Never Buried: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (2 page)

Lying there, in Cara's hammock, was a small man in a pinstriped suit. An old-fashioned top-hat shielded his face; his hands were clasped serenely over his chest. He wore black dress shoes, dull and scuffed with dirt.

Leigh frowned. Whatever she had feared in a nighttime visitor, this wasn't it. This bizarre little person had cost her a good night's sleep, and she didn't appreciate it. She started down the steps to confront him. She was almost to the bottom when she stopped cold.

Something was wrong. This man wasn't lying in the hammock. He was levitating in it. His head and feet touched the nylon mesh, but his midsection hung above it. His body was straight as a board.

After several seconds, she exhaled. "Its a dummy," she decided finally. "Somebody's stupid old mannequin."

She moved towards the hammock, her uneasiness wrestling with her annoyance. The scene was just too bizarre. Who would leave a life-sized dummy in someone else's backyard at three o'clock in the morning? Especially one dressed like an idiot?

She peered down closely at the moth-eaten hat. It was of a greenish fabric, with half a red feather stuck in a dusty brown band. Wondering if this dummy had a face as demonic as the one from
Magic
, she lifted the brim.

Later, she would say she hadn't screamed. Nevertheless, the sound that echoed through the backyard and into the house was shrill enough to make waves in Cara's decaff.

Leigh attempted a dignified retreat, but her legs didn't seem to be working right. She tripped up the last of the steps and fell on her face, eye level with Cara's approaching feet. Struggling up, Leigh grabbed her cousin's arm and propelled them both back into the kitchen.

"What on earth is wrong with you?" Cara demanded, "Why did you scream like that?"

Leaning against the back door and taking deep breaths, Leigh slowly regained her poise. "I didn't scream. But I need to call Maura. Now."

Before Cara had time to respond, Leigh grabbed the phone and dialed. She asked the dispatcher for Officer Polanski, and soon heard a woman's voice, deep and pleasant.

"Avalon Police, Maura Polanski. What can I do you for?"

"Get over here now, Maura," Leigh said intently. "I want you to look at a corpse."

***

The husky voice on the other end of the line chuckled.

"Yeah right, Koslow. Don't tell me—some plumber called you 'Ma'am' and you smashed his head with a pipe wrench. Am I right?"

Leigh breathed deep. "Will you just get your carcass off that chair and get down here, please!"

She heard the squeak of Maura's ancient swivel stool. "Chill out, Leigh! Just tell me what the problem is."

"I already told you what the problem is. There's a corpse in my cousin's backyard. Now, are you coming over or do I have to track down Mellman?"

The only answer was a loud click, then silence.

Leigh hung up the phone. When she turned to speak to Cara, the kitchen was empty.

Breaking into a run, she caught up with her cousin about six paces from the edge of the patio. "Don't, Cara.
Don't
. It's not a pretty sight. Stress is bad for the baby, remember?"

Cara's mouth opened as if to protest that Leigh was being ridiculous. Then awareness flickered in her eyes and she closed her mouth in a petulant scowl. Leigh felt a sweet sense of triumph. Trying to stop Cara from doing something was like trying to hold back the tides, but the baby was proving an excellent trump card. Leigh had promised Gil, her aunt, her mother, and half of the Greenstone United Methodist Women's Association that she would do her best to make Cara follow doctor's orders, and she wasn't going to let them down.

Cara sulked as Leigh pulled her back into the kitchen and steered her to a chair. "I'm not an invalid, you know," Cara said with a pout. Then she smiled slyly—a fresh gleam in her blue-green eyes. "I'm supposed to avoid stress, not intellectual challenge. You know I’m good at detective work!" She leaned towards Leigh expectantly. "So spill it. You said there was a body?"

"Well... yes." Leigh answered, uncertain what to say. Finding a bright side to the discovery of a body in one's backyard was vintage Cara, but hearing morbid details surely qualified as stressful. Perhaps the less Cara knew, the better.

