Dead Body Language

by Penny Warner

“What’s that go to do with this?”

  I ran a finger lightly under my eyes. “She was getting older. Maybe she was worried about her looks. Or maybe having a new man in her life made her to want to be more attractive and youthful again. I don’t know. She had the money. The sheriff said she’d spent a few weeks in Europe a couple of months after Reuben’s death. She could have had it done there and no one would be the wiser. Unless you know where to look for the scars.”

  “Do you know where to look?”

  I pulled my hair back. “Right here, see?” I made sure he saw the pristine, albeit slightly graying temples. I let my hair down. “Actually, you look pretty good, for your age,” I said. “Boone looks a lot older—and a lot different. Sure you haven’t gone under the knife?”

  “Ha! No way. I told you, Boone is ten years older than me—and we have different fathers.” He paused, then went on. “You know, I’ve got a funny feeling my brother got himself into some serious trouble this time. Sitting around doing nothing is driving me crazy. I can’t just wait for him to show up—or not.” He pulled on his leather jacket. “You staying a while?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Got some thinking to do, so I might as well do it here.”

  “How can you think with all this racket—” he stopped, looked at me, blushed. “Sorry. I keep forgetting. You just don’t seem …”

  “Deaf. That’s what I hear, so to speak. Keep in touch,” I said, as he sipped the last of his champagne. He gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. It was a disconcerting feeling.

  I sat stirring my pink drink, watching the tiny bubbles appear and disappear. The stirrer was a little plastic arrow, about the length of a skinny pencil, with a tiny heart at the tip. I stuck the tip in my mouth and sucked off the drops of liquid.

  As I held it up to read the fine print along one side, Mickey Arnold’s face came into my line of vision. He was standing a few feet away talking with Sheriff Mercer, frowning, gesturing, and looking as if he was discussing something very important. I couldn’t see the sheriff’s face but his body language was clear. He alternately nodded and shook his head as he spoke and listened to the deputy.

  I held up the funeral program and feigned reading it while I peeked around the side to read the deputy’s lips.

  “It just came in.” The deputy was breathing hard. He had one hand on his radio, the other on his gun.

  The sheriff said something and Mickey gave a sharp, official nod.

  “Confirmed. Definitely a homicide. The body was completely—” He turned his head a fraction and I lost his words.

  The sheriff rubbed his forehead and spoke.

  Mickey replied with two “Yes, sirs” and one “No, sir.”

  The sheriff held him on the shoulder and said something up close and personal.

  The deputy nearly saluted. “I’ll check on it,” I thought he said.

  The sheriff massaged his temples with a clawed hand. I was worried he’d get a rug burn from all the rubbing. He walked over to talk with Lacy’s attorney. Mickey took a half-empty pink drink from the table, downed it, and caught me looking at him. I waved the program at him.

  He moved over solemnly, set his empty glass on my table, and plopped into a nearby chair as if he carried the weight of the funeral on his shoulders. “Hey, Connor.”

  “Hi, Mickey. You look tired. Long day?” I stirred my drink again. I hated myself for being coy. “Is something wrong?”

  He looked around for the sheriff, who was busy with the attorney, then leaned in. “Well, it’s definite. Lacy Penzance did not kill herself.” He checked again for eavesdroppers.

  “Really?” I said. Although the revelation was no longer a surprise to me, the thought that Lacy might have been murdered caused the little hairs on my body to prickle and stand at attention.

  “Yep, she was killed, just like I figured. The M.E. confirmed it. I told the sheriff. He said keep it quiet until the funeral is over.”

  “What did the medical examiner say?”

  “Well, here’s what’s really weird. He said Lacy was stabbed with that knife after another weapon was used to kill her. We haven’t found the weapon yet, but it was definitely not the knife. The M.E. said it was something long and thin. And get this—during the autopsy, they discovered there was hardly any blood left in her body.”

  “Oh, my God. What happened?” I could feel my arms tingle with goose bumps.

