The murder victim of this week’s case—though, that we call her fate ‘murder’ is a thing of inference, beloved listeners—was last seen alive on a dry-as-bones Tuesday night. The witness, a prolific and neighborly curmudgeon, editor and disseminator of the resident HOA newsletter, reported springing out of her chair to her window when the victim’s blue headlights flashed by. She peeked through the slats of her vinyl blinds and observed our victim, ‘the renter,’ parking her lime green jeep. The victim then pattered up her front steps, dropped her keys, sang-swore the C-words (one you can guess, the other being ‘Christ’) like a caroling mezzo-soprano, and let herself into her home for the final time. She was never seen again. Her body was never recovered. 

It seemed like there could’ve been a break in the case once when a future tenant of the selfsame house uncovered a camera, hidden through the eyes of a mounted, taxidermized marmot. The police seized the landlord’s desktop, and in the files is a recording of the victim, 30 minutes after returning home, opening her fridge and pulling out a Tupperware of chocolate-covered strawberries. 

The victim can be seen bringing the container to a colorless, mid-century chair, laying hammocked in it, dangling her legs over an arm, and holding a plucked strawberry by the stem over her mouth before stopping herself, squeezing it in her palm.

She closes her eyes, apparently straining herself, and performs the sign of the cross: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then, as if inspired, she performs the flanks of the cross several times over: The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, andtheHolySpiritAmen. 

The strawberry is mush; she licks her palm clean. Minutes later the victim disappears up the stairs, lost to us once more. 

The next relevant footage that came to light is when the victim’s closest confidant, her bosom buddy, her pixie-cut bestie, is witnessed by the same hidden camera a few days later crawling in through an open window. She ascends the stairs and returns with a bag of the victim’s belongings presumed stolen by the killer: bras, a laptop, a tangle of mushrooms. 

The friend pauses and shouts the victim's name, her concern lilting across the vaunted ceilings like a trapped canary, and then leaves to drive to the police station to report the victim missing. 

Listeners, in this case, there is a dearth of suspects, as the usual all possess alibis.

Her thieving friend shoplifting at 3 AM, her pervy landlord rotting in a Venezuelan jail, her boyfriend sleeping at her thieving friend’s house, her ex-boyfriend closing up a soup kitchen, her mother, father, and stepfather gambling together in a hem-locked basement, and the disturbed man with decaying sideburns who hovered protectively around the foosball table at her local haunt, who when interviewed asked, “which one was that again?” playing foosball at the local haunt. 

Listeners, I witnessed the victim once too, long ago, interviewing for a case no one remembers in the same town. My husband and I went to the haunt to decompress over light beer and lemon drop shots when we saw her at the far end of the bar; the victim seizing the Karaoke microphone, the palm of her hand wrapped tightly in lilac gauze. When the honky-tonk crowd wasn’t responsive to her rendition of Leaving On a Jet Plane, she yelled, “I’m serious, I’m leaving! On. A. Jet. Plane!” 

Six months after her presumed death, local uniforms pulled over a man doing 89 in a 45 in the victim’s car: a lime green jeep with mercury headlights. He was asked, heard through the arresting officer’s bodycam, where he got the car, and he said it he bought from a friend of a friend. 

“By who? Well, I hardly know her. Did she look like this? No, don’t look familiar. Less pretty. Her hair was shorter too, maybe butch. Hm. She is stunning though. Never met her in my life and I’m guessing this gal is missing, or departed? If so, I do hope that I meet her in the next life.” 

Listeners, this man croaked three hours later in custody of natural causes: the sudden rupture of his aorta, this I’ve confirmed from reading the autopsy myself. When the police got a warrant for his phone, they found a Wyoming number saved as “the seller.” 

The lady who answered the landline spoke kindly but with a low, toothy crackle, like the words were chiseled into her throat. The police explained they were investigating the sale of a stolen vehicle. She denied her involvement. The police informed her the car was connected to a murder case. She denied involvement. The police asked if the victim’s name sounded familiar. She asked if the coppers would mind if she put a pot on the stove for some lavender chai. They said that that would be just fine. 

The line disconnected soon after. The police dialed the number again, and again, from every phone they could think to call from, but whoever was on the other side was content to let the ringing continue unabated for the rest of the evening and into the first distant symptoms of sunrise.