A Body in the Backyard

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  Chapter Eight

  “For heaven’s sake! I haven’t been here for months, Crazy Dan. You act like I’m down here every week panhandling or something.” Myrtle frowned at the scraggly man who indeed was not wearing a shirt. “Is Wanda in today?”

  The man tilted his head to the side. “Whassat?”

  “I said is Wanda in,” said Myrtle loudly. Noting the look of confusion still on the man’s face, she said again, “Wand-er. Your sister.”

  “Need a for-toon read?” Now Crazy Dan looked cunning.

  Myrtle knew she hadn’t brought any money with her. She turned to give Miles an inquiring stare.

  Miles sighed. “I suppose so.”

  Crazy Dan nodded and took to gazing at Miles’s carefully pressed golf shirt, khaki pants, and nice shoes. “Wander!” he hollered. With the shack as tiny as it was, it was hard to imagine that a raised voice was even necessary.

  He disappeared into the dark depths of the shack and Wanda appeared. She looked exactly as Red had described and Myrtle gave a satisfied nod. Nicotine stains, bedraggled hair. Leathery, sun-ripened skin. Really just a female version of Crazy Dan. Fortunately, she was wearing a shirt and even wore a pair of disreputable-looking bedroom slippers. She didn’t seem surprised to see them at all.

  “Wondered when you’d come,” she said in a dissolute voice, turning to walk into the shack. Myrtle supposed they were intended to follow her, so she carefully entered into the darkness. Going from the broad, unrelenting daylight to the dimness of the cluttered house might be a recipe for disaster. Myrtle poked in front of her with her cane to make sure she wasn’t going to trip over piles of laundry or psychic accoutrements or perhaps spare hubcaps.

  Fastidious Miles didn’t look as if he particularly wanted to sit down on Madam Zora’s sofa. He appeared concerned about the cleanliness of the conditions. “I’ve been driving for a while so I might just stand and stretch my legs for a bit.”

  Myrtle wondered if Wanda saw straight through that statement. Wanda studied Miles through narrowed eyes. She let it pass without a challenge and said, “Come to get your for-toon read?”

  Myrtle said warily, “I told Dan I would, but I’m not too sure about that, Wanda. That never ends up going well.”

  “Why not?” asked Miles, eyes still glancing into the corners of the room as if watching for rodents to leap out at him.

  “Because she always sees horrible things. Horrible. She’s never looked at my palm and said, ‘You’ll win a million dollars in the sweepstakes and be happy for the rest of your life.’ It’s always something completely ghastly that she says.”

  “Not fair,” said Wanda. “I just read what’s there. Give me a chance and mebbe there won’t be bad stuff now.”

  Myrtle sighed and held out her hand. Wanda took it, looked into her palm and muttered, “Death.” She dropped Myrtle’s hand as if it burned her, then lit up a cigarette.

  “See!” demanded Myrtle furiously.

  Miles said dubiously, “But that’s not really even a stretch of your imagination is it, Wanda? Considering the customer, I mean.” Myrtle shot him an angry look and he blushed. “I mean, well, considering her age…um…well…her advancing years….”

  Myrtle gave him a repressive glare. “How gallant of you, Miles. Eighty is the new seventy, you know.”

  “But you’re not eighty. You’re nearly ninety,” said Miles, confused, before blushing even more furiously than before.

  Wanda said scornfully, “Didn’t predict it because she’s old. There’s other death ‘round her—not natural, either. And danger. I always warn her. Never listens.”

  Miles nodded sympathetically.

  “Maybe,” said Myrtle in an irritated voice, “the reason you’re seeing death everywhere is because you recently murdered someone.”

  Miles gave a choking laugh at her directness.

  “Whadya mean?” Wanda’s eyes narrowed. “I ain’t done nothin’.” She blew a blue cloud of cigarette smoke at Myrtle’s face.

  “Are you sure? Because you were seen lurking on my street near my house the night a murder was committed. In my backyard.” Myrtle steadily held the psychic’s gaze.

  “Wasn’t there at night!” interjected Wanda hotly, then glared resentfully at Myrtle for having tricked her into disclosing that she’d been there at all.

  “Why were you there?” asked Myrtle. “What were you doing hanging out around my house?”

  “Didn’t even know it was yer house!” said Wanda.

