My friend and mentor, Les, is fond of telling me that I have to be careful what I pray for. “God just might give it to you,” he says. Always with one eyebrow raised, like who knew what horrific pandemonium would inevitably ensue if God gave me exactly what I requested for a change. His ways were above my ways and all that.
But I didn’t think even a God who works in mysterious ways would send a dead body to fulfill my request that he help me stick to my diet.
Excuse me. Strat-EAT-Gic Plan. In Fat Fighters we were fined two units every time we said the “D” word. See, I had prayed for help not half an hour earlier, asking God to give me strength, willpower, discipline, a wired-shut jaw, anything to help me lose weight. Then I had driven straight to Sonic. It had been that kind of day. I knew I wasn’t supposed to turn to food to relieve stress, but since I could no longer turn to alcohol, drugs, or wildly promiscuous behavior, that left either violence or fried foods. So you can see how a double meat, double cheese burger with extra mayo and jumbo fries was actually a fairly sensible option.
I scrubbed my face with my hands and tried to convince myself that I deserved to be sitting there (at Sonic, America’s Drive-In, where roller-skating carhops will bring your 237 grams of fat directly to your car window! You don’t even have to get out from behind the wheel! I had no reason to feel guilty. I’d been pretty good, considering...well, considering how bad I usually was. I’d lost four pounds in the five weeks since my high school buddy Trisha and I had joined Fat Fighters.
Yes, I’d hoped to lose twenty. Or thirty. But four was nothing to sneeze at. My pants were still too tight, but at least I could sit down without feeling like I was going to sever an internal organ. This trip to Sonic was my first real binge. Then again, this was the first time a) my little dog Stump had coughed up something bizarrely shaped and of unidentifiable origin on my kitchen floor, b) I’d been bitten by a saber-toothed Pomeranian at work, and c) I had looming date with the husband. (That last didn’t sound like a big deal for most people, but...well, I wasn’t most people. Until the last few months, I thought Tony and I were divorced. Turns out, not so much.)
I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat, wishing the carhop would hurry up with my food. If I had too much time to think, I would freak out about the weekend with Tony, what I was going to wear, what I was going to say. Would he try to kiss me, for heaven’s sake? If he did, how would I react? What was the protocol here? I mean, he was my husband.
I also reflected on the unfairness of a world that had no sympathy when you say you’ve been bitten by a Pomeranian. Those suckers might be small, but their teeth were like rattlesnake fangs.
And Stump. Good Lord. What could she eat that would look like that when it came back up?
I heard a rumble and looked up to see the garbage truck in the alley behind Sonic. I watched idly, my mind whirling as the metal dumpster rose into the air and spewed its contents into the truck, much as Stump had done just that morning on the kitchen linoleum. Crushed cardboard boxes, black trash bags, various papers and cups. Dead body.
I actually sat there for a few seconds, still worried about Stump, before it dawned on me that the dumpster behind Sonic is not our normal way of disposing of dead bodies. What my reaction lacked in timing, it made up for with intensity.
“Hey!” I shouted. Because that always helps.
Unfortunately, the carhop had just skated up to my window with my order, and she thought I was yelling at her. She jerked back, and my french fries went flying.
“Sorry!” I yelled. Because I was in yelling mode now. “Dead body! In the dumpster!”
She was too busy backing away, wide-eyed, to see the bigger picture.
The truck dropped the dumpster back down with a hollow thump and trundled on down the alley.
I cranked the engine over and swung out of the space. I should have looked back; I almost ran down another carhop behind me, but luckily she was pretty quick with a dive. I steered with one hand and dug through my purse for my phone with the other. I bounced the car out of the parking lot and spun around into the alley at the same time my hand closed around my phone. I charged my rusty little bucket down the rutted dirt alley while I punched in 9-1-1.
“I need to report a dead body.” Wow. Déjà vu. It was, what, three months since I had called the same number with the exact same message? Maybe I ought to put 9-1-1 on speed dial.
I was proud of myself, however, for not bursting into hysterical laughter this time. I had not wanted to do that last time, but I couldn’t help it. I have issues.
It took a few attempts for me to convey to the dispatcher what was going on, and even then I don’t think she completely understood the gravity of the situation. She seemed entirely too calm when she said, “Police are on their way.”
But the truck was now stopped at another dumpster, so I hung up and jumped out of the car. I leaped onto the running board and shouted “Hey!” at the driver, slapping the window a few times.
He looked much the same as the carhop had when I’d shouted at her.
“You have a dead body in your truck,” I mouthed through the closed window.
He stared at me.
“You have. A dead body. In your truck.” I motioned for him to roll the window down.
After a second he leaned over, slowly, and inched it down, eyes wide.
“I was watching when you emptied the dumpster behind Sonic. There was a dead body in it.”
He looked confused. “There’s a dead body at Sonic?”
“No,” I said. I did not say, “you idiot,” because I was trying very, very hard not to be that kind of person anymore. I took a deep breath. “There was a dead body in the dumpster. Now it’s in your truck.”
He threw the truck into park and said, “You’re kidding.”
“Ummm, no.” Hopefully when I made jokes I was funnier than that.
I stepped back as he flung open his door and jumped up onto the seat. He braced his hand on the top of the cab and leaned, stretching on tiptoe to peer into the big bed that held all the garbage.
I circled the truck in time to see him inching, toes barely clinging to a metal seam along the side of the truck, toward the big bed. He held onto a pipe with one hand and leaned to look in. “Are you sure? I don’t see – oh. Oh, good Lord. Oh, man.”
