Chapter Four
My Mom is gorgeous. Picture Michelle Pheiffer with a southern drawl. Even though she's fifty, people always think that she and Charli are sisters. It drives Charli nuts. They look a whole lot alike -- that stylish ash-blonde hair, blue eyes, peachy complexion, small boned -- the exact opposite of me. With my brown curly hair, green eyes, and olive complexion, I'm the spitting image of my dad.
Mom and Charli both dress real fancy, too. They wear expensive, stylish clothes from the best stores. Again, just the opposite of me. I like jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes. The size four, lime green, silk suit with matching pumps Mom wore looked like it cost more than one of my monthly paychecks. It didn't look all that comfortable either.
She walked toward me, practicing her 'Miss America' smile, giving me one of those lady-like little waves.
I met her in front of my car. "Mom, do you have some sort of special 'Marty radar' that goes off the second I get involved in anything? How did you know I was here?"
She gave me a quick hug. "Hi, sweetie, I didn't know you were here." She pulled back and looked me over, her smile fading. "What in the world have you done to your head?"
"I ran into a tree branch, back there on that big old oak tree." I nodded toward the back fence. Back to where the body sat, not even thirty yards from the tree.
She hugged me again. "Honey, you've got to start watching where you're going. You could have poked your eye out. I swear, sometimes you are such a klutz."
I blew out my breath. "Geez, Mom! You act like I did this on purpose."
(When I was nine, I was hanging by my knees from a tree branch. When Mom saw me she said, "Martina Gayle, get down from there! You're going to fall and break your neck. And when you do, don't come crying to me." My mom loves hyperbole almost as much as she loves clichés.)
"It looks like it hurts." She gently touched the bruise. "You don't have a concussion do you? We better get you to the doctor."
"Ouch!" I jerked my head back. "Don't touch it! I don't need a doctor. I'm fine."
"For goodness sakes, Marty, let me look at it." She reached for my head again. I backed up a couple of steps.
I started to tell her about the corpse, but caught myself. I didn't want her to faint or anything. But, then, maybe she already knew about it. I couldn't think of any other reason she would have shown up at the park on a hotter-than-hell August morning. Mom isn't the sort to sit around communing with nature. Especially when nature contains mosquitoes and other pests.
"What are you doing here anyway?" I asked.
She fluttered her hand. "Well, it's sort of silly. I interviewed Mayor Mongan this morning." Mom's a reporter for the local weekly, The Glenvar News-Record.
"I'm doing a story on the new golf course proposal. You know, the one they want to build on top of the old landfill?"
I didn't bother to answer. Mom's questions are usually rhetorical.
"Anyway, when I got in the car to go over to city hall, I found this note stuck under my windshield wiper blade." She pulled a folded up piece of paper from her jacket pocket and handed it to me.
"Did you put it there?" she asked.
"No."
I opened the note. It was typed on lined paper. The paper still had the ragged edges where it had been ripped from a notebook. I read it aloud:
Three strikes, you're out The Ump did shout
He's blind as a bat He's a dirty rat
He went bye-bye No one will cry
At Morley Park you'll find a scoop
Look in the can that's next to the poop
At the bottom of the note was a crude drawing of the portable toilets and the trash can where I'd found the body. A big star was drawn on the front of the trash can. Obviously, whoever had put the body in the trash can wanted Mom to find it. But why?
"Isn't that the silliest thing," Mom said. "Marty, what's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?"
I studied her face, trying to figure out how she was going to react to the news. Maybe I could sort of ease into it. Maybe I shouldn't tell her. No, I had to tell her. The police were on their way. I finally just blurted it out.
"A corpse. There's a corpse in it." I shook the note. "In the trash can. There's a dead guy in the trash can you're supposed to look in."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Mom, would I kid about something like that?"
She leaned back against my car. "No. I guess you wouldn't. Do you know who it is? Was?"
"No. I didn't look that closely." I leaned next to her.
She didn't say anything, just stood there staring toward the trash can.
