“I need to report a dead body.” Wow. Déjà vu. It was, what, three months since I had called the same number with the exact same message? Maybe I ought to put 9-1-1 on speed dial.
I was proud of myself, however, for not bursting into hysterical laughter this time. I had not wanted to do that last time, but I couldn’t help it. I have issues.
It took a few attempts for me to convey to the dispatcher what was going on, and even then I don’t think she completely understood the gravity of the situation. She seemed entirely too calm when she said, “Police are on their way.”
But the truck was now stopped at another dumpster, so I hung up and jumped out of the car. I leaped onto the running board and shouted “Hey!” at the driver, slapping the window a few times.
He looked much the same as the carhop had when I’d shouted at her.
“You have a dead body in your truck,” I mouthed through the closed window.
He stared at me.
“You have. A dead body. In your truck.” I motioned for him to roll the window down.
After a second he leaned over, slowly, and inched it down, eyes wide.
“I was watching when you emptied the dumpster behind Sonic. There was a dead body in it!”
He looked confused. “There’s a dead body at Sonic?”
“No,” I said. I did not say, “you idiot,” because I was trying very, very hard not to be that kind of person anymore. I took a deep breath. “There was a dead body in the dumpster. Now it’s in your truck.”
He threw the truck into park and said, “You’re kidding.”
“Ummm, no.” Hopefully when I made jokes I was funnier than that.
I stepped back as he flung open his door and jumped up onto the seat. He braced his hand on the top of the cab and leaned, stretching on tiptoe to peer into the big bed that held all the garbage.
I circled the truck in time to see him inching, toes barely clinging to a metal seam along the side of the truck, toward the big bed. He held onto a pipe with one hand and leaned to look in. “Are you sure? I don’t see – oh. Oh, good Lord. Oh, man.”
He let go of the bar and dropped to the ground. “I saw a foot. Oh, man. Oh, man.” His eyes rolled back in his head, and he staggered.
“I called the police. Hey, don’t –” But it was too late. He keeled over.
I was holding his head in my lap and giving his cheek increasingly firmer “pats” when I heard sirens. The guy blinked a couple of times and looked up at me. “Oh man,” he said again.
“Yes, I know.” I scooted him off my lap and stood to wave at the squad car that was slowly making its way down the alley. I was happy to see a patrol officer I didn’t recognize get out and do the cop-swagger toward me.
I knew it wouldn’t be Bobby Sloan because he was a detective now. He had shown up at my last Finding-Of-The-Body, but that was a fluke. It could have been Watson, another cop with whom I was on more-familiar-than-was-comfortable terms. I would prefer not to see Watson again, and I was sure the feeling was mutual.
This guy looked young, probably just out of the academy. He was Hispanic, medium build with buzzed hair. He eyed the driver and me so suspiciously that I started to feel guilty, which was annoying.
He did just what the driver had done, hopping first onto the seat, then inching out far enough to see what the driver had seen.
I stood beside the alley and peered up at him. It was as if I could tell exactly the moment he realized he was going to have to climb into that truck to make sure the person attached to that foot was really dead. His mouth turned into a grim line and he looked down at us. “Stay right there,” he ordered.
With a quick shake of his head, he hoisted himself up and straddled the side of the truck, then dropped into the truck.
The driver kept looking up at the opening of the hauler, as if the foot he saw was going to pop up any second.
After about thirty seconds the patrolman hauled himself back out. I guess it didn’t take very long to establish the facts and get the heck out of there.
Bobby Sloan pulled up in a white sedan.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said as he got out.
I shrugged. “Wish I was.”
He walked up and squeezed my shoulder. “Salem Grimes. Reporting a dead body. Now here’s something you don’t see every day. Every week, maybe, but not every day.”
“I was minding my own business, Bobby, I swear. I just looked up and saw the body falling out of the dumpster. It was my civic duty to report it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and wished I’d been able to lose those thirty pounds already. I was never comfortable around Bobby, but he’d kissed me the last time I saw him, and I still didn’t know why. The moment he stepped into the alley, that kiss was all I could think about.
Bobby ordered me to stay put and went over to talk to the patrolman. I dropped onto the ground at the edge of the alley, beside the truck driver. He sat with his legs in front of him, arms on his knees, and shook his head every few seconds.
“Kind of weird, isn’t it?” I asked, feeling sorry for him. The sight of that limp body tumbling into the truck ran over and over through my head, but, to be fair, the guy did look worse than I felt.