He let go of the bar and dropped to the ground. “I saw a foot. Oh, man. Oh, man.” His eyes rolled back in his head, and he staggered.
“I called the police. Hey, don’t –” But it was too late. He keeled over.
I was holding his head in my lap and giving his cheek increasingly firmer “pats” when I heard sirens. The guy blinked a couple of times and looked up at me. “Oh man,” he said again.
“Yes, I know.” I scooted him off my lap and stood to wave at the squad car that was slowly making its way down the alley. I was happy to see a patrol officer I didn’t recognize get out and do the cop-swagger toward me.
I knew it wouldn’t be Bobby Sloan because he was a detective now. He had shown up at my last Finding-Of-The-Body, but that was a fluke. It could have been Watson, another cop with whom I was on more-familiar-than-was-comfortable terms. I would prefer not to see Watson again, and I was sure the feeling was mutual.
This guy looked young, probably just out of the academy. He was Hispanic, medium build with buzzed hair. He eyed the driver and me so suspiciously that I started to feel guilty, which was annoying.
He did just what the driver had done, hopping first onto the seat, then inching out far enough to see what the driver had seen.
I stood beside the alley and peered up at him. It was as if I could tell exactly the moment he realized he was going to have to climb into that truck to make sure the person attached to that foot was really dead. His mouth turned into a grim line and he looked down at us. “Stay right there,” he ordered.
With a quick shake of his head, he hoisted himself up and straddled the side of the truck, then dropped into the truck.
The driver kept looking up at the opening of the hauler, as if the foot he saw was going to pop up any second.
After about thirty seconds the patrolman hauled himself back out. I guess it didn’t take very long to establish the facts and get the heck out of there.
Bobby Sloan pulled up in a white sedan.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said as he got out.
I shrugged. “Wish I was.”
He walked up and squeezed my shoulder. “Salem Grimes. Reporting a dead body. Now here’s something you don’t see every day. Every week, maybe, but not every day.”
“I was minding my own business, Bobby, I swear. I just looked up and saw the body falling out of the dumpster. It was my civic duty to report it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and wished I’d been able to lose those thirty pounds already. I was never comfortable around Bobby, but he’d kissed me the last time I saw him, and I still didn’t know why. The moment he stepped into the alley, that kiss was all I could think about.
Bobby ordered me to stay put and went over to talk to the patrolman. I dropped onto the ground at the edge of the alley, beside the truck driver. He sat with his legs in front of him, arms on his knees, and shook his head every few seconds.
“Kind of weird, isn’t it?” I asked, feeling sorry for him. The sight of that limp body tumbling into the truck ran over and over through my head, but, to be fair, the guy did look worse than I felt.
He turned to me. “You don’t think there’s any way I’d get fired for this, do you?”
“Why on earth would you get fired?”
He shook his head again. “I don’t know, b ut I keep getting fired, and I was really hoping this job would last a while. I don’t really know where I’d go from here.”
I knew what he meant. Probably from driving a dumpster truck there weren’t many places to go. “I work in a dog grooming shop. We’re always looking for people to bathe the dogs. Maybe I could train you.”
“I’d have to be trained to bathe a dog?”
“You’d be surprised.” I stood and brushed the dried grass of my jeans. I held out my hand. “Come on. Let’s just walk down to the other dumpster and back. Get some air.” That truck was starting to reek.
And okay, here was the really bad part: I began to feel kind of sad about my double meat cheeseburger and fries. That was bad; I knew it was bad. More proof – as if I needed it – that I’d replaced my addiction to alcohol with an addiction to food. Out of the frying pan and into the fat pants. On the upside, I hardly ever picked fights with total strangers after I had a stupendous-size order of fries and a king size Snickers bar. I was usually too sluggish.
Bits of trash littered the alley, and I realized that some of it could be evidence. “Some of this stuff could have blown out of the truck.” I toed what looked like a cash register receipt.
“Yeah, we leave crap all over town,” the driver said. “It blows out all over the place.”
We walked slowly up and down the alley, but I had no way of knowing what was a clue and what was just regular old garbage. I saw two crushed soft drink cups, four more receipts, a diaper, a torn piece of orange t-shirt with “acon” written in a font that looked like bacon, and a Nerf bullet.
“That guy was naked,” I said, bending to pick up the fabric. “I wonder if this was his shirt.”
“Hey!”
I sprang back like I’d seen a snake.
The patrolman stomped down the alley toward us. “I told you two to stay beside the truck. Don’t touch anything out here. We have to get forensics out here.”
“We were just looking for clues,” the driver said. He pointed to the Nerf bullet. “Could be something.”
The patrolman jerked his head toward the truck. “Get back over there.”
“Grump,” I said under my breath as we walked back. I had mixed emotions – I wasn’t sure if I should be upset or relieved that I had not ordered bacon on that burger, since it had ended up on the ground anyway. I wondered if I could go back and tell the manager what happened. Maybe they would give me a free Sympathy Bacon Burger, like a hero, kind of.
But then again maybe they wouldn’t, since I’d almost mowed down one of their carhops. Probably better to go to a different Sonic from now on.
Bobby finished talking to new people who had shown up and came over to me and the driver. “Tell me again what you saw.”
I took a deep breath. “I was sitting at Sonic, waiting for my order, and I saw the truck pull up. The dumpster lifted up and the body came tumbling out with all the trash. So I followed him down the alley to tell him.” I jerked a thumb toward the truck driver. “That’s all I did.”
He stuck his hand out to shake Bobby’s. “Dale Coffee. Nice to meet you, sir.”
“Dale, I’m Bobby Sloan. Sorry we have to meet under these circumstances.”
“Me too,” Dale said sincerely.
