A Body in the Trunk

Chapter One

Chapter One

Myrtle and her friend Miles sat quietly in Myrtle’s living room. Their taped soap opera, Tomorrow’s Promise, had just finished, but neither of them felt inclined to get up from their seats. And, certainly, there was no real need to get up. It was the end of the day and they’d just eaten popcorn and cheese and crackers for supper while watching their show. There was a pitcher of lemonade handy in case they got thirsty. And there was absolutely nothing pressing to do. Or, actually, anything to do at all.

Myrtle tilted her head to one side. “I hear a lawnmower. I wonder who’s mowing his grass now.”

Miles listened thoughtfully for a minute. “It sounds like someone at Jim’s house.”

“No, it wouldn’t be Jim. Jim’s grass was mowed a couple of days ago. Must be Perry or Tom,” said Myrtle.

Pasha, her feral black cat, gave Myrtle an annoyed look, stretched, gave a tremendous and pointed yawn, and leapt out an open window.

“Even Pasha thinks we’re boring,” said Miles.

“We are boring! There’s nothing to do in this town. And that makes me feel restless,” said Myrtle.

Miles gave Myrtle a wary look. When Myrtle felt restless, disaster frequently followed.

“Maybe I should cook something for supper,” said Myrtle.

Now Miles looked even more wary, as if this was the anticipated disaster. “We just ate a ton of popcorn. Besides, it’s summer. It’s not exactly the best time of year to turn on the oven. You’ve got some perfectly ripe tomatoes in your backyard. You should simply make a tomato sandwich for supper.”

“I’m out of mayo,” said Myrtle, looking dissatisfied. “It’s no good eating a tomato sandwich without mayonnaise.”

“I’ll bring some over,” said Miles quickly. The last thing that Miles wanted was for Myrtle to try to cook dinner and invite him to be her guest. Or, rather, victim.

Myrtle’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of mayo do you have?”

“Hellman’s. It’s excellent with tomato sandwiches,” said Miles.

Myrtle snorted. “Well, I can tell you lived in Atlanta for far too many years. You can’t eat a tomato sandwich without Duke’s Mayonnaise. For heaven’s sake, everybody knows that.”

“I didn’t realize I was speaking with a tomato sandwich connoisseur,” said Miles a bit coldly.

Myrtle ignored him. “You know, I have an idea for an activity tomorrow. We can go donate those old clothes and things that I’m giving away.”

“Big thrills in Bradley, North Carolina,” said Miles dryly. “A visit to Goodwill.”

“There are worse ways to spend a day.” Myrtle was sounding cross now. “Think about the soap opera we just watched with Edwardo stuck in a car trunk. That would be a rough day. Perhaps you should have stayed in Atlanta if you wanted entertainment.”

“At least I’m adjusting to life in Bradley better than our new neighbor,” said Miles. “He has this tortured look on his face whenever I see him.”

“Hm. That’s the one in the old Terry house, right? Is it just him, or his wife too?” asked Myrtle.

“His name is Neil. And yes, he is married. Let’s see. What was her name?” asked Miles. Then his face brightened. “Clara.”

“Hopefully he’ll settle in as time goes on. Now, back to the Goodwill trip. I think we should go ahead and load the car now,” said Myrtle.

“Since you don’t own a car, I presume you mean that you want me to load my car,” said Miles. “But since I didn’t park here, I’d rather not do that until tomorrow.”

“But you did park here, remember? We ran an errand before we came back here.”

Miles said, “Oh, that’s right. I’d somehow forgotten the scintillating trip to the drugstore to pick up my allergy medicine before coming here.” He sighed and slowly stood up. “All right. Where are the clothes and things?”

“Oh, I can help you, Miles. I simply didn’t want to do it all myself.” Myrtle stood up and stretched to her full, nearly-six-foot height. “It’s all in my room.”

“Myrtle, you won’t be able to carry things and hold your cane at the same time.” Miles looked pointedly at the cane propped on the chair next to Myrtle.

“I can walk without the cane. You know that! It’s practically just a fashion accessory.”

Miles sighed again and followed Myrtle. They carried out several bags and boxes to Miles’s car.

