“Okay, Janie. Tell me what happened.” He handed her the water glass and helped guide it toward her lips. The cool liquid slid down her throat, diminishing the lump of emotion lodged there.
“Melody left the back door unlocked because Ethel would be coming in a little while. I took a pain pill so I dozed off, I guess. Next thing I know, this large hand clamped over my mouth and nose.”
“Go on. Take your time.”
She told Blake what the gruff voice said. “He slapped me, I imagine to make his point.” She sucked her sore lip and tasted blood.
He cocked an eyebrow and glanced up at his underling. “Add assault to the charges.” His gaze shifted back to her as his eyes grew cold. “Janie, I thought we agreed you’d let the police handle this. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing. We went to Edwin Newman’s funeral and spoke with his niece.”
He held up a shuffled a stack of papers, now half dispersed onto the area rug. “And this?”
She batted her eyelashes. “A little light reading while I am convalescing.”
His jaw line hardened. The air became frigid as he thumbed through the court report.
Janie winched.
Blake smacked the documents down on the table. He rose off the couch and paced, hands rubbing down his face. After a moment, he stopped and turned to her. “Give Connor as full a description as you can. A patrol car is making rounds, but we will step it up a notch.”
“Okay, thanks.” She stared at her hands as they clutched her quilt. When did they start to get so old and wrinkly?
“In the meantime, Janie...”
She lifted her glance as his finger aimed at her face.
“…you are to stop this nonsense immediately. You understand me?”
She gave her head a quick nod.
He thrust his thumb into his necktie. “I’m the detective. Let me do my job.”
Her lips quivered as his image shimmered through new tears.
Blake shifted his weight. “Don’t start the water works again. Please. I’m sorry, but you do yank my chain.”
The officer, pen poised over his notebook, let off a snicker. His expression returned to a stone-faced one when Blake’s gaze shifted in his direction.
“Connor, gather what evidence you can and fill out the report. Bradley, check for footprints in the yard.”
“Yes, sir.”
Blake knelt to Janie’s eye level again. “I gather he wore gloves?”
Her eyes widened. “No, he didn’t. I just remembered something.”
“What?”
“His hands smelled of truck stop soap and raw hamburger meat.”
Blake’s expression tightened. “Branson, get the fingerprint kit, too.”
* * *
Ethel tapped on the backdoor jamb. “Hello? Janie, are you okay?”
Blake called to the kitchen. “In here, Ethel. All is fine. But do not touch the door knob, okay. We need to dust for prints.”
“Fingerprints? Oh, gracious. May I watch?”
“As long as you stay out of the way. My officer is getting the kit now.”
She tiptoed across the dining room rug and stood in the threshold of the living room, her arms laden with her stack of court papers and two grease-seeped sacks from the fast food joint down the road.
Janie groaned.
Blake eyed the papers, humphed again, and patted her shoulder. “Remember what I said, now.” He half-bowed to Ethel on the way out.
Janie motioned for her friend to sit and wait until the officer finished asking her questions. When he ran out of them, he handed Janie the golden copy of the report and said they would be in touch. “We will dust the back door. Did he touch anything in here?”
“Besides me, no. I don’t think so.”
The cop grinned. “I’ll close the door on my way out.” He touched the tip of his hat. “Ladies.”
Ethel stopped him. “Blake…er, Detective Johnson, said I could observe ya’ll as long as I stay out of the way.”
Connor’s eye twitched. “Okay. Bradley is outside taking pictures. We’ll call you when we start.”
Ethel gave him a sugary smile, opened the bag, and pulled out a large box of fries, batter-fried chicken sandwiches, and fruit cups. “Figured you might want comfort food after your accident. Little did I know...” She jutted her thumb toward the kitchen. “What happened? Are you okay? You’re pale.”
For the third—or was it the fourth?—time, Janie relayed her harrowing adventure.
