A Body in the Backyard (9 page)

It was a good twenty-five minutes before they started seeing the signs off the badly potholed state highway outside Bradley. “These aren’t so bad,” said Miles. “Jesus loves you?  That’s a lovely sentiment, Myrtle.”

“Just wait.”

The next sign was a bit more ominous.
Forbidden fruit creates many jams
. “Well, it’s certainly true. The straight and narrow path usually leads to an uncomplicated life. I think these rural churches are simply looking out for their parishioners.”

Myrtle grunted.

The next sign said:
Choose the bread of life or you are toast
, followed quickly by:
Eternity is a long time to be wrong
.

Miles heaved another sigh. He seemed to be full of them lately.

“Right here,” said Myrtle pointing off to the side of the road where a faded sign advertised bait, hubcaps, peanuts, and psychic readings for sale.

“Where’s the house?” asked Miles, pulling into the dirt and gravel path (that was heavy on dirt and low on gravel) that passed for a driveway and carefully dodging various cars on cinderblocks.

“Right there in front of you! Don’t tell me you can’t see it,” said Myrtle, waving a hand at a shack that was completely engulfed in hubcaps.

Miles blinked at the shack. “I assumed that was the hubcap showroom. They live there?”

“Oh, it’s fine. Don’t be such a priss. I’m sure there are probably many advantages in living in a house covered by hubcaps.”

“So,” said Miles slowly, “when a customer
wants
a new hubcap, they pull it off their house?” He seemed unduly concerned about the structure of the house. It must be his engineering background. Or whatever it is that he used to do.

“Come on, let’s go up there,” said Myrtle, impatiently, pulling her cane out of the backseat and heaving herself out of the car. She walked over to the house and rapped her cane on one of the hubcaps. There was a sign duct-taped near the door that said,
Madam Zora. Sykick. Tarro Card reeding
.

“Crazy Dan always is the one who answers,” grumbled Myrtle. “For some reason he acts personally offended whenever he sees me at the door.”

A grizzled man with leathery skin and days of stubble yanked the door open abruptly and glanced suspiciously at both; then his beady eyes honed back in on Myrtle. “You! What’re you doing here again?”

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.