I parked and followed the trail of uniformed officers around to the back, where tonight's entree sat, leaning back against the wall beside the service door. I heard the sibilant interior chuckling before I actually saw any details, but as I got close enough, the lights strung up by the forensic team showed me plenty worth an appreciative smile.
His feet were crammed into a pair of those black, glove leather shoes that are usually Italian and most often worn for the sole purpose of dancing. He also wore a pair of very nice resort-style shorts in a tasteful cranberry color, and a blue silk shirt with a silver embossed palm tree pattern on it. But the shirt was unbuttoned and pulled back to reveal that the man's chest had been removed and the cavity emptied out of all the natural and awful stuff that should go in there. It was now filled instead with ice, bottles of beer, and what appeared to be a shrimp cocktail ring from the grocery store.
His right hand was clutching a fistful of Monopoly money, and his face was covered with another of those glued-on plastic masks.
Vince Masuoka crouched on the far side of the doorway spreading dust in slow, even strokes across the wall, and I stepped over beside him.
“Are we going to get lucky tonight?” I asked him.
He snorted. “If they let us take a couple of those free beers,” he said. “They're really cold.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
He jerked his head toward the body. “It's that new kind, the label turns blue when it's cold,” he said. He wiped his arm across his forehead. “It's gotta be over ninety out here, and that beer would taste great right now.”
“Sure,” I said, looking at the improbable shoes on the body. “And then we could go dancing.”
“Hey,” he said. “You want to? When we're done?”
“No,” I answered. “Where's Deborah?” He nodded to his left. “Over there,” he said. “Talking to the woman who found it.”
I walked over to where Debs was interviewing an hysterical Hispanic woman who was crying into her hands and shaking her head at the same time, which struck me as a very difficult thing to do, like rubbing your belly and patting your head. But she was doing it quite well, and for some reason Deborah was not impressed with the woman's wonderful coordination.
“Arabelle,” Debs was saying, “Arabelle, please listen to me.” Arabelle was not listening, and I didn't think my sister's vocal tone of combined anger and authority was well calculated to win over anyone —especially not someone who looked like she had been sent over from a casting office to play the part of a cleaning woman with no green card. Deborah glared at me as I approached, as if it was my fault that she was intimidating Arabelle, so I decided to help.
It is not that I think Debs is incompetent —she is very good at her job; it's in her blood, after all. And the idea that to know me is to love me is one that has never crossed the shadowed threshold of my mind. Just the opposite, in fact. But Arabelle was so upset, it was clear that she was not filled with the thrill of discovery. Instead she was several steps over the edge into hysteria, and talking to hysterical people, like so much of ordinary human interaction, isn't most people's favorite thing to do, happily for Dark and Dismal Dexter.