Authors: Elaine Orr
At one time there had been two large flower beds, one on each side of the front walk, not too far from the house. The beds were still raised above the level ground around them, but they were all weeds and vines, except for a forsythia bush in the middle of each patch. The bushes had already bloomed, so the yellow blossoms were gone. All the bushes added was height, and they were too tall.
Rather than squat down, I walked to my pick-up and opened the back. It took a few seconds of wrestling to remove the wheelbarrow. I put a short shovel in it and started for the huge mound of mulch. It was almost five feet tall and easily six feet wide. I couldn't see the depth from where I stood.
As I got closer, I saw footprints in the soft dirt and the mulch had been disturbed at the edges. Probably some cat had used it as a litter box last night. Ugh.
The second thrust into the mulch hit something hard. Not metallic, just solid. I squatted and used the tip of the shovel to gently move the mulch. If a dead animal was in there, I didn't intend to touch it.
Hal Morris's face was covered in bits of bark. He had a small tangerine in his mouth, and his eyes were shut. Permanently.
AFTER I THREW UP, I called the South County Sheriff’s Office. River’s Edge has no police force, but the Sheriff's Office is in town. I used their main number to keep from dialing 9- 1-1. If I did that, the call for deputies would go out fast and wide, and it’d be all over town in three minutes that Hal had been murdered. Plus, if I had started to blubber it'd be on tape.
I sat in my truck, leaning against the headrest. What did the tangerine in his mouth mean? Did someone know Hal had thrown an orange at me? It seemed like something you'd see on a gory cop show on TV, the serial killer leaving a gross calling card or stealing a kitchen knife to use in the next murder.
I thought for about the tenth time about calling the paper, but it didn't seem smart to irritate the sheriff when I was the one Hal had yelled at last night in the store. I didn't think anyone would suspect me of murdering anyone, much less carting a body to Syl's place and burying it in the mulch. But still…
After another three or four minutes, the sound of a siren reached me. Car tires screeched as the patrol car turned into the drive, signaling that Deputy Aaron Granger was driving. He seems to think he's more important when he squeals into a crime scene. I've seen him do that a bunch of times, but this would probably be his first murder, too.
I got out of my truck, and the deputy pulled up next to me and leapt out of his car. "Where's the body, Melanie?"
I pointed. "You can just see his head at the bottom of the pile."
Hal has… Hal had dark hair, so it took Granger a few seconds to see it.
"Good God!" He walked slowly toward the pile, hand on his holstered gun until he was within a couple of feet of Hal's head. Granger turned slowly. "You found him like this?"
"No, Granger. He was sitting on the porch, and I moved him."
He raised both hands to his shoulders and dropped them back to his sides, clearly frustrated. "I don't need your smart-ass side, Melanie. This is serious…"
A red Ford Fiesta, horn beeping, turned into the driveway. It belonged to the paper, and I did a mental groan.
Deputy Granger raised his arm, palm out.
The car stopped twenty yards from him, where Sandi and Ryan almost ejected themselves from it.
"Why the hell did you call them?" Granger asked, walking back toward me.
"I didn't. They listen to the scanner."
"Scanner didn't say it was Hal," he muttered.
I matched his quiet tone. "So they probably don't know."
Sandi was almost breathless as she got to where I now stood next to Granger. "Scanner said someone found a body here! I told you about the job." She hiccupped a sob. "We were so worried…"
Ryan let out a breath and put his hand on the camera, which was on the strap around his neck.
"No photos," Granger growled. "Get back to the edge of the property."
Sandi strode into my arms, and I hugged her. "Come on, I'll walk back with you."
"You stay here, Perkins," Granger said.
I let go of Sandi and gave her a gentle push toward her car. "I found…it."
"Ohmigod. I'm so sorry, Melanie."
Granger had pulled a phone from his shirt pocket, and he must have placed a call because I heard him say, "I'll need a crime scene unit, and you might want to call IDI." He turned his back and walked toward Hal so I couldn't hear more.
Sandi and Ryan paused in their walk to the car and looked at me. It's uncommon for the Sheriff's Office to ask for assistance from the Iowa Division of Investigation first thing. Their eyes telegraphed questions.
