a wide opening was slightly cracked. Frankie rolled it open enough that he could see a sleek white car so new it still had the dealer’s advertisement where the license plate would eventually go.
“Wow,” Kate said as she looked under his raised arm.
“Funny what people spend their money on, isn’t it?” Frankie said. “The house looks like it’s about to fall down while there’s a seventy-five-thousand-dollar car sitting in the garage.”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” Kate said, whistling. “I repeat, wow.”
“Well, he’s probably here. Let’s go knock again.”
No one came to the door this time, either. Kate walked out onto the grass opposite the front window, approached the glass cautiously and peered inside.
“See anything?” Frankie called.
“Yeah. It looks like a...” She stopped talking as her hands flew to cover her mouth and she quickly backed away from the window almost stumbling over her own feet.
“Kate! What’s wrong?” Frankie asked as he started to walk toward her.
“No, open the door. Hurry,” she cried, casting him a wild-eyed look. “Open the door.”
He turned back around and tried to twist the knob, then he rammed his shoulder against the door.
“Hurry!” Kate said.
Raising his leg, he kicked at the thing and this time the old wood creaked but it still didn’t budge. He ran to Kate’s side. “What is it?”
Her skin had drained of color. “A man,” she said. He glanced at the windows but from that distance, all he saw were their reflections. “I think he’s...he’s dead,” she mumbled.
Frankie grabbed one of the plaster garden gnomes and smashed it against the window. As glass shattered to the ground the foul odor of rotting flesh all but slammed him in the face. Kate turned her back to him, braced her hands on her knees and retched as he peered into the heavily shadowed room.
A small-framed man with sandy white hair hung from a rope attached to a rafter while an overturned stool occupied the floor under his dangling feet. From the smell and the appearance of his face, it was obvious he’d been there for quite a while.
Frankie moved to grasp Kate’s shoulders as she heaved. He tried patting her back but he didn’t say anything. What was there to say? When she had finished, she looked even more pallid than before. She accepted the clean handkerchief he offered her. “Thanks,” she whispered. “I saw a faucet by the garage. I’m going to go wash out my mouth.”
He took out his cell phone and dialed 911. What had Dave Dalton wanted to show him? It now seemed unlikely he’d ever know.
* * *
THEY SAT IN the car and waited for the sheriff’s department and an ambulance to arrive. Kate breathed through her mouth. Even with the windows rolled up, she was almost positive she could still smell the rotting corpse of that poor man. Her empty stomach clenched.
The ambulance and the sheriff’s cars came with sirens. Frankie and Kate answered a dozen questions that added almost no information that mattered one way or another. The deputy who entered the house came out looking almost as washed-out as Kate felt. He was about her age and she got the feeling this might be his first dead body.
“I can’t believe old Dave killed himself like that. Sara is going to be real broken up by this.”
“Sara?”
“His daughter.”
“Then it is Dave Dalton in there,” Frankie said.
“Yeah, though his own mother wouldn’t recognize him now. No note or nothing, either. Shame you folks had to find him.”
“Did he live alone?” Kate asked.
“Yeah. Has since Polly died ’bout five years back.”
“I’d never really met the man,” Frankie said. “In fact, I only talked to him one time and exchanged a couple of emails.” He explained about the documentary and added, “He seemed interested in showing me something. It just seems odd that he’d kill himself before he could do it.”
“What did he want to show you?”
“I have no idea.”
“You never can tell what’s going on in someone’s head,” the deputy said.
Two EMTs came out of the house rolling a body bag between them and loaded it into the ambulance. The deputy, Frankie and Kate watched with somber expressions.
“That’s a nice car in the garage,” Frankie said as the ambulance left the yard. He’d already retraced the actions they’d taken since arriving at the Dalton house.
“He’s got himself a hell of an entertainment system and a kitchen that looks like one of them that’s on a cooking show,” the deputy said. “I had no idea he had that kind of loot.” The deputy took off his hat, scratched his head and pulled it back on. “Dave’s dad died a few years back,” he added. “Dave retired about then. Maybe he inherited some money. He wasn’t exactly the chatty type.”
“I guess it’s true,” Frankie said softly. “It takes more than money to make a person happy.”
The remark hit close to home for Kate who glanced down the twisting road as the ambulance’s taillights disappeared from view.
Several hours later when they stopped for gas, Frankie asked Kate if she was hungry and she shook her head. “I don’t think I could eat. You go ahead, though.”
“I don’t have an appetite either,” he said. “Listen, Kate, I’m very sorry that you were with me today and had to see all that. I wish I’d known what we were getting ourselves in for.
“How could you possibly have known?”
“If I’d called or texted him and he hadn’t responded we wouldn’t have stopped...”
“Don’t beat yourself up on my account,” she said. “The deputy mentioned Mr. Dalton had a daughter. It’s better that we found his body than she did, right?”
“I guess so,” he said.
“Anyway, I was with my grandfather when he died.” Now why had she told him that? When she’d signed on for this venture, she’d sworn she wouldn’t talk about herself, invite confidences or reveal personal information. She had never lied to anyone before in her life and Frankie was making doing so now very hard because...well, she didn’t know why exactly, she just found herself wanting to tell him things. She muttered, “Death happens.”
“But not usually like that,” he said.
“No, you’re right. Poor man.”
Once
