I was out of the shower in five minutes, and it took me another five to pull on jeans and an old King George University sweatshirt that had a small mustard stain on the band from a wayward hot dog. I pulled a dark green watch cap over my head and laced up my heavy winter boots.
My favorite thing about watching crime shows on television was how put together everyone looked at a crime scene. The women wore heels and nice suits, nails were manicured, and no hair was out of place. I’d caught sight of myself a couple of times on the news, and I’d had an internal conversation about being a public figure and looking more presentable for public perception. Jack always looked camera ready, but that was genetics more than the time he actually spent on his appearance.
But for my part, it was a short-lived war. Crime scenes were never camera ready or picture perfect. They could be messy. And sometimes the weather added to the mess—rain, snow, cold, extreme heat—it all played a part. When you’d had the experience of walking onto a crime scene with an umbrella to keep brain matter from dripping on your head from a murder/suicide, then you stopped caring about outward appearances and moved toward the practical. And I was very practical.
It was February, and Virginia in February tended to be wet most days—either from rain or snow or a combination thereof—and it was cold. As soon as Jack mentioned that a body had been found in an alley my mind went to all the probabilities of what kind of shape the victim would be in. Not to mention all the generally disgusting things that could be found in an alley that might contaminate my scene. Rats wreaked havoc on dead bodies.
I bounded down the stairs and Jack was waiting for me by the front door with my heavy waterproof jacket and a to-go cup of coffee. I grabbed my medical bag off the entry table, made sure my camera was inside, and then Jack took it from me and hefted it over his shoulder.
“Wait a second,” I said. “What about Doug?”
“I left him a note on the refrigerator,” Jack said. “That way I know he’ll get it.”
It had been five days since Doug Carver had moved in with us. To say that it had been an adjustment was an understatement, but we still felt like it was the right decision to make. Doug was the nephew of Jack’s best friend, Ben, and Doug wasn’t a typical teenager. He was off-the-charts smart, to the point that he’d been under house arrest for a good part of his teenage years for hacking into high-security government institutions.
Carver had been the one to turn Doug in, and oddly enough, Doug didn’t hold it against him. They were peas in a pod, and Carver had told Doug in no uncertain terms that their gifts were to be used for good and not for evil.
Doug had agreed, but he’d still had to wear an ankle bracelet and do his schoolwork online. He was sixteen and finishing up a couple of college degrees, and his mom had done everything she could for him. He needed something to keep him busy and out of trouble, and Jack and I could provide that for him by letting him help with the occasional case.
So he’d packed his bags and we’d redecorated a suite on the second floor that he could call his own. Jack came from money, and he’d never been shy about spending it, but if we ever went broke I was pretty sure it would be because Doug ate us out of our budget.
“Good thinking,” I said. “You don’t think we should wake him up for class or anything?”
“Class is his responsibility,” Jack said. “He’ll be fine.”
Jack locked the front door behind us, and then we walked under the covered porch to the portico where his Tahoe and my Suburban were parked.
“How long has it been raining?” I asked.
A drizzle fell in the darkness, but it was the kind of rain that soaked everything and everyone through to the skin and seeped into the bones along with the cold. I’d take the fat drops from a thunderstorm any day of the week over this crap.
“I checked the weather reports and it looks like the rain started just after two. And it’s not supposed to let up anytime soon.”
I went to open the door of the Suburban and realized it was already running and the heat was on full blast. Jack had come out and started things up while I’d been getting ready. I grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him in for a kiss. Jack was great about the little things, and I hoped I never took them for granted.
“Thank you,” I said, taking my bag from him and tossing it onto the passenger seat. “You’re the best.”
“You can pay me back later,” he said, giving me a grin that had my blood heating beneath my skin. “I’ll follow you to the scene.”
Newcastle was a half-hour drive from our house, and it was still dark by the time we pulled up to the scene.
Newcastle was one of the four towns that made up King George County—along with Bloody Mary, King George Proper, and Nottingham—and just like all the towns in King George, it had its own vibe and quirks. Newcastle had an artistic, bohemian feel that the rest of the county didn’t have. There were as many yoga studios as coffee shops, and the demographics leaned toward up-and-coming late-twenty to early thirty-somethings who still hadn’t figured out if they wanted a career or to lose themselves in their creativity and starve for a living.
The buildings downtown were historic, and even the new apartments they’d recently built around the park had an old-world feel to them. The streets were cobbled and gas streetlamps and iron benches were placed strategically along the sidewalks.
But during the Victorian festival, they took things to another level. The city council did their best to make sure everything was authentic as it could be, even going so far as to not allow vehicles in the cordoned-off streets. Only foot traffic or horse and buggy were allowed. Jack and I drove around the barricades and made our way down the cobbled streets until the Curtain Call came into view.
It was the corner building facing the park, and it looked like a white birthday cake with all the ornamental carvings and arches and columns a baroque architect could possibly add. There was a second-floor balcony that looked out over the park and the streets, and the theater would host a cocktail hour for donors before each show. Anyone who was anyone wanted to be seen on that balcony. When I was a kid there’d been a fistfight between two of the wealthier men in town, and one of them had fallen over the rail and cracked his head on the sidewalk. People still talked about it as if it had happened recently.
There were a couple of black-and-whites with lights flashing parked near the entrance of the alley, and there were two ambulances several yards away near the park entrance. I pulled in beside Jack and turned off the car, and then grabbed my bag and hopped out. The stocking cap I wore would be soaked through before long, so I pulled the hood of my jacket up for the time being. The cold was bitter, and I felt the warmth from Jack’s good deeds of the morning start to fade away.
Jack left his lights flashing and then met me at the back of the Suburban to help pull out the gurney. There had been many days after I’d inherited the funeral home where I’d had no choice but to work solo—I hadn’t been able to afford any help—especially after the financial and legal mess my parents had left me in after they’d faked their deaths.
But business at the funeral home had picked up and I’d been able to hire Emmy Lu and Sheldon to keep things running on a day-to-day basis. My parental problems had mostly resolved themselves over the last several months. I tried not to think about it.