  Mickey folded his arms across his stomach. “We don’t know much yet. Still checking on it. I have some ideas, but I can’t say anything right now. I’ll let you know later, but I gotta keep it quiet until the sheriff says it’s okay to release to the public. You understand. Now don’t go publishing this in your newspaper.” He glanced again at the sheriff for a moment, then back at me. “Oops, Sheriff wants me. Hey, how about dinner tonight? Maybe we can thrash this thing through and come up with something.”

  I nodded vaguely but was so engrossed in my own thoughts I didn’t even say good-bye. Lacy was murdered. Someone had actually killed her.

  I swirled my drink again and pulled out the stirrer. This time, when I licked the tip, I stabbed myself in the tongue.

  “Ouch!” I said, catching the attention of a few people standing nearby.

  I looked at the weapon I had just poked myself with.

  The weapon.

  Something long, slim, sharp.

  And, perhaps, missing from the mortuary? What was that thing they used to embalm the bodies? A trowel? A trucker? A trocar … that was it. The thing with a hollow needle. That pierces the flesh, then the artery. Then siphons out the blood.

  It was long and slim and sharp. And missing.

  I was jumping to conclusions. But what the hell. It made some sense. Still, why use a trocar? It wasn’t exactly the kind of weapon available at your local Wal-Mart. Only a select few would be able to get hold of one—and know how to use it.

  French knew how of course. He owned the mortuary. But why would he kill Lacy? Maybe he was Lacy’s new secret lover, and he didn’t want Jilda to find out. He and Jilda had been seeing each other ever since I’d arrived in Flat Skunk.

  Celeste? She knew the place intimately. She’d probably know how to use one of those things. Maybe she was Lacy’s new lover. You never could tell these days.

  Any of the mortuary staff could have done it. Sluice Jackson cleaned up the grounds, did custodial work—he probably saw a lot. The guy was strange. And what was all that stuff he was mumbling at the mortuary this afternoon?

  What about Wolf Quick? He seemed to have some kind of an association with Celeste. How easily could he get hold of a trocar?

  Then there was Jilda. Maybe she was jealous. Maybe she—

  Hell. I was jumping a little too far, even for a conclusion. I’d plotted too many mystery puzzles for my newspaper.

  Still, a trocar would make a great weapon. There were no locked doors to the sterile room—I walked right in. Anyone could have “borrowed” it for a while, if no one was around.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a select group after all.

  I looked around. The once-crowded room was rapidly emptying. Most of the food was gone, some of the decorations had been pulled down, either stuffed in purses or trampled by the guests. I assumed the music was still playing—a few dancers were bobbing their heads and moving their bodies to a silent rhythm.

  Lacy had been murdered. There was a check for five thousand dollars waiting for me at her lawyer’s office. I had to find out what happened, not just for the newspaper, but because I still felt an obligation to her. After all, she’d essentially made her last request for help to me.

  It wouldn’t be difficult to think up reasons for talking with people who might have had a motive, or a special interest in Lacy Penzance—or even an opportunity to take the trocar. And most folks would probably overlook me if I snooped around a little. That’s the way it is being deaf. Because we’re sometimes silent, we’re often invisible.

  The whole thing was a long shot. Maybe Lacy wasn
’t murdered with an embalming tool. Nevertheless it gave me the creeps to think a killer was lurking around our little town. That, coupled with the fact that someone had been poking around in my diner, made my skin crawl.

  Surely, I thought, it wouldn’t take a whole lot of investigating to find out the whys and then the who. Not in a small town like Skunk.

  Naïveté can be a wonderful thing. I didn’t know half of what was in store for me.

  But the key, I was certain, was Risa Longo.

  There’s nothing lonelier than a funeral party with no live guests. At the end, it was just me and the corpse, commiserating in silence in the chapel. Lacy looked peaceful, lying there with her hands crossed on her chest—ironically, they were posed in the ASL sign for “rest.” I wished that peaceful feeling would brush off on me, but my anxiety wouldn’t abate.

  I recalled the photographs of Lacy’s body on the grave, spread-eagle. It wasn’t the kind of body language she would present willingly, even in death. She looked more composed after her fall than in those snapshots. I scanned her emotionless face. The tiny face-lift scars had been covered expertly with makeup.

