Don't Cry Over Killed Milk

DON’T CRY OVER KILLED MILK

(A Damon Lassard Dabbling Detective Mystery)

by

Stephen Kaminski

For my parents: Art and Yolanda

A Special Note

To all—like me—who have endured the effects of Amniotic Band Syndrome (ABS) or any other digit or limb difference, stand proud. You can rise above any challenge life throws at you and thrive!

Chapter 1

His fingers looked like baby carrots—orange, round, and stubby.

Damon Lassard strained his eyes to avoid staring at them. Standing opposite him, Jeremiah Milk was speaking in an animated manner, gesticulating with his right hand while the left remained planted firmly on the desktop between the two men.

Jeremiah was afflicted with a congenital condition known as amniotic band syndrome. In less than one-tenth of one percent of pregnancies, a portion of a woman’s amniotic sac ruptures, leaving fibrous bands that can entangle and squeeze off parts of a fetus’ developing body. Jeremiah had been lucky in a relative sense—his umbilical cord could have been severed. Instead, the stringy strands had limited their wrath to his extremities, and Jeremiah was born with each of his fingers individually pinched off like a mini sausage link.

“You need to take action,” Jeremiah said with pleading tones.

“Like what, Jeremiah?” Damon asked, leaning back into his utilitarian swivel chair behind the library’s reference desk.

Jeremiah’s lean towering figure pitched forward to close the space Damon had just created. “I don’t know what, but my crepe myrtles are getting eaten alive. My neighbors are having the same problem.” The pink and white flowering trees were pervasive in Hollydale, a close-knit community in Arlington, Virginia, just west of Washington, D.C.

“Why don’t you get someone to come out and spray?”

“I already told you,” Jeremiah insisted. “I have a company to do that. Last week, they applied their most powerful solution––an organic one, mind you. The insects went away for a couple of days and then came right back.”

Damon shifted in his chair. Not only did he volunteer at the library in Hollydale but he also served as president of the neighborhood’s citizens association. The latter role compelled Damon to indulge the locals and their sundry grumblings. He usually relished helping his neighbors but Damon was stumped as to how he could assist Jeremiah Milk.

“I’ll tell you what, Jeremiah,” Damon said after a moment, “I’ll post a notice on Hollydale’s Internet listserv and see how many others in the community are having the same problem. Maybe we’ll see a geographical pattern.”

Jeremiah ran a hand through his light frizzy hair. He looked to Damon like a mop standing on end. “Okay, thanks. I guess that’s a start. We have a naturalist on staff at the park, and he’s never heard of a bug that keeps returning to eat crepe myrtles.”

Jeremiah worked as a ranger at Tripping Falls State Park, a haven for soaring oaks and a magnificent natural waterfall. The majority of parkland rested in nearby Fairfax County, but fifty acres in the southeast corner trickled into Arlington. The park’s land didn’t stretch to the Hollydale neighborhood, so Damon’s experience with it was limited to hiking as a visitor.

“Can the naturalist come out and take a look at your crepe myrtles?” Damon asked.

“I took a branch into work yesterday. He examined it and suggested I treat the trees with heavier chemicals.”

“So why don’t you?”

“Because I’m not going to kill the Earth to make my plants beautiful, that’s why.” Jeremiah Milk turned his lanky frame and strode out of the Hollydale branch library.

Damon sighed heavily. His volunteer shift would be over in less than an hour, and he planned to spend the upcoming evening obsessing over the details of the date he had arranged with Bethany Krims for the following day. After initially rebuffing Damon, the stunning evening weather girl from one of the local television networks had agreed to join him at a Washington Nationals baseball game.

* * *

Minutes later, Rebecca Leeds trounced through the library’s doors. Damon’s best friend tracked wet footprints across the blue-gray carpet. Mid-September brought frequent afternoon bursts of rain to Hollydale.

“Thanks for adding to the wet dog smell in here,” Damon said with a smile.

“Better than that cologne you started wearing,” Rebecca teased, squeezing droplets from soggy strands of dark brown bangs.

