Scrambled Hard-Boiled

by E.R. White, Jr.

  * * * * *

  In broad daylight, the place looked even more run-down. The siding on the house was dirty, with mold creeping up from the ground. Yellow crime-scene tape was plastered across the windows and doors, and another deputy stood guard outside. We walked up to the front door. After a quick consultation between the deputy and our escort, the seal on the front door was broken and Ernie and I went inside.

  The murder scene had been cleaned up. The victim’s blood and other bodily fluids had been washed from the floor for sanitation reasons. Just like in the movies, a stark, chalk outline was all that remained of where Susan Bowman’s body had fallen. The shattered, glass-topped coffee table had been swept up into a neat pile near the top of the chalk outline. A cheap, brown couch and chair were set up against the far wall and a small, black-and-white TV with rabbit ears sat on a stand across from them. The fireplace lay empty and cold. A few magazines were sitting on a table stand next to the couch. The walls and floor were barren of adornment.

  Ernie and I looked under the cushions of the couch and chair, but other than turning up a bit of loose change, we found nothing. We made our way into the kitchen.

  There was nothing there of interest either. There was some canned goods and dried pasta in the pantry, and a few plastic dishes, plates and cups on the shelves. The fridge was still running and inside we found only some beer and a few sodas. The cheap card table that served as a dining table and its matching folding chairs were present in the middle of the room. We moved on to the bedroom.

  The bed had been stripped, and the floor cleaned of Sonny’s vomit. The scent of pine oil cleaner was heavy in the air. Ernie started to go through the dresser, and I headed for the closet.

  Inside, I found the trampy and somewhat meager remnants of Susan Bowman’s boudoir. The small closet contained no more than a few blouses, four pairs of jeans, one dress and a couple of negligees. At the bottom were three or four pairs of high-heeled pumps, some tennis shoes and a pair of sandals, the same pair that she’d been wearing in the photograph. Convinced there was nothing else to find, I turned to look at Ernie and caught him sniffing a pair of panties that he’d found in one of the dresser drawers. I coughed to get his attention, and he quickly dropped the panties back in the drawer.

  “Find anything?” I asked.

  “Nothing, just some panties, bras, pantyhose and things like that. No mementos, address book, nothing other than the bare essentials. How 'bout you?”

  “Same here, it’s as if she just dropped into this house out of thin air. It stinks.”

  I went over to the bed and looked under it. There was a suitcase there. I grabbed it, threw it on top of the bed, opened it and searched it. Bare as a bone.

  In disgust, I slammed it shut, and bent over to toss it back under the bed. It was then that I spied it, wedged behind the bed frame leg, next to the wall. A small, white cardboard box, no more than three-by-three inches square and an inch deep. Curious, I pulled it out from behind the bed frame leg and laid it on top of the bed.

  It was one of those small boxes you get when you buy some cheap jewelry from a drugstore. Carefully, I opened it. Empty. Well, almost empty. I nearly missed it because of the box’s white color. When I was about to close it and throw it away, the sunshine streaming through the bedroom window struck the inside of the box in such a way that I saw the minute sparkle that a powder can give it if light hits it just the right manner. And it dawned on me. The kind of sparkle of a powder—like heroin. The walls of the box had a light dusting of it. I called over Ernie and showed him.

  At first, he wasn’t impressed.

  “So what, maybe she kept her shit here, she had to put it somewhere. Maybe it’s nothing, not even smack. Who gives a damn?”

  “Don’t you remember me telling you that she picked up a small package at the post office the day she died? It was about this size.”

  I saw the light of understanding start to creep in into his eyes.

  “Someone mailed her the heroin!” we said in unison.

  “Deputy!” Ernie hollered. “Come here, now, we need you.”

  The officer rushed into the room.

  “I want you to get an evidence bag, put this box on the bed in it and seal it. We want it tested. When we’re done here, we’ll go back with you and make sure Sheriff Crump knows about it and sees it, got it? This is damned important.”

  The deputy, somewhat flustered at his sudden responsibility, stuttered out “Yes sir!” and sped out of the room to go get the plastic evidence bag.

  “Look for the paper it was wrapped in,” I said, “it was brown.”

  Unfortunately, our luck had run out. Ernie and I tore up the house but found no brown wrapping paper. We eventually gave up and went outside in the crisp November air, stood by Ernie’s car and discussed the situation. We had gotten over our initial euphoria on finding a possible clue, something that Ernie later confessed had very rarely happened to him during his days a private detective, and while we would still have the box tested for drug residue, we had no real proof of it being mailed to her. So, somewhat disheartened, we went back to the Sheriff’s office to turn in the box for tests.

  We walked into Crump’s office and showed him what we had. He looked at us sympathetically, as if he knew we were snatching at straws and took the evidence bag from his deputy, then dismissed him.

  “Sure I’ll have it tested, but even if it comes back positive, I don’t know what it will prove. That she and Sonny kept a neat drug den?” He dropped the bag on his desk.

  Then I had an idea.

  “Sheriff, can I look at that box one more time, outside the bag?”

  He shrugged, called up his lab boys and had them deliver a pair of rubber gloves to his office.

  “Might as well play it by the book.” he explained. “Now that it’s here, we got to be careful, Anderson will kill me if I screw this up. Hell, I shouldn’t even let you touch it anymore, but considering you’re the one that found it, I guess it won’t do no harm.”

  The rubber gloves were brought in. Crump handed them to me and told me to wear them when I handled the box.

  I put them on, got a couple sheets of blank typing paper and a pencil. Carefully, I removed the box and placed it on one of the sheets of paper. I then took the other piece of paper and placed it on top of the box. Carefully, using the pencil, I began rapidly to scratch back and forth on the paper.

