jerked him off after he died? Isn’t that possible? I heard that men can have erections after being hanged.”
Jerry looked at me like I was crazy. “You think someone got him sexually aroused after he was strangled?”
Maybe I was crazy. “No,” I said. “I guess not. I have trouble getting guys aroused when they’re completely awake and alive.”
“You? I can’t imagine it. A sexy woman like you?”
Normally, I would have deflected his compliment and crushed it with a joke, but this time I didn’t. The look in Jerry’s eyes stopped me in my tracks. His eyes were mischievous, teasing, tempting. The look lasted for only a second, but it was there nonetheless. I was being hit on. It stunned me. I wasn’t prepared. But then again, how does one prepare for something like this?
“Jerry, I don’t know what to say.”
“Maybe it’s best if you didn’t say anything,” he replied, looking around the room for perhaps a diversion? “Anyway. . .”
“Yes . . .” I said, like an adulterous wife who narrowly escaped getting caught cheating. And just like that, we went back to our old lives. Respectable. Professional. Uninvolved. Not starting an affair.
“How about a DNA sample?” Jerry asked.
“Excuse me, I’m not that kind of girl.”
“No, Amanda, I’m going to have the crime people take a DNA sample of the sperm here on the floor. I’m suspicious. . . Just a hunch.”
“You have a lot of hunches, Jerry.”
“That’s all my job is, Amanda. Hunches that need to be proved correct.”
“You know, Jerry, I have a few myself. I guess I need to check them out. What I don’t understand is why someone . . . wait a minute! Aleksei really shot his mouth off yesterday at Jean-Michael’s. He probably said something he shouldn’t have.”
“And I assume it was all on film?”
“On tape, if you want to be technical. High-definition videotape. Call it what you want.”
“I think we need to look at that footage as soon as possible. Our answer to this whole mess might just be on there.”
CHAPTER 23
What A Load of Fertilizer
Later that afternoon, I decided to go looking for answers myself. First stop: the potting shed in the backyard. I left Ian’s house and walked the expansive lawn toward the back of the eight-car garage. As I neared the shed, I could have sworn someone was there walking behind me. I stopped and turned around quickly but saw no one. Were all these murders creeping me out? Was my mind playing tricks on me?
I entered the unlocked shed and stood there silently, taking it all in. What was I looking for? I wish I knew. Maybe I’d see something that might spur my mind if I saw it. If I were Hercule Poirot, I would start by thinking about what might have happened; then I would reconstruct the steps of the crime. Okay, I didn’t have a French accent, but I could live with that. Everything had been gone over by the police and was back in its proper place, so I was looking at everything that was there the day of the murder. If what I was looking for was there in the first place. One thing at a time.
I looked at everything in the shed and went through the inventory, item by item, taking them down and examining them, then putting them back exactly where I got them. On the top shelf was the gopher poison and a bottle of Malathion. Spotless bottles of poison. Agatha Christie would have loved this. The next shelf down, Miracle-Gro, bonemeal, and two labeled wooden boxes, one containing three pairs of gardening gloves, the other containing three garden trowels. Again, spotless. The gloves looking like they had never touched dirt. Mine, I had to admit, were never this clean. No dirt on them whatsoever. Drake apparently washed them after every use. Just two shelves. On the main potting table, there were just four pots, all containing succulents presumably ready to go out in the yard now that the days were slowly getting cooler. Also, there was a small, four-drawer cabinet filled with twist ties and a pad of paper with a list of more plants under the heading “To Buy.” I looked at the pad to see if there were impressions on the pages below made by previous notes, but nothing was discernible. Under the table on a shelf below was a dented half-gallon paint can to hold paint while painting, two two-gallon paint cans of latex Ralph Lauren paint