Unoccupied~1

The guest rooms were always hiding things. No one starts out wanting a guest room. It’s usually an office first, but then you got fired and can’t look at it anymore, so you throw a bed in it that you’ll never sleep in. Sometimes it’s a kid’s room, but they’ve moved out into a college dorm room. It used to be storage, but then the divorce happened, leaving it depressingly empty. A studio for recording music, but the bass player was in a car accident, and the band broke up.

Guest rooms are rarely ever intentional. It’s more of a ritual. Something society has deemed necessary. The presumption that someone wants to stay with you and your new husband. The poor friend grits their teeth trying to pretend they can’t hear you having sex, trying to make the stiff pillows into something they actually want to lay on, trying to breathe through the Yankee Candle Vanilla Wafer air freshener that’s plugged into the wall. The window sticks after an inch and they can’t get it up all the way. They unplug it after everyone is asleep, but the smell has been cloistered in the room for so long that it will never smell like anything else. They put the pillow on top of their face and try to sleep.

I stood in the doorway to this guest room without entering it. Untouched rooms give you answers. They offer secrets. This one had last been occupied by a dead girl, lying face down in a pool of blood.

*

I found out about the case through the police.

That never happened.

We didn’t get along.

“Yeah?” I barked into phone, a landline I had installed myself. Cell phones bothered me.

“Is this Alma?” It was Detective Herbert Ross. He knew it was me.

“What’d’ya want?” I said, trapping the phone between my ear and shoulder as I took a kettle of hot water off the stove and poured it in my favorite chipped mug with my favorite raspberry tea. If this was about the parking tickets I’d never paid, I still wasn’t going to pay them. If this was to call me in about the robbery I solved before them, I wasn’t going to tell them how I did it.

“A girl’s dead.”

I set the kettle down a little too hard. Hot water sloshed around inside. I stared at the swirling steam coming up from the cup. I wouldn’t be able to drink it now and I frowned. The cops never called for my help. I usually embarrassed them by figuring their cases out for them. As a PI, it was rare to get a call like this.

“You need me?”

“Yeah. Can you come?”

I hesitated for only a moment.

“Yeah. What’s the address?”

“325 111th Ave, Blaine.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour.” I hung up and reached for the tea, hoping I could snag one sip, burnt tongue be damned.

The tea bag had broken.

*

Blaine was a little forgotten neighborhood thirty minutes from Minneapolis, where I lived. The town used to be nice and neighborly where kids bike until dark and people shoveled driveways for the elderly. Now it was dirty. Every house had this gray dinginess to it, like everyone, had collectively decided one year to stop taking care of things. Lawns were overgrown, cars were rusting away, big lilac bushes and weeping willows were being taken out or cut down.

It was like an anti-Homeowners Association. Uglifying until everything was up to code.

I showed up to the house where only one police car remained. There was yellow tape in front of the door. A crowd of people stood a few feet away, muttering. I looked the crowd over quickly, but no one stood out.

I lifted the tape and went into the house. Herbert was standing right inside, apparently waiting for me.

“Body has already been taken.” He grunted.

“That’s fine.” I didn’t get much from dead bodies. I knew Herbert would tell me anything I needed to know because he had called me. Still, this was awkward. We both were uncomfortable, and it was obvious by how we refused to make eye contact, our hands shoved in our pockets.

“Husband found her facedown in the guest room. Stabbed multiple times. Said the doors were all locked, no sign of forced entry.”

“You ask the neighbors if anyone was skulking around?”

Herbert nodded. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Seems like everyone keeps to themselves.”

“What did she do?”

“Who?”

“The victim. What did she do for work?”

“Oh. Her names Noelle Sharp.”

“The writer?” I asked, bewildered. She was known for gritty romance novels-turned deadly. Not my thing, but I knew her name.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know she lived here.”

He nodded again. “They moved here a few years ago.”

“Jeez. Why?”

Herbert shrugged. “Husband – names Magnus -- works for a painting company. She seems to make more dough.”

“Where is he?”

“Already down at the station. Guy’s pretty numb. Won’t say much.”

“Yeah, well. His wife was murdered.”

