Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (classic books for 11 year olds .TXT) 📕

“Seems like nighttime right now to me,” she said.

“Filling in because it’s New Years. Busy night. I’ll be back in the morning to open the place, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Who’s the owner?” she asked. “Maybe he knows the guy?”

“I’m the owner.”

“You’re Bunzo?”

“I bought it from him but kept the original name. Anything else?”

“Sounds good, thanks,” she said, backing away from him. She gave up on her interview when the stink of the nearby dumpster got too strong. Getting in her Datsun, she left. She kept an eye on the rearview mirror as much as she did the road ahead.

Chapter Fifteen

As far as Gina was concerned, she still had another hour to sleep when her phone rang with a call from Ana on Saturday morning.

“If it wasn’t illegal, I’d kill you for calling so early,” she told her sister.

“Too much to drink last night?”

“Barely had anything. You do realize there are five time zones between us, right?”

“Wasn’t my idea for you to move to the other side of the world. Mom’s miffed at you again, by the way.”

“Again or still?”

“A little of both. Why didn’t you call her yesterday?”

“I’ve called her every day since coming here. I don’t get a day off?” Gina asked.

“It was New Year’s Eve. She didn’t hear from her second favorite daughter.”

“She’ll live. How’s Dad?”

“Same ol’. Talking about retiring again.”

“He never will. Maybe on paper, but not from driving beats. Put him on.”

She waited while Ana went to the basement, following her footsteps in the family home by listening to squeaks in floorboards and doors shutting here and there.

“Hey Dad.” Gina caught up with her father’s news, which wasn’t much more than busting the oldest Russo son for drunk driving. “Know anything about Rolexes?”

“You’re earning so much with that job that you can afford a Rolex?”

“Not hardly. I came across one the other day. I’m still trying to figure out why someone loses a nice watch and not come back to look for it.”

“Because it didn’t belong to whoever lost it. Where was it?”

“In the grass by the front porch steps. It seemed like it had been sitting up in the grass and not down by the dirt. It wasn’t dirty or damaged at all, more like it had just fallen off someone’s wrist.”

“What kind of band?” he asked.

“Gold-colored metal, with a fold-over style clasp.”

“Was the clasp open or closed?”

“Open, but not working right. That’s what gives me the idea it fell off someone’s wrist.”

“Gina, a watchmaker wouldn’t put a cheap band on an expensive watch, one that would pop open accidently. Take a look at the brand name of the band. Is it Rolex branded?”

“I don’t have it. I turned it over to the police.”

“You called the police to report a found watch?” he asked.

Gina still hadn’t let on to her family about finding a dead body on her porch earlier in the week. “They were already here about something else. I got pictures of it, though. I’ll try to read whatever is on it later. Anything else I can do?”

“I’d act it out. If you still had it, you could wear it on a wrist and walk around the front proch to see if it snagged on anything. Try to figure out what someone had been doing when they lost it. Maybe that could give you some insight of who the owner might be.”

She made a mental note of his suggestion. “How’s Mom? Ana keeps saying stuff about Mom being pissed at me.”

“Not so much now. You could’ve given her a little more lead time that you were leaving town.”

“I told her the same day I took the job, which was the day after I was offered it.”

“Just don’t forget her birthday, which is next month, or you won’t be allowed back home.”

Gina laughed. “Probably not. Dad, let me ask one more question. What do a Rolex, an old windbreaker, a bottle cap from crappy brand of beer, and a cat with a dead rat have in common?”

“What’re you into, Gina?”

“I don’t know,” she said, pouring a cup of coffee. “Can you keep something quiet?”

“As long as it’s legal.”

“Look, I found a body on my front porch on Monday morning.” She told her father what she knew about the case. “Just a no-name homeless man that had been sleeping there the previous couple of nights. All he had in his pockets were the bottle cap, a bloody pocketknife, and a wallet with nothing in it but an old snapshot. But I found the Rolex in the grass just a few feet from where the body had been.”

“He was stabbed in the liver with an ice pick and had no other injuries?” he asked.

“That’s right. No other injuries that I’ve heard about.”

“And the investigator thinks he was killed elsewhere and his body was dumped there?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Any other evidence on his body?” her father asked.

“Freshly mown grass clippings on his shoes, the type of grass doesn’t match anything on the estate. To me, that means he had to have walked across a newly mown lawn not long before he was killed, and have walked nowhere else after.”

“Why nowhere else?” he asked.

“It seems to me most of the clippings would’ve fallen off if he’d gone anywhere after walking through the clippings, right?”

“That would depend on the amount of moisture on his shoes and the grass, and if he had anything else on the soles of his shoes that might make the grass adhere better than water.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Gina put that on the list she was making of things to ask Detective Kona the next time she saw him. She figured it wouldn’t be long before she got another lecture from him about interfering in his investigation.

“Are you trying to solve his murder? Because you need to remember you’re no longer on the force, not here or there. You can’t interfere with an official investigation.”

“I’m not trying to solve the murder.