Baby, It's Dead Outside

by E M Kaplan

  “But you’re okay with drugging someone without telling them? What if I have to take a drug test for work? I’d fail it, thanks to you.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Hemp doesn’t show up on a drug test. This aioli doesn’t have THC in it. Nothing that would get you high. It’s just the medicinal oil for pain and anxiety.”

  “All the same, you can’t give it to someone without their knowledge or consent. That’s terrible.”

  He had the grace to look ashamed. “I thought you needed the rest. I didn’t want anything to disturb you.”

  The sound that came out of her throat was a cross between a growl and a sigh. “I ought to file a formal complaint. Do you know how violated I feel?”

  I’ll never trust a sandwich that’s not of my own making again. Never mind the darned cookies.

  He finally conceded. “Look, I’m sorry. I was in my kitchen and I just grabbed the first mayo in the fridge, which happened to be my homemade herbed blend. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. I didn’t realize it would affect you so much, and I’m truly sorry.”

  Josie glared at him but let it drop. Luckily for him, she and Bert hadn’t experienced any huge side effects from the pot mayo. If they had…

  Let’s just say his pristine car might suddenly develop a mysterious rotten fish odor that he wouldn’t be able to get rid of.

  “Open up, Sandra,” he snapped, out of patience. “I just want to give this to Ann and be on my merry way.”

  But Sandra wouldn’t step aside or allow either of them entrance into the yellow house, and she was more than a little irritated about it. “I told you already. They’re not home. I can’t let you in.”

  

  “Bite our heads off, why doncha? I don’t trust that woman one bit,” Aloysius told Josie under his breath as they walked back to their side of the street together.

  They had not gotten Sandra to budge one bit, and how was that for ironic—Aloysius full of suspicion for someone else? Josie gave him the side-eye. She was never letting his shady, designer-clothes-wearin’ beanpole butt back in her house, and not within a twenty-foot radius of Bert either.

  And speaking of strange behavior…

  “Why didn’t Sandra want to let you in so you could at least put the aioli in their fridge? She had the door open. Why didn’t she want to let us in?” Josie asked, even though she had a strong hunch why. “She could at least have taken the jar from you and put it inside herself.”

  Instead, Sandra had slammed and securely locked the door behind her before taking abrupt leave of them. She was currently sitting in her car in the drive speaking urgently into her phone.

  “Because there’s something weird going on in that house,” Aloysius said, clearly arriving at the same conclusion as Josie. “We should watch the door to see who goes in next and who comes out. You want to take the first shift and text me if you see anything?”

  Oh, I think I can do one better than that, Josie thought, but didn’t share her plan out loud with him. Even though she was fully prepared to put his neck on the line if someone called the police while she was breaking into Harris’s house, the stress of keeping tabs on Aloysius when she didn’t trust him wasn’t worth it.

  As soon as Sandra’s car was gone, Josie was going back over there—and without Aloysius.

  “It’s probably not worth it,” she told him in what she thought was a convincingly casual tone. “I don’t even think anyone is over there. They probably just leave a light on in the front room so burglars think someone is home.”

  They both turned to look at the house, and a light clicked on in an upstairs window at that very moment.

  “A light on a timer switch,” she said, less convincingly but nevertheless persisted with her theory. “I mean, it’s making us think someone is home, isn’t it?”

  He pursed his lips at her, an irritated expression which she almost didn’t catch in the shadows of the street. What right did he have to be annoyed with her, for crying out loud?

  He paused at the end of his driveway and crossed his arms over his puffy vest, making her realize that she hadn’t noticed the cold much in the whole time they’d been standing on Harris’s porch. Maybe her fervor to get inside his house was keeping her warm.

  “If you say so. All I know is I tried to deliver this mayo to Ann, and if she isn’t home, that’s not my fault if she runs out. She knows where to find me. I have better things to do than to wait around for her.”

  What better things? Josie wondered. Just what exactly is he doing other than dealing in herbal sandwich spread?

