An UnCozie
by Filamena Young

From the Case Files of Jack Doe: 113Y - An UnCozie

Lotte Michelle was a queen of society. I’d dated her briefly when she was a lot younger and I was a lot stupider. That’s how I ended up at her house the night her father died.

So there I was, standing in her mother’s kitchen in a house up in the hills of the city. A beautiful marble affair so ritzy the hired help outclassed me. The mother, Evelyn by name, drained the scotch off of some rocks and stared at her daughter. Said daughter spent her time telling me all about her last trip to Paris.

“So, you’re Doe?” Evelyn asked with slightly liquid apathy. “I am, you know, if this is an inconvenience for you—”

“Don’t be silly.” The woman snorted and set her glass down. “Not for me. Her father will throw a fit,” she trailed off. “Well, it can’t be helped.” She looked me over hard and then smirked. “You’ve still got a tag hanging off of your shirt, Jack.”

Lotte laughed it off and reached for a pair of scissors, offering them to her mother. “Not those, dear.” Evelyn reached in a drawer and pulled out a different pair. “Those normal scissors don’t work for me.”

Saved from the social embarrassment of a tag on my shirt, I was allowed on to dinner when it was ready.

Dinner was a classic set up. The whole cast was there. The controlling and abusive Patriarch, Kenneth, who held onto the family money with an iron grip. The alcoholic wife, Evelyn, so beaten down she had no opinions left. The spoiled baby daughter who wanted her hands on her inheritance early so she could blow it one dope and hop-headed hoods. The bitter eldest daughter and her fiancé who couldn’t marry because the father wouldn’t give his blessing, and of course, Lotte and me, doing our ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ impression. The answer wasn’t Sydney Poitier, it was blue collar me.

Politics, life style, economics, religion, even sports. There was no topic Kenneth couldn’t talk about and wouldn’t find a way to make uncomfortable for everyone.

Really charming party, you should have been there.

Cocktails after dinner weren’t any kinder, complete with Kenneth and the fiancé coming to blows. Lotte made me stay. She seemed to think it was all very funny. She was the bon vivant daughter to round out the cast, so I guess she was entitled to her opinion.

I broke up the fight, the fiancé wiped blood from his nose and I reached a hand to Kenneth to help him up off the ground. He was a short man, and an angry one, and slapped my hand away.

Then the lights went out, probably the storm outside.

It was a small room with a small crowd and when the lights went out so suddenly, every one was all shouts and screams with wet gurgling sounds.

That wasn’t right.

 

When the butler got the light back on, we stood in a circle looking down at Kenneth’s dead body on the Persian carpet. In all the movement and struggle in the dark, we all had blood on us, and that made things that much trickier to deal with. I knelt by the corpse and took a closer look while the butler ran off to call the police. My idea, of course.

His throat had been slit by a kitchen knife on the ground next to him. Cut from behind from right to left.

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Jerry,” Lotte said to the fiance.

The eldest sister started shouting. Lotte started shouting back. The little sister jumped in, and soon the room was full of people shouting at each other over a corpse.

All except for Evelyn and me.

I stood up and went to her, taking her gently by the elbow, and guided her to a nearby chair. Her face was pale and her whole body was shivering.

“You just had enough, is that so, Evelyn?”

“Yes.”

That shut up the room pretty quick. All eyes fell on the old woman.

“He told me he was leaving me and my three bitch daughters. He said he’d had it, and that he was taking him money and getting out of town. He said it was all my fault and he’d see to it all three of my girls were tossed out in the cold.” She looked up at me with clear, brave eyes. No guilt there. No shame. “How did you know?”

“The scissors, ma’am. You couldn’t use regular scissors because you’re left handed, right?” The woman nodded.

“I don’t see what that had to do with anything.” Lotte, some of the wind out of her sales, spoke quietly for once in her life.

“The body, Lotte. His throat was cut from behind, right to left. His killer was left handed.”

“I just wasn’t going to let him hurt my girls anymore.” Evelyn said before falling into a sort of peaceful silence.

When the police came, I talked them into taking her out to the car without cuffs, it was the right thing to do.