“Tell me what you saw.”
Bobby had on his cop face. The thing about Bobby is, he’s always had a cop face. Maybe that was one of the things that fascinated me about him.
––––––––
It was only fear of what else God would throw at me that kept me from going back to Sonic for my burger. I had several heads of broccoli at home and a Fat Fighters recipe that promised a dish so good, “it’s like crack!” I had serious doubts about that, but maybe I wouldn’t have to gag it down.
Viv’s Caddy was parked on the concrete pad beside my trailer at Trailertopia. Irrationally, I thought at first it was a coincidence that she showed up on the same day I found a (another!) dead body.
She trotted out onto the front porch as I was coming up the steps. “You found another one! Way to go!” She pumped her wrinkly old-lady fists in the air.
“You are such a weirdo,” I said as I trudged past her and into the house. “A, it’s not a celebration and B, how did you know? It happened, like, forty-five minutes ago.”
“Police scanner,” she said as she followed me cheerfully back into the trailer. Viv was retired, rich off the efforts of husband number six or seven – maybe both – and had nothing else to do but look for trouble. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. Some naked guy.” I dropped into the cracked recliner and hauled my dog, Stump, into my lap. “Did you hork up anything else disgusting while I was gone?”
“She’s good,” Frank said. Frank was my next door neighbor and Stump’s babysitter. He rarely looked away from the television, but was able to carry on a decent conversation anyway, when he didn’t lapse into Spanish. “She did try to eat some pecans from the backyard but I stopped her.”
“Stump,” I chided her, scratching her ears. “There are no pecan trees around here. If you found a pecan it must have been brought here by a rat or something. Do you want to be eating rat leftovers?”
“You’re better than that, Stump,” Frank said as he flipped through channels.
I heaved a deep sigh and leaned back in the chair, wondering if it would be feasible to just stay there until tomorrow. Now that the shock was wearing off, I felt a little bit traumatized. I didn’t like this finding dead bodies thing. It freaked me out.
Then I felt guilty for being so self-involved when someone else had just lost their life and a family somewhere was mourning the loss of a loved one. Trauma and guilt, and I couldn’t drink. I was closing in on two hundred days sober.
I shouldn’t have tried to drown my emotions in fat and carbs. If I had to endure one more weigh-in day with Trisha squealing about her two and three pound losses while I got a, “That’s another point two for you, Salem! High five, Sister Fighter!” with the overly enthusiastic smile from our Fat Fighters team leader, I was going to punch more than the air.
“Some naked guy, huh?” Viv dropped onto the ottoman across from me.
“Naked dead guy,” I said. “Don’t sound so intrigued.”
Viv’s age was unclear, mainly because she had turned out to be a pathological liar. She pretty much made things up as she went along. But she was old enough to look eighty-something and to live in Belle Court Retirement Center. She just wasn’t old enough to realize she was an old lady. Still, for her, maybe she was close enough to death herself that “dead” in a guy wasn’t the deal breaker it was for the rest of us.
“Naked dead guy in a dumpster,” Viv said, looking contemplative. “You don’t see that every day.”
“Not every day,” Frank agreed.
“Let’s make a game plan.” She reached into her $700 designer handbag and pulled out a flip notebook. “First, we have to find out who it was.”
I groaned. Viv and I had accidentally solved a murder case a few months back, and ever since then she believed we were some kind of crime-fighting duo. She had ordered a private detective certificate online and had cards printed up. The cards had red lipstick and handcuffs on the front, so the receiver couldn’t be sure if he was getting an offer for PI services or a very disappointing threesome.
“I don’t think we need to get involved in this,” I said. I hauled myself out of the chair and dug the broccoli out of the crisper. I found the Fat Fighters magazine and turned to the crack broccoli recipe, doing my best to keep an open mind. “This has nothing to do with us. At least with Lucinda Cruz we had a reason to get involved. We were helping Tony.”
Tony. Tony Solis, who had been my teenage husband a million years ago, and the man I thought of as my ex-husband for the past decade. But then I happened to find a dead girl, and Tony had been accused of killing her. In the ensuing investigation I’d learned that we never actually got divorced. So I was a married woman. And Tony and I had a “date” in three days.
I felt suddenly light-headed and pulled up a barstool to the kitchen counter for balance. Thinking about Tony, and thinking about whatever was or was not going to happen on that date, was way more disconcerting than thinking about dead bodies and crime fighting.
“It was good to help Tony,” Viv said. “I like helping people, don’t you? Someone here needs our help.”
I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the recipe. I was supposed to peel the “woody stems” from the broccoli. I turned the broccoli back and forth. They did look like little trees, but still. Woody stems?
I decided maybe a murder investigation was just the thing to take my mind off my complete neurosis about Tony. “You might have a point,” I allowed.
“I always have a point,” Viv said. “What are you doing with that?”
“I’m roasting it,” I said. “It’s supposed to make it like crack.”
“Crack doesn’t taste good.”
I gave her a look.
“I assume.” she said. “I mean, why would it taste good? It’s crack.”
“I think the point is, it doesn’t taste like broccoli.”
“I am unclear on the purpose of buying broccoli when you don’t like the taste of broccoli.”
“That’s because you’ve never been a fat woman trying to squeeze into a dress for a date with the husband she hasn’t dated in ten years.”
Uh-oh. That reminded me that I also had to buy a dress. I was seeing spots now. I put the knife down and bent over. I tried to put my head between my knees because that was what you were supposed to do when you felt faint, but I was too fat to get all the way there. I got my head near my knees. Near-ish. “Thinking about Tony is freaking me out,” I said. “Let’s talk some more about the murder.”
