Death at a Drop-In (8 page)

“Miss Myrtle,” he said, “how are you doing?  I was just thinking that I needed to get in touch with you about your column this week.  How’s it coming along?  You know that there’ll practically be a riot in the streets if we miss including your helpful hints this week.”

“I’m sure they’ll live,” said Myrtle dryly.  “Actually, I was thinking about doing a bigger story this time.  The Whitlow murder.  I’m assuming you’re already working on a story about it, but I’d like to take it over.  I’m going to find out who’s behind Cosette Whitlow’s murder.”

Sloan sounded like he might be experiencing some stomach upset.  “The Whitlow murder?  Miss Myrtle, you must have better things to do than to get involved with that story.”

“Better things to do?  What?  Play bingo at the community center?  Watch the last episode of my soap another time? What
better things to do
could I possibly have?” asked Myrtle.

“Well, you know, your helpful hints column is getting so popular that I thought we might want to run it more than once a week.  People are really eating that stuff up.”

Myrtle’s voice became sharper.  “Sloan, are you trying to get me out of the newsroom?  Because I’d much rather be poking my nose into the Whitlow murder than telling people how to get tomato sauce stains out of their clothes.”

Sloan meekly said, “You see, Miss Myrtle, I have this new intern.  She’s from Atlanta and is trying to get bylines and clips so that she’ll have something for her portfolio when she interviews with the Atlanta paper.”

Myrtle frowned.  “So she’s getting the top stories: and what are you getting?”

She could picture Sloan blushing on the other end of the wire—that red, splotchy flush that went all the way up to the top of his ever-expanding forehead.  “Miss Myrtle, it’s not like that.  Kim is right out of college…she’s just a kid.  You see—I don’t have to pay her anything since she’s an intern.  Plus, she’s really sharp.”

“You barely pay
me
anything.  And I’m really sharp, too.  Besides, I’m the one who discovered Cosette Whitlow’s body.  And my son is the town’s police chief.  It sounds like I’m the one who should be writing the story—not some kid from Atlanta who doesn’t even know these people.”

Sloan sounded apologetic.  “I’d undo it if I could, Miss Myrtle, but she’s already reporting the story.  Seems kind of harsh just to take her right off it, especially since we had a deal.  I didn’t know you were the one who discovered the body.  I’ll get Kim to interview you straightaway.”

“Don’t bother.   No comment.  I’ll write my own story and then you can choose the story you’d rather run at the end of the case.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Myrtle,” said Sloan regretfully.  He was sure he’d be paying for this at some point in the future.

“I know you are.  See you soon, Sloan.”

“Wait! Miss Myrtle, what about the helpful hints column?  Is it ready?” pleaded Sloan. 

She certainly didn’t have any time to research a bunch of helpful hints for the old biddies in the town.  She’d have to make some up.  “Fine.  I’ll email it to you tonight,” said Myrtle. She could put something together in five minutes if she didn’t have to look it up.

She hung up, and then pulled her phone book out of her desk. If Tobin Tinker had some grievances against Cosette, she’d like to hear them.  It was going to be tricky having a rival yardman come to her house, though.  Dusty wouldn’t like it.  She couldn’t afford to lose Dusty, despite his deplorable work ethic.  He was cheap, did a decent job, and was the only yardman in town who’d trim weeds around her gnome collection.

But Myrtle saw in the phone book that Tobin also apparently offered tree removal services.  She peered out the back window.  There was a sickly-looking pine tree down by the lake that had been ailing for some time.  Ordinarily, she’d simply let nature take its course, especially since the tree was in no danger of falling on her house or anyone else’s.  But she could always call Tobin to get an estimate for removal.  She picked up the phone again.

Tobin answered promptly and listened as she outlined the tree problem.  “I’d be happy to come take a look at it.  I’m pretty booked-up this week, though, unless you’re free for me to run by right now.  Since you’re right down the street, I could take a look at the tree real quick before I head out to the next job.”

“That would be great.  I just want to get an idea how much it would cost to take it down.”

When they hung up, Myrtle smiled.  Now to get him to rant a little about Cosette.  It should be easy enough to broach the subject since they were both neighbors of hers. 

