Morning all. It’s already shaping up to be a steamy and sweltering day. Pretty standard for this time of year, but each year it feels more intense than the last. Maybe it is, maybe I just blank out how bad it is during the winter. Either way it is time to kick this day into motion. So, timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go into the blank page.
As with any murder I will need time to go back and think this through before I start writing it, but I kind of like the set up.
Tuesday, July 21st: The table was set for seven people.
The table was set for seven people. As there were only six bodies, Detective Roberts found the number of place settings interesting. The fact that his mind kept thinking of dwarves, the Heigh Ho song playing as a sound track in his mind as he walked the rest of the scene was something he planned to leave out of his report.
‘Luckily there aren’t seven beds.’ He thought as he took a stroll through the rest of the house, eyes studying everything. The bodies were gone now, taken in for further study after all the details that could be gleaned on scene were. Outlines and little plastic numbers as well as lingering stains and smells remained. He ignored them, still seeing the positioning of the bodies.
Had the seventh been the killer or did that person not arrive?
He would have to read over the witness statements. His partner mentioned there was one particular neighbor who seemed to keep tabs on everyone in the neighborhood. She seemed particularly interested in this house because it always had such interesting things going on. They had only collected the details of this evening, but it might be worth the time to talk to her about any other interesting things that went on in this house.
‘If she found it noteworthy then something had to differentiate them from the other neighbors on her watch list.’
Now he wasn’t seeing a whole lot of differentiation. This looked like a typical suburban home. Three bedrooms, the master was outfitted as a full bedroom but as the couple had no children, both bedrooms were turned into home offices, they each had a day bed for any incoming guests, but the spaces were used when there were no visiting overnight guests.
As the offices had a fresh laundry scent to them when he approached the bed, the couple might have been expecting at least two of the guests to stay overnight.
‘Or they were prepared incase someone had too much to drink.’
There was a fully stocked bar downstairs and several bottles stationed in the kitchen, ready for use. A particularly fine bottle had been decanted in anticipation. It would never be appreciated. Roberts found it amusing in it’s way. The decanted bottle was expensive and as he knew from occasional forays out, worth the price. There was a second bottle of the expensive stuff but the other bottles lined up on the counter were several steps down the price and taste range.
‘Serve the good stuff when they can tase it and the cheaper stuff when they are less discerning,’ was his take. ‘Still even the cheaper stuff isn’t that cheap. Just not noteworthy.’
He wondered if they were trying to impress. ‘If they were the fresh sheets could be in case someone went snooping instead of for inebriated company.’
Ten til Midnight 