  “You’re the psychic! You should know stuff like that,” said Myrtle.

  “That’s a little detail. I don’t get little details,” said Wanda in a defensive voice. “And the reason I was in your area is because I had a vision.” She stubbed out her cigarette and put her skinny hands on her emaciated hips.

  “What sort of a vision?” asked Miles, curiously. He’d been busy the last few minutes looking around Wanda’s living room at the crystal ball, Tarot cards, and other oddities. Maybe he missed his calling as a seer instead of being an architect. Or whatever it was that he used to do.

  Wanda turned to stare at him. “Thought you was going to be hurt,” she told Miles. “In the vision, you was going to be hurt. I thought I’d go over there and stop it. I should know better than to mess with the stars, though.”

  “You thought that I was going to be hurt?” asked Miles, startled. “Why on earth would you have a vision like that?”

  “He was up to no good,” said Wanda, giving a shiver. “No good, that Cousin Charles.”

  Now she had Miles’s complete attention. “How do you know Cousin Charles?” asked Miles intently. His eyes were wide with what looked like terror as he waited for the answer.

  “Because he’s kin.”

  “Kin to whom?” Miles’s eyes were saucers behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “To me. To you.” Wanda said it simply, giving Miles a world-weary look.

  “But how?” Miles’s white face indicated that he was in desperate need of that Bloody Mary he’d been talking about earlier.

  Wanda shrugged a bony shoulder and seemed disinclined to answer.

  Myrtle persisted with her line of questioning. “So you went over to Miles’s house and hung out for a while to see what you could see? What did you see?”

  Wanda said, “The vision was fuzzy on the time. Must have been the wrong time. Didn’t see Cousin Charles.”

  “Did you see anything else?” asked Myrtle, ignoring the fact that Miles was muttering something under his breath.

  Wanda stared at Myrtle. “Just yer cat.” She looked away and Myrtle swore she was hiding something. So she’d seen something but didn’t want to share it. Great. What was it about the people involved with this case? None of them wanted to talk.

  Miles was once again in charge of the conversation, but Myrtle had already lost interest since it was clear that Wanda wasn’t going to share any more information. At least not today.

  “If you could just tell me,” pleaded Miles, “exactly how we’re related?”

  In the car, as they headed back from Wanda and Crazy Dan’s shack, the fact that Miles asked Myrtle to drive him home was a strong indication of just how shaken up he was. Myrtle set off at a stately thirty-five miles per hour. “What on earth were you thinking, Miles, asking Wanda to the funeral? And my reception!”

  Miles was blindly staring out at the slowly passing landscape in a dazed fashion. “Well. She’s family, after all. I’ve got to observe all the niceties.”

  “Family in a very convoluted way, and only because your uncle was a miscreant. What a reprobate to saddle Crazy Dan and Wanda’s mother with two children and then not provide care for them!” replied Myrtle, veering off the road just a hair while overcome by emotion.

  Miles buried his head in his hands. “Oh Myrtle. That’s right—Crazy Dan is related to me, too.”

  “Let’s not fall apart over it all, Miles. It’s not as if you have to suddenly start going over to visit them
on Sunday afternoons after church or anything. Just carry on as usual. You’re not even claiming the other members of your family in the area, anyway. What’s two more cousins?” asked Myrtle. Then she turned grim. “But you didn’t invite Crazy Dan to my reception, I hope. He never wears a shirt!”

  Miles spoke out of the depths of his hands again. “I didn’t specifically tell Wanda to come with her brother, no. Who knows if he’ll decide to show up? I don’t even know how Wanda got over to our street on the night of the murder. All the cars I saw were up on cinder blocks.”

  “I guess there must be one that actually works.” Again she glanced over at Miles, who really did appear to be having some sort of terrible headache or attack of some kind. “Don’t be so worried, Miles! Everything is going to be fine.”

  The everything is fine mantra was one that Myrtle continued repeating when she’d finally gotten back home. Here she was with a reception going on the next day and she felt extremely unprepared. For one thing, she’d forgotten to get flowers at the store for that simple memorial she was trying to create, and the flowers in her yard weren’t looking so great right now.

  Myrtle peered out her side window into Erma’s backyard to see if her roses were still as ratty as ever. As expected, the poor things looked as if they were positively gasping for water.

