Page 16 of Gem Warfare

“These are myneighbors,” said Mom, not even trying to hide her disgust at the discussion.

“They live at the end of the block,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter. A neighbor is a neighbor. We don’t have murderers as neighbors. I would know!”

“Well, you definitely had a dead body as a neighbor and you didn’t know anything about that,” I pointed out. Mom narrowed her eyes at me and I contemplated stepping behind Solomon, out of her glare. Not that I was scared of my mom but… well, yes, she was scary.

“Looks like Garrett is wrapping up with the Dugans,” said Solomon. “Let’s split tasks. You find out what he knows, and I’ll quiz the Dugans.”

“And then you’ll take the case?” asked Mom.

“They haven’t asked us yet,” I said, while nodding my agreement to Solomon’s suggestion.

When the Dugans returned to our small group, their worries still evident across their faces and the way they clenched their hands, I took the moment of distraction to slip away and walk over to Garrett where he stood, his phone pressed to his ear. I made sure he saw me, then waited for him to finish the call.

“I’m told Mom called you,” he said, glancing at her. “I don’t see why. There’s nothing here MPD can’t handle.”

“I don’t doubt it. Have you had a case like this before?” I asked.

“Here and there, although residential neighborhood cases are rare. I think I recall handling two cold cases in the past year and before you ask, there are no similarities so far. One was under a flowerbed for twenty years and the husband definitely did it. The other victim had been killed by his housemate and when the housemate died years later, and the drywall was being ripped out prior to the sale, there he was, just hanging out in the wall cavity. Another clear-cut case. You probably read about them in the newspaper.”

“The first one sounds familiar. Was there a trial?”

“Yeah, it went on for a while too. They ended up tearing the house down. No one wanted to buy it and with the homeowner in jail for the rest of his life, no one was maintaining it. I think the bank foreclosed on it eventually, and sold the land to developers who replaced it with condos.”

“It is kind of creepy,” I said.

“Yeah, but not altogether rare. Anyway, you might as well take off. I’ve got this covered. I’m waiting on the medical examiner to get here. I think the body will be declared dead,” Garrett added with a chuckle.

“Very funny. I think I’m going to stick around. The Dugansmight want to hire us to help them navigate all this.”

“They’ll be wasting their money. Hope you tell them that.”

“We’ll discuss the merits of the case with them before we take it, if it comes to that.”

“And Mom?” asked Garrett.

“Can you talk to her?”

“Nope. She didn’t call me.”

I sighed. “What can you tell me? Is there anything you can say about the body, or the location, that stands out?”

“Nothing about the location. Just a regular house. I think I’ve known every owner since we were kids. There’s been three? Maybe? I don’t recall anything weird about any of them but who knows? I’ll need to think about that and ask the neighbors if anyone remembers any of them or one of them seemingly disappearing. The backyard isn’t exactly an odd location for concealing a body. It’s convenient and the location isn’t readily visible to other homes. The deceased might have a connection to one of the prior owners so once I get an identity, I’ll be looking into that first.”

“And the body?”

“I’d like the ME to confirm, but it’s most likely a man in his fifties when he died, and it looks like he’s been there for years.”

“As in a few years? Or decades?”

“Hard to say. I’ll need a better look at his clothing and the coroner will run tests, but it’s definitely not clothing we would consider fashionable now.”

“So he still looked… male?” I asked, trying to find words that had the intent of “partially intact body” but wasn’t quite as gross to say. “Or you could tell from the skeleton size and appearance? That’s impressive.”

“I’m notthatgood at skeletal anatomy and this one has definitely been in the ground long enough to lose its features. No, as it happens, I pulled a wallet from the deceased’s jacketpocket, which was a nice surprise.”

“A wallet? Really? What was inside?”