  Before she had a chance to ask him, he turned on his heel and retreated into his house, waving at her over his shoulder without a backward glance.

  She limped the rest of way with care, trying not to slip and snap her other ankle even though she would still have been irked enough to angry-hop the rest of the way there. She was hopping mad, as it were.

  As she let herself in the kitchen door, going through a mental checklist of the supplies she’d need to break into Harris’s house as she did so, her phone rang. This time, she glanced at the screen before deciding whether to answer.

  Oh, great. It’s Drew, my conscience.

  Chapter 37

  Her fiancé sounded rushed, which was to her advantage. “I haven’t heard from you in a while, so I thought I’d check up on you…I mean check in with you,” he said.

  You were right the first time.

  “No worries. I know you’re busy—and I’m good,” she lied. It wasn’t an outright untruth. She was no longer in the ER and was mostly mobile now that she’d ditched the crutches. She hadn’t been arrested for anything, and she hadn’t committed any felonies or misdemeanors. Yet.

  “I hope you’re finding what you need to. I just wanted to hear your voice. I’m actually on my way in to talk with a patient and her family before I head over to a dinner meeting with some of the clinic’s new management.” He wasn’t out of breath, but maybe jostling his phone while walking.

  “I’m on my way out, too,” she said and cringed. That line was absolute truth, but she wouldn’t in a million years voluntarily mention where she was headed. Other than to a certain flaming hot locale in a handbasket.

  “I know what that means,” he said, “and I’m not going to press for details. I’m only going to ask you to be careful.”

  And suddenly, she could breathe again. She still had a knot of stress in her stomach, but she hadn’t realized she’d inhaled and not exhaled until now.

  He gets me.

  “I promise I will try to be careful,” she said believing her own words for the moment.

  “I mean, you’re doing well this trip. You haven’t even injured yourself, right?”

  She was silent for a second or two before she said, “Right—no major injuries.”

  He was no dummy, however, and his sigh signified that he heard her hesitation and interpreted it correctly. “I do want to know. I just have to head into my patient’s room right now. Can I call you later?”

  “I’m fine,” she told him. Lynetta was another story, however, but she wasn’t going to tell him about that right now either. “Bert’s good, too. And yes, I’ll tell you everything later.”

  Actually, if she thought about it too long, “everything” looked pretty grim and she wasn’t sure how to fix it—not any of her situation.

  He sighed one more time and said a hurried goodbye before hanging up.

  “I don’t think he approves,” she told Bert, who wagged at her. “And he’s right not to. He totally understands me, though, which is a good thing.”

  But now she felt conflicted. Here was a sign from the universe, from the almighty…or at least a big coincidence. Was she going to ignore the fact that the Powers that Be had just sent her a warning message to give up her dumb idea of breaking into Harris’s house?

  She patted Bert’s bony head and then zipped up her jacket.

  She may not have been able to save Lynetta, but sh
e could at least help track down Betty, another vulnerable old lady, if only to drag her into the police station for questioning.

  

  She made it as far as the door when her phone rang again. Looking skyward, or at least at the tin ceiling tiles in the kitchen, she said, “You really are trying to tell me something, aren’t you?” The question was, would she listen to these warnings from the universe?

  “Hey, sorry it’s so late, but I found a few things you might want to know,” Susan told her.

  Josie didn’t want to check the time while she was on her phone, especially when she wanted to hear what Susan had dug up, so she said, “It’s not that late. Plus it’s an hour earlier here than on the East coast.”

  “Oh, cool,” her friend said in that semi-manic way she had when she wasn’t really listening. Usually it meant she had something on her mind and probably hadn’t slept well for a while. Susan tended to get a little one track minded these days. “So here’s what I’ve got for you about Lynetta Downes. I went back through the husband’s family as you asked. It took me a while to find anyone through my usual ancestry searches, but eventually, I found some distant cousins in England.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Josie said. “No American descendants in the Chicago area, then?”

