Dale Andrews - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134 & 135, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

“I’m Evelyn Wyatt Szymanski,” the woman announced, not looking at me but glaring at the tree stump, as if she was addressing it. She was blond, in her late twenties, maybe, and her clingy sportswear showed off her figure well. “I live down at the corner there.” She turned and waved one hand toward a large house, only the roof of which I could see from this distance. As she gestured, something struck me as faintly familiar. I frowned, trying to pin it down, but she kept talking and I lost the thread. “This — thing is disgusting,” she yelled, “and I think the town should do something about it!”

I didn’t point out that the only way she could possibly see Halsey’s yard from her house was with binoculars. Instead I asked, “Have you talked to Mr. Halsey?”

“Certainly not,” she said with an expression of disgust, as she circled around the stump. “I’m not going anywhere near that pervert! Can you imagine the kind of twisted mind that would make something like that?” She let out a huff of breath and eyed the carving with compressed lips. “There are children on this street, you know. Impressionable young minds.”

As if to demonstrate her point, a little girl slipped out the side door of the minivan and calmly walked up to stand next to her. The woman gave no notice, but kept talking. The girl, the woman’s daughter, I assumed, was very pretty, maybe about five years old, with pale blond hair in a scrunchy-held ponytail. She looked up at me with wide-set blue eyes and I couldn’t help but notice the birthmark that marred her skin — an irregular, violently red splotch that covered her left cheek from her ear to the corner of her mouth. I smiled at her.

“—example of pornographic, misogynistic symbolism that I’ve ever seen. Right out here in the open!” Evelyn Wyatt Szymanski was saying as I turned back. “There must be some kind of ordinance or obscenity law or something,” she finished and, finally, drew a breath. Suddenly her eyes went wide. “Janie. Don’t!”

I whirled around. Little Janie had walked up next to the carving. She turned to her mother, one dimpled hand raised. “She’s pretty,” the girl said softly. She smiled, turned, and patted the stump figure on one luxuriant, bark-nippled boob.

The woman gasped and dove forward to snatch her daughter’s hand away, as if she were dunking it in hydrochloric acid.

“You tell that Mr. Halsey that we want this abomination removed,” she yelled over her shoulder as she hustled the little girl back into the car. “It’s a public disgrace.”

Actually, from what I could tell, Mr. Halsey’s figure was becoming something of a local scenic attraction. During the woman’s neighborly visit, a handful of cars had passed by, including one full of teenaged boys. Each and every one of them slowed down long enough to give the passengers a good eyeful. I was pretty sure that the traffic was more than usual for this street, this time of day. Word was getting around.

I decided to talk to another neighbor. Maybe one of them knew something more about Halsey’s project.

There was no answer to my knock, and no car in the drive at number 41, across the street. The yard here was decked out for Halloween, complete with a scattering of realistic-looking tombstones, one of which had a human foot sticking out coyly from the ground in front. Fake cobwebs drifted from the trees and a hooded figure of Death holding a bloody, raised scythe towered over the path to the door. Apparently the Uber-mom I had just met didn’t have any problem with this yard; it seemed Gothic horror was perfectly okay for impressionable young minds.

From there I walked over to the small blue Cape diagonally across from Halsey, number 43. I knocked on the door. There was silence for a minute or two, but then from the corner of my eye I saw a slight flutter of the curtains at the bay window. The door opened.

A man answered. He was tall, perhaps mid thirties, with dark, tousled hair and a shadow of stubble on his chin. He was wearing a rumpled green T-shirt and drawstring sleep pants with a pattern of Irish beer logos on them.

“Hi, sorry to bother you,” I began.

“S’okay.” He gave me a lopsided smile and ran a hand through his curly dark hair.

I introduced myself. He told me he was Drew Richards. He looked down at his state of attire and said, with a rueful smile, “Sorry I’m kind of a mess. I work nights. You caught me sleeping.”

“I’m sorry. I was just wondering what you thought of your neighbor’s new landscaping.” I said it with a smile and angled away from him to indicate the Halsey yard.

Drew Richards laughed and kept his eyes on my face. He had very nice eyes, I noticed, with long, dark lashes. “Oh, that?” He gave a shrug. “Yeah, it’s kind of weird.”

“Did Mr. Halsey say anything to you about it?”

Richards frowned faintly. “Nope. Should he?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Neighbors talk to each other.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He shrugged. “Well, I just moved here not too long ago.” He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Been here a couple of weeks. What with working nights and all, I don’t know many of the neighbors yet.”

I nodded toward Halsey’s yard again. “It doesn’t bother you?”

Drew Richards smiled at me and shook his head. It was a nice smile. Under the stubble and dressed, I realized, he would be very good-looking. Who was I kidding? Stubbled and undressed worked fine, too.

“Hey, it’s no business of mine,” he murmured. “In fact, it could have been a lot worse.” He twitched his eyebrows and widened his eyes in mock alarm. “It could have been some of those pink plastic flamingos.”

We both laughed.

“Right. It’s probably more of a woman thing,” I said. That sounded stupid. I cleared my throat and tried to concentrate on not thinking about not blushing. “Mrs. Doughty over there is pretty upset,” I said. “She thinks something may have happened to Sheila Halsey.”

“Really?” Drew Richards’s face sobered. “Wow. I did see the police over there earlier. I hope she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is. Apparently she’s gone away for a few days. Well, thanks for talking with me.” I shook his hand, appreciating, as I did, the view of well-muscled arm.

“No problem.”

I walked back to my car, thinking about the fact that my husband had been dead for three years now and I was only just starting to notice again that there was an opposite sex. But that was something I didn’t want to think about. Instead, I focused on the story.

Story? Oh please. I grabbed my notebook from my backpack and flipped to a clean page to write a few notes. It would be one photo, small-font caption, probably on page seven, under “Witka Happenings,” next to the church bean-supper schedule.

Still, it was interesting, the variety of reactions that Halsey’s stump had gotten from the different neighbors. Differences. And similarities. I frowned, remembering my encounter with each of them. Something was bothering me about one of them, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

And where was Sheila Halsey? It shouldn’t be too hard to confirm her whereabouts if, as Halsey had told his neighbor, she was at a retreat. I figured the police probably would check up on that, if only to shut Marilyn Doughty up. I knew someone, Hughie, down at the station. I would call him and check it out later.

If and when she came back, I thought to myself, what on earth would Sheila Halsey think about the little arts-and-crafts project on her front lawn?

It was getting late. I’d have to come back the following day to talk to Halsey. It was possible that he had figured out that I was coming to interview him and high-tailed it out of there to avoid me. Suspicious? Yes, but not criminal.