Coming Unclued (2 page)

I quickly brushed my cheeks with blush and put on a little mascara. Only a slight improvement. Starting tomorrow I was going to eat right and exercise and of course not drink a drop of alcohol. And sleep eight hours on a satin pillow which was supposed to be good at preventing wrinkles. Maybe after Christmas, when I needed to flush out a little intestinal debris, I’d even try one of Heather’s cleanses. I’d be back to my old self in no time.

I slithered out of the satin dress and into a pair of yoga pants that had never seen the inside of a yoga studio and an incredibly soft, pale blue sweater that Heather gave me last Christmas. Cashmere. My first cashmere sweater. I gave her a
Luscious Low Fat Recipes
cookbook, but since she had upped the present ante I’d have to search farther than the dollar deals page on Amazon for this year’s gift.

I pulled my shoulder-length brown hair back into a ponytail, gave my cheeks a quick pinch — one of Gran’s favorite beauty tips — and peered in the mirror. Not great, but passable enough to keep Julie’s interrogation to a minimum. A quick pee and a swig of mouthwash and I’d be good to go. I hustled into the bathroom, put the toilet seat down and tried to avoid looking up. One of the other design flaws of my condo was the decision to put a mirrored shower stall directly across from the toilet. Naked white thighs splayed across the toilet seat is not a vision that would inspire confidence in even the sturdiest of egos. The toilet. Something was nagging at me. The toilet! I live alone. Evan hadn’t been here for a couple of days. Why was the toilet seat up? Did I drink so much I actually threw up? Didn’t sound like me. I have a strong stomach. So why was the toilet seat up? Had there been a man here last night? A man who couldn’t be bothered to put the toilet seat down while I’m staggering around the kitchen rustling him up a nice snack. I racked my still murky brain to think of a male from the office I could possibly have brought home. Ken? Six feet five inches, about 150 pounds, a bushy mustache and a propensity for dirty jokes involving animals. I could never be that drunk. Not possible. Richard? A kind, annoyingly fastidious, sixty-year-old married man. His desk was decorated with pictures of his large family engaged in what seemed like endless celebrations. It wasn’t Richard.

The aspirin was starting to work its magic, but I wasn’t feeling much better. How could I have done this again? I don’t even like drinking that much. I can take it or leave it. I’d prefer to take it, but it doesn’t fill me with the kind of orgiastic pleasure that a slab of New York cheesecake does.

There was a brisk knock on the door. Julie. She prides herself on her punctuality. Actually she prides herself on a lot of things. Her unshakable confidence is one of her most tiresome qualities. I mentally braced myself and hustled to let her in, a cheerful, no hangover here smile pasted to my face.

“Your security door is still broken,” said Julie, in lieu of hello. “Don’t your condo fees cover that kind of thing? Who’s on the board?” she demanded. “Give them a call. Any wino or pervert could be wandering the halls.” Julie always has an eye out for the perverts who walk amongst us.

“I’ll deal with it,” I said. “Go sit down — I’ll get the coffee.”

I was actually on the condo board, though I’d yet to attend a meeting.

“Where do you want the trap?” called Julie, as she marched into the living room in her usual purposeful manner. She was wearing sweat pants and a faded yellow hoody. Not nicely fitted yoga pants with a little flared leg. Baggy grey sweat pants, tight against her ankle. Julie didn’t believe in following the vagaries of fashion. If the clothes fit she wore them, and if the clothes didn’t quite fit she wore them anyway. “I can’t do coffee,” she said. “No time. I’ve got to run to the grocery store. I’m just dropping this off.”

Just as well she couldn’t linger. I didn’t have the energy for it.

“I’ve smeared it with peanut butter,” she said, carefully setting the trap and placing it against the wall.

“What if it goes off?” I asked.

“You remove the dead mouse and toss it in the garbage. And then you reset the trap. There’s never just one. And look — I brought you some of this mouse treat stuff. They eat it and then they go back to their nest and quietly dehydrate or something.”

“Poison,” I said. “That sounds kind of mean.”

“As opposed to luring them in with peanut butter and snapping their neck?”

I nibbled on a piece of banana bread and contemplated my options. There was no way I was picking up a dead mouse. “I’ll use an oven mitt and toss the whole mess down the chute. I’m pretty sure there’s only one. He looked like a loner.”

