Excerpt: Poplar and Peppermint

Chapter Three
Bodies in the Nursery

2108 Magnolia Drive was a decent-sized plot of land in the middle of a smaller business district, far away from the skyscrapers and big banks of the inner city. This address sat right between a bright orange house that advertised itself as a thrift store, and another house that wasn't nearly as much of an eyesore with animal shelter advertisements on its windows. A small dog could be heard barking from the inside. On the opposite side of the street sat a large block of apartments. That red brick building had bits of graffiti and window boxes with flowers dotting the outside wall.

But the only address that Maserati really cared about was 2108, an address that called itself Demeter's Garden. The small house in the center of this property was almost hidden behind the larger plants, trees and structures holding up more climbing plants, and looked like it was painted a light green a long time ago. Now the siding was a victim of rust spots and more than a few climbing vine plants. Either the owner of this place was too preoccupied with maintaining the jungle of plants around the house or just didn't care about the exterior. Or both.

As soon as Maserati and Snow stepped on the property, we noticed a very heavily pregnant woman who appeared to be in her early forties next to a larger man who looked like he made a hobby out of bodybuilding and didn't mind showing off that fact in a dirty old wife beater. Maserati caught himself hoping that that guy wasn't the poor woman's husband or the father of her kid, but there she was crying into his shoulder and his arm was around her. Her baby could be seen kicking through her thin dress from several feet away.

Maserati decided to ignore the two for now, focusing instead on what the forensic shrimps were digging up. They were only half finished at the moment; from what they had accomplished so far, he could see most of the tragedy that happened here.

The corpse wrapped in a garbage bag was that of a young female, paled skin from days or more of death and without sun, and mostly free of caked on dirt thanks to the black plastic that once surrounded her. She was a pretty young thing, something that Maserati would not have admitted aloud out of habit after over two decades of marriage. He certainly would not have admitted that what bits of her clothing that he could see were what really caught my eye: very much like the little black dress that Sherry would wear on nights out with me, except in a brighter red than one would see at a stop light. Apart from a deep, curved cut in her upper arm that looked fresh, with a larger tear in the trash bag to match, there was not a scratch or mark on her. Her body was kept pale and clean, and the one offending item - an old, recently bloodied shovel, lay beside the shallow grave.

However, the smell was a different story. Dead bodies always had that same smell of decay. Maserati hated it before, and could barely stand being around stiffs when he first started working these cases. One learned to get used to that sort of thing. Snow, apparently, did not. So he walked off, gagging, and made a beeline toward the two witnesses - the man and the woman - some distance away.
I approached them both, introduced Snow and I, and showed my badge. Snow probably did the same, but I wasn't paying attention to him. "Detective Miguel Maserati, this is my partner, Detective Spencer Snow. Can you tell us what happened?"

The pregnant woman kept crying in her man’s shirt for a few more moments while he pat her back in an attempt to calm her down. The baby made a few more visible kicks. Some distance away, under a small, young tree next to a smaller goldfish pond, other crime scene investigators were digging up the young woman's body. Some distance away was a shovel. Snow noticed this, but wanted to get some information out of the woman first. This looked like it was going to be difficult. and my problem tooth decided to make its presence known then to make things especially stressful for me.

"Okay, ma'am. Why don't you sit down on that bench right there and start with your name?"

The woman let out a sigh. Her man told her, "Go on. It's okay," and gently pushed her in the direction of the bench. So she took a few more steps and sat down, right under a big wooden arch with a tangle of vines and purple flowers growing and climbing on it.

"I'm Chloe Green," the woman began. "This man is just my neighbor. Levi Daniels. He lives in those apartments over there."

"And where do you live?"

"Here." Chloe pointed behind her to the old house. "I live on the second floor. The first floor is just to run my business."

"Okay. Think you're up to telling us what happened here?"

"I called Levi to come over this morning," she told Snow slowly. "I wanted to get rid of that damned tree for so long, and finally wanted to get around to digging it up. But in my condition, I decided it wasn't the best idea for me to be doing that, so that's why I called Levi in the first place."