“Wow.” Ethel sat back and took a bite from her whole wheat bun. “Guess we’ve ruffled a few feathers, huh?”
“I don’t see how.” Janie gathered the quilt to her neck. “I mean, who figured out we’ve been snooping?”
“About everyone in a five-mile radius of Sunset Acres. You know how fast gossip travels.”
“Hmm.”
“So,” Ethel pointed with a French fry to the stack of papers. “Discover anything?”
“No. Something tells me I won’t. Keeping my mind occupied, though. How about you?”
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you after the expression on Blake’s face.” She motioned with her head to the underling who combed the room with his eyes looking for anything out of the ordinary.
Silence fell between them. They locked gazes.
Ethel took another bite of her meal and chewed like a cow taking its time to graze. She wrapped her lips around the straw of her iced tea and took a long, slurpy draw.
Janie arched her left eyebrow and tapped her fingernail on her take-out cup. Connor moved toward the dining room, his head bent to the ground as if searching for a lost contact lens.
Ethel set down her food and dabbed the napkin to the corner of her mouth. In a quieter voice she resumed. “I went to visit Peggy Williams today. She says ‘hello’ to you by the way. We had a nice chat, and I caught her up on all the news.” She crossed her leg. “Can you believe she never heard about the, well, about Edwin? I gather they are more or less isolated so news travels pretty slowly around those facilities.”
Janie cocked an eyebrow.
Connor glanced at them, gave them a head nod, and continued his search.
In an even softer voice she proceeded. “Guess what she told me? She couldn’t sleep one night so she wheeled herself down to the common area. You remember? The one with the big picture windows that overlook the complex?”
“Yes, go on.”
“Well, this occurred a week ago Monday, I mean Tuesday to be more accurate since Peggy figures she witnessed the van about two in the morning.”
“A van?!”
“Shhhh.” Ethel wiped a smudge from her glasses and waited for the police investigator to shuffled toward the kitchen. “She thinks so. A vehicle with its lights on dim moved at a tortoise’s pace down the lane.”
“She could see it?”
“Oh, yes. Even with a new moon, the street lamps cast a soft glow and the fourth floor offers a wonderful bird’s-eye view. The residents often peer out from that vantage point as they wait for relatives to arrive.”
Janie re-positioned herself, leaning on one elbow. “I see. And?”
“Well, she described a dark colored van, like one of those delivery ones. Except who gets packages at that hour?”
“She is sure about this?”
Ethel nodded. “Uh, huh.”
Janie’s eyes lit up. “How interesting.”
“She detected a huge dent on the passenger door as if it’d been t-boned in a wreck. What’s odd is she remembered seeing the exact same damaged van leaving Sunset Acres about seven earlier that evening. Close to the time the Roberts spotted one near Newman’s house. “
“Well, well.”
Ethel grinned like a lion spotting a wounded gazelle. “Here’s the thing. This time, the truck headed into our community instead of out. And”—she edged closer and whispered into Janie’s right ear—“stopped at the club house dumpster.”
A jolt zipped up Janie’s spine
.
Chapter Twenty-five
While Ethel witnessed the fingerprint dusting process, Janie contemplated her latest news. Why would a van leave but come back to deposit the body? Unless the murderer transported the corpse to another location to be dissected and came back to hide the pieces in the dumpster, knowing full well the trash service came early the next morning. That would mean the perpetrator had prior knowledge about the comings and goings in Sunset Acres. So he staked out Edwin’s garden home? No, he’d only been there less than a week. That meant the perp lived in the community or had a family member who did. She shook off that thought like a spider web clinging to her shoulders.
Janie’s cell phone rang. At the other end, Melody’s nerve-racked voice wobbled. “Mom, Blake just called and told me. Are you okay?”
“Yes, besides a cut lip where he slapped me.”
Her voice elevated to a high soprano. “He did what?”
“I’m fine, dear. Ethel is here and she brought me supper.”