"It could be someone…prominent." I said this quietly, to be sure Granger couldn't hear me.
Ryan made a 'gimme' gesture with his fingers, but I shook my head. Everyone at the paper would be furious with me for holding back information, even if it was only for a few minutes. Partly it didn't seem right to say who was in the mulch before the sheriff did, and partly I knew I couldn't because Sandi has the opposite of a poker face. Granger would know I told her.
"Melanie." Granger's tone was sharp. "I need to ask you to sit on the porch. You two, out on the road."
Another siren sounded in the distance as I turned to face Granger. "They'd take crime scene photos for you. You guys just have a point and shoot camera, don't you?"
"I don't need your friends padding around the crime scene." He pointed. "Porch." We walked side by side.
"I saw footprints, but I don't think my feet left the edge of the driveway."
Granger said nothing, so I asked, "How long has he been there?"
"No idea. That your wheelbarrow? Why are you here?"
"Syl, Mr. Seaton, hired me yesterday to do some yard work."
I sat in one of the canvas porch chairs, and Granger, who is fortyish and about six-one, towered over me. "What did you and Morris fight about last night in the store?"
"Nice grapevine." I couldn't quite keep the bitterness from my tone. "We didn't fight, it…"
"That's not what I heard."
"Then talk to the manager. Calvin Jenkins will tell you Hal did all the talking. Yelling, actually."
The ambulance slowed on the street and did a careful turn into the driveway.
"What's the ambulance for?" I asked. "He's dead."
"I'm aware of that." Granger walked down the steps.
I sat on the porch and watched him brief the paramedic from the fire department who had accompanied the ambulance driver. Martin was the paramedic, but I didn't recognize the woman who had been behind the wheel. Probably new.
I stayed seated while Granger and the other two looked at Hal. It would have been better for me if another sheriff's deputy had taken the call.
Aaron Granger was Peter Frost's nephew and probably believed his uncle's lies about my parents agreeing to sell Frost their farm for a rock-bottom price. The last couple times I'd seen Granger around town he'd either not acknowledged my hello or spoken in a clipped tone.
My mind working more normally, I went over the morning. The Farm and More clerk had said the mulch was delivered last night about dinner time, and I'd seen Hal later than that.
There was no way for me to tell how long Hal had been in the mulch heap. I recalled that the bottom of the pile was messed, but other than that, the mound didn't look disturbed. Surely whoever had put Hal there had dug a lot in the mulch.
Was Syl Seaton gone because he killed Hal? If he didn't, how could he have slept through a murder? Where could he be? He hadn't mentioned going out of town. Not that he needed to tell me his schedule.
I glanced toward the driveway entrance. Ryan and Sandi had backed up, but they hadn't gone onto the road to park. It was too narrow, and the Fiesta would get hit by a tractor or the next patrol car at the scene.
Ryan had taken the camera off its strap and was surreptitiously taking photos of the ambulance, which pretty much blocked the mulch. He kept his eyes on Granger, making sure the deputy didn't spot the camera in action.
Sandi waved slightly, trying to get my attention without letting Granger see her. I squinted and finally realized she was mouthing, "Who is it?"
I stood and walked to the edge of the porch to peer toward the mulch mound. Granger and Martin were squatting in front of it, and the ambulance driver was shining a flashlight on the spot they were studying. I moved closer to the porch steps, took my phone from my pocket, and held it up. It vibrated with Sandi's call in two seconds.
She was breathless. "Who is it?"
"Listen, you need to turn around, and you can't do anything to indicate what I tell you."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe I should tell Ryan."
Her tone grew impatient. "Come on Melanie, who told you about this job?"
Remind me to thank you later
. I drew a breath. "Turn around."
She did.
"Sandi, it's Hal."
If she hadn't screamed so loudly, Granger wouldn't have figured she was talking to me.
I'D BEEN SITTING in the sheriff's private office for twenty minutes, and the shock of finding Hal was slowly seeping in. My heart was beating faster, and I felt cold. Who would have had the nerve to commit a murder and then brazenly bury the body at Syl's place?
Sheriff Gallagher walked in, stopped, and stared at me. "You all right?"
