by Gregg Olsen
Monique’s body hangs from the shower head. A piece of white electric cord is wrapped around her neck; the end with the plug is draped over her shoulder. She is a short woman and her toes barely touch the tub. Her skin is all in one piece, lying in the tub beneath her. One piece. Like a wetsuit with a wig and face mask.
Her head is slumped to the side, eyes bulging out of the sockets like bloody marbles. There are two teardrop-shaped, blood-filled cavities where her nose should be. Her jaws hang open as if she died screaming. Tony said there are no close neighbors and I didn’t see any as I came to the scene.
No one heard her screams.
I feel dizzy, nauseated; my legs are buckling. Luckily, Sheriff Gray has moved up behind me and takes my arm. He leads me back into the bedroom. One of my booties gets blood on it and I hear the tech let out a grunt of disapproval. I almost snap at him but I want to throw up even more. I rush out of the bedroom, into the hall and down to the half bath before I lose it. I gag and retch but nothing comes up. My stomach is in knots.
I pull some toilet paper from the roll, dampen it in the sink, and wipe my mouth. To hell with the techs. I splash water in my face and use more toilet paper to pat it dry. Tony was right: There is no way to identify what’s in there as Monique Delmont. Even the hair is so caked and stiff with blood that it’s impossible to tell the color. I look in the mirror. Good thing I don’t wear much makeup. I return to the bedroom.
“You okay, Megan?”
I’ll never eat rare steak again, but I’m fine.
“I’ll be okay. I just had breakfast this morning.”
My stomach lurches but I won’t give the tech the pleasure of seeing me throw up again.
“Good thing you didn’t have the greasy bacon, huh?” the tech says, and Sheriff Gray turns on him.
“Deputy, I think you’d better get back to work. I want all the photos and your reports in two hours. Do you understand?”
Both techs say nothing. Their body language says it all. We’re interlopers, idiots who have raided their domain. Crime Scene can be that way sometimes. I know Mindy is here somewhere and I want to talk to her. She won’t be such a wiseass. I haven’t seen Jerry Larsen. He’s probably sitting in his van, having coffee until he can take the body.
“Your chest giving you problems again?”
“It only hurts when I breathe.” I smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. He knows I’m hiding the pain. I won’t take painkillers. I can’t let my guard down, and those things put me to sleep.
A pewter tray holding several rings sits on top of the double dresser. A necklace with a thin gold chain and a diamond and ruby pendant are next to the tray. An ornate, carved-wood jewelry box is at the other end of the dresser. The lid is open and I can see other precious pieces inside. I don’t take Monique for a person to own junk jewelry. Why did the killer leave the jewelry? Because it wasn’t a robbery.
“Seen enough?” Tony asks.
I say something that comes out as a croak, so I just nod. We go down the stairs, careful to follow our own steps back to the front door. Outside, Copsey is playing Candy Crush on his iPhone until he sees the sheriff and hurriedly puts it away. If he knew the sheriff like I did, he would have just asked Tony for some tips on the game. Sheriff Gray spends hours in his office playing some game or other.
“I want a sweep of the grounds,” I say. “One hundred yards each direction. I want to know how this guy got in here and how he got out.”
“Already being done, Megan.” Sheriff Gray points off to the right of the house. I see Mindy is in the tree line. She makes a left turn and comes back toward us in a straight line. She’s walking a grid.
“Shouldn’t she have some help?”
“She wants to do it herself,” Tony says. “She saw your police picture in there and she’s worried about you. So am I.”
I watch her methodical movements. If anyone can find evidence, she can.
“Don’t worry,” he says.
I feel like I can breathe again. He’s a good man: honest to a fault; but, like me, he’ll bend the rules a little for a friend. As far as trust goes, I trust him more than most. Besides, he knows me only as Megan. He doesn’t know the name Rylee or that I attended South Kitsap High School. And there is nothing on the picture to identify it as South Kitsap. I am being paranoid.
Mindy looks up briefly and waves. I wave back and return to my car.