“I shouldn’t have left.” Her daughter swallowed a sob.
“Now, Mel. Don’t be ridiculous. This is a gated community. Most of the time we are perfectly safe...”
Wait a minute. A gated community. The thought struck her as Melody’s voice faded into the recesses of her brain. The killer knew the entry codes. But, then again, all the major delivery carriers did. And the pizza and Chinese restaurant drivers. Only God could determine how many people learned the code since the take-out food industry typically had a large turnover of employees. Or so a magazine article she read several months ago stated. Add in the friends and families of the residents, and it easily equaled half of the population of Alamoville. What a false sense of security.
* * *
Janie turned on the local evening news as she crocheted a new tea cozy for the church bazaar. Waiting for the weather forecast, she half-listened to the reports from around the city and state until one sentence caught her ear.
“A recent development has occurred in the law suits against Texas prisons for not being air-conditioned. You may recall when several inmates perished from heat exposure at the Wallace Pack Unit near Navasota last summer. Temperatures climbed over one hundred degrees for ten straight days. The unit houses over sixty men in their seventies and many more over the age of fifty-five.”
She set down her needlework and reached for the remote. Her thumb pressed the button four times to jack up the volume. The anchor continued.
“Families of the victims gathered testimonies from former inmates, but those still incarcerated are reluctant to speak out. A few, however, proved quite verbal. One such person, Edwin Newman, was recently found murdered in a retirement community near Alamoville. Police have yet to connect his death to his willingness to come forward and testify against the Texas State Prison system. However, the attorney for one family is concerned Newman’s death will silence other witnesses.”
Janie set down the remote control and picked up her phone. She hit the one to speed dial her daughter.
“Mel, it’s Mom. No, I’m fine. Is Blake around?”
Her daughter’s voice deflated. “He’s gone to get Jaime from practice. He should be home in an hour.”
“Okay, honey. Tell him to call me this evening when he gets a chance. I want to let him in on the recent incidents over here. I also want to ask him a question, but I promise not to take long.”
After five minutes of placating Melody’s ruffled feathers and discussing the grandkids’ latest accolades, Janie hung up. She glanced at the mantel clock. 6:22. May as well hobble to the kitchen and heat up some more bisque soup for dinner.
Her mind flopped the news report over and over like a pancake on a not-yet-hot-enough griddle. Could the report and Edwin’s death be related? Two theories existed. First, someone opportunistically burgled the wrongly accused man to get his almost a quarter-million-dollar settlement. Or, a shady character angrily silenced him for his whining about prison conditions. But would the killer not shoot Edwin and leave him on the floor of his garden home?
No, this smelled of a clever, premeditated plot. Edwin’s murder had all the markings of a professional hit. It took time and effort to dice a body into pieces and dispose of the parts. Which meant someone held a mighty grudge. Not because of his mistaken identity. The notion dead-ended somewhere in South America. Even if he faked his death to stave off the authorities, Edwards would never surface now, nor would the robbery money.
Dollars to donuts, the hitman hijacked a delivery van, transported the body to another location to slice and dice it, and returned to unload the remains in the dumpster hours before the garbage disposal truck arrived. That way, no odor, no flies, and nobody would detect them in a truck container filled with hundreds of plastic bags. Except for two Bunco Biddies who decided to power walk in that direction Tuesday morning and happened to be taking a breather at the right time and place.
Janie sighed. She located a note pad and wrote down her questions.
1. How did the interview with Edwin’s old inmate go? Ask Blake.
2. Did the inmate ever suffer from heat stroke last summer? What about Edwin?
3. Why was no money found on the scene? Did a check get deposited into a bank account? There are only two branches in Alamoville.
4. Any delivery vans accidents reported in the past week or two?
5. Where can someone chop up a body? Meat packing plant? Butcher? Surgical unit? Coroners lab? Mortuary?
Janie read over her list and nodded. The memory of the raw hamburger odor tickled her nose. Must be a meat packer or a butcher’s. She underlined both. My still slightly-throbbing foot may be sidelined, but my brain cells will remain in the game.