"Not really. You're the first person to ask. Thanks."
He leaned his head out of his office. "Bob. Can you grab a decaf for me and a regular coffee and sugar for Melanie?"
I've been to too many of his press conferences if the sheriff knows how I take my coffee
.
Sheriff Gallagher probably weighs close to three hundred pounds, and he's only about five-ten or eleven. Oddly, he doesn't look terribly fat. I see him on the high school track, walking not running, so he tries to stay in shape.
He sat across from me at the small conference table. "You need to see the doc or anything?"
I shook my head. "Guess I've only seen dead people in the funeral home."
His expression softened. "And you wouldn't even have had that chance with your parents."
I frowned. My parents' car had been rammed by a semi and pushed into another one on an icy highway north of town. I've always been glad I didn't get called to cover the accident and ensuing fire. The fire was so fierce it was a couple of hours before it was clear who had been in the car.
Bob, who's on desk duty because he broke his ankle chasing a burglar who could run faster, limped in with the cups of coffee. He set them down and tossed a packet of sugar at me. "Sorry you had to find him, Mel."
I nodded, not sure I trusted myself to talk. Bob left. I busied myself with the sugar packet for a moment and, finally, met the sheriff's eyes.
"I need you to take me through your morning, and I want to hear about last night at the Hy-Vee."
"Sure…hey, did Syl ever show up?"
Gallagher shook his head. "Not yet, but a neighbor had his mobile number. He was in Des Moines for a meeting. Told me he left not long after six this morning."
"Oh, good." I straightened my shoulders and started with the call from Sandi to tell me Syl had placed an ad. I made it clear Hal sought me out in Hy-Vee, outlined my stop at Farm and More before going to Syl's this morning, and mentioned the time the clerk said they'd delivered the mulch the evening before.
"Right," he said. "I stopped by Farm and More on my way in. Tell me everything you did at Mr. Seaton's, before you found the body. Found Hal."
I shivered and took a sip of coffee.
He didn't interrupt me until I started to describe sticking the spade into the pile of mulch. "Did you see anything besides footprints and the small disturbance at the front of the pile?"
"No, and that struck me as odd." My reporter instincts were back. "He was really buried. How would anyone do that? Or do it quietly, anyway."
He hesitated. "We aren't sure. Mr. Seaton sleeps on the side of the house farthest from the end of the driveway, where the mulch was, and he took a sleeping pill."
"A sleeping pill? Why'd he need that? He doesn't do shift work."
Gallagher looked amused for a moment. "I didn't ask. In any event, the only light would've come from the porch light. It's a good-sized bulb, but it wasn't on."
"So someone would have had lots of time to, um, put him there." I wondered if Syl's truck had been parked at the end of his driveway. If it was, the mulch mound would have been largely hidden from the street.
"Anything unusual at the paper the last few days? Nasty letters to the editor, or Hal seem especially angry with anyone?"
"I wouldn't know, Sandi would. We talk almost every day. The only thing I remember her saying was that Hal kept his door shut more than usual." I shrugged. "That's a good thing, less shouting."
"Now, Melanie, I have to ask this. You were at Mr. Seaton's yesterday, and it was your idea to get the mulch delivered."
My mouth dropped open. "But I would never…"
"I've known you a long time, Melanie, and I'd be as surprised as anyone if you had anything to do with this. But he fired you and hollered at you, and you do like to do a lot of garden work and such."
I felt my cheeks redden. "Yes, but I didn't plant Hal."
He grunted and tapped his now-empty, paper cup on the table. "Go over your evening yesterday, after you left the grocery store. Did you see or talk to anyone?"
"I waved hello to Mrs. Keyser. When I got to my apartment, I left Sandi a message, kind of warning her Hal was mad that I got the work with Syl. Mr. Seaton." If Sheriff Gallagher was being formal, maybe I was supposed to.
"Why would Sandi need a warning?"
"She, uh, called to tell me about the ad, the one Syl pulled because I stopped by his house before it ran." When Gallagher looked nonplussed, I added, "But I don't think Syl told Hal that anyone called me. Hal would probably have started out throwing oranges. Or gone looking for Sandi first."