“Atta girl. First we have to identify the victim.”
“You know,” I gasped. It was hard to breathe, bent over like that. I couldn’t help but think I was doing it wrong. I lifted up a little and looked at Viv. “We don’t know for sure it’s even a murder.”
“Yeah, some guy might have just gotten naked, crawled into the dumpster and died on purpose.”
“He might have been wasted or something. Overdosed. But yeah, it was probably a murder. What did they say on the scanner?”
“Oh, it was that guy that took Stump to the vet. Hawkins?”
“Watkins?”
“Yeah, Watkins. He called it in to Bobby. He said, ‘Your girlfriend is at it again.’”
I jerked my head up. “He said what? He called me Bobby’s girlfriend?” More spots. More freaking out. I tried to remember if Bobby had been giving off any I-think-of-you-as-my-girlfriend vibes while we were in the alley with the garbage truck. All I had picked up on was an I-think-of-you-as-a-pain-in-my-ass vibe, but those weren’t mutually exclusive, necessarily. “Was it, like, a joke? Was he laughing?”
“I don’t know; it was the police scanner. It was breaking up.”
“What did Bobby say?”
“I don’t remember.”
I leaped up and grabbed her by her bony old lady arms. “Viv, think! What did he say?”
She pulled away and gave me a look that clearly said I was a maniac. “Something like, ‘You gotta be frigging kidding. God help me.’ Something along those lines.”
“But did he say anything about me being his girlfriend? This is important!”
Viv studied me carefully. “You need to get a grip.”
I groaned and dropped back to the stool. “I know. I’m not going to think about that anymore, either.” The list of things I didn’t want to deal with was growing.
I heard a knock at the door at the same instant Frank said, “Some dude is here.”
“Is it Tony or Bobby?” I asked. Well, screeched. Because if it was either one, I planned to pretend no one was home. Even though the door was open and the “dude” could see us walking around inside.
“No, some skinny dude.” I had known Frank long enough to know that it wasn’t laziness or rudeness that kept his own skinny butt sitting in my recliner instead of getting up to answer the door. The thought had simply not occurred to him. Frank was one of the best spectators I had ever known.
I wiped the little broccoli bits off my hands and went to the door.
“How did you find me?” I asked Dale as I answered the door.
“That cop? He gave me your address.”
“Bobby, the detective?” That didn’t sound like him, giving my address to strange guys.
“No, the uniform cop. He said he knew you would be good with it.”
Watkins. Now, that did sound like him. He was getting back at me because Bobby made him take Stump to the vet when she’d been hurt during our last foray into crime solving.
Dale lifted his hands. “I knew it. They fired me.”
“You’re kidding! Why would they fire you for something that was clearly not your fault?”
“It’s a bunch of political BS. They’ve been looking for a reason pretty much since the day I came. They said I didn’t follow procedure –” He made air quotes. “I didn’t report the incident –” more air quotes – “correctly, which is an automatic write-up, and unfortunately it was my third write-up, so they had no choice –” Man, this guy liked his air quotes – “But to let me go. Frigging political BS is all it is. Man, whatever you’re cooking smells delicious.” He rubbed his skinny belly.
I looked around, wondering what he could possibly smell, since the broccoli was still raw and on the counter.
“You don’t mind if I stay for dinner, do you? Mainly I just need someone to hang out with tonight, because this whole thing has me kind of freaked out.”
“Sure,” I said, remembering the way the poor guy had keeled over in the alley.
I went into the kitchen and leaned close to Viv’s ear. “We have to be nice to this guy; he’s had a hard time of it.” Sometimes Viv needed an explicit reminder to be nice.
I would set a good example, I thought, although I really had no idea what I was going to feed him. I hoped this was one of those times when just being around other people – even people who fed you broccoli – was better than being alone. It sucked, being fired. I knew. It had happened to me more than once. Of course, with me it was usually my fault and not just political BS.
I rummaged through cupboards and pulled out everything that was generally considered edible: half a box of dried spaghetti, a can of tuna, some chow mein noodles, and some saltines. I laid it all on the counter by the broccoli and opened the fridge, taking out another crown of broccoli, half a cucumber, and a jug of skim milk with about four ounces in the bottom. After some hesitation I left the tub of non-fat “butter” that I’d bought my first week at Fat Fighters, the one with only half a teaspoon gone from it. That stuff was disgusting, and it looked like my little pile of stuff didn’t need any more strikes against it.
I studied the array and prayed for a miracle.
“We’re not eating that,” Viv announced, picking up her pink-jewel-encrusted smartphone. “I’ll call Little Ling’s.”
I said another prayer, this one of gratitude for such a quick (and truly miraculous – Viv hardly ever offered to pay) response, and began putting all that crap back into place.
Viv ordered lo mein, moo shu, and fried rice. I did not once say, “Thanks, but I’ll eat my broccoli instead because I’m on a special Strat-EAT-Gic Plan.” I did not say, “Can we explore healthier alternatives?” I did not once look into my Fat Fighter materials to see just how many units were in lo mein so I could make an informed decision and plan the rest of my week accordingly. My Fat Fighters team leader would say that I had issues with speaking up for myself and that I needed to learn how to “put myself on the to-do list” and “make myself a priority.” Yeah, that was the issue, the reason I was having trouble losing weight: I was afraid of offending people. It was not that I jumped at the chance to eat something tasty and fattening and good, instead of that frigging broccoli.
“We need to talk to your boyfriend,” Viv said after the initial pandemonium of divvying up the food had passed. “He can share what he’s learned so far.”