This was apparently Levi's cue to start talking. "I was glad to help her, but I didn't have any shovel or tools of my own. So I took hers out of the shed and started digging. Then I hit something that wasn't dirt, and the tip of the shovel looked like it was covered in blood. I dug some more, and found that woman. Then I called you."

"So you disturbed the body?" Snow asked him.

"Well, I guess so. But I didn't know she was down there at the time. Did I do something illegal here?"

“If you’re telling the truth, you should be fine.” Snow turned his attention away from those two for a bit and stepped over to join Maserati at the grave. The young woman was now dug up and lifted out of the ground, and looking at her, their first thoughts were what a shame her death was. Even under the dirt caked on her body and trapped in her hair, It was obvious what a pretty young woman she was before she died. Whoever did this to her probably thought the same, and tried to keep it that way, because there wasn't a scratch on her. Some red splotches from blood pooling, sure, but that was it. Not even a bruise from what the detectives could see.

Snow and Maserati heard a kid screaming nearby and looked up; four little kids who were playing in the street a little while ago were now standing by the fence, completely silent. The one girl in the group was the screamer; she now had her face covered up by her hands, with just one eye peeking out from between her fingers. Three other boys with her leaned against the fence with interest.

It couldn't hurt to talk to them, so Maserati walked over and showed them my badge. "Police. So what're your names?"
The girl didn't want to talk, but one of the boys immediately spoke up.

"I'm Sammy. This is Mallory, Ignacio, and Carlos."

"Okay. How often do you kids play out here?"

"All the time. Mallory isn't always this scared."

"Shut up!" Mallory threw down her hands to show she was tough. "I'm not scared!"

"Hey, calm down. I know you're not." Maserati smiled at her, but she didn't calm down at all. "Did any of you notice anything strange here whenever you were playing?"

All four shook their heads. Mallory looked away, suddenly becoming very interested in a nearby tree. Having a daughter at about that age, Maserati recognized the look on her face as trying to cover up a lie.

“Mallory? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

She didn’t say anything, just kept shuffling her feet.

“It’s okay. You won’t be in any trouble with me.”

"There was a person in here digging yesterday," Mallory told me. "But I didn't think it was wrong, 'cause it's a big garden. But it was really late, past my bedtime. I was watching out the window and not in bed like my mommy told me to.”

"Well, that's okay. What did the person look like? Was it a man or a woman?"

Mallory just shrugged. "I don't know. But the person wore a big sweatshirt and pants."

"Did you see anything else strange? Do you know what she was planting?"

She just shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.” The other boys followed her lead with shrugs.

"That's okay. Here. I'm going to give each of you my card. If you remember anything, just give me a call anytime." I pulled a stack of cards out of my jacket pocket and handed one to each of them. They all took the cards and stared at them for a bit before stashing them away in their pockets. "You've all been a good help. Go on and play now."

The kids ran off, and Maserati and Snow could hear Mallory once again insist that she wasn't scared. As they left, Maserati finally noticed that Snow had returned from talking to Chloe and Levi. "So, you get anything out of them?" asked the new guy.

"They saw someone digging here yesterday, but couldn't say anything else."

"Makes sense. That grave looks fresh. Whoever did it buried the dirt under loads of mulch."

"Get anything else out of them?" Maserati gestured to the two adults.

"Nothing. Neither one of them saw the girl before in their lives. But did you notice how she was dressed?"

Maserati certainly did. The woman showed more skin than fabric in that red mini dress and heels, but that doesn't matter as much to him as it apparently did to Snow. "Yeah. What about it? Still think you're back in Vice?"

"No. Just saying. If she's a pro, we'll have no shortage of suspects for this. Is it really worth our time?"

Did he really ask that? His question was met with a glare, something he clearly picked up on noticed.

"Hey, I'm not saying she deserved it. But if we're going to be chasing some cold case while innocent people are being killed-"

"That girl IS innocent. I don't care what she does for a living."

"DID for a living, Maserati."

One of the investigators, a shrimp of a guy with glasses who - Maserati would guess - was the victim of many schoolyard dodge ball games, interrupted us. "Hey, when you two are done fighting, can you come back to the crime scene over here? You should probably see this."

So Maserrati shot Snow another glare and left with the investigator. He led him to a patch of some kind of plant some distance away from the tree.

