Mother Finds a Body

by Craig Rice

The sheriff climbed into the front seat. “Well, come on,” he said. “Let’s go take a look at where your mother buried that body of hers.”

  Biff climbed into the front seat with the sheriff. I sat in the back. The sheriff, I decided, was certainly not squandering the taxpayers’ money. I have traveled in broken-down crates before, but the sheriff’s car was a new experience in discomfort. It was no time to beef, though, so I kept my ideas to myself.

  Instead of driving through the trailer camp, he took a longer route around the back. It brought us out near Mrs. Smith’s burned trailer. The sheriff parked the car, and we got out to walk from there.

  The dry grass underfoot was dusty and hot. It burned right through my thin-soled sandals. The same heavy smell of chemicals and gasoline filled the air. The trailer looked sad, I thought. Twisted metal supports were mixed up with the remains of a permanent-wave machine. The base of a hair drier was still intact. Otherwise it was a total loss.

  “They won’t be able to salvage much of that,” I said. I thought I had been talking to Biff, but when I turned around he had disappeared. I called his name, and he answered me from the burned wreckage.

  “I was just casing the joint,” he said as he caught up with me. “You never know what women suffer for their kissers until you take a look at those contraptions. Can you imagine a guy going through all that to get good looking?”

  “In some cases,” I said “it might help a little.”

  The sheriff walked on ahead, so we followed him. The ground was hot. Not from the sun now but from the fire. Here the grass was charred and still smoking in places. The small tree stumps had been uprooted by the firemen and they looked like wires reaching up through the black dirt.

  Ahead, I saw the disturbed grave. The shallow hole was empty.

  “Looks like a woman’s idea of a deep hole,” the sheriff said. He kicked aside a few leaves that were under his foot.

  Biff stood near him and peered into the hole. They both reached for the white square of linen at the same time.

  The sheriff was quicker. He held a handkerchief in his hands. It was a plain white handkerchief, the kind you buy in drugstores for a dime. He shoved it into his pocket before I could see if it was large or small, before I could see if it had a laundry mark on it. Not that I know one laundry mark from another, but I was anxious to know about the handkerchief found in that grave. It was clean. I had an idea it had been dropped there since the fire. Mother’s handkerchiefs were gaily colored. They were very small.

  Biff was looking farther into the woods. He squinted his eyes.

  “Look!” he said.

  The sheriff and I looked. A six-by-two mound is unmistakable. The dirt that formed the mound was fresh. Even from a distance of several feet, I could see that it was damp.

  I followed Biff and the sheriff as they ran toward the mound. When they began kicking away the dirt, I closed my eyes tightly. I knew what they were going to find and I couldn’t look at another corpse again as long as I lived.

  They worked quietly for a minute. Then I heard the sheriff say, “Easy now. I think this is it.”

  Biff grunted in agreement.

  My eyes were pressed together so tightly that I saw green lights, then red lights dancing before me. I put my hands to my eyes and pushed the thumbs tightly against the center of my nose.

  Biff said, “Well, I’ll be double damned!” He waited a moment. Then, “This ain’t our corpse at all!”

  “Naturally,” the sheriff said calmly. “Yours is at the morgue.”

  I opened my eyes and saw Biff holding the coat of a very dead man. Slumped way down in the coat I saw the bulge of the body. The sun was filtering through the stunted trees, and I thought something glittered. I looked more closely and saw the handle of a butcher knife. It was sticking out of the man’s back. Just an ordinary butcher knife, and most of it was buried in the ruddy material of the coat.

  Biff let the body fall back into the overturned grave, and the dead man’s face stared up at me. What was left of a face, I should say.

  “Someone must have smashed it in,” I heard Biff say hoarsely.

  “Wish you hadn’t been so quick in handling it,” the sheriff said. He knelt down and examined the clothes of the dead man. The lining of the coat was torn, the pockets were turned inside out.

  “Stripped clean,” the sheriff said.

  I looked at him. Stripped was a funny word for him to use, I thought. Then I suddenly knew what he meant.

  “Someone did that so you couldn’t identify him?”