I chewed on an egg roll and reflected that it must be nice to live in Viv’s delusional universe. “Bobby Sloan is not going to share what he’s learned. Not with us.”
“That detective guy is your boyfriend?” Dale asked, with entirely too much incredulity.
“Don’t look so shocked,” I said. “And no. He’s not.”
Although he had kissed me. I was 98 percent sure that had really happened. The fact was, I had been kind of whacked-out on trauma and pain meds at the time. Plus, Bobby and I had not spoken to each other once in the few months since, so there was room for just a smidge of doubt in my own mind. “He’s not my boyfriend, and he does not share. Bobby does not play well with others. So what’s Plan B?”
“Your reporter friend. She’ll have the inside scoop.”
Thinking of Trisha made me feel guilty for taking another bite of that egg roll, but somehow I managed. I didn’t particularly want to see Trisha, but only because I was mad at her for doing better at Fat Fighters than I was. She probably would have some inside information that she could share with us.
I checked the clock. She would be focused on getting the newscast ready. “I’ll call her after the late broadcast. And don’t call her a reporter. She’s an anchor, so I think that’s kind of an insult.”
Meanwhile the carbs, fat, and sodium from Little Ling’s were doing their job, soothing over my anxiety and numbing my emotions. I cleared dishes and was wondering if I could snatch the rest of the moo shu from Frank in time to have enough left over for lunch tomorrow, when I realized that Viv and Dale were engrossed in an intense discussion about the body in the dumpster, without me.
Dale dug a torn envelope from the stack of junk mail on my bar and started to sketch out plans.
“So first we have to determine the motive,” he said, scribbling on the envelope.
“Right. Who wanted this guy dead in a dumpster?” Viv narrowed her eyes and looked into the middle distance, as if the answer might possibly be hovering eighteen inches over my living room carpet.
“Sounds like revenge to me,” I piped up because it was the only thing I could think of. I never have liked being left out of stuff.
They ignored me.
“Once we’ve determined motive, next comes opportunity.”
“Why?” I asked, perhaps more irritably than was necessary. “Why does opportunity have to be next? It’s not like solving a murder is a neat three-step process where you just check off boxes, you know.”
I dropped onto the ottoman that sat crookedly between the two of them, three ripped soy sauce packets still in my hand.
Viv leaned over to see around me. “So we find out who was the last guy to see him alive,” she said. “And we work out from there.”
Dale nodded, jaw slightly open as if this was one of the single most brilliant things he’d ever heard. He scribbled some more on the envelope.
“What about known enemies?” I asked. “Police always ask about known enemies first. And spouses. Nine times out of ten, it’s the spouse.”
“Which is why I’ll never get married,” Frank said, still staring at the television.
“Got spouses already,” Dale said, not looking up from his scribbling.
Having had enough, I sighed and rose, then threw the packets in the waste basket and licked a rivulet of spilled soy sauce off the back of my hand. I might as well add a little water retention to the growing list of annoyances.
But what I’d said kept running through my head. Maybe there was a process that detectives followed to solve murders. Viv and I had solved one murder and a couple of petty crimes by watching reruns of Columbo and Matlock, but surely the real detectives had something a bit more structured. If it was to be found, it could be found by Google.
My crappy Internet service and even crappier computer, a hand-me-down from Les’ son, allowed me to search “murder solving,” “how to solve a murder” and “most likely to commit murder.” This last one sidetracked me to a high school reunion website that turned out to be a big time suck. It had a multiple choice questionnaire that I couldn’t pass up. I was “Most Likely to be Involved in a Sex Scandal with a Faculty Member.”
“Hey look,” Dale shouted when the teaser for the evening news came on, interrupting my “investigation.” “That’s my truck!”
We all stood (except Frank, of course) and edged closer to the TV. A picture popped up of the alley, cordoned off with yellow police tape. There were cops everywhere, and spectators in the background. Dale’s garbage truck still sat where he’d stopped it. I guess they were processing it for evidence.
“A disturbing discovery today in a mid-town garbage dumpster. Good evening, and thank you,” the anchor said, with his trademark solemn nod punctuating the words, “for joining us.”
“Police are at the scene of a disturbing discovery in the alley of the 3300 block of Avenue B, where a dead body was found this afternoon by a City of Lubbock sanitation employee,” Trisha said in her most professional voice.
“Ex-employee,” Dale said bitterly.
“The discovery was made around 4:30 this afternoon. Very little is known at this time, but sources say the person in the dumpster was male, and believed to be deceased when the dumpster was picked up by the truck. Lubbock PD has scheduled a news conference for 8:00 p.m. with more information. We will bring you more as it becomes available.”
They moved on to what would have been the biggest story of the day, sans a body-in-a-dumpster – a thunderstorm promising to build on the edge of the viewing area. My part of West Texas had been stuck in a drought for almost two years, and any hint of rain, no matter how remote, sent everyone into a breathless tizzy.
“Well crap,” Viv said. “She didn’t tell us any more than we already knew.”
“I’ll wait till the broadcast is over and then call Trisha. Patrice, I mean.” Trisha Thompson and I had grown up together in the neighboring small town of Idalou, Texas. She changed her name to Patrice Watson when she got married and started her career in broadcast news, but I was having a hard time making the name change. The best I had managed so far was to catch myself halfway through the name, so instead of “Patrice” it came out “Tri-patrice.”
Her co-anchor moved on to a story about a local guy who’d been missing for a couple of days.
“I saw this,” Frank said. “That guy took all the money and fleed. Fleeded.” He moved his lips silently a little, then stopped, apparently satisfied that he’d settled on the right word.
“Took all what money?”
