Bad for Business
by Peter C Byrnes
Free ebook download: Bad for Business by Peter C Byrnes, legally licensed and available in PDF, and ePub formats.
The seventh book in the Murder Mystery series featuring Detectives Joseph Lind and Marjory Hendricks. Free to Download legally in PDF, ePub, Kindle.
Excerpt:
It was as hot as all Hades.
The sun not a benevolent yellow orb in the sky giving life to the land; instead, it was a white, hot spot of malevolence searing everything.
The old man straightened and for the umpteenth time, wiped his wet brow with an angry swipe of his arm. Now, not only was his arm and hand streaked with dirt but most of his face had a covering of sweat patterned dirt caked to his skin.
It looked surreal.
Especially because he was a beloved and respected Businessman of the district. Rarely seen without collar and tie. A well-tailored business suit. The latest cut from Saville Row in London. A figure of respectability instead of what he resembled at this moment.
A hobo. A person of no fixed abode trespassing on one of the District’s historical properties.
Admittedly, he loved to potter in his veggie patch. His own creation. His pride and joy where he could immerse himself for hours away from the prying eye and strident voice of his wife. She wouldn't allow herself the ignominious gesture of going anywhere near the absurd Vegetable Patch. The old bloke spent hours of tireless work urging the products of his honest labour to sprout. To grow. There was nothing else like it, especially in his chosen field of endeavour from which he had only recently retired.
He knew though that he could not tarry to enjoy these plants that he loved so much.
He needed to finish this irksome chore quickly. If not sooner!
Firstly, to get in out of this hot afternoon sun.
Then to have a shower and dress for the occasion. The great majority of the Executive was meeting this evening in the front Sitting Room of his majestic abode.
The original stone building of the district. Handed down from eldest son to eldest son for five generations. Beautifully restored, sensitively extended throughout its history. Of significant historical rating. So too was its surrounds that were forever dwindling such was the need to find the money to constantly maintain the premises.
The meeting was to discuss that very problem.
The district boasted of a fine selection of historic homes, estates, and gardens.
A great deal of money was made by the district, especially during the softer Spring, early Summer, and Autumn months with 'Open Gardens' right across the area for all the 'rubberneckers' to explore, grovel and envy over. Wanting to know firsthand how the other half, the upper, other half lived!
The only people to turn a profit from this annual custom was the Ladies Auxiliary who provided tea and coffee, scones, and cake. And the Motels and Hotels of the district. 'House Full' signs rarely extinguished during those weekends.
He swung the mattock with anger at the thought.
On his property during the Spring months, and for the number of weekends that the gardens were open to the public, these purveyors of crumbs and spills positioned strategically to one side of the serpentine loose gravel driveway that wound up from the impressive front gates some two hundred metres away. The driveway then circled around an immense Pepper Tree. A large, loose gravel 'forecourt' became the Parking area for all those plebs whose cars endlessly dribbled motor oil onto the washed pale gravel surface.
A fresh truckload of the expensive stuff required every year because of this.
Another point of discussion, he reminded himself.
The anger continued to boil.
The elderly women of the Ladies Auxiliary ridiculously protected from the often-harsh sun or sprinkling rain, cowering under those hideously coloured gazebos donated by some unknown colour-blind benefactor! Spilt coffee and tea and crumbs from the thousands of cakes and scones that they sold, the annoying signature of their position on the gravel driveway! Plus, myriad small holes made by steel pegs thoughtlessly stabbed into the bowling green like lawn to help stabilise and hold down these hideous little tents!
These thoughts made him angrier, causing him to stab the mattock harder into the unforgiving ground. He was down about a metre and close to the clay base. The tip of the mattock hit something solid. The old bloke bent down and scrapped some of the dirt away. It was bone and it looked to his untrained eye like a vertebrae section from the spine. He stepped back further along the trench, turned around and swung the mattock high. With a crunching sound, it seemed to strike a resistance then break through. Again, he bent down and was sure that he could make out a human skull.