"I can't tell you much more than that," Leigh said unconvincingly.

Cara shook her head sadly. "You're a wonderful actress, dear, but a pathetic liar. Now,
talk
."

Leigh searched for an unalarming way to describe the dark, cracking lips, the thin lids parting over shrunken eyeballs... it just wasn't possible. She squirmed in her seat and waited for inspiration. What she got was an interruption.

Leigh and Cara both jumped as the front door opened and slammed hard. Heavy footsteps crossed through the parlor into the dining room. Even though the six-thousand-person borough of Avalon covered only five-eighths of a square mile, it was physically impossible for Maura to have arrived from headquarters so soon. But then, Maura always seemed to do things that were physically impossible.

The doors between the dining room and kitchen swung open to admit six feet two inches and two hundred ten pounds of Avalon's finest. Maura Polanski was a big woman, period. Ordinarily she was rendered less imposing by a cherubic baby face, but no dimples could obscure her current displeasure.

"Leigh Koslow!" she boomed, hands on hips. "You had
damn
well not be jerking me around." Beads of sweat stood out on Maura's broad forehead, and dark brown hair clung limply to the sides of her face. Mao Tse uttered a trademark hiss and took cover under the kitchen stepladder.

"Would I do that to you?" Leigh's sarcasm held respect. Four years as Maura's college roommate had taught her how to diffuse her friend's wrath. The skill was necessary, as she was also expert at invoking it. She pulled open the back door and swept her arm across the opening. "After you!"

Maura nodded to Cara, scowled at Leigh on principle, and ducked out the door.

Leigh turned to Cara. "Stay here," she said firmly. "Have some more decaff." She started out the door, but ducked back in. "Just think about that baby!"

Leigh pointed Maura down the steps and followed close behind her. She couldn't suppress a sadistic sense of glee. Maura was always telling Leigh she overreacted to things, always accusing her of being melodramatic...

Not this time.

Maura's ability to remain cool in a crisis irritated Leigh to no end. Never mind that the policewoman came from law-enforcement stock (her late father had been the police chief and patron saint of Avalon), Leigh just didn't find it normal. She could make her friend blow a fuse on a moment's notice, but had never managed to spook her.

Maura's department-issue shoes clomped heavily down the concrete steps. When she reached the bottom she let out a sigh and walked casually over to the hammock. Leigh stayed at the base of the steps and held her breath.

Maura looked carefully at the folded hands, the position of the body, and the odd clothes. She pulled a notebook out of her breast pocket and began to write.

Leigh exhaled with a groan. "Aren't you at least going to flinch?"

Maura kept scribbling and replied without looking up. "You would prefer hysterics?"

"Well yes, actually," Leigh retorted, coming closer. "How many bodies have you seen before, anyway?"

"More than you care to know about. Did you touch this hat?"

"Of course I touched the hat! I thought it was a dummy. I only knew it was real when I saw the head.”

Maura lifted the brim of the hat with her pen and slid it off the face.

It was a man's face, no doubt about that. An old man. Wrinkled skin hung loosely off his facial bones, and his head was bald except for a few short wisps of gray hair. He might have looked like any other old dead man, but he didn't. His skin was unnaturally dark and shriveled, the folds above his collar looking dry enough to crumble off his neck.

Leigh stepped back again and waited. Maura said nothing, but began a rhythmic tapping of her pen against her notepad. Leigh waited some more.

"Well?" she finally asked. "Is there a dead man in Cara's hammock or isn't there?"

The tapping ceased.

"Oh, yes," Maura answered in her police voice, sliding the notebook back into her pocket. "That's a dead man all right."

"So," Leigh continued, "What do we do about it?"

Maura clucked her tongue. "
We
don't do anything.
I
make some calls." She left the body and started up the stairs. Leigh followed, trying to catch up.

"Don't you need to dust for fingerprints or collect hair samples or something?"

Maura snickered. "That's not my job, Koslow."