“Your choice,” said Julie, with a tight-lipped expression, that clearly said “fine, you indolent wastrel.” Julie has an excellent vocabulary. For most of her adult life she’d been a high school English teacher, but she gave it up a few years ago. She said she just didn’t have it in her to read one more plagiarized essay on
The Great Gatsby.
Now she ran a very successful dog poop removal service — Super Pooper Scoopers. She drove all over the city in her poop van, emblazoned with the words “We Stoop for Your Dog’s Poop,” complete with an illustration of a dog that left nothing to the imagination. People tended to stare, and sometimes laugh, which didn’t bother Julie. “They laugh, they remember me,” she said. And there was a surprising amount of money in the poop scooping business.

“I’ve got to run,” Julie said. “I’ll call you later.”

Feeling vaguely depressed, the way one often does after a night of drinking, I wandered into the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, sliced off another piece of bread and was suddenly transfixed by the greasy range hood. There were a couple of tiny flies, entombed in the grease. Well that wouldn’t do. One of these days I’d have to clean that up.

And then I heard a snap. A loud snap. The mouse. I’d already forgotten about the damn mouse. A snap, and then some scratching and the distinct sound of the trap being dragged along the floor, fast, like he’d planned a getaway route. I put down my coffee, spilling it over the counter and ran into the living room just in time to see the mouse disappear into my bedroom, one skinny little grey leg dragging the trap. Damn Julie, deserting me, leaving me with a rampaging mouse. I could hear the trap thumping. What was the vile thing doing? Why couldn’t it just accept its fate? I would have to free the stupid bugger. I couldn’t let it suffer. Unless I left the condo and couldn’t hear it. Then maybe I could let it suffer. Damn it. Who could I call? This wasn’t the kind of thing I dealt well with. Heather? At least she would have rubber gloves and she’d be sure to dive right in there to protect an innocent animal.

The banging stopped. Had the mouse died? Or chewed its leg off and escaped? Please, not that. I couldn’t deal with that. Just a nice quick painless death that a mouse would hardly notice and then a quick trip down the garbage chute. I peeked around the corner and saw the trap lying on the floor by my bed. No mouse. The little bastard had escaped. It sure had left a lot of blood behind though. Way too much blood; enough blood for a whole colony of mice.

I glanced up at my bed. My beautiful bed with the new 400 thread count sheets and gorgeous white duvet cover I had splurged on in anticipation of my Christmas bonus. The Christmas bonus that had turned out to be a pink tote bag emblazoned with the office logo and a coupon for a ham. And, for a moment, as my gaze rested on my first ever magazine-worthy bed, my heart actually stopped. I’m positive it stopped beating. There was someone in my bed. Someone very still and covered in blood.

I was shaking and whimpering as I stumbled across the room. My legs felt like cheap rubber, as if my ankles were going to completely give out. I couldn’t even tell who it was lying there. Oh my God! Evan? Was it Evan? Had he decided to come over during the night? It wasn’t Evan. The body in the bed was small and had thin, grey hair and a distinct bald spot. Mr. Potter? It looked like Mr. Potter from the back. Like Mr. Potter would look if he was lying in my bed covered in blood. Steeling myself, I gave the stiff little body a push so that I could see the face. It was Mr. Potter. My boss. The annoying little man who just two days ago had called me an incompetent imbecile in front of the entire office. Dead. In my bed.

I took a couple of slow, deep breaths trying to calm myself down. 911. I had to call 911. Should I tell them there was no rush — he was already dead? No. I wanted help as soon as possible. I punched in the number and the operator answered immediately. “You have to send someone right now,” I gasped. There’s been an accident. A bad accident.” Even as I said it I realized I had no idea how Mr. Potter died. There was so much blood. Was he bleeding from every orifice?

“Is the victim conscious?” asked the operator.

“He’s dead!” I screamed.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Have you checked for a pulse?”

I gingerly picked up Mr. Potter’s hand, which was cold and stiff and definitely not pulsing.

“He’s dead as a doorknob. Nail. Doornail.” In my panic I was screaming into the phone.

“And are you injured?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” I screeched. “Just send someone.”

