Knot in My Backyard

by Mary Marks

  I glanced at Lucy, who briefly rolled her eyes.

  “Um, the police aren’t sure. Sorry, but I don’t know more.” I shrugged.

  “So, are you guys going for a walk, or what?”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed to be waiting for an invitation to join us, but I wasn’t going to give her one. Sonia was harmless but annoying.

  After a rather long minute of disappointed silence, Sonia shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll be going.”

  Lucy smiled. “Bye, Sonia. Nice to meet you.”

  We turned away and walked slowly down the street, waiting for Sonia to disappear inside her house. As soon as she walked out of sight, we doubled back to Ed’s front door. I knocked, but nobody answered. We were about to turn away, when I heard someone moving inside.

  The door opened a crack and Ed gave me a warm grin. Handsome, early thirties, light brown hair, and stubble on his jaw, he looked more like a movie star than an outlaw biker with a dark side. He wore his summer uniform of khaki shorts, flip-flops, and a blue striped tank top showing off a tattoo of the Greek flag on his left shoulder.

  “Hey, Martha, ’sup?”

  “Hi, Ed. My friend Lucy and I were taking a walk and I decided to see if you were home. There’s something you really need to know.”

  “Is this about all the police activity out back by the river?”

  “Yes. Can we come in?”

  Ed opened the door wider and moved aside. We stepped into a dark, north-facing living room with sliding glass doors opening to the backyard. Beyond the back fence, several patrol cars were parked on the street.

  In the ball field directly behind the squad cars stood a two-story structure the size of a small apartment building made of corrugated metal painted maroon and gold, completely blocking Ed’s view of the San Gabriel Mountains beyond.

  Ed stared bitterly at the eyesore. “That’s what I have to look at every minute of every day.”

  When the Joshua Beaumont School began renovating the existing Little League field two years ago, no one in the neighborhood suspected that they were actually planning to build a million-dollar baseball stadium. Nor did we ever suspect they could get away with erecting an ugly two-story building obliterating the view of several homes on our street. By the time the neighbors found out, the project was a fait accompli. The houses nearest the field suffered the most, especially Ed’s.

  “I used to enjoy working in my yard.” He turned his back to the maroon-and-gold atrocity looming only sixty feet away. “Now I can’t stand to go out there.” He waved toward his dry, weedy backyard, complete with an empty hot tub, fading in the sun. This young bachelor liked to have the occasional barbeque, but clearly no one had been in the backyard for months.

  “I’m so sorry, Ed. Beaumont School has given you more than your share of grief.”

  “Yeah. After the relative quiet of summer, the new school year has started and those kids are back there, practicing every afternoon again. It’s just a matter of time before they have their first game of ‘fall ball.’ Between the noise and the ugly view . . . well, I’d like to blow the bastards up! Oh, sorry.”

  “We’ve heard that word before.” I smiled. “Everyone feels the same.”

  “So, what’s the deal?” He offered Lucy and me seats on his leather sofa.

  “Dax Martin is dead. I found his body this morning on the riverbank behind the field.”

  “You? Found? No kidding!” He looked genuinely surprised. “What happened?”

  “Someone murdered him. There was a lot of blood. I don’t really know any more.”

  “I can’t say I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  Lucy tilted her head slightly and looked toward Ed. “Martha’s told me about the troubles with the school. Why didn’t you go to the police? There are laws against noise pollution.”

  “You don’t understand.” Ed swept his hands through the air in frustration. “Beaumont School is bulletproof. The mayor, the police chief, the DA, and half the city council are either alumni or send their kids. Some of those very kids play baseball at that stadium.”

  “Why don’t you all get together and hire a lawyer?” She looked at both of us.

  Ed sighed. “Because they’ve got a bunch of high-priced lawyers—school parents who’ll defend their cause for free. And some of the other parents? They’re the ones who’re supposed to enforce those laws. They make sure our complaints are buried. Our resources are limited. We’re no match for them.”

  “There must be something you can do.”

