A BODY IN THE BEGONIAS
There were four parks in Cain’s End: Blackwood, Prosper, Hollowvale-on-the-Glen, and of course, the town’s flagship (and recently renovated) “public recreation facility,” Riverfront Gardens. The renovation was the subject of quite a bit of hand-wringing and drama on the part of the Board of Supervisors. While all seven members recognized the need for an upgrade from Riverfront’s former condition, which, to approximate Mrs. Grimes’ rather colorful colloquialism, looked like “a dead, mangy dog,” three of the seven simply couldn’t abide the cost. Those would be Teller (just the one name), Mr. Warren, and his ex-paramour, Mrs. Abernathy.
The three in favor, Mrs. Grimes and the Sisters Crawley, argued vociferously the merits of raising real estate taxes by the three pennies needed to pay for the refurbishment, citing not only the relative lack of financial burden it would place upon the residents of the End but also the dire condition of the town’s infrastructure beyond the park, including, but not limited to: the potholes on Mace, Pike, Spear, Scythe, Cable, and Garrote Streets, the crumbling pylons on the Nameless Bridge, the rotting pier at City Dock, the dilapidated Epler House on Tamber Lane, and the hole in the roof at the John Allan Community Center. Then there was the fact that the fire department was down to only one truck, the other, having been bought thirty years before, finally antiquating itself out of repair.
“The sheriff hasn’t had a raise in five years,” the Sisters Crawley argued. “And he needs new deputies. I mean, he hired that Turner boy, but…”
“I play gin with Blanche Turner every Tuesday,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “They’re good churchly people.”
“Turners may be churchly,” the Sisters Crawley said. “But they aren’t the sleuthing types.”
“Why, that’s a mean thing to say.”
“Mean but accurate.”
“Whatever your opinion of the Turners,” Mrs. Grimes broke in. “Sheriff Thomas needs more deputies, and he can’t hire just anybody. The few that apply take one look at the offer and laugh their way up to the northern counties.”
“Let ‘em laugh,” Ms. Abernathy said. “We don’t need interlopers down here anyway. Certainly not on our police force.”
The tie-breaking vote, as usual, belonged to Judge Henderson, eighty-four, the lone moderate on the board, if one defined moderate, as Judge Henderson did, as “unaffiliated with either party because I don’t like either of ‘em.”
“All this petty bickering over pennies is going to give me a hematoma,” he once said. “If I die in this chair, I lay the blame entirely at all of your feet.”
Now, said distasteful parties argued back and forth about the pennies he so despised, he sat like a monarch on his throne, fingers templed on his lips, head bowed, his bushy eyebrows creating hoary ledges for his thoughts. When the debate died down and each member’s vote cast, the room grew silent, and one by one their heads turned toward him.
“Well, Judge,” the Sisters Crawley said. “Where do you stand on this matter?”
They hung there waiting for his response. It took a while, sometimes, for Judge Henderson to craft something worth stating, and indeed, at least once in the past, he snorted himself awake in the process. But this time they waited, and waited, and waited, but the longer they waited, the less he responded.
“Judge Henderson?” Mrs. Abernathy said. She knocked on the table. “Judge Henderson?”
“Oh, this is absurd,” Mrs. Grimes muttered.
She stood up and stalked around the table to where the old man sat, eyes still closed, fingers still templed.
“JUDGE HENDERSON,” she shouted. “WAKE UP!”
She jabbed him in the shoulder, a strong enough poke that knocked one of his hands loose from where, unbeknownst to the Board, it had been propping up his chin. His head hit the old oak table with a bonk, and there he lay, a corpse, having died from one of his greatest fears: of boredom while listening to his lessers bicker about shekels.
The following month, the Sisters Crawley proffered a compromise, a compromise to which their adversaries, feeling guilty, perhaps, about Judge Henderson’s tragic (if timely) death, agreed. The proffer was this: the Board could use some leftover funds still held in an account from two cycles before (part of the “rainy day revenue” allowed by the state) for the renovation but only raise the real estate tax rate by a penny and a half.
Would old man Henderson have been insulted, then, to know that his ultimate sacrifice only resulted in enough money to upgrade a park but not enough to help out the sheriff? Or would he, as the self-proclaimed voice of reason, be pleased?
The point was moot.
