by Elise Sax
There was no answer. Lucy and I looked at each other. “If we were smart, we would call Spencer,” I whispered to her.
Lucy stomped her delicate shoe on the ground. “Don’t steal my fun, Gladie,” she said, but there was a distinct tone of wariness in her voice.
I stuck my head in the house. Every light was on, but there was no sign that anyone was home. “Steve? Steve, it’s Gladie. You told me to come here.”
Finally, there was a sound. And it was coming toward us. Click. Click. Click. And there was the sound of a little bell, too. Lucy choked up on her shovel, wielding it like Hank Aaron.
“We’re just talking with him,” I whispered, reminding her.
“Okay, but I want to be ready to smack him to lights out.”
It sounded wise to me. I liked having backup. “Just a second. Let’s calm down a little. This is Steve, the insurance salesman. We have nothing to fear from an insurance salesman.”
But was that true? He was my most obvious suspect. He had means, motive, and opportunity. He was jealous of his friends’ success. Instead of famous with a mansion and a dragon, he was hawking home, fire, and life and lived in a townhouse. That spelled murder to me.
The clicking and bell ringing got closer. Lucy was poised to strike with her shovel, and I was poised to run like hell. Then, we saw the source of the noise.
It was Poopykins.
Lady Philomena.
Steve’s dog.
Lucy and I erupted in laughter, giggling like schoolgirls and hugging each other while we tried to catch our breath. “Just a dog. Just a dog,” I breathed. “We’re being so silly.”
The dog clicked away, deeper into the townhouse, and I took two steps inside. “Steve, it’s Gladie! Are you decent?”
I gestured for Lucy to follow me. The townhouse looked a lot like Steve. It had generic, cheap furniture, no artwork, several piles of mail on a table next to the front door, and a lot of dog paraphernalia. No sign of Steve, himself. The townhouse was set up like Bridget’s with three small levels.
“Maybe he’s hiding, waiting to kill you,” Lucy suggested in a whisper.
“What about you? Isn’t he waiting to kill you, too?”
“Nobody tries to kill me. They’re always after you. But I’ve got your back. I’ll whack him with my shovel and then fry his testicles.”
“Okay.” It was a good plan, except for the possibility of me being already dead when she fried his testicles. “Normal people would call the police,” I said.
“Normal people… funny one, Gladie.”
The main floor was a living room with the regular living stuff. I searched it for signs that Steve was the murderer, or if he was telling me the truth and knew who the killer was, any clues about who that was. I found a bunch of different insurance brochures and a disturbing amount of dog photos, but there was nothing about my father or Adam.
“We’re going to have to go to the other floors,” I whispered to Lucy.
“Downstairs or upstairs?” she whispered back. Her head darted from left to right, watching for Steve with her shovel raised. The townhouse hugged the side of a canyon. The main floor was the middle floor. The dog’s bell on its collar dinged as it went downstairs.
“I guess we follow the dog,” I said. “Keep your shovel ready.”
Even though Lucy was the one who was armed, she walked closely behind me. She had my back, but nobody had my front. Before we reached the stairs, I grabbed a dog bone from the floor and wielded it for my own defense. We walked slowly down the stairs. Each step creaked, announcing our descent, so if Steve was lying in wait for us, he knew we were coming. The dog’s clicking had stopped, but the bell was still ringing. When I got downstairs, it became clear why. The floor was carpeted, which muffled the dog’s nails when it walked. There were two bedrooms downstairs. One was used as a makeshift office, and the other was Steve’s bedroom. He hadn’t made his bed, and he had left wet towels on the bathroom floor. The dog circled my feet and went back upstairs. There was no sign of Steve, and I began to relax.
“Can you believe he left us alone to snoop?” I asked Lucy.
I went through Steve’s desk, but all I could find were bills and insurance stuff. Nothing about my father or Adam. There wasn’t any poetry, either. I supposed that when Steve quit writing, he really quit writing.
