Chapter 3 #2
Okay, so… I spoil Grizzy, only because when I adopted her at the pound, she was rail thin from her years on the streets and had lost an eye from a vicious fight with another stray.
Now she lives in the lap of luxury — a cat tree jungle gym and all the Fancy Feast and Meow Mix she could eat.
Her litter box is self-cleaning. On the off-chance I can’t find a sitter for her when I’m on vacation, she has not one but two automatic cat feeders.
I may be a childless cat lady, but I’m doing it in style. Cats are quieter than babies, have more sense than men, and more decency than human beings. Maybe I’m in a mood over the wrongs wrought upon me by my own friends and family, but right now the only company I can stand is my cat’s.
Grizzy ignores us, basking in a shaft of sunlight. I kneel down and stroke her soft orange coat. She purrs and swats lazily at my arm, scratching my inner wrist.
“Ouch.”
“Purr.”
“It’s like Feline Disneyland,” Elliot says, marveling at the elaborate cat trees. “Does she even use this?”
“Not really,” I say, smoothing down Grizzy’s tail. “She’s not very limber.”
Elliot crouches down and strokes Grizzy’s belly, eliciting a contented symphony of purrs. Grizzy usually doesn’t like strangers, but she’s also not as spry as she once was.
“She’s the fattest cat I’ve ever seen,” he says.
“She’s a little tubby, that’s all.”
“She’s obese.”
I take a good look at Grizzy. Okay, so she's put on some water weight since I took her home from the pound. But obese?
“I'll extend her walks then.”
“Why am I not surprised that you walk your cat?” Elliot mutters.
Grizzy’s one eye squints in pleasure with every stroke of her fur.
"Do you have pets of your own?" I ask, amazed by how good he is with Grizzy.
“Just a ficus,” he says absently. He frowns and glances over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
Without a word, he stands and strolls to Grizzy’s litter box.
He strokes his chin, studying it as if he could magically conjure up the poop in the sand.
"I already told you that Grizzy is fastidious with her bathroom habits,” I nod toward the litter box, “and that’s the self-cleaning Litter-Robo 800.”
“Automatic poop disposal,” Elliot says.
“That’s right.”
“She's too fat to come downstairs,” he says, mumbling mostly to himself, “too clean to leave the turds... no evidence of constipation. Hard turds,” he taps his foot, “rock hard turds in the photo.”
I think it’s safe to say that Detective Frost has lost his mind. He has turds on the brain.
“Are you…?” I frown, studying his profile. “Are you okay?”
“The cat is innocent,” he declares, not exactly to me but through me. He’s staring past me, into the middle distance, lost in his thoughts.
Without preamble or an apology to Grizzy or me, he leaves the room.
“Okay,” I sigh, “here we go…” I know he has his methods (strange, strange methods), but I hope leaving me in the lurch doesn’t become a habit.
I make my way downstairs. “Where are you?”
“Here!”
“Where?” I jerk my head to the left.
“Here!”
I follow his disembodied voice to the nook where I catch him back on his haunches, squatting mere inches away from the stained carpet.
Like a forensics expert at a murder scene, Elliot studies the stain with an expression so intense I wouldn’t be surprised if he began outlining the turds in chalk.
He whips out his phone instead.
“The stains suggest the consistency was hard and somewhat sticky,” he says, snapping a bunch of photos from multiple angles. “Can you confirm it?”
“Confirm what?” I ask, tiptoeing around the tree skirt.
He glances up, flabbergasted. "You can come a little closer."
I eye the stain dubiously. “I’m fine right here.”
He tilts his head to the side, laser-focused on the stain. “Can you confirm that the turds were dry before you scooped them up with your shovel?”
“Um… yes,” I nod. “They were dry.”
“How dry?” he asks, snapping a close-up shot of the carpet fibers.
“I was more concerned about getting them out of my house as fast as possible.”
“Hmm.” Elliot sounds displeased. “You are unhelpful.”
“They were dry, okay! I can’t tell you how dry, but they were dry. The perp was constipated.”
Suddenly, Elliot stands up. “Dry turds,” he says. “Dry. Dry. Dry. Constipated. We have a constipated perp.”
Sucked back into his detective mind palace, he paces the circumference of the Christmas tree.
I eye his shoes. “Watch your feet.” The last thing I need is him tracking poop stains across my carpet. “What does it matter if the perp was constipated? It looks like he or she had no problem dropping the kids off at the pool.”
“Ah!” He holds up his finger. “But don’t you see? A constipated suspect means they had to go out of their way. Exerting significant effort to drop trow, squat, squeeze…” He bunches his hand into a fist as if squeezing a tube of toothpaste. “Do you see? The squeezing…”
“What exactly are you squeezing there, Detective?”
