ll get one at one o’clock.”

  We used up the remainder of the morning by typing up our case notes and tracing the few villagers that had moved. Luckily, there weren’t many, and the phone numbers were still valid. No one contradicted Clayton’s or the police reports. Vera Howarth’s case still seemed on track, wherever that led.

  Lunch was a quick affair at the pub. When we returned to the incident room for the afternoon meeting I crossed my fingers that we were about to get a break in the case.

  Graham wasted no time in putting us out of our misery. “Thanks to Divisional Commander Tierney’s rush order, we have the DNA test results on the bones and the hair sample we received from PC Warson.” He paused, holding up the report and looking at each of us. “The DNA matches. The bones are that of Vera Howarth.”

  I think a cannon could have been fired and I wouldn’t have heard it. All I could take in were Graham’s eyes as he looked at me, and my images of the bones in the wood. A dark, eerie place that seemed to be haunted.

  “Now that we can move ahead on this aspect of the case,” he said, “we need to find out more about her. Not only why and when she disappeared—whether of her own volition or not—but also of her childhood. If her grandmother and she both went to London, perhaps there’s a tie there…other family, close friends, a family home. Margo, I’d like you to research the house Vera and her grandmother owned. There’s got to be a
deed of sale on the grandmother’s house—either she bought it or her parents bought it. Eventually, someone bought it and she came into possession of it. I understand we have no name for the grandmother, but if you can locate anything for Vera, that might give us a lead.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Byrd, if you could ask Clayton about the car color, make and model she drove, that might prove to be a lead. Maybe he’ll remember the year model. Teenaged boys…you know.” He gave us a quick grin. “That will be a big help. In the course of your research, you may come upon some item that will produce more information. You know what to do. Sorry if I’m preaching. Put it down to…well, this case.”

  He didn’t have to mention the Divisional Commander’s name. We knew he felt the pressure to come up with Reed Harper’s killer.

  Graham assigned other jobs of work to the rest of the team, giving Mark and me the first task of locating Vera’s birth certificate. “Her parents will be listed. Then, look up each parent’s certificate. Follow me?”

  We nodded.

  “Because we have Vera’s bones buried so close to Reed Harper’s, this may give us another break. As I mentioned before, the body disposal site has got to mean something to someone. Taylor, you and Mark tackle that after you come up with the birth certificate information and follow that as far as you can. A person doesn’t just bury two bodies in the same place for no reason. We need to know why he chose that spot, which helps us identify our killer. Now, does anyone have any questions?”

  I was going to tell him of the greeting card addressed to Harding, but Mark jabbed his elbow into my side and glared at me.

  “Any problem, Taylor?” Graham asked, perceptive as always. “You wanted to say something?” He stood in front of the table, leaning against its edge. Behind him, tacked to the whiteboard, were photos of Vera’s bones and Reed’s body, plus the handwritten lists of Suspect, Motive and Opportunity.

  “No, sir. Sorry.”

  “We’ve still got a good chunk of the day left, so let’s see what we can come up with. I’ll be digging into Reed’s background, so if you need me, I’ll be here. All right? Thanks.” He dismissed us with a nod of his head and a hopeful smile.