It was time to go to the top floor, the last place to search. That turned out to be the dining room and kitchen combo, just like in Bridget’s townhouse. We stood in the dining area. The dog click-clicked all over the floor, circling me. This time, he left little paw prints where he stepped.
And the paw prints were red.
“Uh,” I said.
“He’s not up here, either,” Lucy said. “What a dud. I should have stayed home and digested my Italian dinner. Nothing ever happens when I’m around. I’m a jinx.”
“Uh…”
“I guess we should go. This is so disappointing. My boring life is contagious.”
“Lucy, look down.”
She looked down. “Cute floor design. Steve’s painted the whole floor in little red paw prints.”
I put my hand on her back. “Lucy, I’m going to tell you something, and you should try to remain calm.”
“Is it about Spencer?” she asked, alarmed. “Is that two-timing, low down dirty dog cheating on you? I’ll kill him. Worse, I’ll get Harry to kill him.”
I took a step back. “No, he’s not cheating on me. Why? What have you heard? Do you know something that I don’t?” I wagged my finger at her. “Lucy, I swear that if you hide anything about Spencer from me, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you with this bone!” I raised the dog bone over my head.
“No, darlin’. I don’t know a thing. I swear it. You said you have something to tell me and to remain calm, so I assumed the worst.”
“Why did you assume that?” I was panicking real bad. Images of Spencer having sex with women with no cellulite ran through my mind, and it was freaking me out. “Should I assume that? Is that something I should assume?”
“No! But why are you so worried? If there was nothing to worry about, you wouldn’t be worried.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Lucy, since when have I needed a reason to worry?”
“That’s true. Boy, we really went down a rabbit hole. So, what did you want to tell me?”
“Thank you. I did not want to tell you anything about Spencer. Spencer and I are perfectly fine. More than fine. Smooth sailing. Lots of sex. He tells me he loves me all the time. So, there’s nothing to assume where we’re concerned.” I took a deep breath and tried to get rid of the images of Spencer cheating from my brain. “The reason I wanted to talk to you was to tell you that the dog paw pattern on the floor is not a painted design. Look at the dog, walking around.”
Lucy’s mouth dropped open, and she looked down at the dog, which took a few steps, leaving faded red paw prints on the floor. “Well, shut my mouth. What is that?”
“Stay calm.”
“Why do I need to stay calm? Oh,” she said after a pause. “Because it’s blood. Bloody paw prints all over the floor. Oh.”
She swayed on her feet, and I clutched onto her. “Whoa there, girl. Are you okay?”
“Of course I am,” she said, affronted. “Do you think the blood is real?”
“Yes.”
“Whose blood is it?”
It was either Steve’s blood or whoever was Steve’s latest victim. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe Steve cut himself shaving,” Lucy suggested. “Do you think he cut himself shaving? Maybe he’s a competitive swimmer and has to shave his legs.”
Lucy was in denial and making a deal with the universe that there was a simple excuse for the bloody paw prints. I recognized the symptoms of denial because I had been there before. “I think it’s more than a nicked leg. I think someone’s dead.”
“Where’s the body? There’s no sign of the body.” Lucy spun around, looking nervously for a body.
I had a bad feeling about where the body was. A half-wall separated the kitchen from the dining area, and we hadn’t investigated the kitchen area, yet. I looked over at the refrigerator. It was the freezer on the top kind, not as big as Adam’s French door fridge.
I sighed.
“I guess we should get this over with,” I said. “Time to open the refrigerator.”
We walked into the kitchen area behind the little wall. “You’re right. His legs are cut,” I said. Most of Steve was stuffed into the refrigerator, which was partially open and secured with a kitchen towel. Since the refrigerator was too small for such a big man, Steve’s legs were sticking out, and they were cut and bloody.
That wasn’t the only thing that was bloody. Instead of cleaning up the blood with paper towels like the killer had done with Adam, this time the killer had decided to be messy, or he just didn’t have the time to be tidy, because Steve had bled out onto the kitchen’s tile floor. So, there was a big pool of blood over much of the kitchen floor, which the dog had walked in.