  The sheriff didn’t answer me. “Call Doc Gonzales,” he said. “That’s the number I gave you this morning. Tell the doc to get over here right away. And tell him to pick up a couple of the boys. Biff and I’ll wait here.”

  I vaguely remember running through the woods and toward the camp office. I felt the scrap of paper in my slacks pocket. My hands were wet and sticky. The paper seemed to be soggy, too. In a moment I was in the office. A second later I heard the doctor’s voice over the telephone.

  “Hurry!” I said to him, as though that mattered. “Murdered. Yes, back of the trailer camp …” I hung up and braced myself against the wall.

  Then I saw Gee Gee. Her face was white and drawn.

  “Did they find him?” she asked.

  “Biff and the sheriff …” I stammered. “We were out in the woods …”

  “They took it out of the bathtub?” Gee Gee asked. Little beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. Her red hair was wet where it fell over her neck and shoulders. Her mouth was quivering.

  I grabbed her by the arm and began shaking her. “Stop it,” I said. “Stop it!”

  Suddenly she relaxed.

  “How did you know about it?” I asked.

  “I—saw it, Gyp,” she said. “I saw it in the bathtub yesterday. Oh, Gyppy, what’ll I do?” She started crying softly. Her mouth began quivering again. “What’ll I do?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It wasn’t in the bathtub, it was in the woods,” I said. “And besides, there are two of ’em already. There may be more, for all I know. I do know this new one is a very unpretty thing. Aside from having his face smashed in, someone was being awfully cute when they tore out the tailor label from his coat. They took everything out of the pockets, too.”

  “What about Gus?” Gee Gee asked. Her eyes were wide and frightened, but her mouth had stopped quivering.

  “Gus?” I said. “Gus what?”

  “Gus is all I know,” Gee Gee said. “And all I want to know. He was in the bathtub yesterday. Dead. The dogs were scratching around the bed. I don’t know whatever possessed me to lift that mattress, but I did, and that awful face was staring up at me …”

  Gee Gee buried her face in her hands and began moaning. “I wanted to tell somebody, but every time I got the nerve something’d happen to me and I’d get scared again. I—I knew him, Gyp.”

  “You couldn’t have,” I said.

  “Yes I did,” Gee Gee insisted. “He used to hang around backstage at the Burbank Theater when I was working there. He sold perfume and stuff. I knew it was hot as a pistol because it was so cheap. You know me with stolen stuff. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. But plenty of the other kids used to buy from him. I did buy a bottle of Guerlain’s Jicky from Mabel, though. She don’t tell me where she gets it, just says she’s in a mood to sell it cheap. I naturally figure it’s a present from some John, so I give her three bucks for it. I get it home and open the bottle and I find out it’s junk. The bottle’s good but the perfume is like embalming fluid.

  “I take it back to Mabel and when I start beefing she tells me to blame Gus, not her, that she got it off him. Only Gus doesn’t come around for a while, so I open my big throat and tell the girls what a cheat he is. I get so mad I even tell Max, the cop that’s got the theater beat. Then, about a week later, I’m finishing my second act number and the doorman tells me there’s a guy in the alley wants to talk to me.

  “I th
row the skirt of my costume around me and I go out to see who it is. I don’t see him right away. He’s standing under the fire escape in the dark. Then all of a sudden I feel somebody grab my arm. Naturally, I go to yell and this guy puts his dirty hand over my mouth. ‘Shut up, you,’ he tells me. ‘I hear you been throaty about me around the theater.’

  “Then I know who it is. I know it’s Gus and I know he’s on the warpath about me telling the cop he’s selling stolen goods. I’m fixing to tell him to go to hell, but I get a good look at him, and Gyp, there was something about the way he was talking that scared the pants off me. His eyes looked little, like a pig’s, and they were red. I got a feeling that he’d just as soon kill me as not. He was telling me to go in and tell the girls I was only kidding about the perfume. I’d look sweet giving him a clean bill of sale after him pushing me around like that! But I don’t tell him that. Hell, I just wanted to get rid of him, so I say, ‘Sure, I’ll tell ’em anything you want.’ He says, ‘That’s a good girl.’ Then he shoves something in my hand and runs down the alley.

