Dead Man Below Deck

Chapter 2. Enter the Cops

When Betty opened the front door she was, of course, in danger of stepping into the crime scene. She peered carefully around then handed me the coffee, reaching over the tape that had been affixed to the outside wall at the door frame.

She was a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you. She had thrown on slacks and a shirt, her hair was tousled, and she had that suspicious look she gets in her eyes every once in a while. Her first reaction was always the same; I must have done something dangerous to cause this mess. This unjust view of my place in the world could be annoying, but when she handed me the coffee I knew she loved me, I loved her, and all was right in our little world.

Betty was a Wisconsinite through and through. Or should I say Badger? Or Cheesehead? I think she preferred Cheesehead. Anyway, she grew up on a dairy farm in the north-central part of the state. Her view of the world was forever shaped by arcane and exotic experiences that I could barely imagine. A curly-headed little scamp running madly around the barnyard, she played with her kittens and engaged in other important little-girl business. From what she told me, stepping barefoot into cowpies was a significant activity. Forgive me for not appreciating the joys of such behavior. I was the kind of kid who could not stand to have his hands sticky. Even today, I would not eat fruit unless it was cut up because of the juice. An apple I could stand if I ate it standing over the sink where I could wash up immediately. Stepping into a cowpie would be something I could handle only if I was wearing waders. I was not what Governor Arnold out in California called a “girly man.” But barefoot into a cowpie? No way in hell.

A childhood of neglect on a farm full of feces must explain why my dear wife was the way she was. Not that there was anything stranger about her than there was about me. But she was more than a little odd. Take, for example, the thing about boxes and bags. She couldn’t throw them away. And they accumulated. Perhaps they bred amongst themselves in the dead of night. How else could there get to be so many of them? They filled up every available bit of storage. Empty boxes and empty bags had appeared in all unused locations in every home where we had lived.

Her cousins were the same way. They were fascinated by sacks and crates, boxes and bags. They saved them for some unforeseen cataclysm, like maybe an invasion of aliens that would only spare people from slavery if they could produce one thousand cardboard boxes that appealed to alien sensibilities.

Something happened on that farm to make those girls the way they were. I shuddered to think what it might have been. Perhaps an old German lived in the woods, occasionally coming to the door of their farmhouse late at night shouting that a ransom of paper sacks must be thrown on the porch. “More sacks, more sacks! If you don’t give me more sacks I will throw you into the oven like I did Hansel and Gretel!”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t what happened. But it had to be something pretty strange.

The policeman stood ready to intervene if either of us stepped into the crime scene. He seemed a little disconcerted by our ability to reach over the crime scene tape to accomplish my selfish goal of obtaining coffee. This was beating the system. This was finding comfort when only discomfort should prevail. I wondered what he would have done if I had asked her to hand over a folding chair.

That proved to be unnecessary. An unmarked sedan pulled up disgorging what I imagined were two detectives. One was a beefy older man in rumpled polyester. The other was a hard looking bottle blonde with a styrofoam coffee cup in her hand. She struck me as the sensible type, no doubt because of the coffee, while he seemed like a doofus ready for retirement. This first impression proved to be completely backward.

They walked over to the little grouping Betty, the policeman, and I had formed by the door, taking in the situation at a glance. “These folks live in that unit up there,” our uniform said to the detectives with a significant look in his eye.

The female detective took the hint. “We would like to ask you two a few questions. May we come in?”

Finally, I would be able to sit down and drink my coffee. “Sounds good,” I said. “We can open the garage door and go in that way if you want.”

The female cop looked at me. Her gaze was professional and cool. What I am trying to say is that she looked at me like I was a bug, a bug under a magnifying glass that she had caught in the back yard. She was studying me to decide where to stick the pins that would nail me to a board when she added me to her collection of trophies. Not that I would be an important addition to the collection since I was not a very interesting bug.

