The Lawn Goodbye

It turned up like a wooly mammoth in the last snowdrift of spring. Had I not been a teen biology geek, I would have raked it into a 39-gallon bag, dumped it at the gutter in front of Shih Tzu’s Mom’s house, and thought no more off it until the city “sucker” crew rumbled along on its seemingly random schedule.

This was the last “harvest” of 2022, brought on by a half-week of high winds which according to Channel 25’s buzzkill meteorologist would become a far more frequent phenomenon because petrochemicals, deforestation, and ice caps. Sarah had deforested two years before, after our backyard maple took out a section of vinyl fence. After God brought down a mighty wind, our transgression was repaid with leavings from our more planet-lovin’ neighbors.

I’d wrestled the last of the mess to the curb when I spotted a patch of brown and yellow amid the waning green of a newly-groomed block. Two doors down. Shih Tzu Mom. In fairness, Shih Tzu Mom had only lived on Remington for 34 years, we’d only been in the neighborhood 27, and, well, she WAS two doors away. The thrust was, neither casseroles, pithy conversation, nor names had ever been exchanged.

Which was how I felt shitty enough to rake Shih Tzu Mom’s lawn. There was pizza at the end of this tunnel, and a Samaritan deed might merit a side of cheesy bread.

“Could I ask what you’re doing?”

I glanced up, my find drooping in my gloved hand. Shih Tzu Mom was standing at the edge of her cracked drive, in a puffy coat, sneakers, and a pink knit cap crammed over her ears. Shih Tzu was at her ankle, yapping away and tugging at his leash. Or hers.

 “Gingko biloba,” I reported, displaying the fanlike leaf. “The gingko’s kind of a missing link of the plant world – not a deciduous tree, not an evergreen. Supposedly goes back to Jurassic times. I don’t remember ever seeing one in the neighborhood.”

“Could I ask what you’re doing?”

“I finished my leaves and saw nobody had done yours. Sooooo…”

“My son takes care of that,” Shih Tzu’s Mom stated. “He was supposed to come over Saturday, and if he sees someone else has done the job, he’ll think I didn’t trust him. How much did you expect me to pay you, anyway?”

I glanced down at my hoodie with the torn pocket, my permanently grass-stained Carhartt knockoffs, my duct-taped Jordan-era Nikes. It was actually a legit assumption.

“I’m two doors down, the blue house? Mike. Mike Dodge. The Dodges.” That was as much conjugating as I could manage. Shih Tzu was trembling and yipping at his master.

“You might check with the people at the end of the block – they don’t seem overly fond of yardwork.”

I took my ass home, peeking back to see Shih Tzu’s Mom pondering whether to restore her half-patch of leafless turf. Shih Tzu had resumed yapping and tugging toward the house.

“And your little dog, too,” I muttered, lowering the garage door.

Sarah was waiting in the kitchen. Hold music was leaking from her Galaxy on the counter. “What happened to you?”

“I thought while I was out there, I might help the old lady two doors down with her leaves. You know, Shih Tzu’s Mom?”

“Who?”

“You know, two houses down. Old lady with the little shih tzu. The shih tzu’s mom.”

Sarah rolled he eyes. “She has a name.”

“Which is?”

Sarah frowned and headed for the sunroom. “Just order the pizza. I got the cable people on the phone.”

“They’ve got a name,” I called after her.

**

Curtis came calling about 10 a.m. the next morning.

“You,” Det. Mead muttered. He scanned my scabby caftan-length Yankees tee and pill-y plaid PJ pants. “Wow, had the entirely wrong idea how you people live.”

“Ha. What’s the deal? Oh, come in, and take off your shoes. Sarah, you know.”

“But they still observe the traditional niceties.”

“Just. Come. In. Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” Curtis sang as he nudged his loafers onto the runner. “Always hate those cop shows where the detective won’t take a free cup of coffee. Then asks for a glass of water three minutes later so he can prowl through shit without a warrant.”

“Close the door, Seinfeld.” I grunted, spotting the patrol car and Curtis’ Crown Victoria down the street.

Sarah was wrapping up her Quordle as we appeared in the sunroom doorway. She tugged her faux-feline robe tight like a Victorian maiden although she had heavy gray sweats underneath.

