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Post by skybright on Aug 22, 2007 22:33:43 GMT -5
Daws shook her head. "After eighty years bricked up behind a wall in the basement of his own gin joint, he doesn't have much of a right to complain," she said, gesturing to the corpse.
"If it's not too much trouble, Henry, I'd appreciate knowing anything you could tell me about the guy -- if his clothes have a tailor's name in them, if he's got broken bones or tattoos or any stuff like that." She grimaced. "I dunno how much you can tell with the state he's in, but any clue is a good clue at this point."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 22, 2007 22:44:07 GMT -5
"I'll tell you everything I can." Henry frowned. "It might be a good idea to have Miriam examine the remains. I may know quite a lot from my years as a practicing mortician, but I'm not a trained medical examiner as she is."
Alex looked at the older man sharply. "She wouldn't--have one of her experiences from that, would she?"
Henry shook his head. "No. After this long... definitely not. A body has to be at least fairly recent for her powers to react to it. Her visions essentially come from reading the deceased's mind, remember." He wryly glanced back at the mummified corpse. "And there doesn't look to be much skin left on this fellow--much less brain matter."
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Post by skybright on Aug 22, 2007 22:50:33 GMT -5
Daws nodded. "In that case, it would be good to have Miriam check him out -- I can use all the insight I can get, here, so long as the Doc doesn't have to go through too much to get it." She pulled a wry face, "Not that examining him is all that pleasant without knowing his thoughts, mind you. Mummies are a lot creepier in person than they are in National Geographic."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 23, 2007 21:34:34 GMT -5
"Actually, real mummification is an extraordinary art," Henry remarked. "And believe me, there are far less savory conditions for a body to be in."
Sid interrupted the amateur egyptologist before he could expound any further on the subject. "So ya want I should bring the Doc over ta your parlor?" His implied exclusion of Alex from that errand won him a slightly miffed look from the entertainer, which he ignored. Alex and Henry were being civil, but there was no sense mixing oil and water needlessly.
"Yes. Well... On second thought, you'd better make it my house instead." Henry frowned. "Miriam might pick up on the clients in the cooler. Tomorrow I'll make sure to bring home all the tools she'll need--and prying into this old bag of bones here shouldn't cause any great mess in my kitchen. I know you have this place to run, so I'll leave work early. Tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock?"
"I can handle that," Sid replied laconically, and glanced at Daws. "How 'bout you? If ya wanna be there ta hear what the Doc has ta say, I can pick ya up on my way over."
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Post by skybright on Aug 23, 2007 22:04:54 GMT -5
Daws smiled gratefully and nodded. "That'd be great, Sid. Thanks."
She glanced back at the corpse with a sigh. "Well -- I suppose we'd better haul him down from there, huh?"
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 23, 2007 22:22:53 GMT -5
"Guess so. The sooner he's outta here, the better I'll feel." Sid moved toward an empty packing crate. "Foxy, willya help me get this in there?"
Reluctantly, Alex shuffled over to help Sid position the crate on the floor beside the hanging body. Then Sid clambered up on top of the crate and examined the electrical-cord noose.
"'S okay--just an extension cord. Not live or anythin'." So saying, he took a folding knife out of his pocket. "Uh... who's gonna catch this guy?"
Henry chuckled at the uneasy expressions of the others, and stepped into the space behind the wall. "I've got him," he said, reaching up to support the body when the cord was cut loose.
"Well, here we go, then..." Sid procceded to cut through the cord. As it gave way, Henry took the body's weight, and carefully carried it out of its eighty-year tomb. Sid followed quickly, dusting off his hands, as Henry gently settled his board-stiff burden on the concrete floor.
"Not much more left than bones," the undertaker observed thoughtfully.
"Yeah." Sid shook his head wryly. "I guess Fats finally found a way ta slim down."
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Post by skybright on Aug 23, 2007 22:32:48 GMT -5
"Wonder what his specialist would've thought?" Daws said dryly.
She glanced around and retrieved a small, empty cardboard box from one of the shelves, then stepped back behind the wall and crouched down to retrieve the broken bottle. "Too bad there's nothing else back here." She remarked, "But I guess whoever did this wouldn't exactly have left their birth certificate lying around."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 23, 2007 22:52:12 GMT -5
"There may be more clues on the deceased's clothes," Henry pointed out. "I'll give him a brief once-over here. I might be able to give you a little more to start with."
Henry proceeded to acquire a large cardboard box, which he flattened and gently slid under the body. Then he bent over it and carefully began to unbutton the huge suitcoat, moving slowly to avoid raising a cloud of dust.
Once he had the coat open, Henry was silent for a moment. Then he made a few more movements that his own body blocked from the view of the others, and made an odd sound which was not quite a sigh. At last, he turned back to his companions.
"I'm afraid you may need to rethink your ID of the subject," he announced wearily. "This is the body of a woman."
