A Body in the Bargain: A Kate & Kylie Mystery Read online

  “Geek,” I said as the screen lit up again. Everything looked normal to me.

  “Now, what were you trying to find?” I asked.

  “I was trying to find the web thing for the River Valley Literary Society,” she said. “Maggie Philby showed it to us when we met at her house last week, and she had her husband take a picture of us, and said she was going to put it on here. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t too awful.”

  “Does it have a name?” I asked. “I mean the website.”

  “River Valley Literary Review,” she said. “Just like the newsletter. Well, I suppose it IS the newsletter now. Heaven forbid that we should have something on paper.”

  A minute later, I had the website up for her. Maggie Philby seemed to have done a good job.

  She put on her glasses and peered at the group photo.

  “It’s a very nice picture of you,” I said.

  “Oh, my goodness, I look ancient,” she said. “But look at Hester Foley. She looks a hundred and fifty, and there’s Meredith Merkle, looking like she just ate a green persimmon.”

  “Kylie and I saw her on Saturday,” I said. “She was at the Cadbury’s yard sale. I spoke to her, and she was just as unpleasant as always. Then we saw her later walking home in the rain. Kylie offered her a ride, but she just shook her head. Of course, she had her umbrella.”

  “Of course she did,” Aunt Verily said. “Rain or shine. It’s all-purpose. She can use it as a walking stick, and you know it has a sharp point at the end. She’s used it on quite a few dogs. Of course, I do agree with her that people shouldn’t let their dogs run loose, especially with so many people walking or running for their health now, but Maria Tapper swears that Meredith poked her dog through the chain link fence.”

  I scrolled down on the website. She studied it and frowned a little.

  “I see Maggie is reviewing her church cookbook,” she said, “And Maxie Lewis has another of her nature poems on here.”

  She frowned and wrinkled her nose.

  “Oh, I don’t mean to be critical,” she said with a sigh, “They rhyme and they scan. I just get weary of all this Tra-la-la verse about nature. The closest Maxie Lewis gets to nature is when she waters her philodendron. You’d think she spent all her time wafting along by the river picking wildflowers, or watching sunsets under a weeping willow tree.

  I laughed. She brightened up.

  “Well, at least I have you back, and I do have a few regulars who read interesting things and like to talk about them. That new police chief of ours is quite a reader. His mother was a librarian, and he was here getting a library card just a few days after he started the job. I just could have hugged him. He reads mostly history and some fiction, but he’s quite selective. I order things for him. You’ll have to meet him.”

  I told her I already had, and he seemed quite nice.

  She asked me how I was settling in.

  I extracted her promise not to call my mother and father and told her about my step-cousins stripping the house of furniture while the neighbors looked on. I wound up telling her about Kylie’s helping me find second hand and the things we had found.

  She frowned as she listened.

  “I wouldn’t want to fool with those Bodreys either. I just hope you didn’t have to spend too much.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “You know, Grandma left me a little money, too. It’s just going to mean that I need to find a little free-lance work to make that and my savings stretch further. There are some magazine editors I can call, but most of that kind of work would mean going back up toward Atlanta for a day or two.”

  “I’ve got an idea!” she said, “They’re looking for a reporter at The Register, and I hear they pay a little better than they used to.”

  “I’ve never done news reporting,” I said.

  Aunt Verily wrinkled her nose and said, “Kate they would be lucky to get you. I don’t think that boy who’s in charge now knows what he’s doing. He’s the son of the man who owns the chain that bought it. He’s nice enough, but it looks to me as if he’s just letting Anna James type everything up the way people bring it in. You could take better pictures than he does, too. He cuts the top of people’s heads off.”

  “I don’t want a full-time job,” I said. “I’d rather go without furniture than give up this time to do my own work!

  That afternoon the computer guy came, and when he left, I was reconnected with the world. I sent Kylie and 45 assorted ‘friends” a Facebook message to announce the good news, I even took a picture of the house with my cell phone camera and sent that. It’s a cute little place with a wraparound front porch, and I got lots of “likes.”