Damon laughed. Rebecca’s athletic legs shone under the harsh glare of the library’s yellow lights.

She set a plastic-wrapped tin on the rough-hewn desk in front of Damon. “Leftover spinach lasagna from this afternoon’s class,” Rebecca said. She ran The Cookery—a school for aspiring chefs located just blocks from the library.

“Thanks,” he said and tore off two sheets of paper towel that the head librarian, Mrs. Stein, kept under the desk. He handed them to Rebecca. “You just missed the tirade I had to endure from Jeremiah Milk.” Damon filled her in on the case of the bug-infested trees.

“I hope you weren’t too hard on him,” Rebecca said. “That man’s had a rough life.”

“I wasn’t obnoxious. Has his life been difficult because of his fingers?” Damon had moved to Hollydale less than three years earlier and didn’t know the histories of all of the longtime residents.

“Not that. Though I’m sure he’s had to endure all kinds of things—people constantly staring, for one.” She finished wiping the last bits of rain from her face and neck. “I meant what happened to his wife and son. I can’t believe Mrs. Chenworth hasn’t told you.”

Mrs. Chenworth was Hollydale’s persistent gossip. She held high court at Cynthia Trumbell’s salon next door to The Cookery. Cynthia, a gaunt woman with stringy blond hair, also served as Damon’s second-in-command for the citizens association.

Damon was interested. He had been introduced to Jeremiah Milk at a Labor Day parade the previous year by Bethany Krims’ father, Jackson. But that was the extent of his interaction with Jeremiah until today’s ambush.

“So what happened to his wife and son?” Damon asked.

Rebecca scanned the library’s bowels. Two pre-teens huddled on a sofa, texting. A middle-aged woman in a green rain slicker sat on the floor in the travel section among heaps of thick glossy guides.

Rebecca lowered her voice. “They both died. On the same night.”

“Were they in an accident or something?” Damon asked.

“No. That’s just it. Their causes of death were completely separate.”

Damon let the information sink in. “How did that happen?”

“It was about four-and-a-half years ago. Jeremiah had been married for just over a year. I remember how happy everyone in town was for him. He’s not bad looking, but I don’t think he ever had a girlfriend while he was growing up.” Rebecca moved a stool from one of the computer kiosks to the front of Damon’s desk and perched cross-legged on it.

“It was an emotional wedding,” Rebecca said with a smile. “Even the cake was in tiers.”

Damon slapped his forehead.

“Sorry, that wasn’t very nice, given the context,” Rebecca said and continued. “He married a woman named Kathryn. She worked at Tripping Falls with him, though I don’t think she was a ranger. Kathryn got pregnant a couple of months after the wedding. They lived with Jeremiah’s mother, Dottie, in the house he grew up in. It’s just down the street from here. Jeremiah still lives there, but shortly after the deaths, Dottie moved to a retirement community in Arizona.”

“Rough way to start a marriage,” Damon observed. “Living with your mother.”

“Well, if he wanted to stay in Hollydale, they didn’t have much choice.” Given its proximity to Washington D.C., housing costs in the small Arlington neighborhood were exorbitant.

“So they’re living with Mom, and Kathryn is pregnant,” Damon recapped.

“Yes. She had a boy. Samuel. I met him when Kathryn took him in a stroller to the picnic area here in town. Cute kid. Big brown eyes. It was February when they died. I remember because it was a rough winter, and the snow was four inches deep at the time. But the weather wasn’t a factor—they both died in their sleep.”

Damon raised his eyebrows.

Rebecca glanced around her. “Kathryn went to bed before Jeremiah that night. According to Mrs. Chenworth, he stayed up to watch a movie in the living room. Dottie had gone to sleep an hour earlier, and Kathryn nursed Samuel just before she went to bed at ten o’clock. By the time Jeremiah went upstairs, it was close to midnight. He tucked in beside Kathryn and kissed her cheek.”

“Was it cold?”