  “I keep watching until I can’t see him any more. Then I go in the prop room where it’s light, so I can get a look at this thing he gave me. It’s like a little book, a pamphlet, only it’s got the dirtiest pictures in it I ever saw. I’ve seen pamphlets, but I’ve never seen anything like that one. There’s something else in the book. It’s like a cigarette, only it’s longer and skinnier. I’m standing there looking at that damn thing and cussing a blue streak to myself when who walks in but Benny the trumpet player. You remember Benny?”

  I nodded. I remembered him as a gangly, neurotic musician. Wonderful trumpet player, though.

  “Well,” Gee Gee went on, “Benny takes one look at the cigarette in my hand and he lets out a whoop. ‘Look who’s joined our club!’ he yells. I don’t get it. I don’t like him much to start out with so I give him a freeze. He looks me up and down real slow. ‘Reefing, eh?’ he says. Then he turns on his heel and he’s gone. Like a hit on the head it comes to me. That Gus has given me a marijuana. Me! Later I find out he’s the guy that’s been selling ’em around town, to school kids even. He’s selling other kinds of dope, too. Cops looking all over for him, and he gives me a marijuana.”

  Gee Gee pulled out a package of cigarettes and lit two of them. She handed me one, and we smoked silently for a moment.

  “I guess I was a dope to go to the cops,” she said finally. “I was scared, though. First I went to Max and told him the whole story. He sent me downtown, and I talked to a bunch of plainclothes guys, Narcotic Squad. They keep asking me questions, and I tell them what I know. I tell them what Gus looks like, how long he’s been hanging around the theater. If I’d known it, I’da told ’em what he ate for breakfast, I was that mad. It was a mistake, sure, but how was I to know? Later I find out, of course, I shoulda known he wasn’t alone in the racket, but I never would have guessed there were so many guys mixed up with him. First I get the telephone calls. Then guys tap me on the shoulder, notes get slipped under my door, all of ’em telling me to keep my mouth shut or they’ll shut it for me permanent. That’s one reason I wanted to leave town.”

  “You should have told Biff and me,” I said.

  “Oh, sure,” Gee Gee said. “You two would have knocked yourselves out asking me to join you. I was just the kid you needed to make your honeymoon complete.”

  “Did you tell Dimples?” I asked. There wasn’t much sense in contradicting her.

  “Hell, no,” Gee Gee said. “She knew about the perfume, of course, because she was working the Burbank when it happened, but I didn’t tell a soul about the dope. Oh. Gyp, it’s such a mess. What’ll I do?”

  She began crying again. I put my arms around her and patted her shoulder. In a way I felt like slapping her, but after all she was my friend and she was in trouble. Just because her trouble had become my trouble was no reason for me to get angry with her.

  “Look, honey,” I said. “Tell the cops the whole story just like you told me. When they know who he was and what he was, they’ll probably pin a medal on you for killing him.”

  Gee Gee pushed me away from her. “But I didn’t!” she said hoarsely. “That’s why I was afraid to tell anybody his body was in the trailer. I knew they’d think I done it and, so help me, I haven’t seen him since that night backstage.”

  I believed her.

  We smoked for a moment longer. Then Gee Gee tossed her cigarette into a fire bucket near the telephone. There was water in the bucket and when the cigarette fell it made a sizzling little noise. There was another sound, though. The sound of someone walking away. I jumped up and ran to the door. It was ajar. I threw it open and looked out. No one was there.

  “What was it?” Gee Gee asked listlessly.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just thought I heard someone. Must have been the breeze.”

  Gee Gee didn’t question me. We hadn’t felt a breeze in a week, but her mind was too occupied to think about that.

  “You think the cops will believe me?” Gee Gee asked.

  I thought for a moment. I tried to remember the sheriff’s expression as he listened to Biff and me. When I did, it wasn’t a reassuring picture. I wondered what he would say when he knew that Gee Gee could identify the first corpse, not as a longshoreman, but as a dope peddler. Then I decided on something.