What she was seeing was a middle-aged guy, average in every respect. White, five feet nine inches tall (with shoes on) and weighing 170 pounds (with shoes off), you could say I was fairly average. My hair was completely white and two inches in length all over. The clipper had a two inch comb on it and I just ran it forward and backward over my head about once a week. My beard, if you can call it that, had a moth-eaten look. With glasses, jogging shoes, jeans, and a polo shirt that I got on sale at Target, she was seeing your typical guy on vacation. Not particularly fit because I don’t lift weights or jog, but at least I could say I was no longer fat. I had lost 50 pounds since I topped out at 222 pounds eighteen months previously. The holiday pictures had horrified me, providing the motivation to change my eating habits. Even though I was not anywhere near movie star caliber, I was satisfied with my average appearance. It was a big step up for me.

The heavyset older one stuck out his hand. “My name is Sergeant Bill Broder and this is Sergeant Schmidt. Let’s go in and have a chat.” He looked like he wouldn’t mind resting his feet for a few minutes.

Broder lifted the tape to let me step under and we went up the steep stairs to our second floor apartment. Betty led the way, followed by me, then Schmidt and Broder. When we got to the main floor, I pulled out a chair at our kitchen table and sat down. “Our living room furniture won’t be delivered until next month, so we better sit here,” I said.

“You’ve just moved in?” Broder was looking around at our sparsely furnished home away from home.

“Yep. This is our summer place. We just got it this year. We’re still fixing it up.”

Apparently, that was enough small talk for Sergeant Schmidt. She flipped open her notebook and clicked her ballpoint pen into the working position. “Names?” she asked.

“Ed Schumacher. This is Betty Betz. We’re married.” I always felt obligated to add that last part. Betty was afraid that people would think we were just living together.

“Occupation?”

“College professors. Texas Tech.” I could be succinct, too.

Schmidt looked up in confusion, so I clarified. “We have summers off, so we bought this place. It’s cooler here in the summer.”

She nodded, not really interested. “What can you tell us about the body downstairs?”

“Nothing. I didn’t know it was there until I got back with the paper this morning.” My answer sounded weak even to me.

Schmidt narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You walked out that door at what time?”

“About six.” I felt compelled to elaborate. “The body might have been there, but since I was pretty sleepy, I wouldn’t have noticed it.”

Schmidt and Broder exchanged disbelieving glances. Since Schmidt seemed at a loss for words, Broder broke in.

“So you’re a college professor,” he said with an indulgent smile.

“Yep. Absent-minded professor.” I appreciated the excuse he was giving me.

“What were you doing last night?”

“We got here from Texas about five p.m. We were pretty tired, but Betty called her cousin and we made plans to go out for a fish fry. No food in the house, of course. Betty, what time did we get back from that?”

Betty looked startled. “Around seven probably,” she said. “We watched some TV then went to bed early. We were tired.”

No doubt about that. Driving up from Amarillo would have been tiring enough. But the night we spent in a motel outside Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri provided no rest at all. Our decrepit and neurotic cat was traveling with us. Betty had given him something to relax him for the drive since he goes nuts in the car. The tranquilizer did not make him sleep, but we found out that it relaxed him in ways we did not anticipate. In the middle of the night, I got out of bed to turn down the air conditioner. The cat was in my spot when I got back to the bed. Naturally, I picked him up and dropped him on top of Betty. Then I lay back down, only to discover something hot, wet, and smelly was all over me. Perhaps it was my fault. Maybe I squeezed him when I moved him and that forced a nasty squirt out the back end. Whatever the cause, we spent the next hour wide awake. The bed was a mess, I was in shock (imagine that stuff on your naked body), and Betty was trying to clean up. The cat seemed to be happy enough, though.

Broder wrote this down. Not the part about the cat squirt since I didn’t tell him that story, but about our going to bed early. Maybe I should have told him the cat story. It would have proven I was not capable of murder. With all the provocation the cat gave me, the possibility of killing it never crossed my mind. Drop kicking it off the balcony would not have been out of the question, though. Maybe it was just as well I did not tell that story to Broder since we had sneaked the cat into the hotel room without asking permission. What if the hotel had called in a report on us for making a strange and noxious smell in their hotel room.

“Did you folks hear or see anything unusual last night?”

Betty and I both shook our heads.

Broder apparently had finished his assessment of us and concluded we were not dangerous. We might have killed the guy below the deck, but we weren’t likely to kill someone else right away.

“Thank you for your time. Sorry to have disturbed you.” Then he smiled at me. “We might have a few more questions.” His smile broadened. “Don’t leave town.”