"Well it's somebody's job isn't it?" Leigh stifled her irritation. Maura had an annoying habit of not saying whatever she knew Leigh wanted to know. "This
is
a possible homicide, right? The man is dead. I'm no coroner, but I don't think he just keeled over while taking a snooze. He looks to me like he's been dead longer than he's been in that hammock."

"Ooh..." Maura answered, pursing her lips. "You're right about that one. Mr. Vaudeville there didn't die last night."

They reached the patio, and Leigh stepped around to face her friend. "Well then, how long do you think he's been dead?"

"Hard to say," Maura answered. "They decay a lot slower after they've been embalmed."

Chapter 2

Cara greeted them by the kitchen door, anxiously twirling a lock of strawberry-blond hair between her fingers. Her face was pale, her pupils wide. She was doing an excellent imitation of a damsel in distress, but Leigh knew better. What Cara wanted was information. Pronto.

"Is it true?" Cara asked in a stage whisper. "Is there a body in my backyard?" Maura assumed a calm, professional demeanor Leigh hadn't seen before. "Yes, there is a body. I know that's alarming, but from what I can tell at this point, the individual appears to have died some time ago. Quite possibly of natural causes."

Cara took a deep breath and nodded, her normal complexion returning. Whether she was relieved or disappointed, Leigh couldn't tell.

"So what happens now?" Leigh asked, looking at Maura with new respect. Police procedure, outside of detective shows and mystery novels, had never interested her. She presumed Maura spent most of her time writing traffic tickets and bouncing drunks. A cop's life suddenly seemed more intriguing.

Local Woman Stops Graverobbing Ring: Police Grateful.

"Koslow? Did you hear what I said?" Maura's stern gaze implied she knew what Leigh was thinking, and wasn't amused. "This is what happens. First, nobody goes near the body again. Second, I make the necessary contacts. Third, you two relax and get ready to answer some questions."

Cara nodded cooperatively. Leigh did the same, but Maura eyed her skeptically. "Could I use your phone, please?" she asked Cara.

Leigh frowned. She had been looking forward to hearing both sides of the conversation. She tapped a finger on the two-way radio clipped to Maura's belt. "Why can't you use this thing?"

Maura's eyes narrowed. "This 'thing,' as you so eloquently put it, is for communication between on-duty officers. Chief Mellman is not on duty this morning. In fact, I have a pretty good idea he's sitting on his fanny in the Chuckwagon Cafe, stuffing down pancakes and sausage with Vestal Fields. But he gets beeped for all unusual deaths, and this qualifies. The phone?"

Cara threw Leigh an admonishing glance and led Maura inside to the kitchen. Leigh followed, but her attempts at eavesdropping were unproductive. Maura called several different people, but she talked to all of them in numbers. Her radio conversation with the dispatcher was no help either—all Leigh heard was static. When the squeal of brakes finally sounded, Leigh trailed Maura outside. Perhaps now someone would speak English.

A dilapidated sedan sat parked in the drive, its chassis springing up a foot as two hefty occupants scooted out.

Donald Mellman, recently named chief of police after a lifetime of playing second fiddle to Maura's father, stood up with an automatic tug at the waistband of his uniform pants. He was a large man, over six feet tall with a roundish midsection and slightly oversized head. His nose, large even for his head, was distinctly crooked. Leigh watched him run a pudgy hand through his graying hair and stifle a belch with a fist.

Sausage. No doubt
.

Vestal Fields, owner of the Fields Funeral Home, rose quickly to his feet and adjusted his tie. Vestal missed Mellman's six feet by a fair margin, but in weight, they were about even. He scrambled immediately to Maura, rubbing his hands anxiously. "You've got a body you think's already been embalmed, eh?"

Maura let out a barely perceptible sigh. Vestal was trying hard to act somber, but his glee about being a "police consultant" was poorly contained. "The body's in the hammock in the back yard," she replied. "You can take a look at it yourself and see if it's anyone you recognize. But don't touch anything!"