“That’s Steve, all right,” I said. “I recognize his pants cuffs.”
Lucy nodded. She was staring at Steve’s legs, too. It was hard not to. The way they were sticking out made them look like some kind of gag gift. I half-expected Steve to jump out of a closet somewhere, laugh hysterically, and shout, “April Fools!” even though it was June, and it was obvious that Steve was deader than a doornail.
“This is a lot like what happened to Adam,” I told Lucy. “Except messier. And no dragon. Just a little dog. So, you got your dose of excitement, Lucy. You happy?”
She nodded and kept staring at Steve’s legs.
“Funny how just a few months ago, I would be throwing up all over the place, seeing this,” I told her. “But I guess it’s like eating avocados. When you try one for the first time, it tastes like snail guts on your tongue, but after you eat a few avocados, you can’t get enough. It’s all about the avocado on toast and avocado in salad. There’s guacamole. There’s avocado crema. Avocado everything. Geez, now I want an avocado. Are you hungry? Boy, I could really eat. I wonder if the grocery store is still open and if they have any ripe avocados. That’s the problem with avocados. You have to get them ripe, or you’re forced to put them out on the counter for days while they ripen, looking at the avocados all the time, wanting to eat them. Oh, yes, I sure am hungry. Do you like avocados? Lucy? Lucy? Did you hear me? Are you okay?”
“Blood,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. Tons of it. The refrigerator must be tilted for it to have poured out like that. You could do laps in that pool of blood on the floor.”
“Blood.”
“Yep.”
“Blood. Oh, blood. Legs. Blood. Legs. Blood. Refrigerator.”
I had seen this before. Lucy was on a loop, caused by seeing lots of grossness and violence. There wasn’t really a cure for it. It was sort of like colitis; you just lived with it. “Take a deep breath, Lucy. You want a glass of water? Maybe we should just get you out of here.”
She made a little noise, like a mouse. Her shovel slipped out of her hand and fell onto the floor with a loud clanking noise, landing in the pool of blood, splashing and sending some blood up into the air before it splashed back down onto the floor, again.
“Oh God,” Lucy moaned and fell, stiff as a board into the blood. I stared in disbelief at my friend in her beautiful dress with her once perfectly styled hair and her once perfectly made up face. Not any longer. Now, she was half submerged in Steve’s blood.
“Lucy? Are you all right? Wake up,” I said. It turned out that excitement didn’t agree with her, after all. “Wake up. Lucy? Are you okay?”
She moaned and touched her forehead with her hand, leaving a trail of even more blood on herself. “What happened?” she asked.
“You passed out into a puddle of a murdered man’s blood, and now you’re completely covered in it.”
“I what?”
“It could be worse,” I said. “I mean, it can’t be any worse. Doesn’t that make you feel better? If it can’t be any worse, then, you have nothing to worry about.”
I heard the sound of the dog’s bell, as it walked into the kitchen, sniffed Lucy’s leg and began to hump it for everything she was worth. Lady Philomena humped away, going at Lucy in a reverse cowgirl position. I had never seen a female dog hump a leg, but I tried not to judge.
“What’s happening?” Lucy moaned. “Why is this happening?”
CHAPTER 16
My grandmother never ate a vegetable in her life. She survived on chicken fat, pastries sweetened with honey, and Bloody Marys for breakfast on the weekends. That woman lived until she was one-hundred-two, and she was as sharp as a tack until the day she died. My Uncle Manny played tennis for two hours a day, every day, and was a strict vegan. His annual birthday cake was a lentil loaf. That man dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the tennis court when he was fifty-two. What’s my point? There’s no rhyme or reason, bubbeleh. Sometimes, we think a lentil loaf is the way to go, but really, it’s all about the chicken fat and Bloody Marys. A nosh for some is a meal for others. Logic has a way of being totally illogical. So does love. You think this one will love that one, but really, he’ll love a totally different someone. Be open. Be flexible. Drink a Bloody Mary and relax.