  “Hang on, I was getting around to that. One branch of the family immigrated to the U.S. in the 1960s. They ended up in Detroit for whatever reason. I don’t think I would have picked that city personally, even if they had non-poisonous running water back then.” Susan cleared her throat. “But whatever. They were a family of four. Mom, dad, and two sons. The father died in the late 70s. I found a death certificate in public records, and it looks like the family struggled for a while. No mention of the boys in the local papers or anything like that through their teen years until a marriage certificate for the older one. He and his wife ended up having one son as well.”

  Josie’s eyes widened. “Let me guess, their last name is Kane and their son’s name is Harris?”

  Susan paused. “Uh, no…am I going down the wrong path?”

  “Rats. Maybe I’m just hoping for connections where there aren’t any.” Josie retreated back into the kitchen and sat down heavily in a chair, taking the weight off her foot. If she didn’t elevate it soon, she was going to wish she had some of Aloysius’s spiked mayo to help her get through the next few days.

  “Sorry it wasn’t what you were hoping for. I’ll text you the links I found and keep searching in the meantime. I might come across something more. You never know.”

  Josie thanked her and hung up, still troubled by the missing motive. Why would Betty Edwards poison Lynetta? Surely the old lady hadn’t committed murder only because Lynetta annoyed her? The three typical motives for murder were love, money, or pursuit of power—sometimes revenge, but that was usually caused by one of the other three. Josie still had her money on…well, money.

  “But at least one good thing came of that information,” she said aloud to Bert, who wasn’t listening in the least. “Now I have some people to track down to give Lynetta’s money. They’re going to feel like they won the lottery.” Some distant cousins were going to be very surprised, in a good way.

  Funny how Josie didn’t feel like that. The pile of cash was nothing but a burden she wanted to give up as soon as possible.

  In the meantime, she had a house to break into.

  Chapter 38

  The Victorian painted ladies may have lined Lincoln Street for a hundred years, but their locks were no match for Josie and her set of picks. After a couple minutes of prodding and jiggling, the front door to Harris’s yellow house creaked open.

  I learned a lot in college my second time around, she thought with a mental eye roll. Her recent undercover stint had thrown her together with a coed named Tiffany who had ninja skills when it came to picking locks. Not only had she taught Josie how to tease open some tumblers, but she’d also told her where to get her own set of picks. Josie owed the girl a thank you note or a couple of good dinners for as many times as the skill had come in handy since her week at Bader University. She was still in a group text for all the kids she’d met there although she’d had to mute the notifications for it because they messaged each other about three hundred times an hour.

  “Hi? Is anyone home?” Josie asked, as loudly as she dared. There was a fine line between acting like an innocent, non-burglar type of person and rousing the nosy neighbors, of which she normally was one. She’d knocked on the door again before breaking in, just in case someone had come home and she hadn’t noticed, but no one had answered. “Your front door was open. I think it was the wind,” she added out loud, lying. Also, just in case.

  The front entryway of Harris’s house wasn’t as unsettling as she’d thought it might be. Yes, about a dozen porcelain dolls of various sizes lined the narrow table by the door, their unblinking eyes watching and judging Josie’s every move—and every lie—but otherwise, the house seemed normal. A little unkempt maybe, she thought, glancing at the layer of dust blanketing everything and a few leaves on the tile floor that had blown into the house from the dead, frozen plants on the front porch.

  She closed the door behind her to keep the cold out, took a few tentative steps in, and listened to the dead silence again. “Sandra said I might be able to find you here,” she said to no one. Still no answer. A light was on in the sitting room, and the grandfather clock in the entryway ticked.

  Okay, then.

  She went further into the entryway and front door burst open behind her. She whirled around with a gasp.

  “Don’t you dare go in there without me,” Aloysius said. “I saw you and came right over.” He held his jar of homemade sandwich spread under his arm.

  Josie clutched her chest where her heart felt like it was trying to bang its way out. “What are you doing here? Don’t you ever sleep?” She glanced the clock. It was almost ten. Hadn’t he given up on his neighborhood watch yet?