“From that big fundraiser thing, you know the one for all the homeless people?”
I had seen something about that, but to tell the truth, I’m sometimes a little too wrapped up in my own drama to pay that much attention to what was going on in town. I knew the big national organization, Hope for Home, had been having their annual blow-out fundraiser. I knew because my boss’s grandson had been selling coupon books to a bunch of local bars, restaurants and golf courses. I didn’t play golf, I was on probation and not allowed to enter bars, and, of course, everything in every restaurant was deep fried, which wasn’t the optimum way to “Fight the Fat!” as we Fat Fighters cheered every week, making muscleman poses. I bought a stupid coupon book anyway. Because of course I did.
But now that Frank had reminded me, I remembered that the guy who was in charge of the whole shebang had disappeared Saturday afternoon, after the annual 5K “fun” run, which was the event that typically capped a week of various fund raising and awareness activities. It was a big deal because the same guy had been in charge of the event for the past seven or eight years, and this was the first hint of anything amiss. People were speculating that something awful had happened to him.
Dale waved a hand at the TV. “He’ll never be seen again. Now his secret’s out of the closet, he’s long gone. Can’t milk this town anymore so he needs to find a new crop of innocent people to fleece. Took the money and run is what he did.”
“Is this about that gay thing?” Viv asked.
“Damn straight,” Dale said, his jaw set. “They been taking our money and support for years, telling us it was for taking care of widows and orphans like the good Lord instructed us to do, but come to find out it was going to teach kids how to be homos.”
“Umm...what?” I asked. I felt like I’d missed something. “Hope for Home – ”
“Is a front for the liberal. Gay. Agenda!” Dale crossed his arms over his chest. “And this guy – ” He jabbed a hand toward the TV – “This guy’s been lying to us all for years. Turns out he’s as gay as the day is long.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, clearly expecting a response of shock and dismay. I just nodded contemplatively, though. I didn’t even know the guy, so I had a hard time feeling shocked about his sexual orientation, plus I have this innate stubbornness that makes me refuse to ever respond in the way that’s expected of me. Ever.
“That’s pretty gay,” Frank offered generously.
“Exactly.” Dale nodded. “Hey, I wonder if he’s the guy in the dumpster.” Then he laughed, like it would be the height of irony. “Maybe that’s why he was all naked and everything.”
“Naked and everything?” I asked. “Everything what?”
“You know, with no clothes,” Dale said, which I found to be very unsatisfactory, as elaborations went.
Tri-patrice had thrown the broadcast to a reporter, who was interviewing a bunch of people expressing shock and fear that something horrible had happened to the guy. The last guy they interviewed was kind of short, with black hair styled into a pseudo-Mohawk.
“Anyone who knows CJ knows that this is not him. He would not take off with the money. This is completely out of character for him. Hope for Home was his passion, and he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it. Those people who are saying he took the money and is lying on a beach somewhere – they don’t...” The guy’s voice cracked, and his blinked a few times. “They don’t know him like we do.”
The reporter, back in the newsroom now, said an estimated $70K had gone missing when CJ disappeared.
“That’s a nice chunk of dough,” Dale said.
I had to admit, it did seem like a stretch for the appearance of a dead body and the disappearance of a guy with a big chunk of money to be coincidental, but I found myself inexplicably reluctant to agree with Dale on anything.
In fact, I thought as I grabbed the cardboard box from Frank with a half-hearted, “You’re done, right?” and ignored his attempt at one last jab of the fork, I had a sudden urge to prove Dale wrong.
I tucked the moo shu into the fridge and promised I’d save it for the next day, then with a strong admonition to myself to ignore pop-ups and banner ads, I settled back behind the computer to do some more pointed investigation into this CJ guy. I could probably type in a few words and find some kind of smoking gun like an airplane ticket to Buenos Aires and a fat off-shore bank account, and a satellite picture of the guy wearing a fedora on the beach and smoking a big cigar. I mean, it was the age of you-can-find-anything-on-the-Internet. Surely I could find something to make Dale Coffee leave my trailer.
I didn’t remember the guy’s last name, so that was a bit of a stumble right out of the blocks. So I did a search on “CJ” + “Hope for Home” + “Lubbock” and came up with CJ Hardin. Browsing through the search results, a few things jumped out:
pediatric heart specialist
4th-generation West Texan
honoree for the Somebody-or-Other Award
sex scandal
secret double life
I did a couple more searches, using some of the key words I’d seen in the results. Between Monday and Friday of the previous week, I counted twelve stories about CJ Hardin, Hope for Home, and Friends of Joshua.
The past week had started off promisingly enough. On, Hardin had been the fair-haired child and had been enthusiastic about the upcoming week. He’d been the chairman of the Lubbock Hope for Home committee for eight years, and he’d “never been more excited” about what this national organization was doing. The mayor had officially declared the fourth week in September Hope for Home week (as had a number of other mayors across the country), and had exhorted everyone to do what they could to chip in. Monday through Wednesday had been what they called “Do Your Own Thing” days. People were encouraged to have car washes, lemonade stands, garage sales: anything to raise money for the cause. Thursday had been a big cookout and miniature golf competition, Friday was an adults-only casino night at a historic building downtown (this one made me lightheaded again, because that was the building where Tony and I planned to have our “date” this Friday, at a ceremony where Les would be getting an award) and Saturday morning had capped everything off with a 5K fun run. Funds had been gathered all week, and at the end of the race there was a huge picnic in the park and awards were given to the racers. Hardin had then shared how much money was raised and how many people were helped.
