Authors: Elaine Orr
"Gotcha. Can we meet for a cup of coffee? I have an idea about Hal."
"Uh, okay. Diner?"
"You know, we should meet at the paper. I'll bring in coffee and donuts."
I hung up before she could object.
WE HAD SPOKEN about the list of questions I'd developed for less than five minutes when Sandi said, "This is good. If we get the paper behind these questions, somebody'll have to look more at phone or Internet records. I'm going to get Scott."
I wanted to talk more first, maybe decide together, but I didn't work at the
South County News
. Besides, if Sandi had the lead, Ambrose wouldn't have to tell even more people that he'd threatened me with an ankle bracelet.
I hadn't formed an opinion about Scott Holmes when I met him so briefly at Fred's funeral. Today, I liked him before we had talked for ten minutes.
"These are good questions, and I think if Hal had had a different personality they might have come up as soon as this Jefferson fellow was found on Mr. Seaton's property. Maybe they have been discussed." He looked at me. "When we write a story about this, if we do, I want to identify you as the source of the idea. You can't write the article or come with Sandi and me when we approach the sheriff. I assume that's why you came here."
Sandi gets to go to the sheriff. She'll really like him now
. "Pretty much. I might be able to help Syl Seaton get comfortable about talking to you."
Holmes stood. "Let's discuss it after we talk to the sheriff. I think it would be interesting to see if Syl Seaton tells Sandi and me the same things he told you."
SATURDAY MORNING, the back of my pickup was open and held Mister Tibbs' new doggie bed, bowls, and food. Play toys were on the passenger seat in his large crate. The crate also had a small step stool for him to sit on so he could see out the window. I must be nuts.
A high-end Toyota pulled into Mrs. Keyser's driveway, blocking my exit. I hoped they were just dropping off something for her.
Instead, Fred's parents got out. His mom held a stack of books, and his dad opened the back door and took out a very small pet crate. If anything, Harvey and Rose Simmons looked worse than they had at Fred's funeral.
"Mr. and Mrs. Simmons." I walked toward them, and when I got there, gave Fred's mom a kiss on the cheek.
She patted my hand as she pulled back. "You're sweet."
Scratching noises came from the crate.
Uh-oh
.
"Can you come up for coffee or tea?" I didn't know them well, and I was relieved when they said no.
"We just wanted to drop off a couple of things," Mrs. Simmons said.
Double uh-oh
.
She handed me the stack of five books, and her voice caught as she said. "Fred left a note on these. He wanted you to have them, especially the one about habits for highly effective people. He said you often talked about that book."
We did?
"Oh, gosh." I took the books, and my eyes filled. I brushed them with the back of one hand. "I'll treasure these."
Mr. Simmons sat the crate down. It held a cat that was not shy about hissing. "You and Sandi are the only ones he left anything for. Besides us."
I sniffed. "He said he wanted to call you that night, the night before he…" I had to stop.
Mr. Simmons sighed and reached for his wife's hand. "He did call, but he didn't tell us anything. He left us each a beautiful note, telling us how he had seen Hal after his death and really regretted not speaking up when people were questioning you. From what he said, he was terrified."
"It makes no difference. I'm not going to think about that again. I'm going to remember Fred," I so wanted to lighten the moment, "with his head in the bowels of the copy machine, cursing it because he burned his finger on the drum trying to get some paper unstuck."
They both laughed.
Yea!
"Seriously, he was really good to me, especially when I first started at the paper. That's what I think of."
They both looked relieved, and Mrs. Simmons spoke. "He talked about you now and then. That's why…" she looked at the crate, "We wondered if you could take Stowaway. We're driving Fred's car back to Florida, but I'm allergic and it's such a long drive..."
Oh, damn. Say no, Melanie. Say no
.
I stooped down to peer at the cat. I'd met the grey, short-haired thing a few times. It snuck into his car one night when Fred was unloading groceries, and he could never find its owner. It hissed.
"I'll tell you what." I stood. "I'll do my best to keep it. But if it doesn't get along with my little dog, I promise I will find the best home in town for it. For her, right?"
"Oh, good." Fred's mom smiled broadly.
"We really appreciate it," his dad said.
After a couple of minutes of small talk, most of it dealing with their plans for selling Fred's house and how half the realtors in town had called about it, they left. Before they were out of the driveway, they drove back and retrieved a bag of litter, food, and a cat bed from the trunk.
Mrs. Keyser came onto the porch in time to wave goodbye to the Simmons. She walked down her front porch steps and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
It was so hard not to laugh. Her house dress was magenta dotted with white cats playing with balls of yarn.
"They couldn't take it to Florida." I lifted the small crate, and we both looked at the cat. It had stopped hissing and stuck its nose toward us, smelling.
She peered at it. "And you with a dog."
I sensed an opportunity. "Are you in the market for a cat?"
Perhaps detecting a need to be on good behavior, Stowaway meowed plaintively.
"Oh, I shouldn't really." She put a finger in the crate for the cat to smell. "I'm getting too old for pets, and I visit my daughter, you know."
"I could feed her and do litter and stuff, when you're away."
She cocked her head, and the cat did the same.
Mrs. Keyser looked at me. "Well, glory be. I must be meant to care for poor Fred's cat. With your help, of course."
Glory be is right
.
"I'll carry her inside for you. When I get back from Ambrose and Sharon's, we can introduce her to Mister Tibbs."
FRED AND I HAD NEVER talked about
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
. It had been on the shelf in his cubicle when we worked together, but I thought it was for show. Now I figured he meant for me to look for something in the book.
I sat at my kitchen table and took off the book jacket. No letter taped to it, and none slipped into a page. I started to thumb through it. Exactly in the middle were four words, near the binding. "Your garden tool bucket."