  I made myself two bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches for supper, and then collapsed on my new bed and watched the news. It was wonderful to be connected to the world again.

  Kylie called at eight and said, “Guess what! Darlene had Doris Dabney’s phone number, and I called her. You’re lucky I reached her when I did, because she and her husband have already moved into their new house, and she’s totally fed up with the whole moving thing. The rained-out yard sale was the last straw. She’ll be there tomorrow morning, though, and she’s got a man coming to haul all of it away around 10 a.m.”

  I was about to say, “Fine with me,” when she said, “But she’ll sell you both the sofa and a living room chair for $40 cash. She says the chair is real comfy, but their dog chewed a little bit of the skirt off the back so it definitely needs a slipcover. I’ll pick you up after I take the boys to school in the morning.”

  “Kylie,” I said. “That’s an ugly sofa.”

  “Kate,” she said. “You’re just hung up on the color. And you saw it in a bad light in that dark garage. Now you’re the creative one, so look at it creatively. For $40, you’ll have the main two pieces of furniture for your living room, and you can afford these cute slipcovers I found online. I sent you the link. They’re white with cute ties all around. I’ll give you some pillows to go on them. It will look darling. It will look like something a writer or an artist would have.”

  I should have stood my ground, but I didn’t. Kylie was so enthusiastic and was going to so much trouble.

  “Okay, let’s go take a look,” I said.

  After that, I checked the slipcovers on the link she had sent me, and I could almost see things her way.

  When we got there in the morning, Kylie pulled the truck close to the Dabneys’ garage.

  As we got out the truck, we could hear a woman screaming angrily in the kitchen. The windows were open. Her voice was rising, and a male voice rumbled.

  “Well, where were you?” the female voice demanded.” What were you doing? You sure didn’t do what we asked you…”

  I was ready to get back in the truck, but the garage door was open, and Kylie got me by the arm and led me there. Apparently, they must have realized we were there because the argument suddenly ended and Doris Dabney came out the back door, looking a little red-faced.

  She was a nice looking woman, probably about the same age as Kylie’s mother, but she had a worn-out, stressed look that was pinching her face up. She managed a half-hearted smile.

  “You’ll have to excuse me if you heard that,” she said. “My son was supposed to get a bunch of stuff done here while we were at the new house, but, well, you know young people.”

  The sofa was as awful and as olive green as I remembered. Two boxes of sale items had been placed on the cushions, things that must have been hurriedly moved there on Saturday. I noticed that there were empty beer cans and a pizza box on the cement floor. Doris made an exasperated noise and hurried around, picking things up.

  Kylie got right down to business and started moving the boxes off the sofa and over to the side.

  “I want to open it,” she explained to Doris. “Just to see if the bed’s okay.”

  “We hardl
y ever used it as a bed,” Doris said. “Like I said, if you want the sofa, I’ll give you the chair. It’s in the house. I’ll get David to bring it out.”

  Once the boxes were off, the sofa cushions looked crooked and higher in the middle.

  “Kylie,” I whispered. “Don’t bother. I do not want that sofa.”

  She gave me one of her very, very patient looks and started taking the seat cushions off.

  Then she found the metal handle to pull out the bed.

  She had it halfway open we both saw the same thing.

  A pale, thin hand sprung up. Then there was an arm.

  “Ohhh!” Kylie said. “Aaaiiiee..”

  But somehow, as if she were on automatic pilot, she kept pulling until the bed unfolded, and an entire, stiff and contorted body seemed to spring upward.

  I remember calmly processing what I saw, trying—I suppose—to make sense of it.

  There was Meredith Merkle, wearing a yellow pants suit. She was very dead and stiff and awkward looking. There was a dried smear of blood on the mattress near her head. Or I thought it was blood. I saw what looked very much like a mashed slice of pizza off to one side. The mattress smelled like beer.

  Doris Dabney let out a little shriek and ran toward her house.