“Where did all this stuff come from, anyway?” asked Miles, panting a bit by the third trip. “I don’t remember your having an extensive wardrobe that needed to be culled.”

“Red offered to bring things out of the attic,” said Myrtle with a nonchalant shrug. She and her son, Red, had a sometimes-combative relationship and it wasn’t easy to directly praise him. “There was stuff up there from thirty years ago. I either can’t wear it now or I shouldn’t wear it now. One’s couture choices in your fifties can be rather different than your choices in your eighties. It’s amazing how many women don’t seem to realize that.”

Miles raised his eyebrows. “That was very helpful of Red to clear out your attic for you. Is that perhaps the reason why the gnomes in your front yard suddenly ended up back in the shed?”

Whenever Red drove Myrtle especially crazy, she pulled out her large and ever-growing collection of garden gnomes. Red had no fondness for the gnomes and, seeing as how he lived across the street, displaying them helped Myrtle demonstrate that Red had annoyed her.

“It was more to give the poor gnomes a reprieve. With Red’s obstreperous behavior lately, the little guys were spending far too much time in the front yard. And sunlight can be so damaging, you know.”

Miles’s phone rang in a shrill, high-pitched tone and he jumped. “I must change that ringtone. It scares me to death.”

“Who is it?” asked Myrtle with curiosity. “One of your lady friends?”

“I don’t have any lady friends. As you well-know,” said Miles stiffly.

“That’s right—you just have a gaggle of admirers,” said Myrtle. She watched as he glanced at his phone and made a face. “It’s Georgia.”

Myrtle smiled at him. “Isn’t that nice? You’ve always had something of a fascination with Georgia.”

“Only because she reminds me so much of someone I was in Vietnam with. And get any thoughts of romance out of your head. Georgia is very likely calling me on book club business,” said Miles with a sigh as he shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“Why on earth is that?”

Miles said, “They appear to be having trouble understanding this month’s selection.”

Myrtle blinked. “Trouble with The Mayor of Casterbridge? Why on earth would they struggle with that book? It’s straightforward enough.”

“Apparently not. And, since it was my choice for the month, they seem to think they should call me to ask me questions about it.”

Myrtle snorted. “I can’t believe it. There’s nothing challenging about Thomas Hardy. If they want a real challenge, they should pick up some William Faulkner. They’d really struggle through that. Or James Joyce. I suspect it’s all just a ploy to talk with you on the phone.”

“They said the book’s language is archaic,” said Miles with a shrug.

“Archaic? For heaven’s sake. It’s practically modern fiction,” said Myrtle, shaking her head.

“I doubt that 1886 technically qualifies as modern,” remarked Miles dryly.

Myrtle was about to engage in a spirited rebuttal of that point when she stopped talking and peered down the street. “Isn’t that the woman we were just talking about? Didn’t you decide her name was Clara?”

Miles put the remaining bags into his car. “Clara. It looks as if she needs some help.”

Clara did appear in dire need of help. She was hurrying down the street toward them, wearing a worried expression on her face.

Myrtle muttered, “I’d better grab my cane.”

“I thought it was a mere fashion accessory,” said Miles.

“It also makes an excellent weapon. Perhaps there are intruders that we need to eliminate, Miles.” She hurried off and was back in less than a minute and just when Clara finally reached Myrtle’s house.

“Hi, I’m Clara,” said the woman in a rush. She was a somewhat plump woman with blonde hair with roots showing.

“I’m Myrtle,” said Myrtle. “And I think you’ve met Miles.”

Clara nodded a greeting at Miles and then quickly said, “Have you seen Neil? My husband? He hasn’t gotten back from work yet.”

Miles glanced at his watch. “Maybe he got held up at the office? It really isn’t very late—only seven o’clock.”

Clara shook her head impatiently. “The problem is that he was quite insistent that he was coming home earlier today. He’s not answering his cell phone either, and he always has his phone with him.”

Miles seemed inclined to offer another excuse for the errant husband, but Myrtle broke in. “We’ll help you look for him. Miles can drive us.”

Miles shot a look at Myrtle.

