1 The Reluctant Dick - The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader Read Online Free

branches, ruined pansies, or indented rose bushes -- no sign of an area of final struggle. My hunch that he wasn’t killed here is now a certainty.
    I’m maybe fifty yards away, but I can see the two detectives and paramedics argue as they clear the smaller rocks off the victim. A wooden stretcher board rests perpendicular. Tiffany is freshening her make-up.
    “Hey, Sherlock,” Norbert yells out. “Can you give us a hand over here?”
    I pretend I can’t hear.
    Burrell calls out, even louder, “Sherlock, get your ass over here.”
    I might be stupid, but not that stupid. I walk the other way, deep in detective thought. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Norbert ask Tiffany a question and I can imagine Tiffany’s “ y ou’ve got to be kidding ” response.
    I take a few more steps and turn around to see the detectives and paramedics circle Alvin’s upper body, squat down, each grip the rock on Alvin’s head, and “on three” lift the weight upwards. Alvin’s flesh sticks to the rock like a suction cup and his entire upper body sits up. The four men stop, mid-lift, not sure how to proceed. No doubt the expletives are furiously rolling off tongues. Norbert finally raises his left orthopedic shoe, places it on Alvin’s chest and pushes it downward. The pressure holding the skull to the stone releases and Alvin slams back down into a clump of worthless body parts.
    Tiffany comes up to me as Alvin is loaded into the ambulance. “Now what do we do?”
    “We?”
    “Daddy said I should assist.”
    “Then why didn’t you help lift the rock off Alvin’s skull?”
    “Oh,” Tiffany sighs, “ w as that totally disgusting to the max or what?”

 
     
    3
    Tell a marketer he's dead
     
     
    What I did for the back forty, I do for the remainder of the property. Up, down, back, forth, criss and cross, I search for something, but I don’t know what. Walk, walk, walk. This is the reason gumshoe detectives still wear ugly shoes with thick gummy soles.
    With Tiffany following, complaining of her footwear choice, I cover most of the property before darkness falls. There is no moon tonight and I have found not a clue of what went down with poor Alvin J. Augustus.
    We move inside to the mansion, where a Hispanic, live-in maid, Theresa, is getting pummeled with questions from Norbert and Steve. The woman speaks only broken English or at least speaks only broken English at this moment.
    Tiffany offers her help. “I speak housekeeper Spanish.”
    An obvious prerequisite for anyone who has never done, nor will ever do, a lick of housework.
    For the next fifteen minutes, I meander through the downstairs, trying to get a feel for the life once lived here.
    My first thought: uncomfortable.
    The furniture is austere, for lack of a better term. It may cost thousands for these high-backed chairs and straight-up sofas, but there is not a place where you could kick off your shoes, lay down and take a nap. The media room has a plasma screen more suited to a drive-in movie theater; but only one Barcalounger sits before it, as if no one could ever agree on which movie to watch. All the floors are made from dark, one-inch, oak planks with the same pattern running across the length of the room. The boards cut from one oak tree, no doubt. The crown moldings are mahogany. All the curtains are made from thick material, maybe chintz. I know little about material except for what I wear. There are six fireplaces, all stone or brick, one so wide a whole cord of wood could fit inside. The house is a newer structure, less than twenty years old, built to appear old and stately, but fools not even me. I guess you could call it faux-old.
    What impresses, or actually depresses, me are the windows. Each is huge with inlaid, painted glass artwork usually reserved for churches or cemetery crypts. I can imagine that little natural sunlight filters through during the day. What an awful way to live. One window, or the lack thereof, in the den intrigues me.