  Kylie wobbled a little and fainted. I caught her quickly enough so that it wasn’t a bad fall. It was more of a slide, and we wound up with my kneeling behind her, holding her up.

  I was very calm.

  Kylie’s really tired of hearing about it now, but I was honestly just unbelievably calm. Maybe unnaturally calm.

  I prioritized. I shifted around and cradled her head in my lap as I called 911.

  I could hear my own voice saying. “There’s a dead body in a sofa bed at the Dabneys’ house on Morgan Road. I don’t know the street number. It’s the big house right down the hill from those apartments for senior citizens.”

  The dispatcher wanted my name, and I told her, “Kate Marley, but it’s not my residence.”

  She wanted me to hold on, so I got Kylie’s cellphone out of her purse with my other hand and called Buddy. Kylie was groaning a little and trying to sit up.

  Still calmly, I said, “Buddy, you need to come over to the Dabneys’ house right now. Kylie’s fainted. There’s … well, she opened a sofa bed in the garage, and Miss Meredith Merkle was inside it, dead. We need you to come out here and get us because I can’t drive a stick shift.”

  “What?” Buddy asked. “You’re not making sense.”

  Kylie mumbled something, and I leaned down to hear her.

  “What?”

  “Don’t buy that sofa,” she said.

  “Right,” I said, and then I got back to Buddy on the phone and said, “Just come right now! It’s an emergency.”

  The police and the ambulance got there first.

  I can’t believe how calm I stayed. I even stayed calm when Chief Daniel O’Reilly knelt down beside us on the garage floor to make sure we were both okay. He had the paramedic check us out too.

  Another police officer had arrived with him and was studying the body on the sofa and snapping pictures with her cell phone. She was a buxom thirty-ish redhead in a tight uniform. She had Sgt. Brenda Breaker on her name tag and she was standing unnecessarily close to Chief O’Reilly.

  “Dead,” she told him. “Isn’t that the old lady who walks everywhere and pokes at dogs? Is that a slice of pizza? Do you smell beer?”

  “She’s dead,” the paramedic said, “That’s rigor mortis. Now I’ve seen everything. That’s Miss Meredith Merkle. I wonder what she’s doing here. Want me to call the coroner?”

  The chief nodded and then turned to Brenda Breaker and said “Would you please put up some crime tape around the whole yard? I need to speak to these two ladies so we can get them out of here.”

  Brenda Breaker looked a little annoyed and left. It all felt a little unreal to me as if I were acting a role on a television cop show. It complicated things that the chief was so good-looking.

  My inner chatterbox took over.

  ‘Chief O’Reilly,” I said. “The only reason we’re here is that Kylie wanted me to buy this sofa bed. She opened it to make sure the bed was okay, and first this hand came up and then she opened it the rest of the way…and there was Miss Merkle. ”

  “Wait a minute. You mean it was closed when you got here?” he asked, looking surprised.

  “Yes, Sir,” I said, “The cushions are over there. There were some boxes on top of them. Kylie took them off. I had already decided I didn’t want the sofa, but she opened the sofa bed to see if the bed was okay…”

  Kylie sat up a little and said, “I want to go home right now. We aren’t buying anything here.”

  “And you knew—um—the deceased?” the chief asked me.

  “Yes, Sir,” I said. “She was our high school English teacher. Her name is Meredith Merkle. She usually has a purse and an umbrella, but I don’t see either of them here.”

  “Thank you,” he said, making rapid notes, and then he grinned very slightly. “That’s all very helpful. I appreciate your cooperation, and you don’t have to call me sir. I know we met the other day. Katie, isn’t it? I’m afraid I don’t remember your last name.”

  “Kate Marley,” I said. “It’s Kate.”

  He wrote it down.

  Buddy Carson arrived, took one look at Miss Merkle and said a word I will not repeat. The chief reached out to shake his hand.