  The corner of Ed’s mouth twitched slightly. “Actually, I’ve been doing some research online. I think I might have uncovered something wonky between the school and the City of Los Angeles. I discovered plans for the stadium were never submitted for approval to the city, and the city never sent out an inspector during construction. Same thing for the environmental impact report. So, far as I can tell, no records are on file for reports, permits, inspections—nothing.”

  Lucy looked puzzled. “How can you build a million-dollar stadium without city approval?”

  Ed shrugged. “I’ve tried to find out from the Army Corps of Engineers. They manage all the land in the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin—all the open land west of the Sepulveda Dam, including the area behind us where the Beaumont Stadium sits. So far, they’ve refused to hand over any of their records. They’ll only admit to leasing the land to Beaumont, but they won’t release the terms of the agreement.”

  She frowned. “Wait a minute. What about the Freedom of Information Act? Can’t you compel them under the law?”

  “I’ve tried, but apparently the US Attorney’s Office has better things to do than force the army to comply with my requests. I’ve been stonewalled at every turn.”

  I still wasn’t sure how this tied in with Martin’s murder. Was he involved in some kind of backroom deal to get the city or the engineer corps to cut corners with permits in order to get the stadium built? “Ed, do you really think this has anything to do with Dax Martin’s murder?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Martin was involved in kickbacks or bribery? He sure pissed someone off.”

  Had Ed shoved a stick into a hornet’s nest? “Have you told anyone else about this?”

  “I’ve been trying to get one of those TV muckrakers to investigate, but nobody will touch it. I made the mistake of meeting with our local city councilman to show him what I found out. I figured he could compel the Army Corps of Engineers to release the information. Only later did I find out his wife sits on the Beaumont Board of Trustees. Now they know I’m digging.”

  I took hold of his hand. “Listen, I’m certain the police will be questioning you soon, given your history with Martin. Do you have an attorney?”

  Ed nodded, face sober. “One of the guys I hang out with.”

  We stood. “Please be careful. If there’s anything I can do to help, just ask.” I gave him a motherly kiss on the cheek.

  As we left, Ed said, “Thanks for the heads-up.” Then he closed the door behind us.

  At the same time, Arlo Beavers got out of his car in front of Ed’s house and walked toward us, scowling.

  I held my hand out to stop him from going to the front door. “He didn’t do it.”

  Beavers’s dark eyes crackled under his frown. “So you knew Pappas and the victim had history and didn’t tell me?”

  “I was going to tell you, but I wanted to talk to him first.”

  Beavers clenched his teeth and spoke deliberately. “Stay out of this homicide, Martha.”

  “Ed Pappas is the real victim here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His home has been ruined by the Joshua Beaumont School. Sure he’s angry, but Dax Martin’s murder genuinely surprised him. Right, Lucy?” I turned to my friend for support.

  Lucy held up her hands, took a step backward, and then shrugged as if to say, I’ve no opinion and don’t put me in the middle.

  I gave her the stink eye and turned back to Be
avers. “You’ll see when you question him. He’s a decent, young guy.”

  “Sometimes decent people do indecent things. Now go home, and I mean what I say.” He put his finger on my shoulder and thrust his face toward mine. “Stay. Out. Of. This.”

  We walked back toward my house. Lucy took a deep breath. “I’m getting one of my bad feelings.” My friend was convinced she could sense disaster before it happened. She claimed to have extrasensory perception. I called it “intuition.”

  I wasn’t thinking about Lucy’s ESP, however. I still stung from Beavers’s comments. “He has no right to tell me what to do. And thanks for not standing up for me back there.”

  Lucy just shook her head. “Arlo Beavers isn’t your enemy. Why can’t you just relax and trust him to do his job?”

  Lucy was right. After my cheating psychiatrist husband left me and my daughter, Quincy, a couple of decades ago, I could never let myself get too close to any man. Even one, like Beavers, who seemed to really like me. Still, you never knew when someone might just up and leave.