“Honey, this is Curtis Mead, the detective guy I’ve mentioned.”

Sarah checked Curtis’ stockinged feet and smiled. “Sorry about the way we look. I’ll get you some coffee.”

“I got it,” I said.

“Have a seat.”

“Feel like I’m on The Crown or something,” Curtis said a few moments later.

“All right. What’s up?”

“You know Corrine Reynolds?”

I shrugged.

“Your NEIGHBORS? Two doors down? From where you live?”

 “Yeah, we’re not close. So…? Oh, geez.”

“Succinct. Daughter found her early this morning in the basement, head bashed in with a concrete goose. One of those porch gooses, er, geese you people dress up for holidays?”

“It’s not a village custom. You can search the shed. So why you here?”

Curtis beamed at Sarah as she delivered a steaming mug. “You take creamer?”

“This is perfect, Mrs. Dodge. Just sorry to interrupt your, ah, day,” he murmured as he reinspected our lounging togs.

“No problem at all. I have to call the cable people, so you and Mike just relax.”

Curtis sipped casually as Sarah grunted terse responses at the cable company’s robot. “So Ms. Reynold’s neighbor across the street saw a confrontational exchange between her and some landscape guy. Then the landscape guy stalked back to this house.”

“Confrontational? Shih Tzu’s Mom – Corrine -- thought I was raking her leaves on spec, and she was upset I was doing her son’s job. I was trying to be a good neighbor.”

“For the Dog Lady.”

“BILLING ISSUE!” Sarah barked at the phone. “NO! BILLING ISSUE!”

I took a defensive swig. “And I didn’t stalk. I’m overweight, and my ankles suck. So, was it a break-in?”

“That’s what we’re checking.”

“Son ever show up?”

Curtis’ cup paused halfway to his lips. “Yeah, you said that before. She don’t have a son – daughter said she was the only family left in town, only child.”

I leaned back. “Really. You think it’s some kind of dementia?”

“Isn’t Alzheimer’s usually about family members who actually existed? Probably embarrassed you took it on yourself to rake her lawn. Like the neighborhood leaf police. Made up that shit about a son to save face.”

“It was an act of kindness,” I huffed.

“Actually, kind of a dick move, you think about it,” Curtis considered.

“Don’t let me keep you,” I said.

**

I prepared a couple invoices for some stray freelance design, mulled a flyer concept for the Millington Arts Education Center Latinx/Rap Dance Fusion fundraiser, got some thighs marinating for tomorrow’s lunch, and, within 15 minutes, was standing at the edge of the late Shih Tzu Mom’s half-and-half lawn.

Curtis was consulting with a couple of uniforms on the front stoop of the tan bi-level when he spotted me. “Yeah?”

“I was curious about uh, the dog. He OK?”

The detective disappeared for a second, then emerged from the open garage bay holding a wriggling black mop. “This one? Yeah, SHE’S fine. Whoa—“

The little dog struggled free of Curtis’ grasp and bee-lined across the lawn. I knelt, and she yipped gleefully and began to lick incessantly.

I managed to locate Shih Tzu’s tag. Phone number, nothing else.

“Looks like she’s found a new daddy,” Curtis purred. 

“Oh, hell no,” I countered, gathering 309-277-9817 and handing her off to an officer.

“Long as you’re here, just step careful,” Curtis said, moving toward the garage. “Name’s Bunny, by the way. On her food bowl.”

**

“Did Mom seem OK?”

I attempted an empathetic smile as Wendi Reynolds waited anxiously. She lived on the other side of Millington, was in fact a claims adjuster with the auto/life carrier that controlled a sizeable chunk of the local economy.

“She seemed. . .fine,” I improvised. Bunny sidled past her “sister” with a growl and jumped onto my lap. I took a breath. “Your mom DID seem anxious about me working on the lawn – she said your brother was supposed to do it.”

“No siblings. Mother was very proud of her self-sufficiency,” the large, middle-aged woman sighed. “I should have stopped by more. She was probably embarrassed the neighbors thought she’d let things go.”

Curtis tossed me a “See?” look.

