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The Harem on the Hill (Part LXXXIX)
🕑 Added 2023-09-13 18:03:45 +0000 UTC
(Nota Bene: There was a tie in the last poll between "plant evidence..." and "find Tina." As a result, I will incorporate both in the next few chapters.)
GPS guides you to 136 Dreamcatcher Lane, the house directly behind Jada Jenson's. After driving past the address, you park along the curb of a dilapidated ranch-style home with weeds in the yard almost as tall as you.
Exiting your Explorer, you walk briskly toward your destination--a tidy two-story with a well-groomed lawn. Unlike the monstrosity you parked in front of, it looks very much lived-in.
Unfortunately.
You stroll to the front door and press your finger against a dime-sized, glowy-white circle sticking out of the stucco. As chimes echo inside, you survey your surroundings. In the affluent California community you were raised in, porches were covered with wrought-iron gates, cameras, and warnings against solicitation. The only thing guarding the entrance to this sleepy small-town residence is a wooden red rooster with a welcome sign around its neck.
No one answers. More importantly, no one stirs inside. There's no shuffling of feet. No jostle of the curtains for a quick peep outside. No barking dogs. Only silence.
You check your watch. 11:27 AM. Anyone between the ages of 5 and 65 would likely be at work or school. You knock against the door's sideboard. Again, nothing.
Hustling to the side of the house, you push through an unlatched wooden gate onto a narrow stone path that leads to the backyard. You half expect to encounter an armed retiree or stay-at-home mother with a pit bull, but all you find is a circular wading pool on a rectangular swath of freshly mowed grass and a garden of colorful flowers running along the back fence. You tiptoe through their tulips, step onto the fence's wooden crossbeam, and hoist yourself over--
Jada Jenson's barren backyard is like another planet. The yards of most homes are lush and green from the fertile Pacific Northwest climate, but Jada's looks as if it was firebombed. Probably from the overuse of some sort of industrial-strength weed killer that poisoned the topsoil. At least it made for easy maintenance.
After covering your tracks and kicking dirt from your shoes, you step onto the uncovered back porch--basically a rectangular slab of concrete--and weave past a set of sun-scorched plastic lawn furniture. You doubt anyone's used it in years. The frail chairs, in particular, would have been a booby trap for someone Jada's size.
In a similar state of disrepair is a cracked and sun-bleached Yoga mat lying by the patio doors. At one point, the top-heavy hottie probably used it regularly, working on her tan while providing titillating poses for her second-story neighbors. Once she got fat, however, it was abandoned along with the rest of her fitness regimen.
As the dimwitted responding officer suggested, the sliding glass patio doors had been shattered to allow for easier extraction of Jada's bloated corpse. Of course, it also allows you easy entrance, and you duck beneath the crisscrossed crime scene tape into the late social worker's home.
You figure you have about fifteen minutes before detectives show up. In a big city, a policeman would likely be posted onsite to prevent interim evidence tampering, but this was a small town with a skeleton crew of cops. And since there were no obvious indications of foul play, the investigation should, in theory, have little sense of urgency. At least not enough to pull a detective from a donut shop mid-cruller.
Still, you should hurry. Based on your eavesdropped conversation at the police station, the higher-ups were already suspicious of the initial report that Jada was merely a victim of her own gluttony.
Where do you start?
