Artful Dodger (Maggie Kean Mis-Adventures) (2 page)

He ignored my sarcasm and went on. “Did he have a partner or did he come alone?”

“Alone, as far as I know.”

“What happened next?”

“Not much. I took him upstairs and let him into the bathroom.  He tinkered around a little and then asked me to show him where the septic tank was buried.  So I did.”

He noticed my hesitation. “It’s better if you just say it all at once.”

Maybe he was right. Surely he had more experience with dead people than I did.

"So then the guy, the one in the striped shirt, dug a hole about a foot or so deep until he struck concrete.  Then he widened the hole until he could lift the entire lid off the tank. Afterward, he stuck this long accordion-like hose down inside. It looked like the tubing that’s used on the back of a gas clothes dryer.” I took a deep breath and pushed on. “Then he flipped a switch on. And nothing happened.”

“Nothing?”

“Nope.  Something wasn’t working.  I didn’t know what was wrong, and apparently, neither did he. He made a couple of calls but, in the end, there was no one available to come out to help.  He was really apologetic and sorry about the inconvenience, but he said he’d come back tomorrow, which was today, with a new truck or motor, or whatever, and take care of the problem.  So he replaced the lid and left. He arrived early this morning, stuck the tubing into the tank again, and started up the pump.”

I shuddered. Suddenly, without warning, everything came rushing back. Horrible pictures flooded my brain. I could see the dark head gently drifting in the putrid cesspool like a buoy in the ocean, but with less bounce. The face, bloated and puffy, was a deep blue color, almost purple. The skin was papery thin and wrinkled, the way it gets after an hour in a hot bath. And the features were distorted. Distorted, but not unrecognizable, because there was no doubt in my mind who it was. It was my neighbor. The very esteemed, the very grand, and the extremely wealthy Mrs. Elizabeth Boyer was floating in my sewage.

There was no way to miss that hair of hers, tied up in its usual tight bun, tight enough to stay put even if someone comes along and drowns you. It’s the kind of thing Elizabeth wouldn’t overlook. Surely she didn’t expect to be tossed into a tank full of unspeakable debris, but it was just that sort of surprise event she insisted on being prepared for. A few strands had escaped the rubber band and the scarf tied around her head like a turban, but otherwise, her hair had held up pretty well under a spur-of-the-moment murder.

Of course, I recognized more than her hair. She was on her back, drifting along as though she was waiting for someone to open the lid and let the sunshine in. The eyebrows were arched and the nose small and petite. Her chin, the one she pointed in the air whenever she marched across the lawn separating our two houses to register her opinion on something I had or had not done, still jutted out like the true patrician she was. Or used to be.

“Is that when you saw the body?”

I shook my head. “No. I was standing away from the truck a few feet. I’ve got a slight germ phobia and I really wasn’t anxious to get too close. Besides, the smell was enough to knock you off your feet.” Poor Elizabeth. Someone really
had
swept her off her feet. Oh, God. Bad jokes bubbled up at a furious pace and I was helpless to stop them. I bit my tongue and clenched my teeth to keep them from spilling out. I was pretty certain cops frowned on morbid humor at the scene of a crime, especially from the main witness.

“Go on.”

I got myself under control and continued. “At first, I just stood there watching the machine sucking stuff out of the tank, like a giant motorized turkey baster. It went on for a little while until I heard this big
whomp!
and everything seemed to stop. The sucking went dead, except for this kind of muffled whine, and it was obvious that something wasn’t working right. I just figured it was the same problem he had yesterday. But the guy pulled and wiggled the hose a little like he was trying to jar something loose, and when that didn’t seem to work, he reeled the hose in a little.  Then he squatted next to the side of the tank and looked down into the hole. Suddenly, he jerked back and fell on his butt like a rattlesnake had bitten him. I started to ask what was wrong, but he dropped the hose, crawled over to my flower garden, and heaved up his guts.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do. Something gross was obviously in the tank and I was in no particular hurry to see what it was. But while he was over there on his knees losing his lunch, I guess my natural curiosity overcame my aversion to raw sewage.”

I held up my hands in a classic gesture of defeat. “I can’t explain why I did it. It’s like when you’re a kid and someone pukes in class and you start yelling, ‘That’s disgusting!’ but at the same time you’re racing over to get a good look at the mess.”  Zorro didn’t look too surprised. 