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Post by skybright on Aug 23, 2007 23:02:10 GMT -5
Daws paused in the process of climbing out of the hole in the wall and made a startled noise. She glanced over her shoulder for a long moment, and then -- with a dry, humorless chuckle -- stepped out into the room and shook her head.
"The Thin Man." She muttered, with a faintly incredulous tone. "I shoulda thought of that."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 23, 2007 23:11:40 GMT -5
Sid blinked in bafflement. "Wha--huh? Henry, how can ya tell it's a she?"
Henry moved aside, drawing back the coat further to allow the others a view of a brilliant red dress underneath. Protected by the coat, the dress still had a glossy satin sheen after eight decades.
"After I saw that, I looked a little further," Henry added. "There isn't much to distinguish with what little skin is still on the body, but women's pelvic bones are a bit different from men's. As far as I can tell, it's consistent."
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Post by skybright on Aug 23, 2007 23:18:39 GMT -5
Daws shook her head. "Well, so much for solving the disappearance of Fats Rizzo." She frowned. "Before we at least had an ID to work with -- now . . ." she trailed off with a shrug. "I suppose now there's even more of a reason to figure out who she was . . . but that's certainly not gonna make it any easier."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 23, 2007 23:31:44 GMT -5
Alex frowned. "You suppose Rizzo killed the woman and put her here, then made a getaway?"
"Why go on the lam?" Sid countered. "Nobody's found out about this gal fer all these years. He coulda just forgotten all about her an' gone on with his business."
"Unless someone who cared about her suspected him, and simply couldn't prove it," Henry pointed out. "He might even have been killed for revenge."
Sid shrugged. "One thing's pretty sure--Fats had somethin' ta do with it. That's gotta be his coat."
"What I don't understand," said Grace, speaking ingenuously from her offended sense of fashion, "is why she has the coat on her."
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Post by skybright on Aug 23, 2007 23:45:03 GMT -5
Daws had moved to stand looking down at the body, observing the wrinkled red satin of the dress. "Maybe he cared about her." She said quietly, "Did it out of some sense of respect." She shivered. "Though if it comes down to it there's not a lot of respect in leaving her hanging back there like that."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 24, 2007 21:43:47 GMT -5
As they speculated, Henry had continued to delicately go over the clothes on the body. Now he straightened and handed Daws a small tag of fabric he had cut from inside the coat's collar.
"There's your garment label," he said. "Nothing personalized, though; simply the clothier's name. If I recall correctly, a very exclusive Fifth Avenue shop that's no longer in business."
He looked down thoughtfully at the remains. "I suppose there's always a chance of something hidden in the lining, but I don't want to take the coat off completely until Miriam is ready to have a look. Our mystery lady is... rather fragile."
Sid shrugged. "Not much hurry. She's waited eighty years fer somebody ta start findin' out who killed her--another day oughtn'ta matter."
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Post by skybright on Aug 25, 2007 2:25:06 GMT -5
Daws nodded absently, turning the tag between her fingers. "I hope we can solve it for her," she murmured, tucking the slip of fabric into her pocket. "No matter how long it's been . . . I still hate an unsolved mystery. Especially one that leaves somebody nameless like this."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 25, 2007 21:06:59 GMT -5
"Well, I think that's about all I can do for now." Henry glanced at Sid. "Will you help me take her out to my car?"
"Yeah. Uh... lemme clear the way first. Don't want any a' my people gawkin' over Rosie there." Sid nodded to the corpse, giving her a spontaneous nickname inspired by her red dress. With that, he went out to make sure the hallway to the back door was empty of employees.
Alex shook his head. "We can't have a normal day even when Tiernan isn't causing trouble."
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Post by skybright on Aug 25, 2007 21:54:47 GMT -5
"You said it, Alex." Daws shrugged and reached for her fedora and trenchcoat. "I guess there's not a whole lot more for me to learn here. Once Miriam's had a look at the body, I guess the next step is looking into that tailor and this doctor Pendergast."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 25, 2007 22:11:33 GMT -5
Sid returned to the basement a few moments later. Henry had by this time carefully covered the body with an old sheet of canvas, and between them, the two men carried it upstairs and out to Henry's car on its cardboard stretcher. Daws, Alex, and Grace drifted out to the parking lot with them.
"Anythin' else ya wanna look at down in the basement?" Sid asked Daws. "I got my work ta do tanight--but I figure on tearin' out the rest a' that wall first thing tamorrow. I wanna get everythin' cleaned up before any a' the staff starts askin' questions."
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Post by skybright on Aug 25, 2007 22:17:10 GMT -5
Daws shook her head. "I may want to poke around the rest of the club at some point, but I don't think there's anything left in that crypt except dust. Lemme know if anything weird turns up when you pull the rest of it down, but otherwise," she shrugged, "I guess I'll just see you tomorrow afternoon."
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Post by Jordanna on Aug 25, 2007 22:22:52 GMT -5
Sid nodded. "Sure."
Finished securing the body in the back seat, Henry closed the rear door of his car and turned to Daws. "I can drop you at your office, if you like."
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