Neither she nor Nick crowded into the space with them.
Mike stooped for a closer look. “You have any idea how this got in the walls?”
“Not a clue,” Jacinth answered. “The house has been standing since the Civil War.”
“The head hasn’t been hanging around for nearly that long,” Mike quipped.
“How long has it been hanging around?” Jacinth asked.
“Can’t say for sure, but my guess is that the victim was living and breathing this time a year ago. We’ll get a more accurate estimate from the forensics team.”
If the officer was even close to right, the decapitation took place after her grandmother had died or at least after she’d gone to live in the nursing home. It was a relief to know she couldn’t have been involved in any way.
The frightening part was that the victim could have been killed in this very house after Jacinth and Caitlyn had inherited it.
“Are you the current owner of the house?” Jordon asked.
“Yes. Well, my sister and I own it together. We inherited it from my grandmother.”
“How long have you lived in the house?”
“Eleven months. We’d planned to fix it up and sell it, but then we fell in love with it and decided to stay.”
Of course they didn’t realize then that it came with spare body parts. Or that the constant repairs needed to keep it livable would drive them to the edge of bankruptcy.
She went over the facts about the inheritance from her grandmother, Marie Villaré.
Jordon made notes. “Did your grandmother live alone prior to moving into the Sunnydale Retirement Center?”
“As far as I know,” Jacinth said. “We weren’t close. In fact, I hadn’t seen her since I was small child.”
Mike used the cuff of his shirtsleeve to wipe a smear of dust from the tip of his nose. “Why is that?”
“My mother had issues with my father’s family and had severed all ties with them when I was just a toddler.”
“Maybe for good reason,” Jordon said. “What about your father?”
“He was murdered here in New Orleans over twenty years ago. I don’t really remember him.”
“How old was Marie Villaré when she died?”
“Seventy.”
“Cause of death?”
“She had a heart attack. She’d been diagnosed with coronary problems and diabetes just before moving to the Sunnydale Center.”
Jordon continued to stare at the head as Mike stood and stepped away from it.
“Helen Fizelle will have a field day with this one,” Jordon said. “Decapitation and missing body parts in a crumbling mansion on the edge of the French Quarter. Right up her alley.”
“Who’s Helen Fizelle?” Jacinth asked.
“She heads up the skeletal recovery team. Worked with the FBI’s Body Farm up in Knoxville a few years back. Nothing she likes better than a case like this.”
“You won’t have to leave the head here until she can see it, will you?”
“Nah,” Mike said, scrunching his mouth into a bizarre shape. “We’ll take pictures and then deliver the skeletal remains to Forensic Sciences. The CSU investigation can wait until morning to take a look around, seeing as how the crime scene is already polluted and not how the killer left it.”
“But we’ll tape off the bathroom,” Jordon added. “You’ll need to stay out of it and leave things exactly as they are until the detective gives you the okay to clean it up. I’m sure a house this size has plenty of other bathrooms.”
“Yes.” Unfortunately, none of the other four had been completely remodeled as this one had. One step forward, ten steps back.
“You’ll need to close the door and keep that cat out of here, too,” Mike added, turning and scowling at Sin, who had crept into the room and scooted beneath the antique claw-foot tub.
“And, of course, the homicide detective assigned to the case will want to question you further.”
“Question me about what? I’ve told you all I know.”
Mike ignored the question and avoided eye contact with her, instead studying the ceiling as if he expected a new rain of additional body parts at any moment.
“Why not have the CSU team come out and investigate tonight?” Nick asked. “They might be able to locate the rest of the body inside the crumbling cavity and hand over all the remains to Helen at once.”
“Anything they’ll find has been here for months,” Mike said. “I don’t reckon it’s going to deteriorate that more much by morning.”
“Just trying to help.”
“If I need your help, Bruno, I’ll ask for it. Wouldn’t stand around waiting if I was you.”
Hostility fired like flint between the two men.
Mike pulled a small camera from his shirt pocket.
“Let’s give them work room,” Jacinth offered in an attempt to keep the peace. She swooped up Sin and she and Nick left the two men alone to take their pictures.
Sin cuddled in her arms for all of a minute before she squirmed her way free and pranced to the door of Marie’s old bedroom. Without a look back, the silver-gray Persian disappeared into the dark, antique-filled room that still held the lingering fragrance of lavender.
“What’s with you and Officer Friendly?” Jacinth asked as soon as they were out of Mike and Jordon’s earshot.
“It’s a long story.”
“How about the condensed version?”
“We had a run-in a while back.”
“About what?”
“His failure to adequately protect the integrity of the evidence in a case I was hired to investigate.”
So the conflict between them was at the professional level. That relieved her mind a bit.
“Whatever he does tonight is fine with me,” Jacinth said, “as long as the decapitated head leaves with him.”
“Not a chance he’ll leave that behind,” Nick assured her. “The chief would have his head.”
“Do you think he’s right about the approximate date of death?”
“Close. Temperature variances and humidity make it difficult to estimate, but forensics will get a handle on