  She snapped her fingers. But in his yard, Miles had that huge magnolia tree that completely overshadowed his backyard. Myrtle would be over there this afternoon when Miles’s aunt came over to visit. She could pull off a blossom or two and float them in a big bowl outside.

  She then turned her attention to her house. It looked all right, she guessed. She knew the hall bathroom could use a cleaning before tomorrow and her kitchen would need cleaning after she finished cooking.

  Something else was bothering her. Whenever she talked about the funeral reception, people kept mentioning ham biscuits. She hadn’t picked up any ham when she was at the store with Red and the only biscuits she could competently handle were the kind that came out of a can. Apparently, this ham-at-funeral-receptions-thing was practically as sacred a tradition as having ham at Easter.

  There was no way around it—she’d have to go back to the store. Sighing deeply, she grabbed a bag and her cane and headed out the door. At least she’d figured out the flower situation. There was no way she’d be able to carry a ham, flowers, and a cane.

  Roy, the butcher, winced as he saw Myrtle Clover coming up. He was well-acquainted with the lady from years of her frequenting his meat counter. He was of the opinion that she was an excellent English teacher, but a terrible cook. Roy always felt guilty, sending off a poor, unsuspecting cut of meat home with her.

  Today it was ham that was on her mind. He didn’t think he’d ever sold her a ham before. He felt a strange reluctance to do so now.

  She was frowning at him, hunching over on her cane as if it had been a long day already. She was a formidable old woman with a towering six-foot height and a towering intellect, too. And she was already unhappy with him. He suddenly realized she’d been talking to him and he’d been too deep in his thoughts to hear her.

  “I need a ham,” she repeated, now getting that stern look he remembered from the times he’d forgotten to bring in his English homework.

  “Of course, Mrs. Clover,” he said meekly. “How much do you need?”

  “I’m thinking fifteen pounds,” she said.

  Roy got the ham out, came around the side of the counter, and placed the ham tenderly in her cart for her. “Now,” he said slowly, “do you need any…well, helpful hints for the ham?”

  She gave him more of the steely glare. “I think I can handle the ham, Roy. I’ll cook it and be just fine.”

  He continued feeling this strong sense of responsibility toward the meat. She did know it was fully cooked, right? “It really just needs warming or maybe a glaze….” At the look she was giving him, he broke off. Well, it wasn’t going to be his fault, was it? He looked sadly after her as she walked away, leaning heavily on her cart.

  Really! Roy seemed in league with everyone else in town who thought she couldn’t host a simple funeral reception. This made her even more determined to have everything go smoothly and catch the murderer simultaneously. She thumped down the sidewalk toward her house, thinking about the case as she went. It must be time for Miles’s aunt to come by for the visit by now. Maybe she should stick the ham in the oven before she went over there. She would be very close by, after all.

  At home, she put the ham on the table and looked at the label. Slightly over fifteen pounds. From what she remembered from the last time she’d hosted Thanksgiving (another occasion when no one appeared to accept that she knew what she was doing), she’d had a bird a pound or so bigger than this ham. It had taken much longer for the turkey to cook than she’d planned on and she’d had to come up with reasons for the delay that didn’t involve the fact that the turkey wasn’t cooked. Myrtle wasn’t about to make the same mistake of underestimating the cooking time again. At least it wasn’t frozen…that was a bonus, especially considering the fact that the reception was tomorrow afternoon.

  Myrtle thoughtfully considered the oven. Had it been 375 degrees that she’d cooked that turkey on? She thought so. She preheated the oven and unwrapped the ham and placed it in a pan. It seemed to come with a glaze. How convenient! Would that taste good in the biscuits, though? It should, shouldn’t it? She mixed up the glaze according to the directions and never saw the directions that came for warming the ham.

  Once the oven preheated, she put the ham in and picked up the phone to call Miles.

  “Is she there yet?” asked Myrtle, still breathless from the exertion of going to the store and manhandling the ham.

  “Not yet,” said Miles with a sigh. “I’m really not up to seeing her now.”

  “Are you planning on mentioning Wanda and Crazy Dan to her?”

  “Why would she even care? It was something her father-in-law did ages ago,” said Miles.