I guess nothing surprises cops.

“Anyway, I held my nose and sort of leaned over the edge, and there was Elizabeth looking straight at me.  At least, it seemed that way with that tubing stuck to her cheek.” I tugged at the hem of my shorts. “So I ran to the phone and called the police, and Officer Mailer arrived with a whole battalion of cars, with you included... who are you anyway?”

“Sam Villari.”

“What’s your job?”

“Homicide detective.”

“Well, Detective Villari, as you requested, I told you the story from start to finish.  No detours or side trips, just like a good little witness. Now I’d like to leave.”

He held up his hand to stop me. “There are a couple more questions I’d like to ask before I let you go.” Villari cleared his throat. “Can you positively identify the body as Mrs. Boyer?”

“It’s definitely her. Believe me, I’d know that chin anywhere.”

 “Sounds like you had trouble with her.”

“Not really.   She was just your average, everyday meddling neighbor,” I replied, growing increasingly restless with this whole procedure. I was tired of answering questions as though I was a suspect. It wasn’t my fault I had plumbing problems, although admittedly, they were bigger ones than I had originally suspected.

“That bad, huh?”

I looked over to see if he was commiserating or pumping me for information. Unfortunately, his face didn’t give anything away. I shook my head. “Elizabeth was a hybrid...a cross between Queen Elizabeth and Aunt Bea. She could dissect, critique, and rearrange my life while pouring coffee and patting my hand.” Oh, God, I could feel the rush of tears bottling up behind my eyes while my nose started to run. I hate any kind of womanly emotion like the sudden spurt of tears that threatened to burst forth, especially when I was doing my damnedest to buck up and maintain control. My revulsion for tears probably springs from my upbringing. My brother, Andy, couldn’t stand to see any woman cry, and when we were growing up he’d haul off and punch me in the arm if my eyes even started to mist. He thought it was unmanly to cry, and since I was the nearest thing he had to a brother, he expected me to feel the same way.

Villari gently touched my hand. “You really cared about her, didn’t you?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose in a vain attempt to stop sniffling. “She was lonely... probably like a lot of older people. Her husband died ten or fifteen years ago,” I said, waving in the general direction of her house, which was mostly obscured by the line of pine trees and scrub oak that separated our properties, “and obviously left her a boatload of money. Apparently, it didn’t change her disposition too much because she was always popping in to boss me around or complain about one thing or another. But mostly, she was interested in my artwork.”

“Your artwork?”

“Yeah, I sculpt.”

“You sculpt?”

“Why are you repeating everything I say?”

“Sorry. I haven’t run into too many artists. I guess I expected more of a bohemian sort of look. You know, lots of color, flowing scarves, that kind of thing.” Villari looked embarrassed. “Maybe a knitted hat or a pair of leather sandals,” he added lamely.

“And I don’t quite match the image?” It was amusing to watch this big hunk of a man squirm, although I could understand how he felt. Wearing my usual outfit of baggy shorts and oversized T-shirt, I looked more like a scruffy tomboy than anything else, a look I’d grappled with for years. At different times in my life, I took a stab at looking more, well,
womanly
. I tried to develop a somewhat sophisticated image, thinking it would start to feel right, even comfortable, if I let it hang there long enough.  In reality, though, my blouses caved in where they were supposed to expand and my feet hurt like hell in heels, so I returned to sneakers before I ended up toppling down a flight of stairs and breaking an ankle.

So I’m stuck with me, a very average five-foot-five woman with a mess of brown curls that spring in every direction except the one I want. My chest is fair to flat and my legs are lean enough but could definitely use a shave on a more regular basis, and some lotion action. Everyone says my eyes—green—are my best feature, which is lucky for me because I don’t do anything more than swipe on a little mascara to spruce them up. My nose is pretty nondescript. It’s not cute or perky or turned up or down, or anything more than functional. All in all, I possess enough looks to keep a man from gagging, and if I’m lucky, catch a date now and then.

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”

Yeah, sure. “Look, it’s no problem. It isn’t my real job. I mean I don’t support myself by sculpting, at least not yet, although it’s always been a dream of mine. In real life, I’m a teacher.”

