The Gardens of Digby Green: Menthol Mustache
The following morning, Detective Marquez drove onto the vacant lot as the first rays of sunlight topped the gravel piles. His perimeter appeared undisturbed. Stepping from his car, he approached the barrier tape and planting.That someone would organize the miniature roses made a sort of weird sense, but adding sand burs in the gaps between? Bizarre.
Again, breeze lifted fine dust that stung exposed skin, and blew grit in his eyes. It also dried out the pitiful rose bushes, scattering petals and crisped leaves across the soil. Blinking, Marquez went back to his car for his sunglasses.
As he shut the car door, two more vehicles pulled in. The forensics van disgorged a team of men and Ray Wilkinson’s deputy. Behind it came a station wagon. Morris, a county K9 handler, trotted over with his black border collie mix beside him.
“Quincy, search,” he told the cadaver dog, and the animal ducked under the tape and went to work.
Marquez and the forensics team watched Quincy mince among the unfriendly weeds, then crouch and bark in different places within the tape.
“He’s found two,” Morris said, and marked the spots with small flags.
Marquez winced. This wasn’t good.
“Should we call for a back hoe?” A forensics man asked.
The deputy coroner kicked at the soil. “They may not be buried that deep. Let’s do this by hand. A back hoe will destroy evidence.”
Two of the forensics men trudged to their van, and returned carrying two shovels each, and a jar of mentholated ointment, which they passed from man to man.
When one offered Marquez the jar, he took a finger-tip full, and rubbed it into his mustache. “Let’s do this job right,” he muttered.
Morris led Quincy aside, and picked sand burs from between his pads. “Good find, Quincy. Good dog.”
The Gardens of Digby Green is a serialized story that posts on Fridays.
Next week, part thirty-nine, Pavers.
Find a link to purchase Heartland Treasures anthology here.
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