  “Okay. I’m heading over,” said Myrtle, hanging up. She picked up her cane and glanced at herself in the mirror. Her white hair was standing up like Einstein, so she impatiently patted it down before walking out the door.

  She and Miles were on their second glass of wine and still no aunt.

  “She did say she was coming, didn’t she?” asked Myrtle. “Our waiting is causing me to drink more wine than I’d planned on doing.”

  Miles shrugged. “It’s not like we’re driving anywhere. It’s been a long day for me.”

  “It’s been a long day for me, and I still have a bunch of stuff to do,” said Myrtle. “Cleaning and cooking. And I need to take a couple of magnolia blossoms off your tree for my memorial in the backyard.”

  Miles gave a choking chortle that was most unlike him. Myrtle raised her eyebrows and wondered if Miles had started with the wine before she arrived. “The memorial, right,” he said. “Can you reach the blossoms on the tree? I was just thinking about you climbing trees at your age.”

  Myrtle shot him a cold stare. “I’m very tall, as you know, so I’m sure I won’t have any problems. For heaven’s sake, Miles.”

  It was probably fortunate that the doorbell rang at that moment. She was starting to get really irritated with Miles but she didn’t have the luxury of stomping off in a huff.

  Miles’s Aunt Connie looked to be in her late fifties and bore absolutely no resemblance to him whatsoever. She had a dissatisfied mouth, a weak chin, and small eyes that right now glanced around Miles’s house suspiciously, as if speculating that he housed many family mementoes that should be in her home, instead.

  “Oh Miles, isn’t it terrible? Our poor, poor Charles! I just haven’t even absorbed the news at all. To have his life ended so young and when he was so full of promise!”

  Miles frowned doubtfully at both the youth and the promise of his cousin, but he was too polite to do anything but give a hesitant nod. “Is everything coming together for the funeral?”
he asked stiffly, motioning to his aunt to take a seat.

  Connie plopped down on Miles’s leather sofa, putting a hand out subconsciously to run along the expensive surface. “It’s all right. There really wasn’t much to do—just coordinate with the funeral home and plan the graveside service. They’re taking it from there.”

  Miles said, “You know that Myrtle is hosting the reception after the funeral.”

  Connie’s forehead furrowed in confusion.

  “Myrtle. Right there,” said Miles, gesturing at Myrtle.

  Myrtle tried to smile graciously, despite just having been grievously ignored.

  “Is she?” asked Connie doubtfully, tilting her head to one side. “Where does she live?”

  Myrtle was unused to being talked about as if she wasn’t in the same room. Her forced smile became more of a grimace as she gritted through her teeth. “I live only a few yards away. As a matter of fact, it was in my yard that your son met his untimely demise.”

  A spark of interest finally shone in Connie’s eyes. “Did you happen to see anything? That night, I mean? Or hear anything?”

  Myrtle cursed herself for the twentieth time for having such an unusual lapse of acuity the night of the murder. “I’m afraid I didn’t. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Connie sniffed, thinking again of her recent tragedy. “Thank you. It’s kind of you to host the reception.” She paused. “I’m not sure how many people will be there. That makes it hard to plan.”

  Miles said, “I’m sure the ladies from my church will be bringing by some extra food the day of the funeral. We’ll be fine.”

  Myrtle shifted restlessly. She was ready to get in the driver’s seat with some questions herself. Connie had had control of this conversation long enough. “Miles was quite surprised that Charles was in town, Connie. Did you know that he was in Bradley?”

  Connie blinked at her and quickly said, “Naturally. He came to visit me and then wanted to catch up with old high school friends who still lived in Bradley.”

  Myrtle got the distinct impression that she actually hadn’t had the vaguest clue that he was in town. “Where had he been living before coming back to Bradley?” she asked.

  “Oh, here and there,” said Connie with a vague wave of her hand to demonstrate that Charles had sort of floated around in the ether.

  “He was a drifter, then?” asked Myrtle innocently.

  “Certainly not!” said Connie with a gasp at the word. “He was an adventurer. Charles loved experiencing life. That’s why his death is such a tragedy.”

  “He was a world traveler?” asked Miles, sounding quite surprised. “I’ve done some traveling in my time—work-related, most of it. Where did he go?” Miles leaned forward on the sofa, looking at his aunt intently. His voice wasn’t at all snarky. He couldn’t possibly believe this tall tale of Connie’s could he? Or, was Miles perhaps just a little bit tipsy?

