“There are worse places to hide a body than a thick pine forest surrounded by a fence and No Trespassing signs.”
The Sheriff shrugged. “For that matter, one of these dratted dogs could have brought the bone from miles away and buried it in the kid’s sand box. But this is where it turned up, and this is where there’s a person missing, and that’s reason enough to start looking here.”
The Sheriff walked away, but the two dogs stayed and started frisking around Grandfather. I asked him if any of Old Man Forsythe’s wives were missing, and he said there wasn’t any point in an outsider trying to keep track of them when Forsythe had never been able to.
For years the kids had been calling the house on the Forsythe estate Bluebeard’s Castle, but I never could figure out why. It was just a big old house, and Old Man Forsythe’s beard wasn’t blue at all but a kind of dirty red that turned white as he got older; besides, he didn’t have nearly as many wives as Bluebeard did. He’d been dead for a long time, but the surviving wives were still fighting over his estate, which was probably why the hole in the fence hadn’t been fixed.
“Isn’t Forsythe buried in there somewhere?” I asked.
Grandfather stared at me. “I forgot about that. He had his own private cemetery. That’s why the wives are contesting his will. He’s buried in the central plot, surrounded by graves of his favorite dogs, and the wives don’t inherit anything unless they agree to be buried with the dogs.”
He chased after the Sheriff and said something to him, and the Sheriff raised both hands forlornly and headed for his patrol car.
“Is he going to check the grave?” I asked.
Grandfather nodded. “Forsythe had small hands.”
We walked around a bit, dodging the dogs. In the distance some deputies and State Troopers were moving in a line between the Forsythe fence and Highway 29. Otherwise, except for the shade trees along the street and the muddy ruts by the houses where the people parked their cars, all we saw as far as the eye could see was weeds.
As far as my eye could see. Grandfather is past 80, but he sees a lot more than I do. He says my trouble is that I don’t know the difference between looking and seeing. We circled behind the houses and walked to the highway and back again, and along the way Grandfather picked up one of those little shovels that kids play with in the sand, and a doll’s leg, and a marigold blooming so deep in the weeds that I was surprised it bothered, and a ham bone the dogs had been gnawing on.
Grandfather pocketed the shovel and the doll’s leg. The marigold he sniffed, making a face, and then he threw it away. The ham bone he scowled at and gave to one of the dogs, which ran off closely pursued by the other. After he showed me where to look I helped him out by finding a petunia and two moss roses near where he’d found the marigold. These were the only signs of cultivation in sight and might have been helpful if we’d been looking for a sloppy horticulturist instead of a murderer.
We went back to the Daille house, and Grandfather knocked on the door. Daille’s housekeeper was a girl who couldn’t have been long out of high school. She wasn’t dressed for company, her hair was a mess, and behind smudged glasses her eyes were very, very scared.
“I’m an old friend of Jim’s family,” Grandfather said. “I thought perhaps I could help.”
“Oh,” she said. “Won’t you come in?”
She already had a roomful of company, but that was only because the living room was small and one of the three women present was large enough to make a gymnasium look crowded. As we walked in they looked us over as though we were some kind of rare insect showing up out of season. Something crashed in the next room, and the housekeeper excused herself over her shoulder as she dashed out.
“I’m Bill Rastin,” Grandfather said. “This is my grandson, Johnny.”
“We’re Betsy’s neighbors,” the fat woman said. “I’m Tru Wyler, and this is Ruth Loken and Joyce Dockett.”
Grandfather wanted to know who lived where, and the Wyler woman, with the tone of her voice making it very clear that it was none of his business, explained that Ruth Loken lived next door, and Joyce Dockett lived nearest the highway, and she lived between them. The other two could have done a Mutt-and-Jeff act. Even when sitting down the Dockett woman looked tall enough to play for the Boston Celtics, and Ruth Loken was tiny. Both of them looked positively undernourished beside Tru Wyler.
The Wyler woman’s head fascinated me, it was so perfectly balanced: several layers of platinum blonde hair piled up on top and several layers of chin piled up underneath. She caught me staring at her and she stared right back, and there’s no telling where that might have ended if Daille’s daughter hadn’t started crying in the next room.
“Men!” Tru Wyler said, turning toward the doorway. “That poor kid came down here to look after Betsy because she thinks Daille’s going to marry her. A pretty sneaky way of getting a housekeeper to work for nothing, I’d say.”
Then Betsy ran into the room. She was a cute little kid with blonde hair tied in pigtails and she went straight to Tru Wyler, who gathered her up and cooed, “Hello, honey baby.” Betsy cooed back and gave Wyler a smacking kiss. The fat woman began making faces at her, and since she had so much material to work with she was able to put on quite a show. Betsy laughed herself into a spasm of coughing, and Tru Wyler got that stopped and began whispering baby talk. Grandfather, who thinks children are people, gave her a look of absolute disgust. Fortunately she didn’t notice.
Sheriff Pilkins came stomping up the steps. I opened the door for him, and he looked in, glared at Tru Wyler — who glared right back at him — and jerked his thumb at Grandfather. Grandfather excused the two of us, and we went outside.
“Forsythe’s grave hasn’t been touched,” the Sheriff said.
“Since when?” Grandfather wanted to know.
“Since it was sodded, right after he was buried. There’s a full-time caretaker.”
“I didn’t say it was a good idea.” Grandfather gestured at the horizon, beyond which the police search had disappeared. “If Daille wouldn’t climb a fence with a body, what makes you think he’d tote it way over there?”
“I don’t. I’ve called them back.” He pointed at the fence. “We’ll have a look in there.”
“What are you looking for?”
“The body that bone came from,” the Sheriff snapped. He stomped away, and Grandfather and I went back into the house.
Tru Wyler was still cooing over Betsy. The housekeeper was sitting across the room. Grandfather took the only other chair, and I stood by the door.
“Is this the book?” Grandfather asked, picking one up from an end table.
The housekeeper nodded. “The Sheriff was looking at it.” It was a typical Mother Goose book for children, with stories and nursery rhymes, and most of the colored pictures had been touched up, but not improved, with crayon scribbles. Grandfather turned the pages slowly. Betsy and Tru Wyler continued to coo, and Loken and Dockett watched them and tried not to look jealous. The housekeeper looked as if she’d rather the whole parcel of us cleared out.
A car drove up outside and a moment later a young man came charging up the front steps. He took one step into the room, pointed at Tru Wyler, and shouted, “Out!”
Her face turned a sort of mottled crimson, which did not go at all well with her platinum hair. She wrapped her arms protectively around Betsy and said, “Wife killer!”
He stepped across the room. They faced each other, Wyler in the chair and the man standing over her, and both of them breathing hard and openly hating. He’d come directly from work, probably driving a long way, and his shirt was crusted with salt where perspiration had dried and his curly hair was a tangle and he looked deadly. She looked hot and flustered even though she had on a light summer dress and didn’t have one platinum hair out of place.