Hope for Home was a nationwide non-profit organization, with the lofty goal of ending homelessness in the United States. There were several programs within the organization, and even smaller organizations that received Hope for Home funds – local shelters, education centers, mental health services, rehab centers, etc. One of the receiving agencies was a group called Friends of Joshua, which had been started in the name of a teenager in the Midwest who had been kicked out of his house for refusing gay reparative therapy. He’d been living on the streets of Chicago when he had been jumped, beaten up, and killed by a group of people. The Friends of Joshua site said he’d been targeted specifically because he was gay.
The number one goal of Friends of Joshua was directly in line with Hope for Home, but their specific focus was on gay teenagers and young adults. Sixty-seven percent of homeless youth, the website said, were gay, bisexual or transgender. They were homeless because they’d either been kicked out of their homes or made to feel so unwelcome that they left on their own.
Hope for Home had supported Friends of Joshua for the past five years, and that information was available on their website for all to see. It wasn’t highlighted, but it was there. But a conservative-leaning magazine had “broken” the story, and it had been all over the news starting the past Wednesday. CJ had been asked to make a statement, and he had acknowledged that a portion of the proceeds that had been raised in Lubbock over the past five years had gone to some Friends of Joshua centers. A newly-formed chapter of FOJ was currently renovating an abandoned house for homeless youth in Lubbock and the surrounding communities.
I tried not to look at the comments on that. The unregulated comments sections of any website, I’d learned, was the place where good sense and kindness went to die. I told myself not to look, that it was just going to be depressing, but it was like watching a train wreck – I couldn’t not read a few of them.
“This clown tells us we’re helping single mothers, puts cute little snaggle-toothed kids on to tug at your heart strings and get you to donate, and then gives our money to a spoiled brat runaway who doesn’t want to live by his parents’ rules.”
“Well, Hope for Home has gotten their last dime from me, that’s for damn sure.”
“Hey, homo teenagers. Go home and keep it in your pants.”
“If they’re big enough to decide this is the way they want to live, they’re big enough to pay their own way.”
“I can’t wait to see what Matt Macon has to say about this.”
“Yet another case where the good intentions of the moral majority are siphoned off to benefit the gay agenda.”
“Whatever that means,” I muttered to myself. To be honest, my stance on the “gay agenda” was much like my stance on most agendas: I wasn’t sure where I stood. I was pretty sure that, as a Christian, I was supposed to stand somewhere. I was supposed to know, in fact. But I’d also been a Christian long enough to know that nothing was as cut and dried as everyone acted like it was.
What I was sure about, though, was that God was clear on us loving everyone and taking care of each other, so I had a hard time wrapping my head around anyone’s argument against Friends of Joshua. At first glance, it looked to me like they just wanted to get kids who were living under bridges into a safe place. It didn’t seem like a gay agenda to me. It seemed like a decent thing to do.
Still, I couldn’t help but think that Hope for Home had made a mistake in not being up front about the issue. Everyone involved had to know it would be a point of contention.
Hardin’s first responses to the questions about Friends of Joshua were fairly vague:
“Hope for Home funds many small organizations that directly address homelessness, and each one is carefully vetted to ensure that the organization’s mission and focus is in line with that of Hope for Home. Each receiving organization is listed on our website, with links to more information about each one. The information has always been available, and will always be available, to our donors.”
That had been Wednesday morning. By Thursday morning, the day of the cookout and mini-golf event, rancor had grown and Hardin had responded with more directness:
“Hope for Home funds many, many smaller organizations, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. We review each organization carefully, to ensure that the funds are going to organizations with a good track record of putting those funds to the most efficient and effective use. No one has a better track record than Friends of Joshua. Their overhead is among the lowest of the projects we fund. They’ve had the highest success rate in getting homeless teens off the street, into a safe environment, and on their way to being productive, self-supporting, and ultimately generous members of society who are passionate about giving back. Through organizations with such heart as Friends of Joshua, we can keep our most vulnerable citizens safe, and end the fear and hate that threaten the fabric of our society.”
There were lots and lots of comments about what constituted the correct “fabric of society,” and dire predictions about what acceptance of homosexuality as a valid “lifestyle” was going to do to that fabric. Hardin started becoming characterized as a pawn of the left, and a shill for whoever had the deepest pockets.
“His granddaddy’s got to be rolling in his grave right about now,” one comment read. “He would never of dreamed this day would come when his grandson would resort to brownnosing a bunch of homosexuals just to get some dollars.”
“This is what happens when we take prayer out of schools!” another commenter said.
I read back through the article again to see if I’d missed something heinous that was happening that couldn’t have happened sixty years ago. Nope, it was still just a group that wanted to get kids off the streets, from what I could see. Perhaps, sixty years ago, people knew the difference between “have” and “of,” but perhaps not.
Not all of the comments were negative.
“I don’t want kids sleeping on the streets, no matter what their sexual orientation is.”
“All you self-righteous jerks need to get a life.” Well, not negative toward Hardin, at any rate.
Then last Friday night, at the big casino night fundraiser, someone had seen Hardin and another man behind the building, caught them in a kiss, and posted a picture of it on the local NBC affiliate’s Facebook page. There had been 747 comments by 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning, and very few of them – from what I read, anyway; it got hard to slog through after the first few hundred – were not full of hate, disdain or infantile jokes.
“I can’t believe I let this pervert work on my son,” wrote HomeschoolMomofOneGreatBoy. “If I find out he’s done something to my kid, they’ll never even find enough of his body to bury.”
“It all makes sense now,” wrote another. “Now we see his true colors.”
“Hope for Home is changing its name to “Hope for Bone.”