Chapter Twenty- six
Blake called at seven-thirty.
“Can you come by this evening for a chat. I might have a new development.”
Blake didn’t mask the tiredness and frustration in his voice. “We’re just sitting down to dinner.”
“Of course. Which is important. You never get a chance to be with your own family anymore.”
The silence iced her phone receiver.
Janie swallowed her words. “This can wait. How about in the morning?”
“Is this about your attacker?”
“I think so, yes. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all. Lying here mulling the whole thing over, you understand.” She decided, since he had not heard the news program, not to mention the special report until he sat across from her face to face.
He grumbled something to Mel in the background. “Okay. Eight too early?”
Janie smiled into the receiver to lilt her response. “Perfect. Thank you ever so much, Blake. Especially since I can’t quite come to you.”
His tone softened. “Right. Because of your hurt foot. Of course you can’t.” More murmuring. Then his voice returned to the receiver. “Take it easy and get some rest. We’ll talk tomorrow. Shall I bring coffee and donuts?”
“One of those breakfast tacos from the drive-through near the highway would be nice.”
He snickered. “Deal. See ya, Janie. Oh, and try not to worry.”
She clicked off and stared at her phone. “And I hope you don’t choke on your taco, dear Blake, when I tell you what I suspect.”
Chapter Twenty-sEVEN
At 8:05, three sharp raps pounded on Janie’s front door. Had to be Blake. He never used the doorbell.
Sure enough, she heard a key scrape the lock. He sidestepped through the opening with two coffees and a take-out bag in hand. “Good morning.”
“To you, too. Let’s sit in the kitchen where I can rest my leg on a chair.” Janie wobbled on her contraption, missing the edge of her dining room buffet by a hair. Blake sucked in his breath. Janie glanced back. “It’s okay. I’m getting more sure-footed with it.”
“Pun intended?” He set the breakfast on the dinette table and turned to the sink to rinse off his hands. “Is your injury doing any better?”
“You mean my foot
or my lip?”
With his back to her, he chuckled. “Both, I guess.” He swiveled to face her as he dried his fingers on a dishcloth. “You are one tough ol’ bird. Told Mel that just the other day.”
She cocked an eyebrow, but couldn’t hold her stern expression after he winked. “I’ll take that as a compliment, then.”
“Good.” He sat down across from her and bowed his head to bless their meal. She followed suit.
After taking a large bite of taco he began. “So, why am I here, Janie?”
She wiped her mouth with the skimpy paper napkin which came in the sack. “Edwin stayed in Watson Pack Unit, correct?”
He nodded as he sipped from the designated mouthpiece in the plastic cup lid.
“I heard on the news last night some inmates filed a law suit...”
Blake pressed his spine into the spindles of his chair. “Yes, Janie. Their attorneys filed a civil action case. Seems several prisoners succumbed to the heat during the hot summers we’ve had since 2008. And of course, last summer, the temps hovered over one hundred for weeks on end.”
“Why aren’t the prisons air conditioned?”
“County ones must be cooled to at least seventy-eight degrees since those who are incarcerated are still awaiting trial. You know. Innocent until proven guilty, so we have to treat them better. They’re still viable citizens with rights. But the state prisons which house the convicted are another story. Tax payers never approved the expense. And the more secure they build these facilities, the more air-tight they become. They don’t call it the ‘hothouse’ for nothing.” He stretched his chest forward over the table and glared into her elderly, smoky blue eyes. “What is this all about?”
Janie ran her finger along the cardboard holder on her cup. “Did you get a chance to speak to Edwin’s old inmate? Did he ever become ill from the stifling conditions?”
“Ah, you think Edwin Newman became a stool pigeon and so someone slapped a contract on him?”
Dumpster Dicing (Bunco Biddies Book 1) Page 12