  CHAPTER 4

  As Lucy and I neared my yard, the coroner’s van drove in the direction of the Joshua Beaumont field. By the time we got to my front door, Beavers drove past and followed the van around the corner.

  Lucy looked at me. “That was fast. He couldn’t have been at your neighbor’s house for more than two minutes.”

  “Yeah. I guess he must have been called back to the crime scene.”

  I still felt a little queasy from the morning’s shock, so Lucy made some tea and we went to my sewing room to audition some red fabric for a new quilt. The room was painted in a soft dove gray, the perfect neutral background for evaluating colors.

  Quilters have a special relationship with cotton cloth. Most of us can’t resist buying quite a few of the thousands of choices available in stores. Fabric comes in all sizes, from five-inch squares to many yards.

  Over time, I’ve collected hundreds of pieces for my stash. The amount I buy depends on what I think I’ll use it for—small pieces for quilt blocks, larger ones for background and borders, and up to nine yards for the backing of a large bed-sized quilt.

  I pulled out a number of red prints and smiled at Lucy. “One of my favorite things about designing a new quilt is going through my stash and fondling the fabric. My fingertips feel happy.”

  “I know what you mean.” She smiled back. “Sorting through your fabric is like visiting old friends.”

  We lined up the other materials I previously selected for my new quilt and placed each red piece with them to see how they worked together. If the color was off or had too much contrast, we rejected it. High-contrast prints jumped out and dominated the design to the detriment of the overall pattern. Prints that were too much alike made the quilt look dull. Choosing just the right components, however, created sparkle.

  Eventually we found three perfect candidates and I decided to use them all: crimson polka dots scattered on cream, scarlet roses on a light blue field, and a tiny black motif marching in orderly lines across a cherry-colored background. I loved traditional quilts made with as many different prints and hues as possible. The more fabrics—the more interesting the quilt.

  By the time we were through, the events of the morning seemed far away.

  “So, how are things between you and Arlo? Still good?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “Well, he did seem a little perturbed back at Ed’s house.” Lucy was too polite to say the words “pissed off.” She almost never used crude language. I thought her restraint came from years of trying to set a good example for her now-grown five sons.

  There was a knock on my front door. An officer stood in a blue uniform. “Ms. Rose? I’ve come to give you a ride to the station. You need to give us a statement about the body you found this morning.”

  I shivered with disgust as I remembered my last ride in the back of a police car four months ago. I was arrested and detained overnight in the Van Nuys Jail under grossly unsanitary conditions. I didn’t want to repeat any part of the experience.

  “Can’t I give my statement here? Why do I have to go to the station? I don’t have much to tell you. I discovered the body and called the police. That’s about all there is.”

  “The detectives will want to ask you questions, ma’am. Detective Beavers asked me to provide you with transportation to the station.”

  I looked at Lucy. Is she just as puzzled as I am? Why doesn’t he come here to interview me? Why not drive me himself ? What’s going on?

  Lucy shrugged and gave a slight shake of her head.

  I turned back to the officer. “Okay, I’m coming, but I’ll drive myself. I don’t like riding in police cars.”

  Lucy took out her keys. “I’ll drive. You’re in no shape to be behind the wheel right now.”

  I took one last gulp of tea, locked the front door, and slid onto the creamy leather seat of Lucy’s vintage black Caddy, the kind with huge shark fins on the back.

  I left Lucy waiting near the front desk while the officer escorted me into a blue interview room of the West Valley Police Station on Vanowen Street. I waited for fifteen minutes, expecting Beavers to show up. When the door finally opened, I stiffened. Kaplan walked in.

  Detective Kaplan was Beavers’s younger partner. The jerk arrested me four months ago, causing me a lot of unnecessary grief. In the aftermath, he never apologized for his behavior. I couldn’t stand him.

  I looked in the hallway, but no one else was there. “Where’s Detective Beavers?”

  With his combination of liquid brown eyes, olive skin, and curly black hair, Kaplan was probably irresistible to young women and girls. To me, however, he was just an arrogant little punk.