"Okay, so what am I looking at here?"

"That mint looks like it was disturbed," Snow pointed out from behind. "Was it recently planted?"

“Looks like it,” the shrimp answered. “But I just talked to Chloe Green over there, and she swears she didn’t plant it.”

"She have any employees around here? Someone had to plant that. It doesn't grow wild like that overnight."

It struck Maserati as odd that Snow would know this much about gardening. He couldn't even identify the plant. But he shrugged that off for a while; talking to Snow about damn near anything would get his blood pressure to rise again and his broken tooth to start throbbing.

The shrimp just shrugged. "I didn't ask."

So Maserati did. "Ma'am? Are you the only one who works here during the day? Or is there someone else on your payroll?"

"Well, it's just a small nursery. I have one employee, Tripp. But he's gone today."

"You know where he lives?"

"In some townhouse in the suburbs... I have the address inside." Chloe started for the front door, beckoning him to follow. As they stepped inside, she kept going. "You're wrong about him. There's no way he would have done this."

"Did he call you? Tell you he wouldn't be in today?"

"No, but he doesn't need to. Today was his brother's birthday. He's probably down in the cemetery paying his respects." Pulling open an old file cabinet inside took some doing for someone in her condition, so Maserati helped her pry it open. She rewarded him by going through what little employee records she had - there weren't more than three folders in there, labeled Chloe, Cora, and Tripp - and wrote down Tripp's address on some floral stationery to give to him.

"I appreciate it. Who's Cora?"

"Oh, she hasn't worked here in months. Ever since she got married, she's been living in some nice place in the inner city. She's a sweet girl, though."

The Cora angle looked like it would go nowhere at that point. That is to say, there was no Cora angle. So Chloe and Maserati walked back outside to find more investigator shrimps digging up the mint bed with Snow and Levi standing by to watch.

"They looked over the bed with some machine," Snow explained, taking another sip of his drink. "Found something that shouldn't be down there under the dirt, so they're digging it up now." Looking over at Chloe, he asked her, "What nursery work have you done around here recently?"

"Just trimming, really. And Levi helped me put up arches for the vines earlier this week."

"Is that it? No planting or anything?"

She nodded. “No planting.”

"No, I didn't help her bury any bodies, if that’s what you’re getting at," Levi told him.

One of the shrimps interrupted: "I got something!"

A minute or so later, a second filled black trash bag was lifted out of the dirt. Tearing it open revealed something that Maserati really hoped wouldn't be there: Another female body, and this one smelled worse than the first one; she was obviously in the ground dead and buried for longer. Chloe took one look at this and screamed some more. Levi and Snow started walking away, gagging yet again.

Maserati just knew that he wouldn't have the stomach for this.

The bag was torn open the rest of the way, revealing that this woman wore a similar revealing outfit than the first woman. She, however, favored silver instead of red. Her body was also just as young, but covered in bruises - this poor girl took a serious beating. Other than that, her body was kept intact. No cuts, scrapes, bullet holes, or leaked blood. She wasn't covered in dirt either like the other, thanks to the tied-up trash bag.

Looking over both girls again, now laid side by side, another similarity was obvious. “These girls have nothing on their necks,” Maserati pointed out. “They weren’t strangled?”

One of the shrimps took a closer look and said, “I guess not. The medical examiner should be able to tell us how they both died.”

“They have to be connected somehow. Why else would they be buried so close together in this tiny place?”

“Maybe they both screwed the wrong guy?” the shrimp suggested, shrugging. “They do look like pros.”

“’Look like’ and ‘are’ are two different things. You ever notice how young women dress these days?”

“I guess. You figure these girls were just out at a party?”

“I don’t know what yet.” Maserati got up and looked around for Snow. He left Levi, still puking up whatever was left of his breakfast, by the fence, and could now be found with his arm around Chloe and trying to console her. Chloe’s waterworks came back after seeing the second dead woman.

Maserati let him have a few more moments with her - whatever he was saying to her appeared to be working - and decided that it was time to move on. “Hey, Snow, come on. We’ve got a lead.”

A few more words of consolation that Maserati couldn’t hear, and Snow handed his card to her and followed him back to the car.