Seven
I’m going through the motions like a sleepwalker. I’ll wake up and find that none of this has happened. Monique will be in Tacoma and I’ll be in bed after having drunk too much wine. Or Scotch. But the pain I feel in the center of my chest tells me I’m awake. I’m here, on the road, doing the legwork.
First step, check with all the neighbors. Get names, vehicles, descriptions, anything and everything that can help me identify who was where and when they were there. This is a nice neighborhood, but the yards are too perfectly kept. Too big. I don’t imagine any of the owners do their own landscaping. I doubt the killer was here during the day to do their dirty work, so the landscapers would have seen nothing.
Plus, our coroner, Jerry Larsen, was getting into his van as I was leaving and told me he couldn’t give me any kind of accurate time or date of death. But his guess was two days, because that was the last time the neighbor walking her dog said she’d seen her. The coagulation of the blood supports that. I remember Tony saying what the woman actually said was that she’d had tea with her. I wonder when that was.
I had the neighbor’s name and address: 123 Julianne Lane, Mrs. Perkins. I drive past the house and for another ten minutes I drive around the neighborhood to get a feel for it. I’ve lived in Port Townsend a couple of years and have never been to this area. The extent of my exploring has been driving to Port Hadlock and Chimacum and back home. Maybe a little downtown to one of five eating establishments and/or bars. Outside of investigations, I don’t go anywhere. My last case took me to several islands, but I wasn’t sightseeing.
I pull into the driveway at 123. Mrs. Perkins is standing behind the storm door. She is a delicate-looking woman with wispy blue-white hair. She adjusts her large, black plastic-framed glasses and squints at me. The house where Monique was murdered is three long blocks away. There’s no possibility this woman saw anything from her house. To be honest, I can’t see her walking that far just to take her dog for morning business.
I knock on the door and hold my badge up and identify myself. Mrs. Perkins comes to the door, cocks her head and her glasses slide down. I could burn ants with the lenses. She pushes them back up the bridge of her small nose.
“I’m Detective Carpenter,” I say loudly, in case she has problems hearing as well as seeing. “Sheriff’s Office.”
She doesn’t move.
“You just talked to my boss, Sheriff Gray. I’m here to talk about your friend, Monique Delmont.” I don’t tell her I’m there to ask questions, because I think she’ll pull her head all the way into her shell and scuttle out of sight and back into the surf.
“She wasn’t really my friend per se.”
Mrs. Perkins says this loudly like I’m the person with hearing impairment. This is going to be fun.
She unlatches the door.
“Come in. I’ll put coffee on. I drink tea myself, but I make a good pot of coffee. I roast my own beans. That’s the secret.”
I walk behind her to her living room. She lives in a nice area, but the houses are much closer together than where I just came from. They are also directly across the street from each other. Out of the window I have a clear view of the living room of the neighbor across the way. A woman is standing there, window watching me. She looks a good deal like Mrs. Perkins. Both are in their late eighties, short, white permed hair tinged light blue. Her glasses are horn-rimmed and attached to a silver chain worn around her neck. Both women are wearing what my aunt Ginger called a housedress: a shapeless, one-piece dress with short sleeves. The dress across the way is red with big white flowers
. Mrs. Perkins’s frock is white with red flowers. I imagine they call each other every morning and come up with the dress code.
Mrs. Perkins catches me looking across the street. “That’s Mrs. Guidry. Leona’s a widow like me. She’s so nosy.”
“Did Mrs. Guidry know Monique—Mrs. Delmont?”
“Have a seat,” she says. “The couch is very comfortable. My son sent it as a Christmas present. Shipped it from Arizona, where he and his wife and three children live. He works for Amazon. Never comes home much since his dad died.”
She didn’t answer my question, but I’ve learned that with some older folks you don’t push. They come from a different era when people still visited and talked and got to know each other before they got down to the nitty-gritty. My mom said she remembered her parents and their neighbors or friends actually sitting in each other’s kitchens and playing games, drinking coffee or something stronger. I look up again and there is Mrs. Guidry, still glued to her window like a tree frog.
