A Crying Shame: A Jesse Watson Mystery (14 page)

“Is her daughter really a lesbian?”

“No, she isn’t. She’s married and has a couple of kids. But
you know how people can be. They make up lies.”

“Introduce me to her and let’s have a chat.”

“Try to behave,” Claire said as she turned the car around and
headed back to her house. “I like Abigail and I don’t want you to embarrass me
by acting weird.”

“I promise that I’ll be myself.”

“I was afraid of that.”

Claire’s house was a huge Tudor with a well-manicured lawn.
All the houses on the street were almost identical right down to the perfectly
mowed lawns. It was duplication at its best.

Claire pulled up into the driveway and when I was about to
open the garage door, she touched my hand. “Hold off for a minute. Let’s park,
get out of the car, and get our duffel bags. It’ll look more natural… like we
have every reason to be here. I can promise you that Abigail will come out to
greet us. She can’t help herself. She has to know everything.”

“What happened to our plan?”

“I think we’d better play this one by ear.”

“If we’re not going to spend the night, why take in our
duffel bags?”

“We might need them just in case I want to put something in
one of them. Who knows, I might have left something behind in my hurry to leave
the rat.”

“Okay, but I have to warn you, other than a few clothes, I
have a 9MM, a can of mace, a knife the size of a machete, and a pair of
handcuffs in my duffel bag. This bag isn’t something I want the police to find
on me, if I don’t have to. I also have Billy’s snub nosed .38 strapped to my
ankle and my .38 Special in my purse. I came prepared.”

“Where’s the rocket launcher?”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be just the ticket?”

Claire parked the car and opened her door. We got out and
walked around to the back of the car. Claire pushed a button on her key chain
and the back door opened electronically.

“No wonder these cars are so expensive; they do everything.”

“To be precise, Jesse, this is a Mercedes, SUV… not a car.”

“I know that. I have a Jeep, but I still call it a car
sometimes.”

We continued to talk about nothing special as we laughed and
walked toward the entrance to the house. As soon as we got close to the front
door, we saw crime scene tape plastered across it. Claire ignored the tape, set
her duffel bag down and then stuck her key into the lock.

“Howdy, stranger,” a woman’s voice said.

We both turned around at the same time. Claire still had her
hand on the key.

“Hello, Abigail,” Claire said as she left the key hanging in
the lock and hugged the woman. “It’s so nice to see you, again. How’re you
doing?”

“I’m fine, but I have my doubts about your husband. What’s
going on with that man?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m here to get the rest of
my clothes and the kid’s stuff. I told Carl he could have the house and
everything in it except a few personal items, like the photo album of my
family. My father died and those pictures are all that I have left of him. I
want my kids to have their own pictures of their grandfather so they’ll
remember what he looked like. I don’t want them to forget him.”

“I understand, dear,” Abigail said, touching Claire’s hand.
“I was very sorry to hear about your dad. I know that must have been
devastating.”

“This is my sister, Jesse,” Claire said, changing the
subject. “I don’t think the two of you have ever met.”

“Hello,” I said as I held out my hand. “Claire’s says you’re
a real hellion and mischievous to the core… and that she just adores you.”

“Ah, now I remember,” Abigail said. “You’re the black sheep
in the family that I’ve heard Claire talk about.”

“I was until my brother, Jack, told the family he’s gay. Now
my star shines brighter.”

“What happened to your arm, dear?”

“Mud wrestling,” I joked.

Abigail put her small arm around my shoulder, looked at
Claire and said, “I like your sister already. Before you leave, why don’t the
two of you come over and have dinner with me?”

“We wouldn’t want to put you out, Abigail,” Claire said.

“You’re not putting me out. I still have that thief of a
housekeeper cooking for me.”

“Why don’t you get rid of her if she steals from you?” I
asked.

“She’s my sister,” Abigail responded. “Besides, the only
thing Isabel steals is food. It’s a private joke between us. She’s a mess, but
I love her.” Abigail turned to leave. “Don’t forget about dinner. We can’t have
you driving back home on an empty stomach. I also want to hear about what
you’ve been up to. Carl says you have a boyfriend. He’s so mad. Oh, I guess you
know it’s against the law to cross crime scene tape. Good luck, and don’t get caught.
You know we still have that private security patrol.” She waved as she walked
away.

“Hey, I like her.”

“I figured you would. You both have so much in common—your
big mouth and your inability to stay out of trouble! You two should be
sisters.”

“I behaved myself, just like I promised.”

“I wonder when Carl told her about my boyfriend. I didn’t
think he talked to her. He told me he thought she was nosey, he didn’t like
her, and he didn’t want her around me.”

“It sounds to me like Carl has a control issue.”

“He’s controlling, jealous, mean-spirited, and we know he’s a
cheater. He’s told me more than once that you had a crush on him. I knew it was
a lie. I also knew about the pass he made at you on our wedding day.”

Claire turned the key, pushed open the door and broke through
the tape. She walked into the foyer and punched in the numbers to the security
alarm. “Don’t worry, Jesse,” she said as she put her hand on my shoulder. “I
understand why you didn’t tell me about Carl. It was too late. We had been married
for a while before I found out. One of my friends finally told me after I
caught Carl cheating. She said that you rejected Carl and he laughed at you. I
can understand why you didn’t tell me. I would’ve probably done the same thing
under the circumstances. I’ve learned that Carl can’t be faithful to anyone. I
should’ve…”

“Claire, what’s that smell?” I looked at Claire. I put my
duffel bag down on the floor and pulled my 9MM out of it. I lay my purse on top
of the bag and instructed Claire to do the same.

