Note: You may want to read the Prologue and Chapter One first! Scroll down!
Chapter 2
I stood shoulder to shoulder with Patsy, surveying the damage.
Patsy’s garden was her pride and joy, her source of solace and strength, the fertile breeding ground for her botanical works of art and, now that I think of it, probably HER place for epiphanies - not to mention daylilies and hydrangeas. After she and her husband Edgar parted company following the rather explosive revelation that not only had he been married before – twice – but he had never exactly bothered to become UNmarried from wife #2 before marrying Patsy, she plunged all her frustrations and energy into her property, transforming a rather humdrum collection of geraniums, boxwood and yew bushes into one of Polled Neck’s landscape showplaces. At this time of year, a profusion of purple and white lilacs spilled over the stone fence next to an antique hitching post where I had tied Edna, but even the fragrant perfume of thousands of tiny flowers, coupled with the smell of the steaming manure pile the pony had obligingly, neatly deposited next to Patsy’s compost heap , failed to mask the pervasive sour odor of alcohol-laced vomit produced by the victim who lay sprawled half in-half out of the birdbath.
This birdbath – and I use the term loosely, because that was how Patsy always referred to it – was in fact a water feature of surprising proportions given the small garden space which it occupied, but the simple fact was, the structure had been there years before the area had been split into tiny lots by some opportunistic vulture of a developer who saw a chance to make a fast buck offering “beachfront” property at exhorbitant rates back in the post World War II economic boom. The once formidable Singer mansion at the intersection of New Jersey Avenue and Morgan Street had been falling to bits for some time until a quorum of Polled Neck residents declared it to be an eyesore of epic proportions; it had subsequently been torn down and the estate divided and subdivided and sprinkled liberally with miniscule cottages that just – barely – met with the existant zoning regulations (no surprise that said regulations were shortly thereafter substantially rewritten until they were tighter than a bikini bottom worn by a middle-aged matron on the first day of beach season, deluded into believing that she still had a girlish figure). Nonetheless the cottages persisted and, as these things inevitably do, came to be viewed as “retro” and soon found themselves in demand again. Patsy was fortunate to have inherited the bungalow her father had purchased soon after being mustered out of the War following a head injury sustained while fighting in the European theater . In any case, the Brelsford family’s miniature estate happened to be the one bit of property which had a piece of architecture remaining from the old Singer buildings – Patsy’s birdbath.
In reality, the “Birdbath” was actually a sort of grotto-esque water feature, complete with several unnecessarily pudgy putti fastened to the back wall so that they gazed down into the pool below them with what I always thought was an expression of rather supercilious fascination.
At the moment they were gazing at the victim.
‘A quick touch on his neck assured me that he still had a pulse, and in fact his color was quite good – tanned skin, flushed cheeks. His breathing was deep and regular. He was rather the worse for wear, however. His dark green uniform shirt was torn at the left shoulder, the right sleeve was missing entirely, and the shirttail was half out of his pants and gaping from the missing bottom button. His khakis were stained and torn at both knees and his hands, though the fingers were long and graceful, were filhy, with broken nails and numerous abrasions. He had fairly long brown hair pulled back into a disheveled ponytail, dusted at the temples with a few strands of grey. Indentations along the bridge of his nose indicated that he wore glasses most of the time though none were evident at the moment.
“He’s not dead, Pats,” I said, “he’s sleeping it off.”
“But what’s THAT?” she fluttered, pointing a pink-enameled index finger at the ground just in front of the stone rim of the pool. I bent over and touched the grass. My finger came back with a brownish red stain.
“Oh. Well, yeah, that’s blood.” Patsy uttered a tiny shriek. I stooped down, shoving aside the dogs who had finally finished their investigation of the garden’s borders and Edna’s manure pile and had come closer to check on what the humans were up to. I discovered a sizeable gash on the side of his head, on the temple closest to the grass, but the blood had clotted and the wound appeared to be fairly superficial. I was pretty sure it would be sore when he came to, however, and also fairly certain that the wound had not been the result of an accident. How the heck would he have met with accident in Patsy’s backyard, after all?
Just then, with my face was only a few inches from his, he groaned. I took a pace back, stepping on Jasper’s toes in the process and eliciting from the startled dog a high, short yap which caused the man to open his eyes. Jasper retreated with his pinched toes and injured feelings to a safer position beneath a bush near Edna, with Coal trailing solicitously after him. Patsy and I retreated also and with good reason, for the man suddenly rolled over, pulling the lower half of his body out of the pool with a splash , and retched painfully into the grass. It was then that I noticed an injury I hadn’t seen before; the movement had caused his torn left sleeve to flap back from his upper arm, revealing another smear of blood and something more: a jagged square of exposed muscle measuring roughly four by four inches. In short, he had been skinned.
“Patsy,” I said, “go call the police.”
“NO!” she yelped and, to my surprise the man simultaneously bellowed the same response.
I turned to stare at her as if she were out of her mind, then came to a decision. “All right,” I agreed, “then go call the club.”
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