Digging his heels into the grass

Digging his heels into the grass, Hank yanked at the stubborn root in Mrs. Ralph’s front lawn. It gave slightly, and then broke off in his hand. Hank Triumphant was the only gardener at Sunny Side Homes, an isolated neighborhood of identical houses sold only to those over sixty-five. Hank used to be one of those wealthy elderly. He had passed his time in leisure, walking to the pool, sitting by the pool, considering swimming in the pool, calling his grandchildren, and making pies. Once he got so bored took up knitting for a few weeks.

Driven to such utter boredom by retirement, Hank began taking trips to Vegas. The excitement he got from gambling large amounts of money was unparalleled by anything he had done in the past twenty-five years. Unfortunately he was not very good at it, and ultimately lost more than half of his savings. Lloyd Crimson, the owner of Sunny Side Homes, generously allowed Hank to remain in his home, with full use of the utilities, as long as he did the gardening for the entire development.

So here he was, covered in dirt, cursing at a root, lying on Mrs. Ralph’s otherwise spotless lawn. He heard a gasp come from Mrs. Ralph’s window. She could not see him from his prostrate position on her lawn, and had probably forgotten he was there. He could hear her perfectly through her screened window, and was careful to breathe very softly so as to not alert her to his presence.

“He did not!......NO!.....Oh my, well I always knew she was a wild one ………..While they were home!......But the dogs!......Oh my……No!”

Mrs. Ralph’s phone conversations were always very cryptic. They were usually about the other occupants of Sunny Side, but since dogs were not allowed there, she must have been talking to an outside party. Her granddaughter had probably snuck in and re-arranged all of the neighbor’s furniture, or left a cake shaped like something obscene on their doorstep. It couldn’t be anything serious because there was amusement in Mrs. Ralph’s voice, and she was never amused when someone in her family did something they could actually get in trouble for. Plus, he knew how she felt about her daughter’s neighbors.

He actually knew how she, and most of his neighbors, felt about a lot of things. In the past two months he had overheard hundreds of conversations. He knew who was sleeping with whose wife, and how many of the slighted husbands had any idea. He knew why Mrs. Jacobs had moved to the other side of the neighborhood, and that it actually had nothing to do with Mr. Stoh stealing her pumpkins.

Mrs. Ralph finished her conversation, and disappeared to another part of the house. Hank slipped away completely unnoticed. He would leave the rest of the root for tomorrow, when he would hear about the neighbors’ reciprocation, and how it was in such poor taste. He walked back to the main building where he turned on the sprinkler system for the night and returned to his room for dinner.

He found Kate Reynolds sitting on his couch, eating a piece of the pumpkin pie he had made earlier that day. He was sure he had locked his door. How she had gotten in completely evaded him

“Book club was cancelled. Dotty got the chicken pox from her grandson.” Of course, he already knew this.

“Wanna play some backgammon?” Hank hated backgammon, but he loved playing it with Kate. He actually loved doing anything and everything with Kate.

He had met Kate last year when she moved to Sunny Side. She was by the club eating curly fries. When he saw her, he tripped over the hose he was laying along the edge of the grass and fell right into the pool. Most of the dampened onlookers were outraged, but Kate just giggled, and returned to her curly fries without even looking at him. The next day she came to his front door and asked him to play backgammon.

Hank smiled at her adoringly. She was adorable. He loved how she was always making up situations to feed her appetite for excitement.

“I’m serious this time! Her mail’s piling up, and when I looked in her window all her fish were floating at the top of the tank. Usually when she goes to visit her daughter she tells me to feed her fish ahead of time. Plus there was a funny smell coming from her house when I walked passed it on the way over here this morning.”

She really did seem serious this time, almost scared. She didn’t have the same wicked twinkle in her eye she had had last week when she had told him that Glen, her 80 year old neighbor, was planning to massacre all the waiters at the pool side restaurant, and Hank had better be careful because he would move up to gardeners when he was done with that job.

