Page 65 of A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch
The streets behind Masons Bay did have streetlights but not many, and the road that went further up the hill had none. Nor a street sign. I turned onto it and drove upward. Slowly—my car didn’t do hills well. Or snow. Or snowy hills.
I came across a street on the right and turned into it, and found myself in a cul-de-sac. Well that was easy, I thought, before I realized that two of the houses had well-plowed driveways and all their lights were on. People were at home. In the winter. This was not what Ronnie had described.
I turned around in a circle and went back to the road I’d come up. I turned right and continued up the hill. The next road I came to was on my left. I turned onto that road, only to find that it wasn’t a cul-de-sac. Or at least it didn’t seem like one at first. It was a straight road, four houses on each side of the road, none of which seemed occupied. Two of them were still for sale with signs from The Hanson Group.
At the end of the street I was going to turn around, but I noticed another road. This one was poorly plowed but had several rows of tire tracks through the snow. I decided it was probably wise to not try driving my car up that way. I parked and turned out the lights. It got very dark. Getting out, I zipped up my puffer coat, pulled the hat down tighter onto my head, and crammed the keys into my pocket.
Then I went around to the trunk. Shortly after my mother abandoned us and the snow began to fly, my grandmother told me I couldn’t bring the baby in my car unless I got an emergency kit for my trunk. So now I drove around with a couple of road flares, reflectors, a tiny tool kit, tweezers, a flashlight, a plastic poncho, jumper cables, a tow rope, a first aid kit, gloves and a folding shovel. Half of it seemed useless in an emergency, but there you go. I found the flashlight, useful in this non-emergency, and walked up the hill.
Yes, this was another cul-de-sac. One that seemed particularly unoccupied. The houses were dark, the driveways unplowed, and there was only one vehicle to be seen. A red Thunderbird from the late eighties. Denny’s Thunderbird. I’d seen him in it. He was very likely in one of the four houses on the cul-de-sac. They were all dark though.
I walked over to the Thunderbird. It had been there a day or two since there was three inches of snow on it. I pointed the flashlight through the windows to confirm the car was empty. It was. With my flashlight, I began looking through the snow for footprints. It made sense to start with the two houses closest to Denny’s car.
I found dimpled footsteps going up the driveway of the furthest house. It was a recent, two-story house with a giant garage. I followed the footprints around to the side of the garage where they disappeared in front of a door. It was standing open, taking the unlocked door thing to a whole new level.
Stepping into the garage, I found that these snowbirds left a Jeep with a canvas top for summer use. Hanging from the open ceiling was a canoe, against the back wall were four bicycles leaning on one another. The door from the garage to the house stood open, which couldn’t be good for their heating bill.
Yes, they weren’t here, but you still had to heat the place—I’d learned this from random conversations. Generally, people lefttheir thermostats at fifty when they left for the winter. It saved them money and prevented the pipes from bursting.
The door led directly into the kitchen. I went ahead and turned a light on. I mean, the entire neighborhood was vacated. Yeah, someone might notice the light through the trees, but I doubted they’d call the sheriff even if they did notice it.
The kitchen was a mess: a pizza box, a case worth of empty beer cans, several full ashtrays, a couple of vodka bottles—one of which was half full, a pile of rust-stained paper towels. That was blood. Not a lot. Not a murder amount of blood—I’d seen that before. This was more like nosebleed blood.
It was warm, very warm. Someone had turned the heat up and that wasn’t making the smell any better: cigarette smoke mixed with marijuana smoke, a sewer kind of smell that suggested I was going to find a stopped-up toilet, and something sour I couldn’t quite place.
The living room was in much the same condition as the kitchen: large coffee table held a bong, more beer cans, glasses, plates used as ashtrays, bits of aluminum foil, pipes, razor blades, rolled up dollar bills. Two expensive sofas sat on either side of the coffee table facing each other. Their seat cushions were on the floor. I could see that there were cigarette burns in both. This was going to be an insurance claim.
I went up the stairs, turning lights on as I went. I went into the first bedroom I came to and there was Denny. He was lying naked on a stripped bed. He had a look of surprise on his pale, waxy face. It didn’t take a medical degree to figure out he was dead. I was standing in the middle of a crime scene.
I really need to stop doing that.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After I used the house phone to call 9-1-1, I went out and sat in my car. He’d obviously died of an overdose of some kind. Tweaked himself to death. Honestly, it should have been more upsetting. And it might have been if I hadn’t popped three Ativan right before I made the call. Three was my limit. Four and I would sleep for eight or nine hours. Three would make me drowsy, but the adrenaline produced by finding a dead body would counteract that. Yup, three was exactly right.
I should have called Opal while I was still in the house. Not that I’d memorized her number—and not that I could turn my cell phone back on. So even if I’d thought about it, I couldn’t have. I really needed one of those phone chargers you plugged into a car’s cigarette lighter. And I’d probably have one if I hadn’t been so busy lately. Although, I always seemed to be… Whatever.
Deputy Twiss showed up, which was annoying. It was late, you’d think he’d have gone home. He’d probably been napping at the sheriff’s office while making triple overtime. He certainly looked like I’d woken him up.
“I got a call about a dead body?”
“Yeah, in that house there. Second floor, first bedroom. Guy named Denny. Drug overdose.”
Before I finished, I realized I should have called this in anonymously. It was going to be hard to explain.
“Whose house is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What were you doing in there?”
“I was looking for Denny.”
“Denny… What?”
“I don’t know his last name.” I’d forgotten it. Three Ativan, remember?
“You broke into a random house, looking for a guy whose name you don’t know. Am I getting this right?”
