The Gortons had planned a Saturday night block party. One of the things Herb came over for, was to ask if I would prefer that they call the party off so that I might have some quiet. I had talked Herb out of canceling the party, feeling that it could help me in getting Dorothy moved unnoticed. I set my alarm for four in the morning. I knew the party would break up between two and three, and that all the neighbors who didn’t get invited to the Gorton’s parties, would certainly be catching up on lost sleep by four o’clock.
Before daylight, Dorothy was in the strawberry barrel down in the basement. I had used the spade to lift the divots of new grass carefully before doing the serious digging. When I finished, I replaced the divots. In full daylight, the next morning, I opened a bale of peat moss and began laboriously breaking it up and spreading it thin over the top of the lawn. Thus I covered up any possible indications of what I had done.
When Herb came over about noontime, I sanctimoniously explained that for Dorothy’s sake, wherever she was, I would do my utmost to create a perfect lawn. Herb sighed, placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. After a moment of silence, he headed back to his own place — for breakfast, I supposed.
Although I saw Whiskers driving slowly by in a ’51 Ford late Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t until Tuesday that he and Delaney came out again. Delaney said he just wanted to check on whether I had heard from or about my wife. He told me they had contacted her sister and cousin through the police out in California, and that neither knew anything about Dorothy’s whereabouts. He reminded me to call headquarters if I heard anything. Neither he nor Whiskers looked at the lawn.
As he was about to leave, Delaney remembered the compost heap. He apologized for forgetting to send some men out to put it back together, and promised they’d be out in the morning. Whiskers put his notebook up to within eight inches of his nose, and as he scribbled I heard him mumble, “Cesspool.”
That made me jump, and I was glad the lieutenant was already walking away so he didn’t see I’d been startled. Earlier in the day I had plugged the drain under the basement wash tubs. I was going to fake a cesspool stoppage and get old Krajewski to dig up the front lawn and uncover the cesspool. I knew Krajewski would arrive just in time to dig down to the cesspool cover before dark. Then during the night I’d drop Dorothy in, replace the cover, and start shoveling on the dirt myself. By daylight, I’d resume shoveling openly and if anyone asked, I’d tell them it had been a drain stoppage all the time. Now, with Whiskers thinking cesspool, I’d have to unplug the drain and try to come up with a better hiding place for a body that just wouldn’t stay down.
By Thursday no one had come to dig up the back lawn, nor did any police arrive to do anything about the cesspool. Dorothy was getting pretty strong in the strawberry barrel, and the sprays and wicks that I had around weren’t too much help. Three men did come out late in the day, however, to work on the compost heap. First, they dug about three feet below the surface under the spot of the original heap. The lieutenant had ordered that, they explained. They were about to start shoveling everything back, when I decided to take advantage of their muscle. Herb had come over to watch. And while we were all guzzling the beers I’d brought out, I asked the diggers to leave the hole open.
“The wife always wanted a big weeping willow tree,” I told them, “and since I now got a hole all dug, I can put one in,” I almost said in memory, “as a surprise for her when she comes home.”
I knew I could get Dorothy into that hole and well covered during the night. And the next day, I could leisurely replace the compost heap. If the police diggers reported to Delaney that they had left the hole open, so I could plant a willow tree and he got suspicious as to why I’d changed my mind, I could always tell him the willow-idea had been sort of an impulse that I’d dropped after a little thought. The next day, when Herb helped me shovel the compost heap back, I told him I had reconsidered putting a tree in. I’d realized that it isn’t right to plant a large tree close to a neighbor’s plot, since its branches would hang over his, Herb’s, property.
Whiskers came out alone the next day. But not before I had the compost heap all neatly piled up, covered with a bag of manure, and watered until the aroma was much stronger than Dorothy had been when I’d rolled out the barrel. Whiskers didn’t talk at first. He just walked around the backyard, occasionally squatting to peer at the lawn or the flower beds. Then out came that dog-eared notebook again and up it went to that spot eight inches short of his nose.
“The police didn’t dig up your cellar floor yet, did they?” he asked.
When I heard my jaws snap, I realized my mouth had dropped open as far as it would go. I looked at him for a good long moment, then swallowed some saliva and shouted, really shouted, “The who didn’t what?”
He blinked his eyes, pulled down his notebook and looked a little hurt. Then he repeated it, haltingly, “The police didn’t dig up your cellar floor, did they?”
“The police!” I bellowed. “You’re talking about them as if you’re not one of them!”
He answered with a soft “Oh.” While I stood with my eyes bugging, he got into his unmarked ’51 Ford and drove away.
The lieutenant was laughing. I laughed, too. When I’d started downtown, I was going to storm into headquarters screaming my indignation. But as I got closer to the police, I cooled off considerably.
“ ‘Whiskers’, as you call him, has never been on any police force,” said Delaney. “Maybe he took a correspondence course somewhere. I wouldn’t know. You’ve heard of fire buffs, well I guess we got us a homicide buff. The first time he followed us on a case, we didn’t even realize he was along until one of the boys spotted him making one of those crazy grid maps of a backyard. We chased him away, but that night we got a phoned-in tip that our suspect was out in the dark digging up his yard. We sneaked out and let him finish the shovel work before we grabbed him and the corpse. Naturally, now we don’t feel the same way about Whiskers following us around. Say, that’s a good name you got for him — Whiskers.”
“You know, Mr. Davis,” Delaney continued, “we almost came out to tear up your lawn. But, when we found there wasn’t much insurance on your wife, and you had no other motive we could tumble to, we decided against crowding you just yet. Then when your neighbors told us how you worked like a dog every year and this was your best lawn yet, we figured to let the whole thing ride. Besides, we still don’t know that anything has happened to Mrs. Davis. All we know right now is that she’s missing.”
When I left headquarters, I felt so good I had to stop the car a few blocks from home and work my face into a harried look again. Just as I drove up to the door, I noticed a huge flatbed truck from Wilton Nurseries backed up on the Gorton driveway. A big tree hanging over the tailgate extended to our back lawn near the compost heap. Or, rather, to where the compost heap had been.