**

“I didn’t mean to make it sound like I thought you killed Corrie or anything,” Hannah Schiff breathed. “I didn’t even realize it was you at first — you were…”

“I was dressed for comfort,” I supplied.

“Who am I to talk, right? I mean, look at ME!”

The blonde was wearing sleek yoga tights with that Lululemon logo that means they run more than Sarah’s entire Target gymwear collection, topped with a seafoam tank top that looked like the work of a NASA engineer and bore her own east side yoga studio logo.

“We should’ve called ahead,” Curtis deadpanned. “So you see anybody else over there after Mr. Dodge left?”

“I was on my way out for the evening, sorry. Corrine didn’t get lots of visitors — she had a strong energy not everyone can appreciate. I liked her candidness, and I took her Starbucks sometimes and talked. That daughter of hers NEVER looked in on her, and Corrie’s getting, well, kinda frail. I’m being judgmental. Like I said, she could be willful. How do you solve a problem like Corrieeee?” Hannah abruptly belted.

Curtis merely nodded. “She said something about a son coming over to rake, ‘cept she only has the daughter. What do you make of that?”

Hannah frowned — she had those drawn-on eyebrows, and came within a quarter-inch of a Frida Kahlo. “Sad to say in this day and age, but it’s a dangerous world, and sometimes, even I make up a big tough boyfriend to deflect the assholes. Maybe Corrie thought you looked a little…” — she reexamined me — “rough?”

Curtis snorted.

**

“Or maybe Corrine actually had a big tough man to rake her leaves,” I suggested on the walk back to the house. “The daughter married? Maybe hubby was like a son to her?”

“Single,” Curtis said. “Ms. Schiff has a point, though — lotta dudes out there on the prowl, and not just for melodious yoga babes. Some of these creeps will latch on to a lonely old widow for the ceramic fillings in her teeth. OK, best to your lovely bride. You go do your retiree shit.”

“Putting up flyers for a community thing,” I related, digging in my hoodie for the Tucson keys. My hand jumped as I contacted something organic and leathery. I brought out the forgotten gingko leaf.

“Thanks, I’m good,” Curtis said. “Cutting out the carbs.”

**

“You know there are male and female gingkos?” I noted, eyes still on the Ipad. “We actually had two at the office. A male by the south parking lot, and a female way over by the loading dock entrance.”

“And just how did you know the sex?” Sarah asked cautiously.

“The female tree’s fruit stinks like shit and makes an unholy mess. We truly hated her. In fairness, the male’s highly allergenic – toxically male, you might say.” Sarah didn’t. “They started grafting male cultivars onto female varieties to get rid of the female stench issue AND the male pollen issue. Probably a human metaphor in there. My guess, a pretty offensive one.

“Anyways. Gingkos originated in Southern China, but spread to Japanese temple gardens. Came over 200 years ago, but I guess they never much caught on for much more than an ornamental. They can live for more than a thousand years, you know.”

Sarah glanced anxiously at her Samsung, which was emanating some string-y variant of Fleetwood Mac as she moved up in the cable queue.  

“Point is, I think somebody carried that gingko leaf onto Reynold’s lawn. Maybe casing the place. Maybe came back later and killed Shih Tzu Mom. Curtis said he’d call all the local nurseries, see how many ginkgos there are around town.”

“The cop’s name, you remember,” Sarah said as a disembodied voice came on the line.

**

Millington could be a hopping town, in a low-impact way. The Campus Coffee Commune bulletin board was plastered end to end. Indie bands at microscopic venues. Seminars and listening circles and conclaves and town halls and webinars. Symphonies and recitals and experimental dramas and lectures by the greatest minds in eclectic esoterica. Coupons for calzones and Szechuan and tacos and personal tutoring in everything from guitar to Javascript.

I had one flyer left, and something had to go. I ripped the vegan pizza ad away; an Amnesty International appeal lie underneath. Finally, I reasoned that between Robert Wise and Steven Spielberg and every crappy intervening dinner theater/high school extravaganza, everyone who NEEDED to see West Side Story probably had, and pulled the Millington Community Theater’s one-sheet. As I discharged my duty for the West Side Neighborhood Resource Bank, a figure loomed nearby – some Sociology Department type with a blaring block-letter event invite – and I furtively folded the decommissioned flyer, tucked it in my hoodie, and fled Campustown.