Judge Henderson had shucked his mortal coil, and as such, his presence was not required for the final vote, just as it was not required at any more of the little league baseball games that were played at Blackwood, or the wine festivals hosted at Hollowvale-on-the-Glen, or the farmer’s market at Prosper. Nor was he required to be present for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly refurbished Riverfront Gardens, which is where our tale begins in earnest.
The morning of the ceremony was as grand a morning as the board could have asked for. The project, delayed first by an abnormally wet spring, then by a summer heat wave, had gone three months over schedule. Serendipity, as far as the Sisters Crawley were concerned. Proof of government incompetence if you asked Mr. Warren (which nobody did). The leaves were in peak color, regaling the eye with burgundy and gold, harvest yellow and burnt umber. The freshly cut grass was as thick as a carpet, and though the mums in the garden had blossomed with gusto, it didn’t stop Mrs. Grimes from inspecting each petal as if searching for a blemish so she could complain.
Mayor Mortimer advanced to the podium, smiling in the early morning sun. The small crowd that had gathered in the park consisted mostly of employees who had been dragged from their posts at City Hall and Parks and Rec, a handful of retirees (who actually were looking forward to the park’s opening), and a homeless woman the sheriff had overlooked the night before and who was now sleeping behind the new restrooms.
The Mayor tapped the microphone.
“Can ya’ll hear me?”
A squelch of feedback.
“Goodness! I guess so. Mrs. Grimes? Would you care to join us?”
“In a minute, Sam. I’m just looking things over.”
“That’s Mayor, Mrs. Grimes,” the Mayor said with a nervous little chuckle.
Mrs. Grimes, seeing something of interest behind the line of azalea bushes, stepped farther into the garden.
“I guess Mrs. Grimes is on QC right now?” Mayor Mortimer said. A light-hearted laugh from the crowd. “I guess we’ll have to carry on without her.” He cleared his throat. “It is rare that I get to attend events like this—”
Mrs. Grimes let out a bloodcurdling scream and came stumbling out of the garden.
“Lord save us! Lord save us!” she hollered. Her shoe caught the edge of one of the landscaping blocks, and she tripped and fell and rolled like a sausage.
With an irritated grunt, Mayor Mortimer stepped back from the microphone, saying, “For goodness sake, Gladys. What is it now?”
“THERE’S A BODY!” Mrs. Grimes yelled. “A BODY IN THE BEGONIAS!”
There was indeed a body in the begonias.
Its face, torso, and legs poked out of the mulch as if it had been dumped and hastily covered. Sheriff Thomas (Israel to his mother, Francine; Is to his wife, Evelyn) stood over it for a moment, hands on his hips, wincing at the sheer inhumanity. He squatted to see what he could see. His mind registered the details, emotionless, objective, looking for the facts, but he couldn’t ignore the disgust he felt for how dry the corpse looked.
He’d seen plenty of bodies. First overseas, in France and Germany. Boys torn to shreds by bomb and bullet. Then later in Korea. When he took the job in Cain’s End, he was hoping to avoid that kind of carnage, but he’d chosen the wrong career. Though the End was small (in population and comportment), drunken drivers still wrecked, jealous lovers still wielded guns, and the homeless still fell asleep on park benches in the middle of winter.
Even so, he’d never seen anything like this before.
The body in the begonias was nothing more than a sack of skin, a dried-out husk, as if every last ounce of fluid had been sucked from its cells. The concave cheeks and protruding eyeballs wrote a story he didn’t want to read.
“What’re you looking for, Sheriff?”
Israel sent a startled look over his shoulder. It was Oliver Washington. His new unofficial crime scene photographer.
“Don’t sneak up behind me like that, Ollie.”
“Like what? I’ve been standing here for a whole minute.”
Ollie squatted next to him.
“Looks like a mummy,” he said. “Even has its arms crossed over its chest.”
“You an Egyptologist all of the sudden?”
“Nope. But I saw The Mummy’s Shroud last weekend at the Marquee. The mummy in the movie had its hands folded like that.” He shivered. “It was a very upsetting film.”
“I believe it. You got the—”
But Oliver had already placed a camera case on the ground in front of them.
“Camera? On it, sheriff. Got the best one, like you said. Telephoto lens and everything!”
“Man needs the right tools for the job. Make sure to give me the receipt, okay? City needs it so I can get reimbursed.”
“Will do, sheriff.” Ollie gave the bushes an eager look. “Time for work, right?”