  I glanced down at her hands, her fingers laden with ornate gold rings, three on each hand. The wedding ring was intricately molded, and featured a large diamond. I reached over to straighten the ring, which had twisted slightly, and felt the chill of her lifeless finger. And the dampness. I looked at my fingertips; a residue of creamy beige liquid.

  Makeup, even on her hands. I guess it wasn’t so strange, except that it was so thick, it hadn’t dried completely. I touched her finger again and gently rubbed the knuckle, removing the layer of makeup. Rough, jagged scratches appeared on the knuckle ridges.

  I lifted her icy hand, examined the fingers closely, and replaced the hand, tucking it beneath the other one to hide the discovery I’d made. I wiped the excess makeup from my fingertips on the inside of her skirt. Puzzled, I stood there looking at her for several more minutes before I left the chapel.

  Hoping he’d gone straight back to the office, I stopped by the sheriff’s on my way home from the funeral. I’d seen him leave soon after his talk with Mickey, and I wondered what his next step would be in the investigation.

  I found him hunched over a pink paper plate filled with pinkish-brown appetizers from the funeral party, studying a sheet of pink paper.

  “Hi, Sheriff,” I said, plopping into a chair near the desk. He nodded with his mouth full. He may have even said something. Tough to tell with that wad in his mouth.

  “Some funeral, eh?” I said. “More like a nice cocktail party. Maybe the mortuary business would pick up a little if funerals were more festive and less depressing. Of course, you probably don’t want business to pick up too much, eh? You’ve already got your hands full.”

  The sheriff nodded again. He seemed uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe there was still too much food in his mouth.

  “So what’s new?” I waited for a response. He lifted his eyes briefly from the sheet of paper, not really looking at me, but acknowledging my presence. He swallowed what looked like something whole.

  “It’s a curious case, Connor. And it gets curiouser by the moment.”

  I picked a slightly squished canapé from the pink plate and popped it into my mouth. “What do you think happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. I keep reading her note over and over. And the more I read it, the more cryptic it becomes. I know she wrote it—I verified her handwriting. And the contents fit the notion of suicide. She was unhappy about losing her husband, and that’s pretty much what she wrote. But there’s something missing here. I just can’t put my finger on what it is.”

  “What do you mean, something’s missing?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t mean just the jewelry. I mean some part of the puzzle.”

  I perked up. “Some of her jewelry is missing?”

  He popped three puffy-looking things into his mouth and nodded.

  “Yeah, a few things,” he said with some difficulty. “A couple of gold necklaces, a few bracelets, some rings, and a gold pin. The maid called this morning. Said she checked Lacy’s jewelry box and noticed the stuff was gone. She’s coming down to fill out a report.”

  “Any chance the maid took them and is claiming theft after the fact?”

  The sheriff shrugged, “It’s possible. But if she did, she’s a fool. We’ll be watching her closely and we’ll catch her quickly if she did.”

  The sheriff was right. This Lacy Penzance thing was becoming curiouser by the minute. A check for five thousand dollars for a missing sister. A visit to a sister who wasn’t a sister. A faked suicide. A bizarre murder with a strange weapon and an odd murder site. And now missing jewelry?

  “Sheriff, could I read the note?” I thought it might be a good time to ask. He seemed in the mood to share. After a moment’s hesitation, he handed it over.

  “This doesn’t go in the paper, Connor, understand?”

  I nodded absently, already absorbed in the haunting document.

  The message was written on a pink sheet of paper decorated with little hearts. It appeared to have been cropped with a smooth but slightly uneven edge along one side. The script was curly, careful, and romantic. The paper was expensive, scented, and unsigned. It read:

  “I’ve been having a hard time lately. Thank goodness for Celeste and all her help in dealing with Reuben’s death. She’s been through a lot with me, and has proved to be a great confidante. I appreciated the support so much. But I don’t think I’ll ever recover from the death of my husband. Even with all his faults, he kept me from being lonely.”

  That was all.