The next morning, at the conclusion of the 5K race on Saturday, CJ Hardin publicly came out. I had to hand it to him – Lubbock wasn’t exactly the most progressive place in the world, and doing what he did took guts. He stood on stage and held hands with the guy with the pseudo-Mohawk, whom we’d just watch being interviewed about the disappearance of Hardin.
The Channel 11 website had a clip from his announcement. I clicked the arrow and waited forever for the video to load.
“I’m a grown man, raised in a loving family, fully stable and able to support myself. Still, coming out to my family was the most frightening thing I’ve ever done. I am blessed to have their continued love and support. I’m painfully aware that I’m in the minority on that score. So many of our gay brothers and sisters are coming to grips with their own sexuality in the midst of family conflict. When you support Hope for Home, you help them, too. The ones no one else wants to help. The ones who are viewed as acceptable losses. You save them. I thank you for your generosity.”
The Mohawk guy stepped up to the microphone and held up a V sign, then pumped his fist in the air. “No more will we tolerate the least of us being swept under the rug like a dirty secret. No longer is it acceptable to let the intolerant few bully around the rest of us. No longer! It ends now!”
Hardin looked a little embarrassed, but let the guy have his say and clapped when he was through. They walked down the steps together.
The video ended, and I sat back, tired and a little depressed that I hadn’t found any tickets to Buenos Aires or fat off-shore bank accounts. CJ Hardin very well could be the guy in the dumpster, and if he was, it looked like a hard job narrowing down who was mad enough to kill him.
Viv and Dale were still at it. Dale was walking back and forth in my living room, talking a lot of crap that might have made sense if I’d been in on the original conversation.
“ – harvesting organs to sell on the internet!” he said excitedly. “Maybe we could look at kidneys on eBay and stuff. See if there are any recent entries.”
Viv looked at me. “Yeah. Check eBay for kidneys.”
“I am not checking eBay for kidneys,” I said irritably. I suddenly wanted him gone. Wanted them all gone, in fact.
“I’m kind of tired,” I said. “I might go ahead and turn in.” It was dark outside. Once I’d quit drinking, I’d gotten into the habit of going to bed as early as I could, because that meant missing a big part of the time I wanted a drink.
Viv and Dale ignored me and went back to their discussion. “I wonder if organ harvesting rings post in local papers. You know, freshness probably counts for a lot in something like that.”
Viv got out her phone. “I can check the local paper on this.” She tapped a few times and then said, “I’m supposed to be able to, anyway.” She tapped a few more times.
I looked at Stump. Too bad I had not given her an egg roll. Cabbage did a number on her stomach, resulting in a fragrance strong enough to peel paint. Even if I gave her one now, it would take too long to work. I wanted the usurper out now.
The thought did give me an idea, though.
I stood and stretched, then winced and put a hand to my stomach. “Oh, no,” I said. I frowned, then slid my hand just a bit lower. “Oh, this is not good.”
“What’s wrong?” Dale asked.
“That moo shu pork doesn’t seem to be sitting very well.”
Viv’s eyes got wide.
I had recently learned that Viv had a fear of vomit that reached pathological proportions. I mean, let’s face it. No one likes to throw up (except Stump, apparently) but Viv had an actual phobia about it. A few weeks ago we’d been on a road trip out to Idalou and we’d passed a car stopped at the side of the road. Viv was positive they were pulled over because someone was carsick. She was so shaken she turned the car around in the middle of the road and drove us home. She turned the vents to inside-only air. She put antibacterial lotion on her hands three times, and rubbed some under her nose.
“You guys feel okay?” I asked, my brow furrowed. “Do you think the moo shu was bad?”
Viv’s eyes got even wider and she stood. “Oh, God. You’re not going to hurl, are you?”
I shook my head, but as unconvincingly as I could. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.” Then I cocked my head like I was listening to some internal warning. “There was some really nasty stomach bug going around at work last week.”
Viv started gathering her stuff.
“Flo said she was driving down Slide Road when her pastrami sandwich came up right in her lap. I’m pretty sure it’s not that, though.” Then I puffed my cheeks out like I was stifling a burp.
“I have to go.” Viv was already halfway to the door. I could only hope Dale would take her lead.
Frank, as he did in all other situations, lay in my recliner and watched like we were the most real – and most boring – of all reality shows.
Dale wasn’t moving fast enough to suit me. I moaned again and bent a little, grimacing.
“That’s a bummer,” he said, in what I supposed was meant to convey sympathy.
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I’m sure it won’t be like last time. Jeez-o-Pete, I don’t even want to talk about the last gastrointestinal episode I had. That was apocalyptic, let me tell you. I didn’t think that chair you’re sitting on would ever get clean.”
Still nothing. Good grief. Was I going to actually have to vomit on him to get him to leave?
I waited. Dale turned back to the television. “Hey, the news is over. You going to call your friend?”
I sighed. “Yeah,” I said darkly. I was not, of course. No way was I going to try and talk to Tri-patrice with Dale there. He’d be leaning over my shoulder, telling me what to say. I picked up my phone and pretended to punch in numbers. Then I hung it up and made one last-ditch effort.
“Dale, listen, if you have time before you go, could you do me a favor? I have something big and heavy that needs to be moved from one side of the yard to the other. Could you take care of that for me?”
Dale jumped up. “Man, it is late! I’d like to help, Salem, but I think we’re going to have to put that on hold for next time.”
Frank and I watched him go, and I leaned against the sofa for a while.
“You’re not that great a liar,” he said, eyes still focused on the program.
“I’m a bit out of practice,” I said. “Don’t forget to lock up,” I told him, unnecessarily, as I turned and headed for bed.