“It all looks level to me.”
“It would. The mower blade sort of floats over small depressions. The mower wheels don’t.”
He probed with a foot. “There it is.” Crushing the grass with the toe of one shoe, he worked his way around the perimeter, his blood running colder with each step as the outline of the depression took shape.
He finished with a rectangle about two feet wide and six long.
She let her breath out slowly. “I hope that isn’t what it looks like.”
Using the pointed spade he’d thrown into the car, he cut through the sod in the center and placed it aside, lifting out the soft dirt beneath until he met a stiffer resistance.
Once more. Gently. And the spade brought up bones that were once a human hand and released a faint stench into the cool, clean night air. “Oh-my-God.”
Covering her mouth, Amanda fled to the car and braced herself with hands on the hood.
He threw the spade aside and joined her.
Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Why didn’t anyone—”
He knew what she meant. “The sod was cut and lifted, the grave dug and the sod replaced. Within a week it would have been unnoticeable. It took a little time to settle, but now we know why Randy didn’t want me mowing on this side of the lane. It has to tie in with what happened to Zeigler.”
Her voice was still hoarse. “Who can it be?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m just a poor fool who had a hunch. Ask Randy. And Mrs. Zeigler. You can start proceedings to have her escorted back from San Francisco on Monday.”
“Monday? Monday?” Her voice trembled with sudden fury. “Try dawn. Try two hours. Try one hour. Dammit, how can anyone—”
Denbow took her in his arms and held her trembling body tightly, her face against his cool and clammy from shock.
“Take it easy,” he whispered. “Remember your job. Start earning that generous salary they’re paying you by setting the wheels of law and order in motion.”
If the day before had gone fast, this one had gone slowly. The sun was low before his processor-driven typewriter had chattered through the last page of his report.
Up on the hill, the grave was now a gaping hole surrounded by yellow tape, and much of Zeigler’s golf-green lawn had been trampled by a horde of lawmen and an army of news-people, from whom Denbow escaped by locking the doors and drawing the drapes.
The straining sound of the four cylinder engine drove him to the kitchen to fix two drinks. When Amanda came through the open patio door, he handed her a glass. She slumped into a chair and kicked off her shoes.
“Mind if I use our intimate relationship to elicit police information again? Did Randy talk or not? Who was in the grave—”
She took a long drink. “It’s all very weird and senseless.”
“When a body gets buried in a front yard, it can’t be anything else.”
“The corpse was a twenty-two-year-old kid named Grover, who worked for Zeigler. Nice, bright kid. From a small town upstate. Late that afternoon, Grover received a call. His mother was in the hospital. He went to Zeigler to tell him he had to leave and why. Randy was in the office at the time. Zeigler asked if he needed money. Grover said he had bus fare, but that was about all. Zeigler gave him a hundred dollars.”
“That’s the Zeigler I knew.”
“Four hours later, Randy was working at the plant, alone, when the night bell rang. There was Grover. He’d been mugged in the men’s room at the bus station in Philadelphia. All he had left was his commuter pass. He didn’t know what else to do, so he came back and walked to the plant, hoping someone would be there and he could borrow some money. Like a lot of people today, Randy doesn’t carry much cash. He uses credit cards. The banks were closed, of course, but there are those cash machines. He drove Grover over, intending to use his cash access card. Either the machine malfunctioned or it had run out. He couldn’t get a dime out of it.”
“What else is new?” murmured Denbow.
“Zeigler wasn’t available. He was having dinner in town with a supplier, but Randy knew he kept cash for emergencies in a safe at the house, and as far as he was concerned, this was an emergency. He drove Grover there. But Zeigler wasn’t in town after all. Since you were away, he’d hidden his car in your garage and was waiting in the dark to see who his wife was entertaining when he wasn’t at home.” She took another long drink. “If this doesn’t make much sense, be patient. It gets worse.”
“I assumed it would.”
“Randy parked in the lane at the front of the house, in the dark, where the light over the garage didn’t reach, because he said it was easier to back down to your driveway and turn around rather than go all the way up to the garage apron at the side of the house and maneuver around up there.”
Denbow nodded. “I’ve seen him leave the car there when he visited.”
“It was too dark for Zeigler to recognize the car or see there were two men. He waited by the side door. Grover was first to come around the corner into the light. Zeigler leaped to the fastest wrong conclusion in history. There could be only one reason for the kid he’d given a hundred dollars to that afternoon, supposedly to visit a sick mother, to drive up to his house. Talk about adding insult to injury. He hit him. Grover fell back into Randy just as he came around the corner. They both went down. Only Randy got up. Grover was dead, skull fractured by one of the stones edging the driveway.”
The taste had gone out of the drink. Denbow set it aside.
“Instant panic. Randy yelling at his father, his father yelling at Randy. When Zeigler realized what he’d done, he came apart. By that time Mrs. Zeigler was out of the house. When Randy started inside to call the police, she stopped him. His father would be arrested, go on trial for manslaughter, might even receive a prison sentence. Did he want that? Who knew Grover was there? No one. Who was more important, Grover or his father? She kept reinforcing the questions with shots of straight scotch. Zeigler was sitting on the ground, staring at his fist. Before he knew it, Randy was digging a hole. Don’t worry, his stepmother kept telling him. Only the three of them would know. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. When his father came out of it, he’d be grateful his son had protected him.”
“She has to be one helluva saleswoman.”
“Randy bought the idea only long enough to bury Grover, but by then he figured it was too late. He had another problem. Zeigler hadn’t moved. If he wasn’t back to normal by morning, people would wonder why. Tell them it was her fault, she said. She’d been thinking of going back to the West Coast. She’d go now. He could blame her. He gave her the money from the safe and promised to send more. Everything was under control. He’d worry about his next step when his father came around. He waited. And waited. Until yesterday.
“Didn’t anyone ever ask about Grover?”
“Of course. His family called when he didn’t come home, but the last time anyone had seen him, he’d been heading for the bus station, so it was assumed he’d disappeared somewhere between Philadelphia and his home town.”
She finished her drink and rested her head against the back of the chair, her voice flat. “I feel cold. Is it the story I just told you or that open door?”
Sun almost gone, the thermometer was falling. He rose and closed the patio door, looking out at the deepening shadows.
“What happens now?”
“Randy and the fast talking Mrs. Zeigler are guilty of the illegal disposition of a body to cover up a crime, but because of the motive and their position in the community, no judge will be too hard. Zeigler? Nothing. A man who isn’t aware of the proceedings can’t be prosecuted.”