“Ok, maybe Mrs. Trebousky is dead. She is 92 after all. Why would you assume someone killed her?”

“I just have a feeling. Please just come with me to look through her house? I don’t want to go alone.”

“What is it with you and breaking and entering?” He asked, resigned to do whatever it was she asked of him.

They decided to wait and go that night at 8:00, when everyone would be fast asleep. Hank had a few more roses to plant before dinner, so off he went, even though he would have liked nothing more than to stay and eat pie with Kate.

He decided to take the scenic route around the development to Mary Morningstar’s, which allowed him to see the actual street, where there were stores, and people whose pants’ waists stopped before their bellybuttons. Hank was walking, daydreaming about a time long gone, when, suddenly, a large lamp came crashing through the Stoh’s window, missing his head by a little more than half a foot.

Catching his breath, Hank turned to see what was going on. The Stoh’s were screaming at each other incoherently, and hadn’t even noticed the man they had nearly decapitated standing outside their window. He was fairly certain that Bert wasn’t the lamp thrower, as he had dislocated his shoulder last week playing mini golf. Last week when Bert was visiting his sister, Liz had moved in with Lloyd Crimson under the pretense that it creeped her out to stay in the house alone. None of the other residents of Sunny Side had bought this, and Hank assumed one of Lloyd’s other mistresses had gotten jealous and ratted her out to Bert. Hank looked back up at the window as the light reflected off Liz’s diamond bracelet into his eyes warning him that she had cocked back her arm to begin hurling the pile of plates she had just brought back from the kitchen at Bert.

Hank decided he should be on his way. Normally he would call Lloyd to come sort this out, but under the circumstances he decided that that would not be wise.

As Hank approached Mary’s yard he could see her pacing back and forth on her front lawn. Mary was a little particular and Hank always hated gardening for her

“Hank, dear, I was looking at the field by the pool, and I was wondering if you could make my grass look like that. Mine’s a much darker shade than I’d like, and I was wondering if you could make mine more yellow like that grass. See I think it would match my curtains much better.”

“Mary, you see, I didn’t plant that grass, and it’s only that green because they re-do the entire field every few weeks. Maybe if you got new curtains..?” As he said this he knew he had made a mistake. Mary spun around, walked in the house, opened the curtains, and slowly dumped an entire tray of sugar cookies into the trash can, making sure he could see her. The only good thing about gardening for Mary was the sugar cookies she made his every time he came over. He attributed her crankiness to the fact that Lloyd had been living with Liz for the past week, so she wasn’t getting any.

Hank and Kate slipped [reconvened] outside of Mrs. Trebousky’s later that night. They were on their way in to her back yard when Kate froze.

“Shhhhhhhhh,” she practically yelled, and ducked down pulling Hank along with her. A big black van with tiny white letters drove by slowly.

They pursued the mystery van, making sure to keep hidden. It pulled up next to Ethel’s house.

A short man got out of the van. He looked vaguely familiar, but Hank just couldn’t place him. Kate squinted trying to make out the lettering on the van.

The next day Hank was sitting by the pool, watching the gardener Lloyd had hired to maintain the field. Mary was right, it was really really green. Almost unnaturally green.

“And take back your diamond bracelet! I saw you carrying groceries to that trollop Ethel the other day, and I seriously doubt you were doing it just to be nice!” One of Lloyd’s girlfriends screamed at him. She was a tall white haired woman with pointy elbows who Hank had seen around, but who had never had any gardening needs, so he had very little dirt on her. He decided he would stop by her place tomorrow with a shrub. She was starting to look more interesting.

Kate, who was sitting across the pool from Hank with Gladys, shot Hank a sharp look, and then got up and headed towards the bathroom. Hank met her on her way there.

“Did you hear Pearl talking about Lloyd bringing Ethel groceries?” Pearl, that was her name…

“Doesn’t it seem a bit odd to you that he brings her groceries one day, and the next her body’s being snuck out in the middle of the night?”