“Put that thing away,” Claire said. “There’s no one here, and
if there was, with that cast on your arm, you’re liable to shoot me instead of
the bad guy.”

“You’re right about one thing, Claire. I doubt very seriously
if there’s anyone here… alive, that is. That smell is the smell of death.”

“Don’t say that, Jesse. It’s not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny. Trust me, Claire; I know that
smell, and I’m telling you it’s the smell of death. There’s someone dead in
this house and they’ve been here for a while. All we need to do is follow the
odor.” A fly breezed past my face. I brushed it away with my good arm. “… or
follow the flies.”

“That’s gross, Jesse. There’s no one dead in this house. It’s
probably the trash or the garbage disposal.”

“Rationalize it all you want, but I think we’re in for a real
surprise. Come on, let’s search the house. Were you serious about the photo
album and the clothes?”

“I made that up. I took everything I wanted when I left. I
didn’t plan to come back. Why do you ask?”

“I was going to tell you to get it now, because when we find
the cause of that smell, we might want to exit quickly.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Claire said as she walked down the
hall, passing the large living room to the right and the library to the left.
“Phew, it does smell rotten in here. I bet Carl left food on the counter. He
was always bad about that. He was so lazy sometimes. It used to drive me nuts.”

As we walked into the large eat-in kitchen, the smell seemed
to be a little less putrid, but not by much. There wasn’t any food left out on
the counter, and when I opened the refrigerator door, I discovered that the
only food it contained was a half-empty six-pack of beer. The top compartment
contained one frozen TV dinner. I turned around and said, “I think that smell
is coming from the living room or the library, but let’s eliminate the upstairs
first.”

“Don’t forget the laundry room and the recreation room.”

We walked to the back of the kitchen and checked the laundry
room and then crossed the hall to the recreation room. The odor was awful, but
not nearly as bad as it was when we first entered the house. We climbed the
stairs and examined the bedrooms. The odor was noticeable in the master bedroom
in the front of the house, but it still wasn’t as bad as the smell downstairs.

“The culprit is downstairs,” I told Claire. “We need to
search the living room and the library. Get ready. It could be ugly.”

“Why didn’t we check those rooms out as soon as we walked in
the house? It seems only logical...”

“I had to prepare myself. I was scared. What can I say?”

“I didn’t think you were afraid of anything. You’re the tough
one in the family. Mom always says that.”

“I’m not so tough, Claire; I just act that way. It’s all an
act. Come on, let’s go downstairs and finish our search.”

Claire grabbed my good arm as we descended the stairs.

I worried that if I should have to use my gun, would I have
the strength in my hand to do it. I’m right-handed and have a cast on my right
elbow. A cast is a sure sign of weakness. Would I be able to pull the trigger?
What am I saying? Who needs to shoot a dead person? And I was sure that there
was a dead person in this house. I sure would feel like a fool if the smell was
coming from a dead animal and wasn’t the odor of a decomposing corpse.

Slowly, Claire and I walked into the living room. The lamp I
had heard about was still turned over, and the droplets of blood still lay on
the hardwood floor. If there was blood on the large Persian rug, I couldn’t see
it. I bent down on my knees and looked closer at the blood stains. I could see
small white fibers in the blood that looked as if someone had swabbed the area
with a Q-Tip. I saw more of the same fibers in all the blood droplets. I looked
around at the bar and saw black dusting powder everywhere. The more I looked,
the more dusting powder I saw.

“The police dusted this room from top to bottom,” I said as I
put my hand up to my mouth. I covered my nose.

Claire walked around the room, looking for anything out of
the ordinary. “I don’t see anything unusual,” she said. She walked over to the
sofa and pulled the cushions out, and then threw them on the floor. She used
one hand to cover her nose and the other to search in the crevices. She came up
with a small, shiny object.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t you know that the sofa is the best place to look for
evidence? Everyone at some point in time has lost something in a sofa.” She
held up her find for me to see.

“What do you have?” I asked as I walked over to her.

“I found an earring, and it’s not mine.”

“Have you seen it before?”

“Oh, yes, I have,” she replied. “It belongs to the woman who
Carl was having an affair with… the one whose husband shot Carl in the leg when
he found out.”

“That just means it could’ve been here for a long time. That
affair happened a while back. He sure has a lot of nerve. He needs to have...”

“It could still be going on, for all I know. Carl is a rat to
the core.”

“Stick the earring in your pocket and let’s finish our
search. Put the cushions back, also. Let’s walk the room once more. We don’t
want to miss anything.”

We walked the room and came up empty.

“There’s no one here, and there isn’t a place to hide a body,
so…”

Claire and I stopped and stared at each other. The same
thought went through our minds at the exact same time.

“The library,” we both said.

“There’s a hidden room behind the bookcase,” Claire said. “It
has stairs that lead down to a basement that we used as a wine cellar. That has
to be it! What better place to dispose of a body? That is, if that odor is what
we think it is. I have my doubts. I find it hard to believe that Carl could
possibly be capable of doing something so awful. He just doesn’t have it in
him. He’s too much of a wimp.”

“I’ve said the same thing about him many times.”

We turned and walked to the room across the hall. As soon as
we entered the library, the smell became intolerable. I noticed a few flies on
the ceiling.

“Blowflies,” I said, trying to resist the urge to gag. “I
studied about them in night school. Blowflies lay larvae that turn into maggots.
Usually, when blowflies appear, the corpse has been a corpse for at least a
couple of weeks, but their appearance also depends on other things… like the
environment. Has the body been out in the sun, or closed up in a basement? Is
the temperature a hundred degrees or thirty degrees? Many factors have come
into play by the time these nasty creatures surface.”