  “Charles was a very independent young man,” said Connie stiffly. “He didn’t find it necessary to discuss all his travels with his mother.”

  Which meant these travels were likely confined to North Carolina.

  “What industry was Charles in?” asked Myrtle in her very sweetest tones. “Did business bring him to Bradley, or was his visit strictly to catch up with you and his friends?”

  Connie pressed her thin lips together. Miles took another good-sized sip of wine and continued to forget to offer his aunt any. This was quite a stunning lapse for Miles and another sign of how shaken he was from the events of the day.

  “He was an entrepreneur,” said Connie. “He worked with start-up businesses. Very cutting-edge things that you and I wouldn’t really understand.”

  In other words, he was chronically unemployed and constantly asking acquaintances to invest money in various shady operations.

  “So he might have been in town to drum up support for a new business opportunity?” asked Myrtle.

  Connie didn’t make a snappy reply this time. There was, in fact, a distinct hesitation before she said, “No, remember? I said he was in town to catch up with me and with friends.”

  Miles said, “Do you have any idea why he’d be coming to see me so late at night, Connie?”

  She raised her penciled-in eyebrows. “Was he coming to see you, Miles? I didn’t know that.” She looked at him suspiciously now.

  “Well, he never told me he was coming to visit me. In fact, I had no idea that he was even in town. It does seem very late to be paying a visit,” said Miles, backtracking now.

  “Maybe he was coming to see me,” said Myrtle with a shrug. “After all, he was in my yard, Miles, not yours.”

  “Why on earth would he have been coming to see you?” asked Connie with a short laugh. “No, he was probably meeting Miles. He might have realized he was finally being remiss about seeing his cousin.”

  Myrtle and Miles didn’t point out that it was very odd timing finally to reach that conclusion.

  “Did he tell you there was anyone in particular in Bradley that he was trying to catch up with?” asked Myrtle.

  “No, I hadn’t talked to Charles in a couple of weeks,” said Connie.

  “I thought you said that Charles had visited with you before his murder,” said Myrtle, frowning.

  Connie flushed an unattractive shade of crimson. “He was planning on coming by, of course. But circumstances obviously made that impossible.” She sniffed again and looked as if the waterworks were in imminent threat of turning on again. “My poor Charles! Misunderstood and taken to heaven in the prime of his life!” She studied the ceiling as if looking for answers. “I wonder if I’ll ever know what truly happened to him. Maybe I should offer a reward for information relating to his murder. It’s simply so awful not knowing what happened.” She rummaged in her patent-leather pocketbook and found a tissue, blowing her nose with gusto.

  It was at this point that Myrtle decided that she should probably check on her ham. There was no way there was going to be anymore information gotten from Miles’s Aunt Connie. When she made her way out the door, an apprehensive-looking Miles was listening to his aunt wax poetic on what a dear boy Charles had always been. And she was pawing through her large pocketbook for photographs.

  Myrtle was so eager to escape from Miles’s house and his aunt’s unfortunate predilection for son worshipping that she completely forgot about her nemesis. Naturally, Erma Sherman hadn’t forgotten about her. When Myrtle had glimpsed her, it was already too late.

  “Myrtle!” said Erma in a pleased voice. “I saw you go in Miles’s house but I figured you probably wouldn’t come back out for a while. I know how it is when you two visit each other. Although I still say you’re taking your life in your hands just being around Miles.”

  “Sorry, Erma, I’ve got to run back to my house. I’ve got to get everything ready for the funeral reception tomorrow,” said Myrtle.

  She bit her wayward tongue fiercely when Erma said, “You’re hosting the reception? Perfect! Of course I’ll be there—I’ve got to support my neighbor. How is Miles holding up? Considering he’s responsible.”

  “He’s not at all responsible and he and Charles weren’t close, so he isn’t particularly devastated.” She fished in her pocketbook for her keys, which apparently were determined to elude her desperate clutches.

  Erma sniffed at the air with her well-developed nose. “Is that something burning that I smell? Yes! Yes, something’s burning. You didn’t leave something on the stove, did you?” She gaped at Myrtle’s house and stepped back a notch as if concerned that the entire building was going to blow up.