  Within a few seconds, the words “Susan Bowman, P. O. Box 1301, Warhill N. C. 28970” were plainly visible on the paper.

  Sheriff Crump was impressed enough with Ernie’s and my discovery that he took personal control of the processing of the box. Within a day or so we had the results from the lab. The light dusting of powder proved to be heroin, of the same purity as the small baggie found near Sonny Slatterson the night of the murder. There was a fingerprint on the box, but it was smudged beyond identification. Nevertheless, it was proof that Susan Bowman was possibly having her drugs mailed to her, and that meant there was at least a third party involved in this mess, even if so far only peripherally. As Swinson pointed out, it was one more thing to hang on Susan Bowman’s head—she was now a drug pushing over-painted trollop vice just your run-of-the-mill over-painted trollop. However, we were still clueless as to who was sending her the drugs and if that individual had anything to do with her murder.

  Ernie and I split up the workload. He went back to Charlotte to tidy up any outstanding work we had and to start searching the records for information on the life and times of Susan Bowman. I stayed in Warhill and started going around and asking questions about Bowman’s activities and habits while she lived in town.

  I started by going around and visiting her neighbors, asking them what they knew about the deceased. Bowman’s home was in the low-rent section of the county and the uneducated, manual laborers who worked unskilled jobs occupied the nearby houses and trailers. Some had lived in the county their whole lives. Others had drifted in looking for work. Alcohol, pot and tele
vision were the focal points of their lives, with sex and the occasional wife beating thrown in to spice things up every now and then.

  All were aware of the murder that had occurred and most of those who lived near the murder site had seen Susan Bowman at one time or another. The men, of course, had salivated over her looks and the women, almost to a person, seemed somewhat pleased she was dead, even though they had never really met her. As one middle-aged 175 lb woman told me as she stood there in a knit sweater with no bra, stretch pants and cigarette hanging out of her mouth with the smoke swirling around her platinum blond beehive hairdo, "The bitch obviously was a whore and got what she deserved.”

  No one, however, had really made more than a passing acquaintance with her, and it was soon clear that Bowman kept to herself the entire ten months she’d lived at the house. People had noticed Sonny Slatterson’s car there regularly for the past seven or eight months, but the couple had bothered no one, so people had left them alone. Other than Sonny, she seemed to have had no other visitors.

  I talked with the real estate company that managed the properties in the neighborhood. The whole area was owned by a ninety-three-year old widow who had inherited the place from her husband when he died twenty years ago. She was in a nursing home and was childless. Her will stated that the property was to be sold off upon her death and all proceeds go to her local church. Miriam Falwell, the rental agent who handled the old widow’s account, said that ten months ago, Susan Bowman had walked in and inquired about renting a place to live.

  “I took her out to a few places in town, but she said she wanted to be somewhere more secluded,” said Mrs. Falwell, “so I took her out to the places we have outside of town and showed her the Trundle Road properties. To be honest, I was surprised when she said she wanted to rent the house at the end of the road. It’s a pretty rundown neighborhood, as you well know, but I guess water always seeks its own level, if you know what I mean.”

  She arched her eyebrows and looked at me smugly.

  “How did she pay her rent?” I asked.

  “Always in cash and always on time.”

  “Did she give any credit references, list her job or anything on the application paperwork?”

  “Hmm, let me look. It's been almost a year since she came here. Give me a second and I’ll check.”

  She stood up and went over to a file cabinet and opened it. A minute later she came back with a piece of paper in her hand.

  “She put down ‘hairdresser’ as her occupation, but gave no credit references or any previous address.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Well—yes, but she paid for the first three months rent in cash, as well as a security deposit. The lease was for six months with an option for six months more, which she took advantage of. Considering where the place was and the lack of demand for those rental properties out there, well, we went ahead and let her move in. And like I said, she was always on time with the rent, 300 dollars a month.”

  That meant with the security deposit, she paid around 1200 bucks cold hard cash up front. That and another seven months rent came up to over 3000 dollars.

  A lot of dough for an unemployed hairdresser.

  And the spending didn’t stop there. I checked with the used-car dealer where she’d purchased her Chevy. She paid close to a thousand bucks, cash, no questions asked, no haggling over price. Car insurance, a years worth, in cash. Water and electric bills, all paid in cash, always on time. Grocery bills, cash. Local drug store, all purchases in cash. In fact, any store where Susan Bowman had been she paid in cash. No checks, no credit cards, no attempt to run a tab, no debts. Just anonymous, cold, hard cash.

  Everyone who had seen her in downtown Warhill, remembered her. The outfit she was wearing when I saw her seemed to be her chosen motif whenever she ventured out, so it was hard not to notice a brazen slut in your midst. Even so, as I asked around, it became obvious she might have dressed like a whore, but she was as aloof as a duchess.

  She’d come into town, do her shopping or errands and leave. No small talk, no getting to know your neighbors. Occasionally, she’d order a sandwich from the drugstore lunch counter, but she would sit in a side booth and eat it and make no attempt to mingle with the locals.

  For close to a week, I tried to recreate the life of Susan Bowman while she lived in Warhill. All I’d found out was that the lady was unemployed, paid cash everywhere she went, kept to herself, and her social life seemed to have revolved around her trysts with Sonny Slatterson. Hell, I didn’t even know how they met in the first place. Overall, after a promising start in finding the small box with the traces of heroin, the investigation had slowed to a standstill.

  Then Ernie called me up and told me that Susan Bowman had been dead for almost forty years.