He turned to me. “You don’t think there’s any way I’d get fired for this, do you?”
“Why on earth would you get fired?”
He shook his head again. “I don’t know, b ut I keep getting fired, and I was really hoping this job would last a while. I don’t really know where I’d go from here.”
I knew what he meant. Probably from driving a dumpster truck there weren’t many places to go. “I work in a dog grooming shop. We’re always looking for people to bathe the dogs. Maybe I could train you.”
“I’d have to be trained to bathe a dog?”
“You’d be surprised.” I stood and brushed the dried grass of my jeans. I held out my hand. “Come on. Let’s just walk down to the other dumpster and back. Get some air.” That truck was starting to reek.
And okay, here was the really bad part: I began to feel kind of sad about my double meat cheeseburger and fries. That was bad; I knew it was bad. More proof – as if I needed it – that I’d replaced my addiction to alcohol with an addiction to food. Out of the frying pan and into the fat pants. On the upside, I hardly ever picked fights with total strangers after I had a Stupendous-size order of fries and a king size Snickers bar. I was usually too sluggish.
Bits of trash littered the alley, and I realized that some of it could be evidence. “Some of this stuff could have blown out of the truck.” I toed what looked like a cash register receipt.
“Yeah, we leave crap all over town,” the driver said. “It blows out all over the place.”
We walked slowly up and down the alley, but I had no way of knowing what was a clue and what was just regular old garbage. I saw two crushed soft drink cups, four more receipts, a diaper, a torn piece of orange t-shirt with “acon” written in a font that looked like bacon, and a Nerf bullet.
“That guy was naked,” I said, bending to pick up the fabric. “I wonder if this was his shirt.”
“Hey!”
I sprang back like I’d seen a snake.
The patrolman stomped down the alley toward us. “I told you two to stay beside the truck. Don’t touch anything out here. We have to get forensics out here.”
“We were just looking for clues,” the driver said. He pointed to the Nerf bullet. “Could be something.”
The patrolman jerked his head toward the truck. “Get back over there.”
“Grump,” I said under my breath as we walked back. I had mixed emotions – I wasn’t sure if I should be upset or relieved that I had not ordered bacon on that burger, since it had ended up on the ground anyway. I wondered if I could go back and tell the manager what happened. Maybe they would give me a free Sympathy Bacon Burger, like a hero, kind of.
But then again maybe they wouldn’t, since I’d almost mowed down one of their ca
rhops. Probably better to go to a different Sonic from now on.
Bobby finished talking to new people who had shown up and came over to me and the driver. “Tell me again what you saw.”
I took a deep breath. “I was sitting at Sonic, waiting for my order, and I saw the truck pull up. The dumpster lifted up and the body came tumbling out with all the trash. So, I followed him down the alley to tell him.” I jerked a thumb toward the truck driver. “That’s all I did.”
He stuck his hand out to shake Bobby’s. “Dale Coffee. Nice to meet you, sir.”
“Dale, I’m Bobby Sloan. Sorry we have to meet under these circumstances.”
“Me too,” Dale said sincerely.
“Tell me what you saw.”
Bobby had on his cop face. The thing about Bobby is, he’s always had a cop face. Maybe that was one of the things that fascinated me about him.
Other Titles in the Trailer Park Princess Series
The Middle Finger of Fate (Book One)
Unsightly Bulges (Book Two)
Caught in the Crotchfire (Book Three)
‘Tis the Friggin’ Season (Short Story)
The Power of Bacon (Short Story)
Mud, Sweat, and Tears (Short Story)
Coming July 15, 2017
Knickers in a Twist (Book Four)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kim Hunt Harris is the award-winning author of the Trailer Park Princess comic mystery series.
Kim knew she wanted to be a writer before she even knew how to write. When her parents read bedtime stories to her, she knew she wanted to be a part of the story world. She started out writing children’s stories, and her stories grew as she did. She discovered a gift for humor and a love for making people laugh with her tales, and the Trailer Park Princess series was born.
Kim loves to not only make her readers laugh and entertain them with a good mystery, but also to examine the issues the everyday people face…well, every day. Issues like faith and forgiveness, perseverance, and tolerance. Set in Lubbock, Texas, the fun books feature a cast of quirky characters, outrageous situations, a drama queen of a dog, and from time to time, a tear or two.
Kim lives with her husband of more than thirty years and two teenage kids in Lubbock, TX.
The Middle Finger of Fate (A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 33