The temp had dropped considerably toward late afternoon, and I sighed as I kicked my Skechers off in the TV room.

“I thought you were putting the frog away for the winter,” Sarah said, pausing David Muir.

“It’s concrete, and already missing a toe,” I whined. Then slipped the hoodie back on, wrestled a cement amphibian the size of a French bulldog into the lawn mower’s house, sat out a potential cardiac episode in the garage, and worked it all out by the time Sarah came to check if I’d had a cardiac episode.

**

“I’d written off Bunny’s hostile reaction the other day to Tiny Dog/Tiny Brain Syndrome,” I told Curtis over late afternoon coffee as Sarah jousted with a new help center. “Then I realized how contradictory Bunny’s behavior was.

“She was yapping furiously, and yanking at her leash. Not toward me, like she wanted to attack, but toward the house. Then, as I was leaving, Bunny began yapping and straining again. Bunny wasn’t pissed at me; she started barking AFTER I left. Bunny wanted to get away from that woman, back to her house. To her dead owner.” I took a beat. “I never talked to Corrine. She never came out of the house, never argued with me. Bunny was just a disguise. I saw Bunny, so I ‘saw’ Corrine Reynolds, too.”

Curtis chuckled sadly.

“And here’s the thing,” I growled. “If someone went to the trouble of impersonating Corrine Reynolds, it’s pretty certain that was the killer. And more importantly, if I never talked to Corrine, nobody SAW me talking to Corrine. Nobody who could have identified Corrine. Certainly not somebody who looked in on her. Not somebody with a clear view from across the street.”

Curtis glanced sharply down the block, then back at me. “But she’s like 40 years younger than Reynolds.”

I shrugged. “She did a convincing voice, the posture was right, and she had a houseful of props to work with, including Bunny. Thought about that, and I remembered where I’d seen her before. “

I yanked the folded sheet from my hoodie and shoved it at Det. Mead. “I stole this from up on campus. Remember when you worked her about befriending the old lady?”

“Now you’re just projecting.”

“And she went all cabaret on us? ‘How do you solve a problem like Corrie?’” Curtis studied the flyer for Millington Community Theater’s winter presentation of West Side Story, starring, wait for it…

“Community Theater ‘s down the block from my old employer, next to what I assume to be Hannah’s yoga studio,” I noted. ”Specifically, Japanese shin-shin-toitsu-do yoga. Hannah strives for Midwest Asian authenticity, down to a meditation garden with bonsai and gingko.

“After I nearly stroked out hauling a concrete frog 30 feet to our shed, I realized Hannah was lying about Corrine’s being frail. The old gal could have dressed her fake goose on the porch, but she carted it all the way to the basement and back outside again. The real Corrine probably could have cleaned my clock.”

**

Curtis went for a brisk constitutional, returning an hour later. I met him on the drive. Hannah Schiff, Millington’s culturally appropriated Maria, was being loaded into a black-and-white in front of her split-level.

“So, it would seem our songstress was lifting shit from your buddy’s house every time she dropped in to be a good neighbor. Reynold’s dead hubby was an antiques guy in Peoria during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and there were some real treasures among the clutter. Hannah’d just take small stuff each visit, ‘nothing Corrie would miss.’ But surprise, Reynolds missed something and told Hannah she was calling the cops. She was dressing the goose – the cement one, I’ll never get what it is with you folks and the lawn animals. Anyway, Hannah finally gave her the goose, to the temporal lobe, to be precise. Then she looked out the basement window to find some schlub raking Corrine’s leaves and does a little theater of her own to find out what you’re up to and confuse the timeline. She had a rehearsal that night, with a few dozen witnesses. Jets versus Sharks number, I guess.” 

Curtis paused. “Asked Hannah why she took such a risk with you. Just laughed, said you’ve called her the wrong name five times over the last two years, including her cat’s.”

“Oh.”

“Dude, cat’s name is Cody. CODY.”

“Ah.”

“Well,” he consoled. “Ain’t like you KILLED anybody.”