Investigating Privately

The day began as all days begin, with the sun rising in the east. As it rose, dawn spread her rosy fingers over Liz’s eyes, the warm, pink light drawing her out of slumber’s embrace. Time to rise and make tea, get this party started.

Over a steaming cup of Darjeeling, she opened her laptop to see what her friends were up to on her media accounts, check the weather, and see what happened in global affairs while she slept. Her cat rubbed against her leg, essentially petting herself as she sipped daintily.

Another victim of the latest serial killer had been identified as part of a pattern that hadn’t yet revealed itself to the homicide investigators. No one was sure if there were two killers or one, as the victims were all female but fell into two distinct categories: young girls and blue collar women, predominantly gas station attendants, bartenders, and waitresses, and two hotel housekeepers.

Liz giggled her hehehe laugh at calling hotel maids housekeepers—they were really hotel keepers. It drove her crazy when words were used imprecisely, and she decided to start her own rogue investigation, sanctioned and sponsored by no one except her internal desire to be the first to solve the crime.

Police in her community held different opinions from different sects, but all knew about the corruption, which never changed except to change allegiance based on who was paying handsomely for it. Liz had expected the recent power shift to produce at least one suspect, but none had been named, and there had been two murders since the reins had changed hands, a young girl and a bartender. Their bodies had been found within days of each other, one in the salt marsh and the other in a ravine in the woods. Caustic substances and animals had devoured much of both bodies’ flesh, but that wasn’t necessarily indicative of anything other than an attempt to rid the bodies of anything that could identify the murderer. Throughout the string of murders, the bodies on land were always found after heavy rains, and those were always the young girls. The women were always found in a salt marsh, usually by families out to indulge in some vacation crabbing, wishing to catch their own dinner in traps set with chicken necks to attract the crustaceans.

Feeling a bit silly and a bit smarter than the detectives, pride and embarrassment battling each other in her psyche, she constructed her own board to visually organize the facts, with the young victims and their pertinent information on one side and the women on the other with plenty of space between for notes. Differently colored yarn would connect the throughlines Liz discovered, and she would use the thumbtacks holding the principals in place to run pieces of yarn from one set of information to another.

It took the better part of the morning. Printing all of the images, articles, and other publicly available information about the victims was time-consuming in and of itself, but arranging everything was a colossal task. After removing and retacking the information to her board three times, she made her fifth cup of tea and sat down to construct a timeline on a separate board.

When Lenore began mrrrrowing for her lunch, Liz tapped her phone and gasped. She abandoned her tea to open a can of Fancy Feast pate for her beloved cat, who could no longer chew dry cat food.

Before Liz returned to her tea, her doorbell chimed and her best friend’s face popped up on her phone.

Tara entered the house with her usual flurry of motion. It was like she carried a tornado in her handbag. Her eyes blazed onto the boards before landing hopelessly on Liz’s troubled ones.

“Not again. When I saw the story, I had a hunch and came to see if you were dressed for the shower or too busy playing detective to remember that your cousin is having a baby.” Tara threw a curtain of silky hair over her shoulder. “What do you think your aunt will say if you miss the baby shower the exact same way you missed the bridal shower?”

Lenore prowled into the room and approached Tara. “Oh,no! Nori, get back.”

Liz scooped up her cat, deposited her in the laundry room, and closed the door. “Sorry,” she began as Tara succumbed to a sneezing fit. “I lost track of time.”

Still sneezing, Tara waved her arms like she was in Carnegie Hall, bringing an entire orchestra to a crescendo. “Go—kerchoo! upstairs and get dressed!” Tara reached into her Coach bag and pulled out an EpiPen. She jabbed it into her biceps and said, “No point taking chances. Your Aunt Sheena will skewer me if you have to take me to the hospital and we both miss the shower. She acts like my allergies are something I found on sale at Bergdorf’s and couldn’t resist bringing home with me”

While Liz got dressed, Tara watered her plants that needed a drink, first rubbing the leaves between her fingers, then plunging her fingers into the soil to assess them, moving some into more direct light and others into the shadows. She shook her head, earrings jingling while bangles clanked up and down her arm.

“You’re killing these plants!” She sang up the stairs. “Maybe you should just pot some kudzu cuttings!”

“No pink or blue! You’ll be accused of gender preference,” Tara shouted into the air conditioner vent.