Lesson 125, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
I wasn’t hungry, anymore. The thought of avocados made me sick to my stomach. The reality of what had happened to Steve and all of the gore in front of me had hit me late, but hard. I helped Lucy out of the blood and wiped her down with a kitchen towel. Steve didn’t have any paper towel, and I didn’t know if that was the reason the killer didn’t clean up, or if he didn’t have time.
In any case, Lucy was a mess. The kitchen towel only served to smear the blood around on her skin, hair, and clothes. By the time I was done helping her, she looked like the climactic scene from Carrie. “This isn’t exciting,” Lucy said. “This is gross.”
“That’s kind of how it goes. There’s always a certain amount of gross that goes with the excitement.”
I now had Steve’s blood and gore all over me, too, on top of the dragon goo slobber that was all over me. My Walley’s brand jeans were ruined. Ditto my Keds. I would have to match someone, quickly so that I could afford a new outfit. If I kept finding dead bodies and dragons, I would wind up naked.
Lucy’s losses were worse. Her designer outfit was worth more than my car. And where I had lost my appetite, she was green underneath the layer of blood on her face.
We stood in the kitchen, waiting for the police to arrive. Instead of calling Spencer, I made a call to the general police line, hoping that Remington would show up. He was a lot less judgmental than Spencer, and I didn’t want to interrupt Spencer’s hero moment to remind him that the woman he loved had a habit of disturbing crime scenes.
My call worked. Remington showed up with Margie after about five minutes. It was just in time because Lucy was pretty freaked out, and I wondered if she might need medical care. She was standing with her arms outstretched, like she was a tightrope walker.
“Look at that,” Margie said and whistled long and slow. “The boss’s girl did it again. How ya doin’, Gladie? What’s new?”
“I’m pretty sure that it’s Steve Byrne in the refrigerator. He sells insurance.”
“Sounds about right,” Remington said and eyed Lucy. “Did you find him this way, or was it more of a progressive turn of events?”
“We found him this way, and then it was a progressive turn of events,” I explained.
“Did he go after you with a shovel, and then things got out of hand?” Margie asked. She was asking if we had murdered Steve, but she was asking it in a nice way. I liked her. If I knew how to needlepoint, I would have joined her club.
“I brought the shovel,” Lucy said, coming to life for a brief moment.
“You brought the shovel?” Margie asked.
Remington
caught my eye and smiled, wide. “You’re a G, Gladie.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I figured it was a compliment. I shrugged. I told them about Steve’s phone call and finding him. “And we didn’t actually use the shovel.”
“Makes sense,” Remington said, nodding.
“It sort of makes sense,” Margie said. “In a weird, nonsense way. Did you find any strange, poisonous animals in the house?”
“No, just Lady Philomena.” The dog click-clicked around us, and her bell rang.
“Poor little orphan doggie,” Margie said. She picked the dog up and petted her. Lady Philomena took to Margie right away and licked her face. “Maybe I’ll be her foster mama, if nobody else wants her,” she suggested.
“I guess we should clear the scene,” Remington said.
“Poor little doggie had a bad day,” Margie said in baby talk to the dog. She held her close and sat down on the couch, petting the dog and ignoring Remington’s order to clear the scene.
“I think I’d like to go home,” Lucy said, finally coming back to herself. “I don’t like having blood all over me.”
Remington took his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll let you go in a minute. First, I need to take a series of photos.”
By the time he took the third photo, Spencer had arrived and marched upstairs. His eyes bugged out of his head when he saw bloody Lucy.
“It’s not Lucy’s blood,” I told Spencer. “It’s Steve’s.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“It’s not my fault,” I said. “Lucy brought the shovel.”
“I cannot tell a lie. She’s right. It’s my shovel, darlin’,” she confessed.
“Shovel?” Spencer asked. “Are you kidding me?”
“Purely for defense purposes,” I explained.
Spencer put his hands over his eyes and took a deep breath. “I was having a pretty good day. The dragon was shipped to the San Diego Zoo. The tabloids are leaving town.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I don’t think I like your tone. You’re acting like I’m to blame for this.”