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“You have reached Sergeant Cruz of the Denver PD. I’m sorry I can’t answer, but if you leave a message I’ll get back as soon as possible. If it’s an emergency, please hang up and call 911.”
“Sergeant, this is Jacob Martin, Debbie Walker’s handyman. I think I found something on one of my scaffold walk boards you need to see. Well actually, Fred found it, but that’s really not important.” I tried to laugh at my little joke before continuing. “Anyway, I’m at Debbie’s now and will try to hang around ‘till you call back, but her sister might not let me.” Once more I realized how nervous I must have sounded by rattling on.
“Are you calling the police?” Lisa had walked into the room, without the kitten, as I finished my message. I should have realized it sooner when Fred had reattached himself to me.
“I think you’d better look at this, Lisa,” I answered, pointing toward the walk boards.
She went over to the boards, lowered her glasses, and squinted her eyes. “Okay, so you write your initials on your equipment. You didn’t have to call the police. I wasn’t going to keep them.”
“I didn’t write it, Lisa. Debbie did.”
I watched as she repositioned her glasses with a single index finger before bending down to take a closer look. “JM. Jake Martin. You’re telling me Debbie wrote that?”
“I might be able to answer that if you’d tell me how she died. For some reason, nobody wants to tell me.”
She stared wide-eyed a second too long before speaking. “You don’t know?”
“No. Sergeant Cruz wouldn’t tell me and I feel like you’ve been avoiding it. What’s the big secret, anyway?”
Her eyes drifted toward the shuttered window behind me and she unconsciously scratched her earlobe. “They say it was your bucket of drywall compound. She must have bumped into your scaffold and knocked it loose. It broke her neck when it hit her on the head.”
I stood there speechless. Visions of a barbecue grill blowing up in a neighbor’s face a couple years ago came flooding back in my mind. The neighbor died and the family sued me for negligence. Could this be happening again?
Whatever itch she had behind her ear must have moved on to her upper arm. “Don’t look so horrified, Jake,” she said while scratching her arm. “I’m not going to sue you. Brendon says you don’t have a pot to piss in, so I’d be wasting my time.”
“Brendon?”
Lisa dropped her eyes. “Debbie’s realtor. He came by earlier to offer his condolences. I’m not sure how, but your name came up, and that’s when he told me about you.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize I was such a celebrity. Did he also tell you Debbie fired him some time ago?”
“Really?” she said, looking me in the eyes again. “I suppose that shows you can’t believe anyone these days, Can you?”
“I suppose, but he’s right about one thing, Lisa. You’d be wasting your time because it was no accident. I think someone murdered her and made it look that way.”
It looked like her eyes might pop out. At the very least she resembled one of the carved pumpkins I’d seen earlier with triangular sockets where their eyes should be.
“Someone murdered her?”
“I think so, someone with the initials JM. But first, tell me something. Did they do an autopsy?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then how do you know her neck was broken?”
“It’s what I heard the other detective say. Cruz told him to wait for the autopsy before jumping to conclusions. So I guess they will do one when they get around to it.”
“I wish I could see it. My money’s on a brain hemorrhage or something caused by a blow to the head. She’d never had time to write the message if her neck was broken.”
Lisa’s face had softened some. She no longer looked like Janet Leigh being attacked in the shower, but she still did a good impersonation of Kathy Bates holding a sledgehammer. “So this is what legalizing marijuana does. Is everyone in this state smoking it? Don’t you think that’s the first thing they’d notice? And how do you know she’d die instantly from a broken neck? I think you’ve been reading too many Agatha Christie novels.”
She had me there. Not on the smoking accusation, I’ve never touched that stuff in my life, but on the broken neck. “Okay, I’m not a doctor. I suppose she could have broken her neck, but wouldn’t that be bloodless?”
Lisa’s eyes went wide again, so I thought I’d better explain before it drove her nuts. “Look at that writing. Doesn’t that look like dried blood?”
She pushed on the middle of her glasses with her index finger and bent down to get a closer look. “Looks like something broad like a crayon, or a wide marker.”
“Well, if it’s not blood, it had to be something edible.”
“An edible food marker?” Her eyes seemed to sparkle.
“A what?”
“Cake decorators use them, Jake. But why does it have to be edible.”
I pointed to Fred who had been sitting quietly, listening to our conversation like he understood every word. “He found the message with his nose. His two favorite things in life are sleep and food. He must have thought it was something to eat.”
“Aw, Fred, are you going to let him talk about you like that?” she said and bent down to ruffle the hair on the top of his head.
Fred barked, and Lisa laughed.
“I’m sorry I got mad earlier, Jake. Why don’t I make it up to you and buy you two lunch? I’d love to hear more about where you get these ideas for your murder mysteries.”