“Nosy thing,” Mrs. Perkins says, and makes a dismissive motion with her hand. “Don’t pay her any mind. She’s like a cat. If you give her the slightest provocation, she’ll follow you around. Would you like tea, Detective?”
What I’d like is an answer, but I’ll have to play along.
“Yes, please. Can we sit in your kitchen? I find it much more pleasant and less formal.” I sounded a little like Betty Crocker just then, but it works. She smiles and crooks a twig-like finger at me to follow.
The kitchen table is made of some dark hardwood and there’s a half-finished monstrous puzzle on top. The picture on the puzzle box is that of a fireman wearing only heavy cotton pants and a red fire hat. He is holding a hose, and what she’d completed showed a heavily muscled chest and part of a six-pack. A four-pack, to be exact. There are words at the bottom of the puzzle:
LET ME PUT OUT YOUR FIRE
I suspect Mrs. Perkins keeps herself entertained, although I’m not sure how she sees well enough to do a puzzle.
She smiles and fills a kettle, turns on the burner and comes back to the table. We both sit.
“Maybe you can help me with this puzzle. I’ve done the darn thing three times and I always get the fireman done first, but this time I can’t seem to find some pieces.”
Maybe she ate them. I look at the floor. Several flesh-colored puzzle pieces are under my chair. I retrieve them and fit them into place.
“There he is,” she says with a huge grin. “Isn’t he adorable? I could just eat him with a spoon.” She blushes, and her hand goes to her face. “I’m sorry.” Then she starts to cry.
I wait her out.
“You must think I’m a silly, dirty old woman.”
It passes through my mind, but I want to get on with this. I say, “No. I don’t think that at all.”
She dabs at her eyes with the tip of a napkin. The teakettle screams like a train whistle. She gets up and takes down what I believe are her best china cups. The handles on the teacups are so small and fragile, I have to pinch them between my thumb and forefinger, and that puts my pinky finger in the air. My mother called that hoity-toity. Pretentious. Lifestyles of the rich and clueless. It is, however, the only way I can hold the damn cup.
I put several teaspoons of sugar in my tea and stir carefully, afraid I’ll break the china or spill it. Mrs. Perkins opens a cabinet above the stove and takes down a bottle of Johnnie Walker. She pours several capfuls in her tea and offers the bottle to me. I decline. I’m on duty. And I’ve spoiled it with sugar already.
She takes a seat. “I have to hide the bottle from Leona,” she says. “She has a drinking problem.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. She smiles and we’re friends. Just like that.
“So, Detective, where were we?”
Before I can open my mouth, a Jack Russell terrier is at my feet, staring at me. I like dogs. I reach down to pet him.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Mrs. Perkins says.
I straighten back up in the chair. The dog is still staring at me. Maybe deciding if I’m lunch, dinner, or just a snack.
“That’s Gonzo. He’s old. He can’t half see. He probably thinks you’re Leona. She always gives him a treat. Don’t pay him any mind. He’ll get tired and lay down.”
I ignore him and pull my feet and ankles under the chair. “You were going to tell me about Mrs. Delmont,” I remind her.
“Oh, yes. Monique. Such a pretty name. Not like Leona or Rowena. That’s my name. Rowena Perkins. Rowena Rafferty when I was unmarried. You can call me Weena. I think ‘Mrs. Perkins’ is just too much.”
I don’t need to hear all of this, so I move it along. “Tell me about Mrs. Delmont, Weena.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry for prattling on.” She stops and takes a sip of her tea and actually smacks her lips. “Ahhh,” she says.
I think I know why she really hides the bottle.
“Monique moved into what used to be the old Donaldson place two weeks ago Saturday,” she says. “I remember seeing that someone was in the house. It sat empty for more than a year. So I went up to introduce myself. She was so pleasant. And she seemed to be sad. We had tea. She sat right there where you are now. In fact, she helped me with this puzzle the first time.”
