He had taken his gloves off and was blowing on his hands. “I want you to see it, too.”
While I waited for the squad, I moved about the garage, careful where I stepped and keeping out of the way. There wasn’t much to see, just the usual clutter of items needed for the yard and odds and ends that had no other proper storage place. I scanned stacks of old newspapers, wicker baskets, dust’. cans of paint, and a rusty charcoal grill that I doubted had been used in years. Sloppily coiled in a corner like a headless green garter snake was the hose from which the segment attached to the exhaust pipe appeared to have been cut. I knelt near the severed end without, touching it. The plastic rim did not look sawn but severed at an angle by one hard blow. I spotted a linear cut in the cement floor nearby. Getting to my feet, I surveyed the tools hanging from a pegboard. There was an ax and a maul, both of them rusty and festooned with cobwebs.
The rescue squad was coming in with its stretcher and body pouch.
“Did you find anything inside her house that she might have used to cut the hose?” I asked Lucero.
“No.”
Jennifer Deighton did not want to come out of the car, death resisting the hands of life. I moved to the passenger’s side to help. Three of us secured her under the arms and waist while an attendant pushed her legs. When she was zipped up and buckled in, they carried her out into the snowy night and I trudged with Lucero along the driveway, sorry that I’d not taken the time to put on boots. We entered the ranch-style brick house through a back door that led into the kitchen.
It looked recently renovated, appliances black, counters and cabinets white, the wallpaper an Oriental pattern of pastel flowers against delicate blue. Heading toward the sound of voices, Lucero and I crossed a narrow hallway with a hardwood floor and stopped at the entrance of a bedroom where Marino and an 1D officer were going through dresser drawers. For a long moment, I looked around at the peculiar manifestations of Jennifer Deighton’s personality. It was as if her bedroom were a solar cell in which she captured radiant energy and converted it into magic. I thought again of the hang ups I had been sitting, my paranoia growing by leaps and bounds.
Walls, curtains, carpet, linens, and wicker furniture were white. Oddly, on the rumpled bed not far from where both pillows were propped against the headboard a crystal pyramid anchored a single blank sheet of white typing paper. On the dresser and beside tabletops were more crystals, with smaller ones suspended from window frames. I could imagine rainbows dancing in the room and light glancing off prismatic glass when the sun poured in.
“Weird, huh?” Lucero asked.
“Was she a psychic of some sort?” I asked.
“Let’s put it this way, she had her own business, most of it carried out right there.”
Lucero moved loser to an answering machine on a table by the bed. The message light was flashing, the number thirty-eight glowing red.
“Thirty-eight messages since eight o’clock last night,” Lucero added. “I’ve skipped through a few of ’em. The lady was into horoscopes. Looks like people would call to find out if they were going to have a good day, win the lottery, or be able to pay off their charge cards after Christmas.”
Opening the cover of the answering machine, Marino used his pocket knife to flip out the tape, which he sealed inside a plastic evidence envelope. I was interested in several other items on the small bedsides table and moved closer to take a look. Next to a notepad and pen was a glass with an inch of clear liquid inside it. I bent close, smelling nothing. Water, I thought. Nearby were two paperback books, Pete Dexter’s Paris Trout and Jane Roberts’s Seth Speaks. I saw no other books in the bedroom.
“I’d like to take a look at these,” I said to Marino.
“Paris Trout, “ he mused. “What’s it about, fishing in Prance?”