fertilizer

Meredith fed the dogs and let them out for five minutes, watching to make sure they didn’t head for the toolshed. When they were back in, she sat at her kitchen table and contemplated a bite of something herself. Maybe some yogurt and a hot cup of tea. Meat didn’t seem at all appealing. Her own spot, the most peaceful place she could imagine, had been violated. She knew rather a lot about death. At her age, one did. But not murder. Would she ever be able to really enjoy those Parson’s Pinks again, knowing what had lain among them?

       On the other hand, she thought later, staring at the floral wallpaper of her bedroom, bone meal was good for roses. Perhaps blood was too.

        It struck her as ironic that someone had planted a body in the President of the Garden Club’s rose garden. Club politics could get pretty vicious, but they had never been a killing matter.

island living and dying

The helicopter with the mainland crime scene people touched down in the big field just outside the rock wall that bordered Meredith’s three acres. Fortunately, the weather was clear and calm for late May.  Had it been the previous week when the purple storm flag was flying at the ferry dock— no boats that day—the island would have been cut off. No crime scene team. No mail, no Amazon deliveries, no prescription drugs, no milk, no newspapers, no visitors, no getting off-island. No contact. In the wintertime it was like that a lot, which was why so many island marriages got reshuffled by spring.  Relentless incestuous togetherness.

        It was full dark by the time they all left, to return in the morning. The body was packed up and taken to the airport to be shipped off island by twin engine to the medical examiners and then, presumably, the funeral home. Other than the cold rooms at the B.I.G. grocery store or the Red Bird liquor store, there was no place to store it overnight.

twenty questions

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” The poise was gone.

         Fortunately, from Meredith’s point of view, her son the Chief had walked in just as she was weighing greetings.

         “Mrs. Adams,” he had said. “I was just about to call you.”

          “Call me?” the perfectly shaped eyebrows arched.

          “Um. Yes. Please sit down. I’m sorry to tell you that there’s been an accident.”

          “To who?”

          “Your husband.”

           “Malcolm?”

           “Yes.”

           “In a car?”

           “No, ma’am.”

           Bigger than a breadbox? thought Meredith, as the questions continued. Bobby was putting the teakettle on the stove.  “Sugar,” she said.

            “I know.”

            They were all hoping she wouldn’t ask to see the body. Because whatever and whoever Malcolm Adams had been, he had been hated. He had been mown down, shot in the chest and head so many times that the only possible explanation was a nutcase with a major grievance and an AK-47. Had Adams not been so readily identifiable with his long silver ponytail and Santa Fe silver-and-turquoise jewelry, you would have been hard put to know who he was.

            “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” Now she was moaning and rocking back and forth.

        Meredith wondered whether Mrs. Adams dyed her eyelashes— her mascara wasn’t running. She couldn’t bring herself wrap her arms around the bereaved woman. The best she managed was to sort of pat her on the shoulder. She really couldn’t abide her.

        Bobby loaded a cup of hot tea with sugar and put it in the woman’s hands. Joseph stood looking serious and rather helpless. The Staties guarded the garden. And, finally, they heard the noise.