Free Death at a Drop-In by Elizabeth Spann Craig Page B

know.”
    “Is that so, Miss Myrtle?”
     “First of all…well, also second and third and one-hundredth of all…she was annoying,” said Myrtle simply.
    Tobin started applauding and Myrtle gave a bob of her head in acknowledgment.
    “Well put, Miss Myrtle,” said Tobin with a barking laugh.  “That’s exactly what she was.  Annoying. We’ll call a spade a spade.”
    “The way she went on and on about her daughter and her grandson…” Myrtle snorted.  “The daughter was the perfect debutante and the grandson will surpass Einstein as the greatest modern-day thinker.”
    There was that barking laugh of Tobin’s again. “I’ll have to take your word on that, since I never had a civilized conversation with her.”
    Myrtle raised her eyebrows.  “Never? What kinds of conversations did you have with Cosette?”
    “Oh, the neighborly kind.  You know.”
    Myrtle did know.  And she knew that Tobin didn’t mean friendly neighbor kind , he meant the warring neighbor kind .  “She was getting on your last nerve, wasn’t she?”
    For a startled moment, Myrtle worried that the big man was going to start crying, right there in her yard.  “It was a nightmare, that’s what it was, Miss Myrtle.  That yippy dog of hers barked all hours of the day and night.  I left a polite note on her door explaining that Scamp was clearly upset and needed to spend more time inside.”
    “It didn’t help?” asked Myrtle sympathetically. 
    “After I left the note, that Scamp was outside even more.  Barking his furry head off, he was. He barked whenever the wind blew,” said Tobin sorrowfully.  “Thank goodness he ended up passing away from old age.  I was about to call Red up and get the police involved.”
    “Barking would have driven me batty,” said Myrtle. “Of course, I live next to the infamous Erma Sherman, so I don’t exactly have a good neighbor, myself.”  She was prepared to give Tobin the lowdown on Erma’s inadequacies as a neighbor, but he was still completely wrapped up in Cosette.
    “Another thing that drove me up the wall—Cosette used my trash can.  She always had extra trash—having all those parties, you know.  She knew I’m a single man,” Myrtle swore she saw Tobin’s lip tremble at this last bit, “and that I don’t have a lot of trash to put out, living alone and all.  So Cosette put her extra bags of garbage in my container.  It stuck out the top.  Once she even put a bag beside my trashcan since she had so many piled next to her own.   I was always worried the garbage man wasn’t going to pick them up.”
     “A couple of times the garbage man left the extra bags, so I took them to the dump myself.  I couldn’t stand the sight of the garbage piled up in front of my house,” said Tobin. 
    “You know,” said Myrtle slowly, “there was a bag of trash at the drop-in.  It was absolutely overflowing.  I thought the placement of it was rather odd—blocking their front door.”
    Tobin flushed, and quickly made a slight change of topic. “And it wasn’t only the dog and the trash can either, although those would be bad enough.  Like I was saying, she had people over all the time—brunches and bridge and cookouts and stuff.  Her guests parked on both sides of the street and sometimes even blocked my driveway so I couldn’t pull my truck out.  Then her parties always ended up in her backyard and I could hear the folks laughing and cutting up until the middle of the night. I’m a hard-working fellow, Miss Myrtle, and I need my sleep.”  Tobin’s face looked hurt.  “All I want to do after a hard day of work is to watch some TV or maybe look at my baseball card collection.  I’m as quiet as can be—why couldn’t Cosette Whitlow be?”
    “Very, very annoying. Yes.  Neighbors can be a trial, can’t they?  When I was telling Erma what a nuisance her crabgrass was….”
    “And that’s another thing.  When her guests parked on my side of the street,