Clara managed to give them both an anxious smile. “That would be great. I’m too keyed up to drive anywhere. Neil was driving a blue sedan. He was wearing a light-blue button-down shirt and a suit. I know you probably only met him a couple of times—he’s thin and a little short. In his mid-forties, like me.”

Miles added, “And he has a goatee, doesn’t he?”

“That’s right,” said Clara as she opened the door to the back seat of Miles’s car.

“It’ll be better if you sit in the front,” said Myrtle. “It should be easier for you to spot him that way.”

Clara hesitated, looking at Myrtle’s cane and Myrtle’s white hair.

“I’ll be perfectly fine in the back seat,” said Myrtle, a bit imperiously. She didn’t like her age to be viewed as an infirmity.

Miles started driving. “Where does Neil work again?”

“He’s the branch manager at the bank. Not the one downtown; the one that’s on the way out of town,” said Clara.

It started to rain and Miles looked even tenser than he did already. “Rain,” he said grimly, as if Myrtle and Clara couldn’t see it for themselves.

“This car appears to be all-weather,” said Myrtle. “And I’m sure that you can drive in rain just as easily.”

Fortunately, for Miles’s nerves, the rain stopped not long after it started. He drove even more cautiously than usual as the sky grew darker. There was no sign of Neil’s sedan.

When they reached the factory that was near the bank, Miles slowed down. There were more employees of the factory than there was parking so both sides of the road were packed with parallel parked vehicles.

“Maybe you should stop the car, Miles,” said Myrtle. “We need to really look at these cars. Unless Neil’s car really stands out, Clara.”

Clara hesitated. “Well, it’s a nice car. Pretty expensive, I mean.”

Miles obediently stopped the car and peered around him. “I don’t know how we’re going to pick his car out of all of these. And I’m not so sure about stopping in the middle of the road.”

“Don’t be silly, Miles. No one is anywhere around and the shift isn’t over at the factory,” said Myrtle.

“Thank heaven for small favors,” muttered Miles.

Myrtle said, “Oh, there! Is that it? A car that’s missing a tire. Neil must have had a flat and gone to get help.”

It wasn’t just any blue sedan, noted Myrtle. She didn’t know much about cars, but she knew this was a very expensive car. A luxury sedan.

Clara frowned. “But why wouldn’t he answer my calls? Why didn’t he use his phone to call for help? And why couldn’t he just change the tire, himself?”

Miles cleared his throat and said, “In my experience, these cell phones have all sorts of issues. Sometimes the battery runs out really quickly. Maybe it was simply a dead phone. And maybe he didn’t want to get his suit dirty by changing a tire.”

Clara persisted. “But why didn’t we pass him on the way into town? Wouldn’t he have walked there to find a mechanic?”

Myrtle said, “Perhaps we should take a look at the car.”

Miles turned around and gave Myrtle a worried glance. Maybe he was starting to get that same ominous feeling that Myrtle had.

Miles drove a short distance away, cautiously parallel parking between two other cars. Then Myrtle and Miles got out of the car.

“I’m going to try to call him again,” said Clara. “Maybe he was working on the car when I tried reaching him and the phone was left in the car.”

As Myrtle and Miles approached the sedan, they could hear a cell phone ringing. They glanced at each other and then peered into the front seat. There was a phone sitting in a cup holder, ringing merrily.

“Look,” said Myrtle, walking around to the other side of the car. “There’s a tire iron here and the flat tire.”

Miles said with a frown, “That’s odd. He struck me as the kind of man who could easily handle a flat tire. He clearly started changing it—suit or not. Why didn’t he finish the job?”

Myrtle said quietly, “Miles, you know what we need to do? We need to look in the trunk.”

Miles recoiled. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You’re only thinking that because we saw a body in someone’s trunk on the soap opera today. This is real life.”

Myrtle opened the driver’s side door and popped the trunk lid. “Then I suppose we should prove me wrong.”

Miles took a deep breath and he and Myrtle walked around to the trunk. Myrtle took a couple of tissues from her large pocketbook and carefully slid the latch and pulled open the trunk.

They looked in the trunk and then looked at each other. Then Myrtle pushed the trunk closed again.