I still think about the tomatoes sometimes. Not in a normal way. Not like, oh, remember how good they were. I think about them and my stomach turns. I can't help it.
My husband Dave and I moved to this community outside Tucson about two years ago. It's one of those places with an HOA that measures your grass and sends you letters if your garbage can is visible from the street. Very clean, very quiet, very controlled. Everyone's retired or close to it. We picked it because Dave wanted to garden through his retirement, and the houses all have decent-sized lots. What we didn't realize until we got there was that the soil is basically garbage. Pale, alkaline, desert dirt. Dave's been gardening his whole life, and he struggled with it. Spent months amending the soil, adding compost, trying different raised beds. His tomatoes were okay. Nothing special.
Then we met Paul.
Paul lived next door. Single-story place, immaculate yard, always working in his garden when the sun came up. He was probably late sixties, soft-spoken, kind of plain-looking. Friendly enough. He'd lost his wife Margaret a few years back, or that's what he told everyone. He'd mention her sometimes in this casual way, like "Margaret always preferred the cherry tomatoes," and you'd feel bad for him because he seemed lonely. That's probably why people liked him so much. He'd show up at your door with grocery bags full of zucchini the size of your forearm, or cucumbers that made no sense, or these tomatoes that were just enormous. Perfect shape, perfect color. The whole neighborhood ate Paul's vegetables. People bragged about them at the block parties.
Dave couldn't figure it out. He'd watch Paul from our back patio, just casually, and he'd shake his head. "That soil's the same as ours," he'd say. "Worse, maybe. He's not doing anything I'm not doing. I don't get it."
I didn't think much of it at the time. Some people just have a green thumb, right?
The first thing that bothered me happened about three months after we moved in. I couldn't sleep, which isn't unusual for me, and I was standing in our kitchen at maybe 5:00 AM making tea. Our kitchen window looks right into Paul's backyard. It's not like I was spying; the houses are close together and his garden takes up most of his lot. I saw him out there with a shovel, digging near his tomato rows. He had this large canvas bag with him, the kind you'd use for laundry or maybe hauling tools. It was heavy. I could tell by how he was carrying it, bent over, dragging it more than lifting it. He dropped it in the hole, covered it with dirt, and then-I watched him do this-he went back to his shed, got a tomato seedling, and planted it directly over the spot. Tamped the soil down. Watered it. Like it was nothing.
I told myself it was probably a dead pet or something. People bury pets in their yards. Even though the bag looked too big for that. Even though something about the way he did it, so methodical, so early in the morning when no one was awake, made me stand there with my tea going cold until he went back inside.
I didn't mention it to Dave. I don't know why. It felt like nothing, and also like something I couldn't explain without sounding insane.
Then, over the next year or so, I saw him do it again. Four more times. Always early morning. Always a different spot in the garden. Always a canvas bag that looked heavy and wrong. After each one, he'd plant something new over it. I started keeping track without meaning to. There was the spot by the zucchini mound. The corner near the fence. Two spots in the main tomato rows. I'd be watering our own struggling plants and find myself staring at his yard, counting.
I told Dave eventually. He thought I was being paranoid. "The guy's composting," he said. "Maybe he's burying kitchen scraps. People do weird stuff with their gardens."
But the bags didn't look like kitchen scraps. They looked like they had shapes inside them.
Things got worse when this woman showed up in the neighborhood. I was getting the mail, and she was walking door to door with a photo. She looked exhausted, like she hadn't slept in days. She asked if I'd seen her mother, this 67-year-old woman named Eleanor who'd apparently been dating Paul. I didn't know what to say. I'd never seen Eleanor. The woman said her mother had been staying with Paul for a few weeks and then stopped answering her phone. That was three weeks ago. She showed me the photo, and I recognized the background. It was Paul's living room. I'd been inside once for a neighborhood thing.
I told her to talk to the police. She said she had, but they needed more to do anything. She left the photo with me, and I kept it on our fridge for a while. Dave thought I was getting too involved. Maybe he was right.
Then our terrier got out. His name is Milo, he's an idiot, he digs under fences. This was maybe two months after the woman came looking for her mom. I heard him barking in Paul's yard and went to get him before Paul noticed, because I didn't want to explain why my dog was trespassing. But Paul wasn't home. I climbed over the fence-our HOA would have had a field day-and Milo was digging in one of the garden beds. Not deep, just enough to get his nose in the dirt. He'd found something. I pulled him away and saw what it was. A watch. Heavy, old, one of those 1980s digital ones with the metal band. The face was cracked, but it was still ticking somehow. It was covered in dirt and something else I didn't want to think about.
I should have left it. I don't know why I picked it up. I just stood there with this watch in my hand, looking at Paul's perfect tomatoes, and I felt like I was going to be sick.
I called the police that afternoon. Told them everything. The bags, the woman looking for her mother, the watch. They were polite but skeptical until I mentioned the watch. Then they got more serious. Asked me to show them where I'd found it. I did. They took it, asked some questions, left.
Two days later, they came back with a warrant. They dug up Paul's garden. I watched from our back patio with Dave. They found seven bodies. Seven. They were under the tomatoes, under the zucchini, under the peppers. They'd been there for different lengths of time. Some were recent. Some had been there for years.
They arrested Paul that same day. He didn't resist. He just sat in the back of the police car looking tired, like this was inevitable and he was relieved it was over.
But here's the part I can't stop thinking about. The part that wakes me up at night worse than the bodies in the garden.
When they searched the house, they found Margaret. Paul's wife. The one who'd been dead for four years. She was in the basement. She had a bed down there. A bathroom. Food. She wasn't tied up. She wasn't locked in. She was just... there. Alive. Unhurt. Aware of everything.
She knew about the garden. She knew what Paul was doing. She'd been listening to him bury people in the yard for years, right above her head, and she never tried to leave. Never called for help. Never made a sound. The police said she answered their questions calmly, like she was describing someone else's life. She said she didn't want to cause problems.
I ate those tomatoes. We all did. The whole neighborhood. Dave and I had Paul over for dinner once, and I made a salad with his cucumbers. I keep thinking about what was in the soil. What we were eating. What we were thanking him for.
Margaret's still alive, as far as I know. I don't know where they put her. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks about us, the neighbors, eating those vegetables and telling Paul how talented he was. I wonder if she heard us laughing through the floorboards while he dug another hole.
I don't garden anymore. Dave tried to keep it up last year, and he couldn't. We let the beds go to weeds. The HOA sent us three letters. I didn't care. I still don't.