  “Hi, Buddy,” he said. “We have a little problem here, as you can see. Would you take these two ladies over to your house? Your wife fainted, and I think her friend is a bit traumatized. I’m going to need to interview them later.”

  “I’m not traumatized,” I said.

  Buddy got Kylie standing with one arm around her and helped me up with other. Buddy is very strong.

  “That’s Miss Meredith Merkle,” he told the chief.

  “So I hear,” Daniel O’Reilly said. “But whose property is this? I mean who lives here?”

  “The Dabneys,” Buddy said, looking around. “You know Councilman Dave Dabney. But I don’t see any of them. Don’t see their car either.”

  Sgt. Brenda Breaker was back.

  “I think that was Mrs. Dabney leaving from the other driveway right when we were arriving,” she said.

  Chapter 5

  Buddy and Chief Daniel O’Reilly agreed—right over our heads—what to do with Kate and me. We might as well have been two kids.

  “I’ve got to get back to work, but my mother-in-law can look after them,” Buddy said to the chief. “You just come on out to our house when you want to talk to them. They both need time to calm down anyway.”

  Kylie sobbed and shuddered.

  “I am perfectly calm,” I said, but neither of them was listening. Traffic was backing up on Morgan Road, and more vehicles with sirens and flashing lights had pulled up.

  Buddy loaded us into the cab of his truck and called somebody to come and get the old truck. Ten minutes later, we were in the Carsons’ kitchen.

  “Don’t let them go anywhere until Chief O’Reilly talks to them,” Buddy told Darlene after explaining things.

  Darlene looked pale and horrified when he told her we had found Meredith Merkle’s dead body in a sofa bed, but she is good at emergencies. She sat us down at the kitchen table and brought out a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a half-gallon of milk and three glasses.

  Kylie seemed more herself after two donuts and some milk.

  “That was the worst thing I ever saw in my entire life,” she said to her mother. “I’ll never be able to open a sofa bed again.”

  And then she looked at me and got wide-eyed.

  “Oh, Kate! What if we had bought it without opening it and you had gotten home and…”

  “Stop!” I said and reached for anothe
r doughnut.

  Darlene said, “Poor Miss Merkle. She wasn’t the nicest person in the world, but nobody deserves that. I wonder who put her in there.”

  “Me, too!” Kylie said. “Imagine living your last moments inside a sofa bed.”

  “I think she was already dead when they hid the body there,” I said. I didn’t mention blood or the slice of pizza. I didn’t know if Kylie had noticed them, and I didn’t want her to faint again. “I didn’t see her umbrella or her bag.”

  Darlene pondered this.

  “And I certainly hope it wasn’t the Dabney boy,” she said. “If there was anybody who couldn’t stand Meredith Merkle, it was that whole Dabney family. Kate, you weren’t here when they went before the Board of Education and tried to get her fired and everything because she flunked their son—what’s his name…”

  “David,” Kylie said with a mouthful of doughnut. “The dad is Councilman Dave Dabney. The son is David.

  “Right,” Darlene said. “Anyway, he never was good in school. I heard he had trouble getting through high school, but he did some summer school after his junior year, and wound up with a C average so they were counting big time on his graduation and then she flunked him in senior English, and he couldn’t graduate with his class.”

  “Couldn’t he have gone to summer school?” I asked.

  “Well, it got worse,” Darlene said. “He got drunk on the night all his friends graduated and totaled the brand new car they had gotten for him. He was in the hospital a while. I don’t think he ever got his high school diploma. I know he didn’t go off to college. He’s just been goofing around ever since.”

  “Well, that seems like a lot to blame Miss Merkle for,” I said.

  Kylie reached for another doughnut. She was getting back to normal now, and normal for Kylie means taking charge.

  “There’s no reason she would go to their house,” she said, “and if he killed her, it wouldn’t make sense for him to hide the body right there in the sofa bed.”

  “Could it have been an accident?” Darlene asked.

  “Mom!” Kylie said. “Have you ever heard of somebody winding up dead inside a sofa bed by accident?”