He raised his brow skeptically.

“It’s true. I teach art at the elementary school down the road.” I held up my hand to stop him from sticking his foot in his mouth a second time. “I know, I know. I don’t look like a teacher either. The only thing I do look like is a third baseman on a weekend softball team—a position I do play, by the way—with extraordinarily bad taste in clothes.”

A small, slightly lopsided grin hovered over Villari’s lips, vanishing quickly as he remembered why he was sitting next to me in the first place.

"I got the impression that Elizabeth thought I was--” I hesitated.

“Was what?”

“Talented.” I could feel the flush burning my cheeks. Despite the way my big mouth shoots off now and then, I’m actually pretty modest when it comes to talking about my sculpture.  The truth is, sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that I’m only kidding myself, that one day I’ll wake up and find I’m just goofing around with a chunk of clay.

“Not to be rude, but why would that matter to her?”

I had asked myself the same question a million times. “She never really told me for sure.”

“But you have an idea.”

“I got the feeling that she wanted to support me somehow.”  I shrugged. “Maybe it was my imagination, or my deepest hope, but she was awfully critical of my work and kept pushing and prodding me to change this or that. She seemed to take it very seriously. And when something was done to her satisfaction, she acted proud, like it was her work, too.”

Villari seemed to be deep in thought. “Did you ever meet any members of her family?”

“You mean those ‘two spoiled brats that aren’t smart enough to spell
Boyer
and don’t have enough backbone to carry the name’?”

“I suppose those were her words?”

“Yep. She thought the two grandkids were useless.”

“What do you think?”

“Cassandra is practically a stranger to me. She doesn’t spend much time being neighborly. Aside from watching her zip in and out of Elizabeth's driveway in her little red BMW, I hardly see her.”

“And her brother?”

“He’s a jerk. It was one thing Elizabeth and I completely agreed on.”

“Why’s that?”

“Find out for yourself. He’s marching his skinny little ass over here right now.”

Chapter Two

Preston Boyer was one of those guys who just begged to be made fun of and I have no doubt his school years were a nightmare. Despite my feelings, which ranged from extreme dislike to total revulsion, I felt little twinges of sadness for his life growing up. I could see him as a little boy, his pasty white face staring arrogantly from behind black horn-rimmed glasses, his spindly body stiffly encased in a perfectly starched white shirt and pressed pleated pants. It wasn’t just his appearance that made you want to flatten his sharp little nose; it was his attitude—a superior, patronizing demeanor—that would attract bullies like maggots to rotted meat. He was so obnoxious I’m sure he garnered very little sympathy, despite having lost both parents in a grisly automobile accident, a head-on collision with a drunk driver one New Year’s Eve.

I never knew him as a child, but I doubt he had changed much over the years.  Although Elizabeth Boyer talked infrequently about her grandson, she had dropped little bits of information over the years, details delivered tonelessly, with little warmth or affection. Apparently he was a loner and had very few friends, none of whom she ever named. I’m not sure she could have named them if she’d wanted to.  He seemed to live life on the sidelines while sneering at those getting dirty in the middle of the game.  Elizabeth, insisting I use her first name, called Preston her greatest failure.

“I don’t know,” she mused aloud one day while staring out my studio window, “whether Preston was always so distant or whether it was just the trauma of losing his mother and father at the same time.  Somehow he associates me with their death and sometimes I believe he hates me, as though I killed his parents.”  She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself.  “It was a horrible time, one that I try to push into the back of my mind as much as possible.  But then, it never goes away, does it?”

I laid my sketchpad down on my lap and hooked my ankles on the legs of the stool. “I don’t think you ever forget something like that. When my mother died, my father took her photograph off the mantel. It was a picture of her crouching in the garden with all these colorful flowers surrounding her. Flowers she was in the middle of planting. He had snapped the shot without her realizing it, and I still remember her complaining about how awful she looked. But it was his favorite picture.” I paused. It was still hard to talk about her death without sliding into a cavern of sadness. “Anyway, my dad took the picture and commissioned an artist to paint a large portrait. He hung it in his office across from his desk so he could see it every day as he worked. At first I thought it was really sweet, but after a few years I began to think it was morbid, that he ought to take it down and get on with his life.”