It was noon on Tuesday, April 16, and Teddy Camel was twelve hours overdue on his income tax, he’d also be late for meeting Eddie, Mary, and Annie at The Ground Floor.
Concerned about what Elizabeth Rockwell had said indicating Growler might’ve already visited the other people who testified against him, Camel was knocking on the front door of a brown-shingled bungalow owned by Judith and Lawrence Rainey who didn’t answer Camel’s knock. The Raineys were an older couple, maybe they didn’t hear him, maybe they were around back.
Camel walked along the side of the house, checking in windows as he went but seeing no sign of anyone home. He entered the backyard, no one here either but he noticed a cigar on the ground and wondered who had dropped it. Climbing the steps and knocking on the back door, Camel ran through possibilities as he waited … what led to the murder of that seventeen-year-old girl, was she in on the theft of that solid-gold elephant or was she trying to blackmail someone with those secret sex pictures? When Camel asked Parker Gray about an elephant, Gray didn’t tip to it, he was worried about photographs. Did McCleany and Gray run a bogus investigation seven years ago to protect the real killer … one of Hope’s lovers, someone she caught with that hidden camera rig, someone rich enough to buy off McCleany and Gray, with enough political power to move Parker Gray up the ranks to associate superintendent?
No one showed at the back door, Camel starting around for the front again when he looked down a flight of concrete steps to a basement door. He went down there and saw that the door had been jimmied. Pushing it open he caught a funny smell. Sincerely wishing he had Eddie’s .45 with him, Camel entered the basement and saw what looked to be red paint on the floor. He knelt. It was dried blood leading to a washing machine and dryer which also had blood on their lids.
Careful not to leave tracks or fingerprints, Camel walked over there and used a handkerchief to lift those lids … Mr. and Mrs. Rainey.