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.
“Sheriff called your partner and gave her the information on the victim. Knowing Ronnie, she’s got a stack of papers for you when you get back to the office.”
She’s not my partner. She’s a reserve deputy.
“She’s good like that,” I say.
“Well, what do you need first? The house or the perimeter?” she asks. “We haven’t finished inside the house, and Jerry just took the body. I can tell you what I found outside.”
It must have been a task to collect the body.
“Zip. No sign anyone came in from the trees behind the house. I checked the windows and the ground under them. No way of telling if anyone was looking in a window, but there are no pry marks. Same with the doors. The front door is unlocked. No sign of a forced entry. I looked from the street and from the trees and there isn’t a good angle to see if anyone was upstairs. Also, there are room-darkening shades in both the master and guest bedrooms. The guest bedroom shades are closed. The master bedroom you saw.”