Tobin was there in a couple of minutes and went straight to the backyard. He was a solid, big man, well over six feet tall.  He had a broad face and was brown from the sun.  He peered down the hill to the spot Myrtle was pointing at. “That scraggly pine tree down there near the lake?” he asked.  “Ordinarily, it’d be between six hundred and fourteen-hundred to bring her down.  But that pine tree is so pitiful that I’ll take it down for three-hundred for you.  When do you want me to take care of it?”

He’d given her such a low price that he clearly expected her to jump on it.  Three hundred was really cheap, but it was very expensive if you didn’t really need to have the work done.  “Let me see.  I’ll have to save up for a while to be able to pay you.  Retired schoolteachers don’t make a whole lot, unfortunately.”

Tobin looked at the tree again.  “That should be fine, since that tree isn’t going to fall on your house or your neighbors’.  Give me a call when you’re ready to cut it down.”

“I will, and thanks.  By the way, what do you make of Cosette Whitlow’s murder?  You’re right across the street from her, aren’t you?  So shocking!” said Myrtle.

Tobin flushed and looked away.  “I’ll admit I wasn’t much of a fan of hers.  Although I’m sorry she’s dead, of course.”  His voice wasn’t very convincing.

Myrtle had hoped he wouldn’t worry about speaking ill of the dead.  She took on a more gossipy tone.  “Did you know that I’m actually the one who found the body?  Such an awful thing.  And I did feel so sorry for Lucas.  He seemed crushed.”

Tobin nodded and relaxed.  “I always did feel bad for poor Lucas, living with that woman.  I’ve had plenty of run-ins with Cosette, but Lucas has always been a great guy and a good neighbor.”

“What kind of run-ins did you have with her?” asked Myrtle.  She gave an exaggerated sigh.  “Here at the other end of the street, I can never keep up with all the news.”

Tobin looked ill at ease again. “Well, I don’t know as I should say anything, Miss Myrtle. Seeing as how she’s dead and everything.”

Myrtle acted as if she hadn’t heard that mild reproof.  “Cosette Whitlow irritated me too, you know.”

“Is that so, Miss Myrtle?”

 “First of all…well, also second and third and one-hundredth of all…she was annoying,” said Myrtle simply.

Tobin started applauding and Myrtle gave a bob of her head in acknowledgment.

“Well put, Miss Myrtle,” said Tobin with a barking laugh.  “That’s exactly what she was.  Annoying. We’ll call a spade a spade.”

“The way she went on and on about her daughter and her grandson…” Myrtle snorted.  “The daughter was the perfect debutante and the grandson will surpass Einstein as the greatest modern-day thinker.”

There was that barking laugh of Tobin’s again. “I’ll have to take your word on that, since I never had a civilized conversation with her.”

Myrtle raised her eyebrows.  “Never? What kinds of conversations did you have with Cosette?”

“Oh, the neighborly kind.  You know.”

Myrtle did know.  And she knew that Tobin didn’t mean
friendly neighbor kind
, he meant the
warring neighbor kind
.  “She was getting on your last nerve, wasn’t she?”

For a startled moment, Myrtle worried that the big man was going to start crying, right there in her yard.  “It was a nightmare, that’s what it was, Miss Myrtle.  That yippy dog of hers barked all hours of the day and night.  I left a polite note on her door explaining that Scamp was clearly upset and needed to spend more time inside.”

“It didn’t help?” asked Myrtle sympathetically. 

“After I left the note, that Scamp was outside even more.  Barking his furry head off, he was. He barked whenever the wind blew,” said Tobin sorrowfully.  “Thank goodness he ended up passing away from old age.  I was about to call Red up and get the police involved.”

“Barking would have driven me batty,” said Myrtle. “Of course, I live next to the infamous Erma Sherman, so I don’t exactly have a good neighbor, myself.”  She was prepared to give Tobin the lowdown on Erma’s inadequacies as a neighbor, but he was still completely wrapped up in Cosette.

“Another thing that drove me up the wall—Cosette used my trash can.  She always had extra trash—having all those parties, you know.  She knew I’m a single man,” Myrtle swore she saw Tobin’s lip tremble at this last bit, “and that I don’t have a lot of trash to put out, living alone and all.  So Cosette put her extra bags of garbage in my container.  It stuck out the top.  Once she even put a bag beside my trashcan since she had so many piled next to her own.   I was always worried the garbage man wasn’t going to pick them up.”

 “A couple of times the garbage man left the extra bags, so I took them to the dump myself.  I couldn’t stand the sight of the garbage piled up in front of my house,” said Tobin. 