  “Look,” I said to Gee Gee. “The sheriff thinks we know the guy you call Gus. We knew him as George; he was our best man. If you go to him now and say it isn’t George, it’s Gus, the sheriff might think something funny is going on. I don’t think anybody could tell who the second corpse is, so we don’t have to worry about him. Why tell the sheriff about Gus? If you didn’t kill him, why let yourself in for something?”

  Gee Gee listened closely. Her head was nodding up and down like one of those counterbalanced doll’s heads. Her mouth twitched spasmodically:

  “Think you have enough nerve to keep it to yourself?” I asked.

  “Gee, Gyp, I don’t know … I don’t know …”

  “Promise me one thing,” I said. I walked over to her and tipped her chin so I could look into her eyes. “If you feel like you’re getting ready to spill it, let Biff or me know first. Promise?”

  Gee Gee grabbed my hand. “I promise,” she said.

  “Come on. Let’s get ourselves a drink. I’ll buy.”

  Gee Gee got to her feet. She leaned heavily on my arm as we walked toward the trailer. Trailerites were sitting under their awnings having early dinner, and as we passed them they waved good evening to us.

  “Some excitement, eh?” one of them shouted with a grin from ear to ear.

  “Yes, sir,” I shouted back. That trailerite didn’t know what excitement was. If he thought a brush fire was excitement, what would he call our two corpses?

  Women in slacks and shorts were making the early-evening rounds. Children were just warming up for their after-dinner screaming. Here and there a man was washing up at a basin. It was hard for me to believe that people living in such a close community could be unaware of the two murders.

  Our trailer was parked farther away from the center of activity. As Gee Gee and I approached it, Mother closed the bedroom door and started down the steps. She carried a small, carelessly wrapped package in her hand. When I called out to her, she slipped it into her apron pocket.

  “Why, hello,” she said gaily. “Where have you been?”

  Gee Gee flopped down into one of the camp chairs; she let her head sink in her hands.

  Mother stared at her for a moment. Then she turned to me.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look awful. Why don’t you fix your hair? Just because you’re camping out is no reason to let yourself go like this. I think you’re gaining weight, too. I knew this trip would turn out like this. You’ll get sunburned and fat, and …”

  “Biff and I went to see the sheriff,” I said. “We went out to the grave and …”

  Mother looked at me for a long moment.
“Well?” she asked.

  “We found a body. Not our body, another one.”

  “Please stop calling it our body,” Mother said petulantly. “It sounds so—so possessive. How do you know it wasn’t ours, anyway?”

  “They dug that one up last night,” I said. “This new one has a knife in its back.”

  Mother sat down next to Gee Gee. She arranged her dress carefully over her bare legs and placed her hands on the table. I hadn’t expected much animation from her, but I would have liked her to act as though she had heard me.

  “Not only that,” I said, “but this one had no face.”

  Mother smiled up at me. “Stop joshing, Louise,” she said. “Who ever heard of a corpse without a face?”

  I poured some water into the washbasin and doused my head in it. It was cool and it refreshed me. Mother handed me a towel and waited until I dried my face and hands.

  “Well, come on,” she said. “Let’s go look at it.”

  Gee Gee shivered.

  Mother changed her tone. “I mean, let’s go see if we can help the police.”

  “There’s no police, Mother, just a sheriff.”

  “Then we can help the sheriff.”

  Mother walked ahead of Gee Gee and me. I could see the blue gingham of her dress as she hurried toward the woods. I heard her hum her little tune, “I know a place when the sun never shines …”

  “Sure you want to go?” I asked Gee Gee. “It isn’t pretty, you know.”

  “I don’t give a damn what it looks like so long as I don’t recognize him,” Gee Gee said.

  I suddenly cared, though. I needed fortification to look at it again. I took Gee Gee’s arm and led her back to the trailer.

  “Let’s get that drink we promised ourselves,” I said.

  Gee Gee got the glasses. I uncovered the bottle, and we had two ryes each. Neat and fast. The trailer was empty. I wondered vaguely where everyone was. Then I felt relieved there was no one around. I was in no mood for casual pleasantries.

  Gee Gee and I went back toward the woods.

  When we arrived at the burial place, I saw Mother leaning over the grave. The sheriff, hat in hand, was standing next to her.