  “I have an herbal tea that fills me up with energy. Makes me stay awake all night. I need only half the government recommended amount of sleep. It keeps me sharp so I can keep working.” He bounced on his toes in the hallway, a hyperactive beanpole looming over her.

  Looks like his special herb starts with a C and ends with “ocaine.”

  Josie heard herself heave a sigh, which he either didn’t hear or probably chose to ignore.

  “Stay put, baby. I’m just going to put this in the fridge for Ann, and then we can snoop together. I know you want to see where Harris bashed her on the head. We can look at it together.” He disappeared into the other room and continued to talk to her even though he’d disappeared out of sight.

  She put her hands on her off-balance hips, stared at the ceiling, and asked herself aloud, “What am I doing? What am I actually doing here? I’m in the house of an alleged kidnapper—possible murderer or even the orchestrator of a murder-for-hire—with a fancy-dressing near-stranger who roofied me with pot looking for an alcoholic creepy doll maker’s dead body because I thought I saw something while I was hopped up on painkillers. And now I’m talking to myself. Someone, please tell me…how did I get this far off track and what does any of this have to do with Lynetta? Am I just kidding myself that I’m chasing down leads?”

  “What’s that you say?” he said, coming back into the room. He didn’t wait for an answer. “You ever walk into someone’s house and take a look in their refrigerator?” Strangely enough, she had, but he kept going. “Oh my good God in heaven. When was the last time these people cleaned theirs out? I think Ronald Reagan was still president. They’ve got containers from McDonald’s with the Hamburglar logo on them. Mayor McCheese changed his name to Mayor McBluecheese. It stinks in there. They’re living like animals.”

  “I was going to tell you to keep your voice down, but I don’t think anyone’s home,” Josie said. She gestured for him to precede her down the hall, which was kind of funny because he strode by her limping self without waiting anyw
ay.

  “Honey, anything I say about their fridge is only the tip of the iceberg of some hard truths they need to hear about the lack of cleanliness and unhygienic state of their kitchen. I even wouldn’t let a dog—”

  Whatever he had been about to say was cut off by a woman’s shriek as he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Josie increased the rate of her hobble as she limped after him.

  She started to say, “I know I have some explaining to—” when the woman screamed again. Except it wasn’t a woman who was screaming. Aloysius slapped a hand over his mouth and cut himself off mid-wail. With a shaky finger, he pointed at the stairs where the crumpled body of a man lay in a tangle of limbs.

  Harris Kane. Dead.

  

  “Well, I gotta say, it’s not looking good for little old Betty,” Officer Jablonski shout-spoke some time later, scribbling down a couple of notes, including Josie’s cell phone number. As always, she flinched slightly at his volume level. “If your landlady did this to her nephew, what’d she be willing to do to her mother-in-law? I mean, people hate their in-laws to begin with.”

  They had watched the coroner, a robust looking older lady in her sixties with bright white hair and a strong jawline, arrive and begin examining the body.

  Josie had already given him a statement about how she’d met Sandra coming out of the house earlier. She’d had to fudge how she and Aloysius came to be inside the house now without a living occupant, saying the door hadn’t been properly closed—and they had been able to show the police the jar of aioli that Aloysius had brought over. Thank goodness for his herbal delights in this case.

  She glanced at his house. The emergency lights flashed all up and down the street, throwing garish colors on the faces of the painted ladies. Aloysius was probably partaking of his homemade remedies at the moment, if she had to hazard a guess. He’d given his statement to the police and had gone home in a big hurry, upset and stammering about needing to catch his breath. If Josie wasn’t mistaken, the presence of the boys in blue had rattled him quite a bit, but maybe it was a race issue. Or maybe he was afraid she’d have him arrested for drugging her earlier. After all, he was a dark-skinned man with an illegal drug business, medicinal or not, and that was asking for trouble no matter how much of a quaint little cottage industry he was running.