  He looked at me with a slight smirk, which I immediately wanted to slap away. “The LAPD has a policy. Detectives cannot interview the women they’re sleeping with.”

  I glared at him. “I guess that means where you’re concerned, all the hookers in LA can breathe a sigh of relief!”

  Kaplan’s eyes blazed, and he opened his mouth to respond, but he must have thought better of it. After a beat, he said, “Just tell me about this morning.”

  “I went for a walk and saw the body. I called Detective Beavers. I didn’t touch anything. When I realized I knew the victim—Dax Martin—I threw up. Then I sat down and waited for the police to show up. EMTs briefly examined me and then Detective Beavers escorted me back to my house. The end.”

  Kaplan was far from done. He kept me there for another half hour, asking questions about how I knew Martin and digging for details about the relationship between the neighbors and Joshua Beaumont School.

  “I went to Beaumont myself,” he interjected at one point.

  That explains everything!

  I tried my best to protect Ed Pappas. I read his name upside down on a folder sitting in front of Kaplan on the table and assumed the contents must have been Ed’s arrest record from his fistfight with Martin. But I knew Kaplan wouldn’t be interested in my opinions.

  “Have you seen any of the homeless people back there in the wash? Can you describe any of them?”

  “Do you think one of the homeless people killed him?” I had, in fact, heard Dax Martin brag on television how he and his assistant coaches periodically visited the occasional person camping out behind his ball field. The coaches cleared out “those losers” so his young ballplayers wouldn’t have to look at them. He actually winked at the interviewer. I wouldn’t blame the homeless if they had killed Martin.

  “I ask the questions here.”

  Give me a break.

  “No. I’ve never actually seen any of them. They purposely stay out of sight. I don’t think they want any trouble.”

  I spoke from firsthand experience. Four months ago, I met a homeless woman, Hilda. She sold me a discarded baby quilt, which turned out to be the key to finding a killer. Hilda worked hard every day to support herself by collecting recyclables and way overcharging me
for information. She was a real entrepreneur and harmless.

  “Well, they’re about to get a whole truckload of trouble.”

  Oh, please. My daughter, Quincy, was around the same age as Kaplan. I hoped she never got involved with someone like him.

  As Lucy drove me back home, she asked, “Arlo didn’t interview you, did he?”

  I shook my head, still seething at Kaplan’s crude remark.

  “I imagine interviewing you is no longer kosher,” continued my Catholic friend. “After all, you two are dating.”

  “Guess so,” I snapped.

  Lucy pulled up to the front of my house and smiled. “See you in the morning at Birdie’s.” For the last fifteen years, Lucy, Birdie, and I got together to quilt every Tuesday morning—no matter what.

  “Thanks for everything, Luce. See you tomorrow.”

  I closed the car door and stood in the ninety-degree heat as I watched Lucy drive away. Five motorcycles sat in Ed’s driveway. He loved his Harley and, in the days before the baseball stadium, used to have his friends over for parties after riding all day.

  As far as I could tell, the guys in Ed’s biker club always behaved respectfully to the neighbors. Even so, some of the locals were freaked out by the men’s matching leather vests that had VE painted on the back in big purple letters.

  A biker I’d never seen before stood in front of Ed’s place, the kind of guy you’d remember: a white male, well over six feet, and weighing about three hundred pounds of solid muscle. He looked like a golem, wearing a black leather vest and a red bandana do-rag. He watched me closely as Lucy drove away.

  CHAPTER 5

  I cracked open a can of diet cola and sat down at the kitchen table. My large cat, Bumper, jumped up on my lap. “Hey, handsome!” I smoothed his fluffy orange fur. He rewarded me with an affectionate purr and settled on top of my thighs, one of his favorite soft places to rest.

  I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of Dax Martin and his fellow coaches harassing the poor homeless people behind the ball field. Did one of them fight back and kill Martin? They’d probably never get the chance. Bullies, like Dax Martin, rarely did their dirty work alone. If you scratched the surface of most bullies, you’d find a coward. If Martin tangled with the homeless, he wouldn’t have gone in without backup.