“Kate, Kate, Lloyd brings people groceries all of the time. A while back when I first started gardening here and didn’t have much time, he brought me all of my groceries.”

“Even so, you don’t think they were involved? Maybe her husband lives somewhere else, and he got jealous or something.”

“No, her husband died about six months ago, she was pretty upset, I couldn’t really see her disgracing his memory by joining up with Lloyd either.”

“Well, anyway, I looked up Mark and Mark Funeral Services this morning, and I don’t think they exist. I looked in the phone. I asked Mrs. Lanie, who is an expert on these kinds of things, and I even had my granddaughter Google it. Nothing.”

Then Hank remembered where it was he had recognized the driver of the van the other day. He was the man who was constantly re-doing the lawn by the pool. The man who was busy re-doing the lawn right now. Hank got up and walked quickly over to the man, filling in Kate on the way over.

“You know, I’m a gardener. How to you keep the grass so green? What do you use as fertilizer?” The gardener muttered something incomprehensible in response.

“Mind if I poke around a bit? Check out the roots? You know, I’m not quite sure why Lloyd didn’t hire me to do this lawn. I do most of the gardening around here.”

“Listen man, I don’t know why you didn’t get hired for this job, maybe you oughta take that up with your boss, but since I did get hired, I am going to have to ask you to get off my lawn. I can’t have you messing with my roots.” The gardener had hardly spoken a word before, but now seemed very serious, and was staring at them very sternly.

“Hank…I think we’d better go…..” Kate said. She sounded nervous. Kate was never nervous.

“Ok, so what do we have?” Kate was pacing. Hank had never seen her take anything this seriously. It made him very nervous.

“Lloyd brings groceries to Ethel – Ethel is taken away in the middle of the night by a made up funeral company – van driver also re-does grass by the pool…………what about….why…do you think…?” She wasn’t even able to complete her sentences anymore.

So Hank and Kate snuck back down to the field that night. Trowels in hand they kneeled in the hyper-green grass. Just as they started digging in, a deep voice came from behind them.

“Aw jeez, you guys just won’t listen will you? C’mon, get outta here!” It was the van driver/field re-doer. “Listen, you don’t wanna get mixed up in this, really, leave while you can.”

“Listen, if you knew what was good for you, you’d get outta here right now.”

“Shhhhh shhhh- okay, okay, I’ll tell you, just please, please keep your voice down. Lloyd’s been killing off single people of a certain age and collecting their social security. That’s how he’s been making enough money to maintain all those women. He threatened me, I didn’t want to help him, I didn’t, I-”

“That’s quite enough Henry” Lloyd’s cold harsh voice interrupted. Hank had always thought Lloyd’s voice rough in an endearing, safe way, but now it sounded metallic, and barely human. Hank spotted a shotgun in Lloyd’s left hand.

“Now Hank, you don’t need to give me any more reason to add you to that list than I already have.”

“So it’s true. You’ve been killing off old people, burying them in this field, and collecting their government checks? How’d you get Henry to help you?”

“Henry’s daughter’s dying of leukemia. Nasty disease, very expensive medical treatments.”

Hank looked at Henry, who was staring intently at his shoe, looking miserable. He looked back at Lloyd to find Lloyd’s gun pointed right at him.

“You didn’t expect me to just tell you all that and let you walk away did you?”

There was a loud flash. Hank thought he was dead, but then he noticed that it was Lloyd lying on the ground. Kate stood over him, shovel in hand.

“It’s not like I’da let him kill you, then what would I have done for entertainment around here.” She said sarcastically, but Hank thought she looked a little teary.

Much later, after the police had come, and taken Lloyd and a penitent Henry away in a police car, and Kate and Hank had told all they knew, Hank was walking Kate back to her condo. They turned the corner to see Mrs. Trebousky taking out her trash.

“Oh hello, Katherine, I had to leave in a rush a few weeks ago. My granddaughter was being born. I completely forgot to ask you to feed the fish! I’m afraid they’ve died, poor things.”