“Detective Sam Purdy, this is Jenifer Donald. She’s visiting her grandparents from South Carolina.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Sam said.
I was tempted to tell Sam that Jenifer was as sweet as an August melon, and warn him that she was older than she looked, but I didn’t. He’d figure it all out himself before too long.
He flipped open his badge wallet for her benefit. Jenifer hopped back from it as though it were cocked and loaded.
“So you don’t actually live here, Jenifer? This isn’t your house?”
“No, sir. Should I call you ‘officer’?”
“Detective. Dr. Gregory told me that you’re here visiting your grandparents. They are due home when?”
Sam was dressed in new clothes, or at least clothes I’d never seen him wear before. Two factors were at play: One, he’d lost a lot of weight over the last year and his old stuff didn’t fit. Two, he actually seemed to have started caring how he looked. The ensemble he was wearing was composed of a pair of jeans from the Gap and a striped wool v-neck sweater over a white T-shirt that hadn’t even considered turning yellow. For Sam, the outfit constituted styling.
Jenifer’s acute anxiety that she had done something to lure a police detective to her grandparents’ door was making me nervous. She said, “Soon. They’re due back soon. Any minute I bet. But I’m not sure. They’re out doing that pill… thing. Exercise, you know? With those machines?”
Sam sighed. He knew. Eating a healthy diet was something Sam had embraced. Exercise? That had become cool with him, too. But Pilates and yoga? For Sam, they were still on an astral plane with tats and piercings. He wasn’t quite there yet. At his partner Lucy’s insistence, he’d accompanied her to a solitary session of Bikram yoga-the kind that’s basically done in a sauna-and was astonished, and dismayed, to learn that people were physiologically capable of sweating out of their noses.
Profusely.
And that they would pay dearly for the privilege.
I thought it would take him a while to come around to being open-minded about yoga and Pilates.
“And this guy, Bob, is your grandparents’ tenant?” he asked Jenifer. “He rents a room?”
“Two rooms. Yes, sir. And he has his own bathroom, of course. Hot plate, microwave. You know. I used to stay up there when I was visiting. It’s nice. You can see the mountains real well when the leaves are off the trees. Or is it ‘real good’? No, no-it’s real well.”
We were all standing out near the alley at the foot of the stairs that led up to Bob’s rented rooms. Sam looked at me before he asked Jenifer the next question. “And which one of you actually entered Bob’s rooms?”
Jenifer swallowed and her eyes got as big and bright as table grapes. “I did. That’s when I saw-I shouldn’t have done that, should I? Oh my Lord. Am I in trouble? The doctor was worried and I thought that he… oh my Lord! Oh my Lord. I’m so sorry. Back home, we’d-but, oh, I really am sorry. I’ll never do it again. I promise. Please don’t…”
She couldn’t even bring herself to say “arrest me.”
“ ‘The doctor’ ”-Sam glared at me-“said you saw some blood when you were inside? And a mess?”
“I did. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I really don’t know what I was thinking. Going into a stranger’s place like that? We might do it back home, but I’m not-Y’all-” She sighed. “I screamed. The blood, the mess. I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s nothing,” Sam said, in his best fatherly voice. “Don’t you worry; you did what you thought was best.” Sam climbed the staircase toward Bob’s rooms. He stopped near the top, turned to Jenifer and me, and said, “What I’m going to do is something that law enforcement calls a ‘welfare check.’ All that means is that I’m going to make a quick walk through his place, make certain that there isn’t someone inside needing assistance, then I’m going to come right back out.” He focused his eyes on me before he continued. “Just in case anyone’s ever curious about exactly what I did in there. Understand?”
“Yes,” Jenifer replied, although it hadn’t been her understanding Sam had been seeking.
He edged into the flat without touching a single surface and was back out of Bob’s rented rooms in a little over a minute. Because of the way the door was situated I wasn’t able to follow his progress. Once he was back on the landing at the top of the stairs, he looked at me and shook his head, “Nobody in there. Some blood, not too much. Just what you saw near the door. And it’s a mess in there, too, Jenifer, just like you said.”
“There they are. Finally,” Jenifer said, pointing down the driveway that led out to Pine Street.
A huge dark GMC pickup with a camper shell was pulling into the driveway. We all waited.
The second her grandparents made it out of the truck, Jenifer announced, “The police are here about the tenant. There’s blood. I looked inside. I’m so sorry. I am.”