“You know,” said Myrtle slowly, “there was a bag of trash at the drop-in.  It was absolutely overflowing.  I thought the placement of it was rather odd—blocking their front door.”

Tobin flushed, and quickly made a slight change of topic. “And it wasn’t only the dog and the trash can either, although those would be bad enough.  Like I was saying, she had people over all the time—brunches and bridge and cookouts and stuff.  Her guests parked on both sides of the street and sometimes even blocked my driveway so I couldn’t pull my truck out.  Then her parties always ended up in her backyard and I could hear the folks laughing and cutting up until the middle of the night. I’m a hard-working fellow, Miss Myrtle, and I need my sleep.”  Tobin’s face looked hurt.  “All I want to do after a hard day of work is to watch some TV or maybe look at my baseball card collection.  I’m as quiet as can be—why couldn’t Cosette Whitlow be?”

“Very, very annoying. Yes.  Neighbors can be a trial, can’t they?  When I was telling Erma what a nuisance her crabgrass was….”

“And that’s another thing.  When her guests parked on my side of the street, their tires trenched my yard.  She’d seen me out there with a shovel before, trying to fix it and smooth it over a little and she laughed and kept on driving. Didn’t even roll down her window to ask if she could send her husband over to help.” 

Myrtle was now very worried that Tobin was going to cry.  She had never been very good with women who cried, and she was sure that she wasn’t going to handle having this big man sobbing in her backyard. 

“Poor Lucas,” said Myrtle, shaking her head.  “Imagine living with someone like her.  And loving her!”

“She yelled at the poor guy when she was with him.  And she didn’t spend
that
much time with him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she didn’t.  And I spotted her once with another man.”  He sighed.  “There now, I’ve said too much.  One of my resolutions this year was to stop making idle gossip, and here I am doing it.”

“Aren’t resolutions made to be broken?” asked Myrtle lightly, wishing that Tobin’s conscience hadn’t taken over at such a pivotal moment.  “I have a tradition of making a resolution to walk every day.  After sixty years of the same resolution, you’d think I’d keep it better.”

But Tobin was steadfast.  He didn’t even give a bit of information when Myrtle asked him if he’d seen anything unusual at the Whitlow house the night Cosette died—he stared at her sideways, then gave her a written estimate and headed off to his next job.

Myrtle reluctantly decided to watch her newest episode of
Tomorrow’s Promise
.  It wasn’t often that real life was more dramatic than her soap opera.

Before she could even go inside, though, she saw a rodent-like face peering over the fence at her.  She jumped.  “Erma!” she said crossly.  “What on earth are you doing up there?  You scared me half to death.  And how
did
you get up there?  That fence should be tall enough so that no one can peep over it.”  The fence was fairly new and she adored the privacy that it ordinarily afforded her.

Erma cackled at her.  “I’ve got a stepstool here because I’ve been replacing light bulbs on my back porch.  I heard voices, including a gruff, deep one, so I investigated.  You’ve got a good neighbor in me, Myrtle.  I’ll make sure my elderly friend isn’t in any danger.  And you do get in danger sometimes, don’t you? Red likes me to keep an eye open.”

Myrtle rather felt as if she were in danger right now.  And hearing that Red was employing Erma as some sort of spy made her even more irritated with him than she usually was. 
If that were possible
.  “Which reminds me.  I need to give my gnomes an airing out.”

Whenever Myrtle was unhappy with Red, which could be frequently, she laboriously pulled out her large collection of yard gnomes from the shed and put them throughout her yard.  Red despised them and, since he lived diagonally across the street from her, got prime view of her civil disobedience.

Erma’s face fell.  “I was just thinking how lush your grass was finally looking since you haven’t had the gnomes in the yard for a while.”

“Except for the crabgrass, which is steadily encroaching from your yard,” said Myrtle pointedly.  “What did you want to talk with me about?  I was heading in to watch my soap.”

Erma knit her brow.  “I heard you were the one who discovered Cosette’s body at her party.  It amazes me how you’re always in the right place at the right time.  Are you sure you’re not manufacturing victims to give yourself something to do?”

“I fail to see how my distressing habit of discovering murder victims could be considered being at the right place and right time for anything,” said Myrtle coldly.  “It’s nothing to laugh about anyway, with Lucas and Joan so upset.”