“Please calm down. Help is on the way,” said the operator.

Well finally. I gave her my address in the most composed voice I could muster and hung up the phone. Mr. Potter was still lying there. Lying there, cold, splattered in blood and staring at nothing. Why were his eyes open? It was like he was still watching me, waiting for me to screw up so he could regale the office with my latest misstep. I backed away from the bed and rested against the wall. The sound of sirens broke the silence. Lots of sirens. I ran to the living room and looked out the window. There was a fire truck, paramedics and two police cars pulling up to the curb. I live on the corner of a busy street in what used to be an old bank building that has been converted into eight condos, two per floor. I’m on the top floor and there’s no elevator. I figured walking up four flights a few times a day would keep me in shape, which didn’t turn out to be the case.

A moment later there was a banging on the door and I mentally braced myself. Be calm I intoned. Keep it together. You can get through this. I opened the door to what appeared to be a good percentage of Toronto’s finest, a couple of them looking a little winded. “He’s in my bedroom,” I said to the officer in the front. “Don’t bother with your boots.” The policeman gave me an odd look. I was just trying to be friendly. Normally in the winter I would expect people to take off their boots at the door.

The policemen, the paramedics and the firemen followed me into the bedroom. It was a shock all over again to see Mr. Potter lying there. “Can you tell me what happened here, ma’am?” Ma’am? When did I become a ma’am?

“I’m not sure what happened,” I answered in a quivery voice I could barely recognize as my own. “I came in this morning and there he was. He was on his stomach. I had to roll him over to see who it was.”

The officer looked a little taken aback.

“Do you know who it is?” another officer asked.

What did they think? That some stranger wandered into my condo and bled to death in my bed?

“It’s my boss. Mr. Potter. Mr. Harry Potter. Like the book.” Why did I say that? Like the book. But it was something that came up a lot. Word has it, back when the books first came out, Mr. Potter tried getting people to call him Harold, but it just wouldn’t stick.

A tall, lanky policeman seemed to be the one in charge. He had latex gloves on and was poking at the body. “Looks like multiple stab wounds.”

Multiple stab wounds! My God. He was murdered.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Looks like it. He’s been dead for a while. Can you tell me when this happened?”

My knees were shaking so badly I was sure I was going to topple over. I braced myself against the wall in case I took a tumble right into Mr. Potter. “I have no idea. I came in this morning and found him like this. I don’t even know what he’s doing here. We had our office Christmas party last night and he must have come home with me. I don’t know why. He doesn’t even like me. I don’t take my work as seriously as I should.” I was rambling now. I needed to pull myself together.

One of the policemen touched my shoulder and said, “Maybe you should come into the living room and sit down. Could I get you a glass of water?”

Finally. Someone who empathized with what I was going through.

“Yes. Thank you. I do need to sit down.”

As I wobbled into the living room I heard the tall policeman say, “We’ll need a full forensics team.” Forensics. He really was murdered. In my bed. Who would do that? Why would anyone kill Mr. Potter? He was kind of an uptight, fusty old thing. Not even that old really. He just seemed old. He was the only person in the office who didn’t go by his first name and I’d never seen him without a suit jacket and tie, but still, he wasn’t so bad. I can’t imagine anyone liking him exactly, anybody choosing to spend time with him, but he wasn’t so terrible you’d want to stab him. Well — maybe occasionally when he was particularly sarcastic and used that kind of whiny voice he always pulled out when he had something particularly cutting to say, but still. Murder? I just didn’t get it. Who would break into my apartment and stab him? And even crazier, what the hell was he doing in my bed? Oh God, I didn’t even want to think about that. I’ll never drink again. I’ll never drink again.

I sat down on a chair by my front window. The neighbors on the side street were out on their porches, chatting, drinking their coffee, buzzing with excitement. Didn’t they have anything better to do? You’d think they’d never seen a fire truck before.

A handsome young policeman brought me a glass of water. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I made a pot of coffee right before I found the body.” The body. I just called Mr. Potter “the body.” “I could really use some right now. I’ll go get it.”

“No problem,” he responded. “Let me.”

“Thanks,” I said. “With just a little milk. Just enough to color it.”

There was a knock on the door and the police officer answered it. It was Heather. I gave her a weak little wave.