"You're going to get your suit dirty." I gently touched the hem of her jacket, rubbing the silk between my fingers like I'd done as a child.
"Not to worry, it's old. I can always send it to the cleaners."
She brushed her hair back from her face. "So you must have received a note, too."
"No. I didn't get a note. I just happened to open the trash can and find the body. See, I was baby-sitting the rugrats for Charli. They were driving me and poor Delbert nuts, so I brought them here. I had to change Jaelyn, and when I went to throw the diaper away, that's when I found - well, you know."
She gasped. "The children were with you? They didn't see the body did they?"
"No, don't worry. They don't even know anything was wrong. I'd give anything to be that innocent." Well, maybe not all the time, but certainly when it came to finding dead bodies in trash cans.
She looked around, as if she expected the kids to suddenly pop out of some secret hiding place. "Where are the little angels now?"
Angels? Charli's kids? The heat was affecting her mind. Or maybe it was that family history of insanity I mentioned before.
"Vanessa Young was here. She took them with her. We didn’t want them here when the police arrived. She's going to keep them until Charli gets home."
Mom pressed her hands against her chest. "Thank the good Lord you found the body! Can you imagine if one of the kids had found it? That just gives me chills." Her eyes teared up and she dabbed at them with a tissue, careful not to smear her makeup.
"I know, me too. I'm so glad Vanessa was here. I don't know what I'd have done if I'd been by myself. Probably panicked or something," I said.
"You would have handled it somehow. You're strong." She straightened up and brushed off her skirt. "I'm going to go have a look."
"What?" I said, pushing off the car and grabbing her arm. "You can't do that! The police will be here in a minute and besides, it, it, it might make you sick."
She shot me her 'don't be ridiculous' look. "Nonsense. I'm a reporter. If I want to have the best story, I need to see the body." She pulled loose from me and headed toward the entrance gate.
I could almost see the wheels grinding in her head. Mom's determined to get a job working for the Roanoke Times, the big daily paper located in the city that's about twenty minutes away from Glenvar. I'm sure she was thinking that this story was going to be the one that got her foot through that particular door.
When she reached the gate, she turned around and winked at me. "Don't worry, I won't disturb anything." She flashed me a smile. "I know all about police procedures."
She pulled a leather bound steno pad and a pen from her purse. I watched her as she walked through the gate. It clanged shut, bouncing back and forth a few times.
"Hey, Mom," I said, "wait up."
I squeezed my eyes shut as she opened the trash can with a tissue. "I don't want to leave fingerprints," she explained.
I opened my eyes. "Mom, this is nuts. I can't believe you're doing it."
"For goodness sakes, Marty, nobody said you had to look again. Go on over there and sit on that table or..." Her voice trailed off.
She dropped the lid down. But not before I'd peeked in again. It was exactly as I remembered it: swarming flies, blood-matted hair, and that lifeless hand. Only something else.
I lifted the lid
back up and looked again. "Wart? Mom, it's Warthog Turner!"
Warren 'Warthog' Turner. The guy voted most likely to go to prison in an informal class poll our senior year. The guy that, if someone had said to me, 'Marty, you're going to find someone you know, dead in a trash can, guess who?', would have been my first, last, and only answer.
I closed the lid and turned around to face Mom. She wasn't there. She was bent over inside one of the portable toilets somewhat inelegantly losing her breakfast. I waited until she'd finished, and went over to her. She mopped at her face with a tissue, not caring whether she smeared her makeup or not.
I put my arm around her and led her over to what I now thought of as 'my' picnic table. Her face was very pale and her eyes were blurred with tears. She trembled slightly as we sat down.
"Are you okay?" I asked gently.
She gulped for air. "I didn't think he'd look so, well, so dead!" she said, after a few more gulps.
I didn't say anything. I heard the sirens and then the gravel spraying as a police car, followed closely by an ambulance and a fire truck, screamed up to the entrance gate.
"We better go out and meet them," I said, pulling Mom to her feet and out toward the parking lot.