A Body in the Backyard: #4

Chapter Nineteen

Myrtle grabbed her pepper spray at the same moment the back door creaked open. She carefully peeked around the kitchen door and saw the intruder entering her bedroom-clearly someone who'd become familiar with her house from previous break-ins.  

She thought about picking up the phone to dial Red...or Miles, but knew there wouldn't be enough time. Those pillows in her bed wouldn't fool Hugh Bass for very long. 

There was a slashing sound coming from her bedroom and Myrtle's breath caught in her throat. It sounded like stabbing. 

There was a frustrated cry and Hugh Bass bolted from her bedroom...and saw Myrtle on the other side of the kitchen island. He held up his knife and charged at her. Myrtle waited, blood pounding in her head, until he came close. Then she lifted the bottle of pepper spray and directed a steady stream right at his face. 

With a howl of pain, Dr. Bass dropped to his knees, digging at his eyes with his fingers. Myrtle quickly grabbed the knife and threw it across the room. She desperately looked around her-looking for something that she could use to knock the dentist unconscious before he charged her again.  

Then she jerked open the freezer, pulling the fifteen pound, rock-hard ham to the very edge of the bottom freezer shelf with some difficulty. Then she dropped it right on Dr. Bass's head.  

It was a knockout punch. 

Myrtle ended up calling Miles next. She still had so much adrenaline coursing through her that apparently whatever she said to him was quite garbled. He interpreted it as, "Call Red and come over," which is exactly what he did. 

It was good, for once, that Red lived so close to Myrtle. That's because Dr. Bass started stirring after only a few minutes. She retrieved her cane from the living room and perched on a kitchen stool, ready to strike with the cane if he should stop being groggy and start attacking her again. 

But once Red and Miles ran in, she decided that she'd take to her favorite chair in the living room. She appeared to have a case of the shakes. She poured herself a sherry-just to steady her nerves. As an afterthought, she brought the bottle with her into the living room. 

The state police weren't far behind. There were pictures taken in the kitchen and samples of things taken outside. They found a key to Myrtle's door in Dr. Bass's pocket, where he'd hastily stuck it before entering Myrtle's bedroom. Myrtle told the police where they could find the knife he'd tried to kill her with. Then, of course, there was the fact that Dr. Bass was curiously dressed completely in black, even with a black cap and black gloves.  

None of those things would have pointed to evidence that Dr. Bass had broken into Myrtle's house. But fortunately, something had loosened Dr. Bass's tongue. He might have been tired of his secrets and relieved to tell them-or it might have been that the frozen ham had made him temporarily lose his mind. At any rate, he was confessing to the police, who hastily informed him of his rights. 

Miles was drinking sherry out of one of Myrtle's bathroom cups, since the kitchen was occupied by police. "I guess we miscalculated when Dr. Bass would arrive. By the way, were you expecting him? I mean-had you already figured out that he'd killed Charles and Lee Woosley?" 

"It was," admitted Myrtle reluctantly, "a miscalculation. It's lucky I was prepared for trouble the way I was. I was expecting Dr. Bass, yes. But I didn't realize he was coming by boat. If I'd thought about it, then I'd have pushed back the time that you were to join me. Oh-and Dr. Bass didn't kill Charles." 

Miles's mouth gaped open and closed. It wasn't an attractive look for Miles. 

Myrtle wasn't sure which part of her statement he was reacting to. "You see, Dr. Bass also lives on the lake. He wouldn't want to risk being seen approaching my house from the street, then cutting through someone's backyard. He did that one time and all Erma's motion detector lights went off. By arriving in a small boat, he just quietly pulled up to my dock and came up through the woods, directly to my backyard."