“I don’t know. The story I heard is that Kathryn was a noisy sleeper, and seemed unusually quiet that night. When Jeremiah checked more closely, he noticed that she wasn’t breathing. He flipped on a bedside light and saw right away that her face looked pallid.”

“What did she die of?”

“Sudden cardiac arrest.”

“That’s horrible,” Damon said and stood up to stretch his lower back.

“Jeremiah called 911 and tried CPR, but it was too late. The paramedics took Kathryn to the hospital to see if an emergency room doctor could jumpstart her heart. It didn’t work. Jeremiah went with her and left Dottie with Samuel. The baby slept through the whole ordeal. Before he left to follow the ambulance, Jeremiah peeked into Samuel’s room and saw him sleeping peacefully in his crib with drool dribbling from his mouth.”

“So Samuel was still alive, and Dottie was awake.”

“Yes. Jeremiah woke up his mother from her downstairs bedroom right after he called 911 and tried to resuscitate Kathryn. She stayed home with the baby while Jeremiah went to the hospital. He came home just before the sun came up, and Dottie was sitting in the living room looking grim.”

“That would be expected. Her son just lost his wife.”

“That’s what Jeremiah thought,” Rebecca said. “Until Dottie told him the news about Samuel.”

“He died while Jeremiah was at the hospital with his dead wife?”

“You got it. Apparently, Dottie couldn’t fall back asleep after the ambulance left. She stayed up in the living room, knitting. A couple of hours later, she realized that Samuel hadn’t woken up crying to be fed, as was his routine. She went upstairs to look in on him and he was lying motionless—no breath, no heartbeat, dead.”

“Did she call 911?”

“According to Mrs. Chenworth, she didn’t. She didn’t call Jeremiah on his cell phone, either. Instead, she got down on her knees, said a prayer, and waited stolidly for her son to return home so she could deliver the news.”

Damon exhaled loudly. “That’s crazy.”

Rebecca folded her hands in her lap. “The doctors confirmed that Samuel died of SIDS, and I heard that Jeremiah had some sort of mental breakdown. Other than the joint funeral, no one saw him for months. Dottie moved to Arizona, and I don’t know whether Jeremiah had himself admitted for psychological assistance or just stayed cooped up in that old house like a prisoner in solitary confinement.”

“He didn’t have friends to check on him?”

“He lived in Hollydale his entire life, but as far as I knew, he was always a loner. I don’t know whether he was close enough to anyone who would look in on him.”

Damon walked into the small office behind the library’s reference desk and poured hours-old coffee dregs from a timeworn pot into his mug. He forced the scalding syrup down his throat. It tasted burnt.

“I think I lost my appetite for the lasagna,” he said, returning to his place across the desk from Rebecca.

“I can’t imagine what that man’s gone through,” she said.

“Neither can I. Did the police ever get involved?”

Rebecca eyed him curiously. Damon recently helped his friend, Detective Gerry Sloman, solve the murder of a traveling carnival owner at the fairgrounds in Hollydale. It was the first homicide committed in the neighborhood’s cozy confines that anyone could remember.

“I don’t think so,” Rebecca said. “Are you itching for another investigation, Damon?”

She knew him well. Perhaps that was the reason Damon’s mother continually pushed him to date Rebecca. His best friend had intimated that she’d welcome the proposition, but he didn’t feel the right level of physical attraction.

“No, I’m not interested in another murder,” Damon said. Deep down, he knew he was lying.

Rebecca cocked her head. “It is coincidental,” she said. “But Jeremiah wasn’t there when Samuel died, and I can’t imagine Dottie would kill off her daughter-in-law and only grandchild. Besides, I never heard anything to suggest that the deaths weren’t natural.”

As Rebecca left the library, Damon let the information about Jeremiah Milk’s wife and son sink in. He couldn’t imagine the trauma that such a series of events might cause. The least he could do for the man, Damon thought, was to try to discover what was harming his crepe myrtles. Before closing the library for the day, Damon posted a query to the Hollydale listserv to find out how many of the locals had been having out-of-the-ordinary insect troubles.