I was immediately chilled, and my stomach did a flip. I stood, started for the door, but stopped abruptly. "I can't do this." I sat back at the table and stared at the words.
A paw reached for my knee, and I looked at Mister Tibbs. I didn't realize I was crying until I saw him. I sat on the floor and buried my face in the back of his neck. I wasn't gulping sobs, but it took time to stop. After about fifteen seconds, he turned his head, tongue out, trying to reach some part of me to lick.
I pulled back and whispered, "You're such a good bo…girl. When am I going to stop thinking of you as a boy?"
Her tail thumped.
"You don't care, do you?" Another thump. "Okay, you'll just have to deal with the gender identity thing. I'm calling you a boy."
I stood and took a napkin from the holder on the counter and blew my nose. "Come on, we're going to the back yard." I snapped on the leash. It wasn’t far, but the yard wasn’t fenced.
Mister Tibbs wagged his tail and stood to lean on my knee. I gently put his paws on the ground. "No jumping, remember?"
It was a cool day for May, not supposed to get above seventy degrees the entire Memorial Day Weekend. The walk to the shed took a couple of minutes. There were several leaves that required inspection, and the corner of a row of peppers required Mister Tibbs' form of watering. Nearly all the marigold plants, meant to keep bugs away from the vegetables, had bright orange and yellow flowers. The rest would in a few days.
The weeder I used most evenings as I wandered the garden protruded from where I had last stuck it at the end of a row of beans. Weeds sprouted everywhere. I could never stay ahead of them.
I hadn't looked in the shed for more than a week. Most of my smaller tools were in a laundry basket in my truck, and the wheelbarrow and rakes stayed in Syl's barn for the time being. When I opened the door, nothing looked different, but it hadn't looked disturbed the day the sheriff had had me look for my hoe. I peered in.
I stared at the red bucket that held trowels, work gloves, and other small hand tools. Fred must have put a note in there. Or maybe he had started some stories he didn't want to leave lying around, and he wanted me to finish them
. Not
.
Mister Tibbs was straining on his leash. There were lots of new smells here. I didn't want him sniffing around the bag of fertilizer. Even organic stuff isn't meant to be in a dog's nose.
"Okay, pal, here we go." Still holding the leash, I bent over to pick up the bucket by its handle. Once I had a firm grip I backed out of the shed and used my knee to shut the door.
A small bark came from near my ankle. Mister Tibbs' head was cocked, and if a dog can have a questioning expression, he was asking, "You dragged me out here for this?"
I smiled. "You can smell here." I let go of the leash. Instead of moving away he sat and leaned toward the bucket, sniffing without touching it.
"Nuts." There was no getting around it. I had to see what Fred had left. I knelt and took the green work gloves off the top of the contents and peered in. Leaning against the interior was a white, business-sized envelope. I took it out. Fred had written
Mel, Champion Reporter
on the outside.
I'm mad at him. I'm not going to cry about this
.
My plan had been to take whatever Fred had left into the apartment to read, but instead I tore open the envelope and unfolded the single piece of copy paper. Fred's neat handwriting filled both sides.
Dear Mel,
If I wrote I'm sorry a hundred times it would never be enough. So, maybe you'll get an award if you write a story about your role in solving a murder.
What I told you about that night was mostly true, until the point of finding Hal's body. The only part that wasn't was that I was with a friend for a while before I went back to Hal's house. Anyway, I was seeing six different shades of red. I followed Hal and parked outside Seaton's driveway after Hal drove in.
I was just a few yards down the driveway, going toward Hal's car, when it got loud. One voice was Hal's. I didn't know Seaton, but figured the other was him. I'd already heard Hal knock on the door. Hal's speech was slurred, and he called someone a rat bastard. The other guy called Hal a stupid SOB.
It was funny to me that someone else was chewing out Hal. It got me calmed down, and I turned to go back to my car. Then Hal said something about a scheme, and the man said Hal didn't matter. Hal kind of shrieked, "No!" and it got quiet.
I wish to hell I'd kept going to my car, but I'd had a couple of beers and wasn't thinking too clearly. I ran toward Hal's car, and when I got to the other side of it, Hal was on the ground, between Syl's truck and the mulch. Some guy in a suit was standing near him. He was staring down at Hal. Then he came toward me.
I said I didn't see anything. That made the guy stop. He said I could be down there with Hal in a heartbeat if I didn't help the guy get rid of him. It was like a bad dream, but it wasn't.
I'm the one who thought of the mulch. It was right there, smelled wet. I still had a shovel in my trunk from winter. I kind of figured it wasn't Seaton. He wouldn't have wanted to bury Hal outside his door. Anyway, I kept waiting for Seaton to hear us, but he didn't.
We lifted Hal. Thank God I had his feet and didn't have to look at the gash in his head. Stupid to think about now. We sort of shoved him part way into the pile, and then I shoveled out a lot of mulch and pushed him in more and covered him up.
I cried the whole time. The guy kept calling me a pansy. He walked away for a minute and came back with that broom. He must have been back there to get it the night you got hit.
So, he swept a lot and then just walked away. He must've come back to move Hal's car. I didn't think of it for two days.
Getting something of yours, that was a wild thought. I was almost back to my house, covered in mulch same as my shovel. People knew I was furious Hal lied to keep me from getting unemployment. The sheriff would come to me ASAP. I thought if I put something of yours there, the sheriff would talk to you first, and I'd have more time to get rid of everything.
I had to toss my clothes somewhere, vacuum the hell out of my car. I got the hoe from the shed. The tangerine I had in my car. It was really gross putting it in Hal's mouth, but I thought it would lead the sheriff to you.