The mattock still in place. Almost locked in the outer surface of the skull.
He didn't know what to do.
He very well couldn't call the Police such was his predicament.
He had spent some time sweating litres digging this trench in the humid heat. Not wanting to ignore his toil by leaving off any further labour on this hole to start another. But he was sure now that a body, or more correctly a skeleton, was at the base of the trench that he had but almost completed.
To his way of thinking he could not very well use this trench to bury his wife.
Over the top of another person's last resting place.
That would-be sacrilege! Completely inappropriate!
He, completely ignoring the fact that he had killed his wife with a swipe of a hammer in a moment of madness. Of sheer rage at her constant nagging and negativity. He had now dug a narrow trench along the 'walkway' between the well-kept, raised vegetable garden plots to minimise the chance of detection. He would lay the steppingstones back over the site and spread any of the excess soil over the garden. The subterfuge never noticed so he surmised.
That had been his plan, this hot summer's afternoon.
A grand and cunning plan he had thought before he had commenced his task.
The sudden disappearance of his wife didn't enter the equation or even raise an eyebrow such was the concentration that he imparted on this chore.
Whether it was his Christian beliefs or not, he could not bring himself to cast his wife's body for eternity over another that neither he nor his wife knew the identity of.
Never.
Not in a million years!
He nervously cast his eyes over the vegetable garden plots that were his pride and joy.
His wife had forced him to position these beds behind the old Coach House that was now the extensive garage with the Gardener's Quarters above. Well out of sight from the main house though a myriad garden beds bloomed colourfully for all to appreciate while seated out on the expansive Patio on those annual Open Day ceremonies. These 'Sightseers' seeming to enjoy the moment. So too, did his wife who basked in the glory for nought effort or planning or involvement in any of this! She would swim in the glory and delight of the people around her. Not for one moment admitting she had little to do with it…it was her diligent husband and a team of three fulltime gardeners who lived on site…now instructed to immigrate for those weekends that the gardens were open to Public view.
He continually mulled over these acidic thoughts and grumbled to himself on the injustice of the situation. His wife was always in her element, entertaining this annual throng of rubberneckers.
Assaulting them with a history of this place that he found not only boring but plain bad manners.
Boasting over something requiring preservation from the prying eyes of those less fortunate than them. The whispers of accusation of him having married into 'good stock'. This fact broadcast as an aside by his wife to the milling throng who accepted it as a comic comment, though to those with practised ears such as himself, uttered with barbs.
He always thought of himself as the outsider, even though it was he who earned the amounts necessary to maintain this monstrosity in a manner that others envied.
She oblivious to the real costs of maintaining such a property....and preparing it for show!
He had personally formed up the sixteen raised vegetable plots though the Head Gardener and his wife had taken over the care of the area. At his age, a daily regime a token gesture that he still enjoyed immensely. All but two beds bursting with healthy looking vegetable and salad plants of which he was enormously proud. He could never disturb those plots with their brimful of nature's harvest that not only feed the entire population of the Estate numbering him and his missus and the Head Gardener's family but kept the Nursing Home closer to town in fresh vegetables and salad items all year round.
They never appreciative of the fact, so it seemed to him!
This negativity had only recently descended upon him.
Once he was a man of immense largesse. A person who thought highly of his fellow man. A man who would often go out of his way to help anyone in need.
However, since his retirement and enforced sentence with his nagging wife, some of her peculiarities seemed to have rubbed off onto him. He had only recently come to that realisation. That understanding that somehow, he was changing, and he did not like that change in his personality at all! It worried him immensely, having the same weight as his concern over the costs incurred in organising these annual 'Shows'. He had for some time now, thought that this was in some way an olive branch offered to his wife, hoping that she would become appreciative and understanding of his toil. Of his worth.
'All for you my Dear. All for you'. He uttered to himself although he knew before the words had escaped his lips, that they always fell on deaf ears.
Especially now!