She stops and takes a bigger sip. Quiet. Looking at the puzzle. I believe she’s lost in thought until she picks up a puzzle piece and tries to fit it in part of the fireman’s groin.
“Weena…” I say.
“Oh. Yes. I was thinking.”
I know what she was thinking about.
“She never invited me over. I thought maybe she kept a dirty house. Yet she was always dressed so nice, I knew that couldn’t be. She was beautiful. She said she had two daughters and a grandson. We never talked much about them. She seemed to not want to. I think that’s why she was sad. My own son hardly ever calls and never visits. I understood her. I don’t know why these kids do any of the things they do. Maybe he's just tired of a needy old woman.”
She stops and finishes the tea in one impressively loud gulp.
I push a little. “Did you ever see anyone at her house? Did she have any other friends?”
“That’s the reason I told you that she wasn’t a friend. Not really. After the first few days she was here she seemed to withdraw and keep to herself. At times her car would be gone, so I knew she’d gone out. But she was usually home. I stopped by about four days ago—Thursday, I think. Yes, a Thursday. I was worried that she might be sick, and when she answered the door, I could tell she’d been crying. I didn’t ask. None of my business.”
“What kind of car did she have?” I ask.
“I don’t know cars. A blue one. My husband did all the driving. I don’t need to get out much. I have a gardener once a week and a boy to deliver my groceries. Even my medicine comes by mail. Amazon is a godsend. If I didn’t have Gonzo, I’d never get out of the house.”
“So you were never inside her house?”
“That’s what I told the sheriff,” she says.
Eight
After two more spiked teas and repeated questioning, I found out Mrs. Rowena Perkins had lied to Sheriff Gray. Her excuse for not telling him right away was that he hadn’t asked directly if she’d been in the house.
I call the sheriff. “Are you still on scene?”
“I was catching up with Mindy,” he says. “Have you already got something?”
I feel a little bad. When I tell him what Perkins left out of her story, he’s going to kick himself for not asking. When I tell him what she left out, he’s going to give her hell. She’s just an old woman who got caught up in something way out of her comfort zone. She thought she was doing a good thing. She is old enough to know that no good deed goes unpunished.
“Someone needs to come to Mrs. Perkins’s house and fingerprint her.”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah,” I say. “She forgot to tell you that she went inside the house. Her dog did too. Here’s the Twitter version of what she
told me. She smelled something bad and hadn’t seen Monique for a couple of days. She didn’t talk to Monique but just saw her coming home last Thursday. She and Monique weren’t good friends because Monique wanted to keep to herself. She hadn’t seen or spoken to Monique since and thought maybe she was sick. When she smelled the rot from the street, she went up to the house. She knocked but the door was unlatched and it came open. She opened the door and nearly threw up. She still thought maybe it was the smell of vomit from Monique being sick, and so she went inside.”
“She saw the body?” Tony asks.
I tell him no. “However, she said she saw something hanging from the shower and got out of there. Her dog lapped up some of the blood before she could pull him away.”
“Damn it.”
I can see the expression on his face. It could be—as it was meant to be now—frightening.
“If you talk to her, try not to yell.”
“I’ll get her… and her little dog too,” he says, and I have to chuckle. At least he’s got a sense of humor about this mess.
“Have Mindy call me,” I say.
“She’s right here.”
A beat later Mindy comes on the line. “Hey you. You’re like a black cloud. But you keep me in business. We got another nut case here, don’t we?”
She’s joking but she doesn’t know how right she is. Everywhere I go, trouble follows close behind.
“Looks like it,” I say.
“We found a recent snapshot of you on the bed. Do you think the victim took it?”
“I don’t think so. Sheriff told me where he found it and it sounds like it was left that way deliberately.”
“That’s what I think too.”
“The killer left your picture behind. Stalker maybe?”
More than one, I think.
“Right. I can’t get a date but I can get a stalker.” I try to make light of it. I don’t want anyone to start protecting me. I can take care of myself. I can take care of whoever this is. My way.