I wondered if Magnus had convinced Noelle to move here. If he had done that thing that men do when they feel like their wife – or any woman really – was doing better than them, so he tried to put her in a box, make her talents and abilities small and manageable. Easy to swallow. How many shouting matches had they been through before Noelle had conceded to move into this shoebox in the middle of shitsville.

“Can I have a few minutes?” I asked.

Herbert nodded.

I surveyed the entrance area. Stairs right in front of us leading down into a dark, wet-smelling basement; a tiny hall leading into a kitchen. Living room to the left, dining room to the right. I gave the first floor a once over. Dirty dishes in the sink, magazines on the coffee table. The trash was empty. No bag. I went up the stairs and found the main bedroom, bathroom, and the guest room.

In the middle of the guest room was a huge blood stain. It was flicked around the room, on the walls, on the bed. The stain was dark against the gray of the carpet. I surveyed the room. One bed, one desk with a small lamp and wooden chair, one plush armchair near the window, overhead light fixture/fan. There was a closet, and a nearly empty bookcase, short and pudgy – maybe something that one of them had been dragging around for years, couldn’t bear to get rid of. Some furniture held onto you. I walked in and thought about the room. The carpet was gray, the walls were white, but it was an off-white. It was like the white had been darkened by something. I sat down in the armchair and looked around, pretended I was staying there. I went over and turned the light on. The fan spun slowly above me. I sat back down in the armchair and looked some more.

I realized; it had been blue. The walls had been blue, but they had been poorly painted over, once, in a hurry. I got up from the chair and went over to the closet.

Inside there was a plastic bin full of wrapping paper. There was a broken vacuum, a box of empty bags to be used for gifts, and a stack of towels and blankets. For guests. I reached out and touched the unused things, linens that had never been unfolded.

So, no guests.

Or maybe guests slept on the couch and this room, like many guest rooms, was useless.

I leant down at the carpet in the closet. I took a small pair of scissors I kept on me and cut off some of the carpet threads, slipping them in my pocket.

I sat on the bed and it dipped, like it was trying to swallow me. The room smelt of dust and the duvet was covered in butterflies.

I lay down and stared up at the ceiling. What was missing in this room?

And then I bolted upright and stared at the blank walls and realized, there was less dust in a few places, sections where things had been removed. Pictures. There were no pictures.

*

Herbert was standing outside, trying to get the crowd to leave.

I stormed out. “Are you sure this wasn’t a robbery?” I asked.

Hebert looked over his shoulder, annoyance on his face at my outburst. It made the dispersing crowd turn, new interest compelling them to stay.

“Nothing has been taken.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Husband confirmed.”

“You don’t think – just maybe – he’s a little fragile at the moment?”

Herbert shrugged. “I’ll have him do another walk through.”

I told him I was going to need to come back to the house again. I needed to think. He told me to call him first before he did. We both knew I wouldn’t.

*

I looked up Noelle Sharp on the internet. I found relatives and close friends and I called and talked to them. Everyone had lovely things to say. I asked about her writing and her hobbies. When I brought up the husband, people also had nothing but good things to say. The mother was the only one who sputtered on and on about how that low life tricked my daughter into marrying him, worthless career, no family money, she could’ve married a Rockefeller.

I didn’t tell her Rockefellers didn’t spend time in Minnesota.

I found their bank information, social media accounts, insurance. He had taken her name. Previously had been Magnus Brown. He had a brother named Leonard.

I called and talked to some more people and asked if they ever had parties. Who were the best friends? Who stayed in that guest room?

No one had much to say. There had been a housewarming party, but never another party after that. I called Leonard and asked him about Magnus and Noelle. Leonard was still shocked about Noelle’s murder, kept going on and on about how Magnus adored her.

“Noelle was such a sweet girl. She was so kind to everyone, great cook. I never read her books, but I knew she was good. Magnus just loved her.”

I told him to call me if he thought of anything else.

I could see from their joint bank account that there was money trouble. There always was.

I carefully read through credit card statements, but nothing interesting sprung out. Not even a transaction from a dirty website.

I sat by the window in my apartment smoking until daylight.