He drops his hand, suddenly remembering his manners. “Perhaps this is not a gesture to perform in front of ladies, but you get the idea.”
“It’s bad enough that one of my guests pooped under my tree. I don’t need to know how their plumbing works,” I pause, “or doesn’t work.”
“The plumbing doesn’t work,” he says. “Don’t you see?” He gestures from the crime scene to the bathroom down the hall. “If the perp really had to go and the one bathroom was unavailable…”
“And Jen was in the bathroom all night…” We lock eyes. I’m suddenly hopeful for the first time. “This means Jen couldn’t have done it.”
Elliot grimaces. “I’m not writing your sister off just yet.”
I roll my eyes. “Jen has a solid alibi! She was pooping, which is unfortunate, but she was doing it on the toilet like a normal person.”
“Can you swear, with one hundred percent certainty, that Jen never left the bathroom?”
“I’m sure she’s been in the bathroom all night. We just need to find witnesses to corroborate her alibi.”
“Sure is not certain,” he says. “She’s still a suspect until I get all the facts. In the meantime, let’s say she locked herself in the bathroom and someone really had to go. They were forbidden to use the bathroom upstairs…” He shoots me a pointed look.
“Well, I would have made an exception if someone really had to go!”
“Would you?” he asks.
“Of course!”
“You say that now… Seems to me your guests were afraid to ask because they knew the answer would be ‘no.’”
“That’s not fair! I would have let them use my bathroom.”
“I guess we’ll never know how that scenario would’ve played out.” With a swish of his coat, he resumes circling the stain. “Denied a bathroom, the perp seeks a corner of privacy: behind the Christmas tree.”
“The broom closet is pretty private, too.” I spot many holes in his theory. “There are loads of nooks and crannies around this house to poop in. What about just stepping outside and doing it behind a bush? But my Christmas tree? That seems extra spiteful.”
I shudder. I will never expel the sight of those three spiteful turds out of my mind.
“Don’t you see,” he snaps his fingers, “that’s my point.
According to the photos, the turds were rock hard.
The stains confirm constipation. Even if the bathroom was supposedly occupied all night by your sister, the perp could have held it in.
He or she could have held it all night long and then some. The perp didn’t have to go and yet…”
I suck in my breath. “He or she went, anyway.”
“Right here.” He points to the stains. “Missing the tree skirt entirely. Right on your pristine white carpet.” He whirls around suddenly and pins me to the spot with the intensity of his gaze. “The perp did it out of spite.”
“Sicko,” I whisper. “What a f–What a sick thing to do.”
Elliot shakes his head in disgust. “I’ve seen many strange things in my line of work–”
“And this takes the cake?”
“No,” he says, “I’ve seen worse. But this is definitely one for the record books. I’m looking forward to catching this lowlife and making him or her pay.” He arches an eyebrow. “What do you plan to do with the perp once you catch ‘em? Are you taking ‘em to court?”
I frown. “I hadn’t really thought that far…” It hadn’t occurred to me to sue one of my friends or family members. “I’ll definitely slap ‘em with a hefty carpet cleaning bill and you can be sure they’re not getting an invitation to next year’s Thanksgiving again.”
“Hmm,” he grumbles. “It’s your life.”
“Why?” I ask, suddenly unsure of my decision. “You think I should sue? Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?” The optics of suing someone in my inner circle would decimate my image in the election. I don’t tell Elliot that, of course. “I’m not a litigious person. Detective, do you–”
Why am I not surprised that I’m speaking to the back of his head? He’s turned away from me again and hasn’t heard a thing I’ve said.
“I guess this means I’m off the hook?” I raise my voice.
“Hm,” he mumbles, his gaze fixed on the window in the Christmas tree nook.
“Are you even paying attention to me?”
He pops the latch of the window and pushes it open. “Was this open during the party?”
I blink, baffled by the turn in the investigation. “I don’t know. I think it was shut.”
“Can it open from the outside?” He pokes his head out, glances from side to side. The wraparound porch is the only thing out there. Unless you count the street.
“As far as I know, it latches from the inside,” I say, joining him by the window. “Wait a minute… are you suggesting that someone might have slipped in during the party?”
“If the window was left open…”
I clasp my hands together. “That’s wonderful news!”
Elliot regards me suspiciously. “You sound unusually happy by this discovery.”
“Of course I’m happy! If someone broke in, then it clears my guest. All of them. I mean, I’m not happy someone broke into my home, but now I don’t have to confront my guests. If it came down to choosing between a stranger pooping on my carpet versus someone I know, I’d choose the stranger.”
I’m floating on air. It’s like a heavy weight has been lifted off my chest. “Elliot, how can we be sure there was a break in?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” He pushes the panes wide open, swings a leg over the ledge…
And jumps out the window.