  Inconclusive, to say the least. But perhaps significant when connected to the night of her death.

  “Sheriff, do you know yet what kind of weapon killed her? It wasn’t the knife?” I knew it wasn’t. Mickey had blabbed. But I didn’t want to get my source in trouble.

  “The M.E. says it was something long and sharp. That’s all he can tell us.”

  “Could it be something like one of those instruments they use at the mortuary? You know, like a trocar?” I asked innocently.

  He looked at me, definitely surprised. “Yeah, a trocar could do it. How do you know about that?”

  “Oh, I took a tour of the mortuary with Celeste this morning. They have all kinds of embalming tools on view for the public. Some of them would make great murder weapons.”

  The sheriff raised one eyebrow. “You took a tour of the mortuary? Now why is that, C.W.?”

  I ignored his innuendo. “Sheriff, no other weapon besides the knife was found in or near the body, was it?”

  He blinked; the eyebrow arched a little higher.

  “And you’re fairly certain she didn’t kill herself with the knife even though there was a note, right?”

  “So.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  The eyebrows fell, along with his shoulders. “All’s I can figure is, this thing, whatever it was, was probably inserted into the body first, then removed. Why, I don’t know. Then most likely the knife was stuck in her. She lost a lot of blood, that’s for sure. There wasn’t much left.”

  “So someone may have killed her with this thing, let’s say this trocar or something like it, then stuck in the knife to make it look like she killed herself. Is that a possible explanation?”

  That eyebrow again. It was getting a workout.

  I continued before he could think beyond my suppositions. “And they moved her to the cemetery and planted that note?”

  He pressed his lips together tightly. That face was a mask of growing tension.

  “It just seems awfully … arranged, don’t you think?”

  He said nothing. At least I didn’t see his lips move.

  I went on. “Almost dramatized, really. Or ritualistic, because of the loss of blood?”

  He still said nothing. His face did all the talking.

  “Any idea why she was killed?” I asked.<
br />
  He pushed the plate of leftovers away, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and pinched the frown lines between his eyebrows.

  After a moment I picked myself up out of the chair and said I had to be going. Newspaper to print and all that. When I reached the door, I caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of my eye. The sheriff was waving his arms, trying to get my attention.

  “Connor, you’re not snooping around on this thing, are you? Someone’s been murdered, and that’s nothing to make into a mystery puzzle for your paper.”

  “No, Sheriff. I’m just trying to do a story for my newspaper, that’s all. I want it to be a thorough job. Which reminds me, did you ever get over to my place to check it out? With this Lacy thing—”

  The sheriff held up his hands to stop me. “Yeah, yeah, I looked over your place. Found the key under the dog dish like you told me. Couldn’t find anything. Tried to take a few prints but your diner is covered in them, probably all yours. I had Mickey brush the doors and windows but he hasn’t come up with much. Did you ever find anything missing?”

  “No. Wait—yes! In my medicine chest.”

  “What’d they take? Drugs of some kind?”

  Now I was really going to look like a flake. “I’m not sure. I can’t remember what was there. Something I never use, I guess.”

  “Then how do you know anything’s missing?”

  “I just know.”

  “You know, Connor, you might not be as safe as you thought you were around here, what with the murder and all. You might want to get some new locks on your doors and make sure your windows are secured. I’ll have Mickey cruise your house for the next few days. But lock up.”

  “I always do,” I said, then waved him thanks and left the office feeling more than a little uncomfortable about the goings on in quiet old Flat Skunk.

  The sounds of darkness were approaching. I don’t really know what sounds of darkness are, but the impending blackness of night must make some kind of sound. After all, you can see it, smell it, feel it, nearly taste it. I’ll bet you can hear it, too.

  I swung by my office to whip up new phony letterheads and business cards, since “Arson Investigation,” “Amway Distributor,” and “Census Taker” wouldn’t do, then hopped back in my slightly injured Chevy and headed the two miles out of town to a Spanish-style villa up on the hill. Parking my car in the driveway, I took the clay tile path to the front entrance of the house and knocked on the metal-covered door.