behind the evergreens and stood facing the house. Rough sawn limestone and red brick combining with semi hexagonal bays, turrets, and half-timbering gave the impression of a fortress.
Joe maneuvered around a section of deteriorating flagstone walkway leading to the ground level entrance. He flicked his cigarette into a neglected flowerbed and stepped across the marble threshold of the open gingerbread door. The aroma wasn’t too bad. He wasn’t surprised that a security keypad, motions sensors, and window glass breaks were nowhere in sight. A pile of mail lay on the floor adjacent to the slot.
When Swedge tossed Joe from the premises, he fired Rosa as his housecleaner. It was apparent that a replacement hadn’t been found. Spider webs dangled from the huge crystal chandelier suspended from the vaulted ceiling. Dust thick enough to write his name in covered the banister of the staircase to the second floor. Sheets covered the furniture in the living and dining rooms to his immediate left.
Green horseflies danced around brass wall sconces in the dimly lit the hallway. With each step, the mild aroma turned more sickeningly sweet with the flies growing thick on the crown moldings. Joe tapped on the door jamb with the club and entered the kitchen, drawing four faces covered with surgical masks his way. A six-panel glass door to the rear yard was open.
“A regular Yogi Bear. He sleeps till noon…,” Lt. Dan Fredericks gibed, handing Joe a mask.
“One of the perks of retirement,” Joe replied, not taking the bait. Fredericks, promoted to head the five man detective division upon Joe’s retirement, was a born-again Bible reader who listed Joe as one of his projects. In his black suit, starched white shirt, and pencil thin red tie, the thirty-four year old looked like a cross between Buddy Holly and Billy Graham.
“Nice to see you Joe,” Dr. Christian Murphy said as he jotted notes on a clipboard.
Chris Murphy was Joe’s kind of guy—nicotine addicted and never missed an occasion to hoist a cold one. Murphy never changed the happy-go-lucky expression on his pudgy freckled face or the lab coat Joe claimed was a biohazard. “Glad to see that someone knows his manners.”
“Not much of a mystery,” Murphy said, pointing to the Parson’s table. A collection of pill bottles lay scattered amidst a leather bound book and two weeks worth of crossword puzzles clipped from The New York Times. “Mr. Swedge was being treated for congestive heart failure. The tablets on the floor are nitroglycerin. I’ll have a definite cause of death in a couple of days.”
Joe checked two EMTs fidgeting with a black rubber body bag. Preston Swedge, leaning back in a wood high back chair with his chin tilted to the ceiling in a forty-five degree angle, had turned into a science experiment. Maggots working overtime stripped the flesh off his face and consumed his eyeballs, leaving sockets glistening like polished ivory. A noxious collection of yellow-green fluids congealed on Preston’s wing tips. “Like the Wicked Witch of the East, he’s melted into his shoes. How long hasn’t he been missed?”
“Ten to twelve days. Humidity and heat play havoc with the decomposition process.” Murphy pointed to the flies on Swedge’s face. “Do you want to know the life cycle of our friend the Chlorotabanus crepuscularis?”
“I’ll wait for the movie,” Joe replied. “Where’s the emergency alert pendent he wore around his neck?
“The last completed puzzle is from the fifth. The date fits within the estimate.” Fredericks removed the pendent from a plastic bag on the kitchen counter, holding it in the palm of his rubber gloved hand. “Didn’t help him.”
Joe shrugged his shoulders.
“Can you remember the last time you saw Mr. Swedge alive?” Fredericks asked.
Joe lit a cigarette and froze Fredericks with his glare. Joe’s former shrinking violet subordinate had grown into the role of being the big cheese. Murphy sorted through his notes as he walked to the door to stay out of the looming fray. “I remember like it was last Thursday. I saw him tool out in his ’58 Fairlane convertible,” Joe said. A half-eaten hoagie lay rotting on its wax paper wrapper across from the body. He circled the table and sat down. “Looks like tuna.”
Fredericks nodded to the EMTs who lowered the bloated remains into the bag positioned on a stretcher. “So what?” Fredericks asked.
Joe waved at a swarm of flies tiptoeing across the hoagie. “He couldn’t chew stuff like this.”
Fredericks removed his mask. “What’s your point?”
“Someone was here when Preston expired.” Joe leaned forward for