Israel watched him carefully approach the scene, making sure not to disturb the body. He leaned over it, squinted into the viewfinder, and snapped a picture. The bulb flashed with a POP!
“Excuse me, Sheriff?” a voice said from behind.
Israel squeezed his eyes shut. He’d recognize that voice anywhere. Nasal, with a pinch of entitlement. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Sheriff?” the voice said. “I said ‘excuse me’.”
Israel twisted around. Mayor Mortimer stood on the other side of the police tape, prim and proper, his spectacles glinting in the late morning sun.
“Morning, Sam.”
“That’s Mayor to you, Sheriff.”
“Okay.”
“May I have a word?”
Ignoring his cracking knees, Israel stood and walked the fifteen yards between the garden and the perimeter where the Mayor stood.
“What can I do for you?”
The Mayor leaned forward conspiratorially.
“Have you identified the body yet?”
“Not exactly.”
The smaller man wrung his hands and peered around the sheriff’s considerable shoulders. Ollie planted two feet on either side of the corpse and took a shot with a FLASH.
“This is a delicate situation, Sheriff,” the Mayor said. “Are you sure that boy…?”
“Ollie’s more than qualified. You have my word on that.”
FLASH!
“I need this to be taken care of professionally. Bad things just do not happen in our little town.”
Israel thought of the traffic accident he’d worked the week before on Route 9. Head-on collision. A couple of teenagers out for a joyride. The steering column landed in the driver’s lap. The steering wheel took off the boy’s head. His passenger wasn’t as lucky. Shot out the window, broke his neck, left half his face on the road. At least the driver of the other car was wearing her seatbelt.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
FLASH!
The Mayor white-knuckled an imaginary strand of pearls.
“Sheriff, I’m sorry to bring this up right now, but I do need to provide you with some information. Oh, dear. This… this is a very delicate situation.”
“You already said that.”
“I’m not talking about the, uh, that,” a nod at the garden. “Body,” he whispered. “I’m talking about a more official matter.”
Israel searched his mind for something more delicate and official than a desiccated corpse but came up lacking.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Sam. Care to be a little more specific.”
“It’s Mayor, Sheriff. And it’s about your budget.”
“You’re right. This is not the time.”
“Times are hard all around, Sheriff.”
Israel turned his back and headed for Ollie and the body, and the Mayor ducked under the tape to follow.
“I’ve got a scene to take care of, Sam.”
“Mayor. And we simply are not receiving the necessary taxes.”
“You’ve got enough to pay for Mrs. Grimes’s expensive flower arrangement here.”
“That’s not fair. Some of the money for this renovation was from two budget cycles ago.”
“You didn’t fully fund the department back then, either.”
“I am merely the bearer of bad news, Sheriff. Unless something happens, you’re going to be facing some pretty difficult decisions.”
This got to Israel. He stopped and spun on his heel, hands planted on his hips, and the little man almost ran into him. At a little over six feet, Israel towered over most people. He positively dwarfed the Mayor.
“Like what?”
“E-excuse me?”
“You said ‘unless something happens.’ Unless what happens?”
“I don’t know—”
“Unless I solve more cases?” Israel pointed back toward the shriveled-up body in the garden. “Unless I solve this case?”
“It couldn’t hurt.” The flash went off behind Israel, and the Mayor shook his head. “If I were you, I’d start thinking about making some personnel changes.”
“You trying to tell me how to do my job, Sam?”
“What? No! No. It’s just…” he glanced around Israel again at Ollie. Israel followed the look.
“Oh, I see,” Israel said. “This isn’t about the budget at all, is it?”
The Mayor stopped his hand wringing and set a dead-eyed glare upon the sheriff.
“I am aware of your relationship to that boy’s father. But fighting in a war—”
“Two wars,” Israel said.
“Fighting in two wars with a man doesn’t necessarily… doesn’t necessarily mean…”
“Did you enlist, Sam?”
“Excuse me?”
“I was just wondering. When old Hiro came calling. Did you enlist?”
The Mayor drew himself up and slow blinked.
“You know I have a heart murmur.”
Behind Israel, Oliver continued to take his pictures. A crowd had gathered, respectfully staying on the other side of the police tape.
“Tell you what, Sam,” Israel said. “I’ll do my job, and you do yours. What do you think about that?”
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