Red Death

The Black Cat

I didn't want to think about murder. I didn't want to think about solving any crimes. Hell, I didn't want to think about anything at all. All I wanted to do was smoke my pipe in peace at the communal fire pit just outside my apartment building on the back lawn. Yes, believe it or not, our cheapskate of a landlord decided to do something nice for us and get us a fire pit for all of us to share. All I wanted to do was sit in silence and enjoy my retirement. I didn't want to talk about anything, but somehow, we got on the subject of love. I remember how it happened now.

It was one of those July nights when the morning rain made it cool enough for all of us to enjoy an evening outdoor fire. Many of my fellow apartment renting neighbors came out to join me as soon as they saw me take out a few dry logs from the green tote that kept them dryand placed them in the pit. I was hoping not to bring any attention to myself, but somehow, I did.

The people in my apartment complex loved to ask me questions and tell me stories at the same time. They knew I was both a retired detective and a now active private eye, so they had no problem coming up to me whenever they saw me and ask me questions or tell me whatever was going on in their minds and lives. As soon as they saw me fixing to make a fire, they came out of their hibernation to join me. After I got the pit lit, we all sat down around it and within five minutes, they started talking.

Like I said, I didn't want to think about murder, and the conversation didn't start out that way. Instead, it started with them talking about love. Love was not a subject I was familiar with, but the more I listened, the more people thought I was. I had my share of lovers over the years, but they didn't last long and I refused to go into any detail about it. But they like to go into detail about it and they did.

"I should hire you, Slim," one of my fellow renters said to me, "I'm in a real pickle." He was a thirty-five-year-old sugar daddy with a twenty-two-year-old lump of sugar attached to the hip where his wallet was. She wasn't there that night, and her absence gave him the courage to ask his question. He went on. "She told me months ago that she stopped talking to her fuck-buddy. Well, I took a look at her phone the other day and I saw three messages from him. Now, I am freaking out that she might be looking for something better, or she might be getting the idea of going back to him. Should I be worried?"

I rolled my eyes before I took the back of my pipe out of my mouth. I shot the man a dose of reality before I threw my questions at him. I told him, "You're a thirty-five-year-old man, working at the same gas station as your significant other, and you haven't got more than a week's worth of clothes in your dresser drawers, but you have a shoe rack hanging from your door and closet full of women's clothes. You have three maxed-out credit cards and five dollars in your savings account. Should you be worried? Yes! But don't worry, she won't be able to get a dime's worth of child support out of you. " I put my pipe back in my mouth and took two puffs before asking him to tell me what the fuck-buddy has been texting her.

"Well," was the only word he could say and when he said, his whole body started to shake as though he were freezing. He told me the guy sent his girl three messages via Facebook Messenger. The first one said, "Happy 4th." The second one was one wishing her a happy birthday, and the third was a video of him floating on a raft in a pool, naked, that he sent to her a few days after my sugar daddy neighbor and his twenty-two year old soon-to-be baby mommy posted their baby announcement on social media.

I asked him, "How much of the man's junk were you able to see?"

"All of it," he said in a casual tone. The video started at his feet and then it worked its way up to where his stuff was."

"Did she respond to anything he sent?"

He thought about it for a second before saying, "No."

"I think you're in the clear," I told him.

"Okay, well, now that I'm in the clear, what should I do?"

I gave him two options. He could either confront his girl about it or he could just grab her phone the next time she wasn't looking and simply block the guy. No matter what he did, I told him to prepare for a fight.

After our conversation finished, everyone else around the fire started asking me relationship questions. Why do all the single people who have never been married and have no kids get asked all the relationship questions, I will never know.

"Maybe it's because single people are smart enough not to get married," was the best answer my neighbor with the fuck-buddy problem could come up with.

Either way, the answer didn't matter. I was now the relationship expert of the apartment complex, and because of that reason, I now had the joy and the privilege of listening to the problems in everyone's love life.

The conversations that followed revolved around cheaters, beaters, the lack of sex, and too much neglect. But in due time, the conversation eventually came around to murder.

"Say, Slim," my neighbor with the fuck-buddy problem said," since we are on the subject of jealousy, what do you think about that murder that happened last week? Do you think that was jealousy?"

Before I go on, I should stop calling him what I've been calling him and instead, I should call him by his real name. His real name is Race Ulcer, and believe me, he was about to give an ulcer of my own.

"It could have been," I told him just a few seconds before I stuck a match and stuck it in the pipe I was smoking. "Why do you ask? Is it because you are jealous of your girl's old-flame?"

He became silent and looked down at the ground. Everyone's eyes were on Race and everyone's ears were waiting for him to answer. After a few seconds of rubbing his hands together, he finally answered, "Yeah, I am jealous. Wouldn't you be?"

I nodded.

"But I'm not jealous enough to kill somebody," he said while raising one of his hands up in the air. "I was just wondering what would make a man so jealous that he would do something like that."

The crime my neighbor was referring to was one that had been buzzing around town for the past three days.

The victim was a forty-one-year-old asshole, who was known for getting drunk and causing fights once a week in a different bar every week. His name was William Fortunato.

His mother was Scottish and his father was Italian. He was over six feet tall and almost six-feet wide. He had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a triple chin. All from I'm sure was his mother's side.

Someone wanted him dead, and they wanted it bad. To explain how bad exactly, whoever did the deed waited until he was drunk, or got him that way. They took him to a room where the bricks were painted baby-blue. They chained him to the wall and sealed him inside the room. On the outside of the wall, someone took red wine-colored spray paint and wrote on the wall the phrase, "For The Love of God."

The police found Fortunato not by tearing down the wall, but by the owner complaining he found a dead body in the unfinished room of the building he just bought.

Monty Montresor was hoping to open an Italian bakery in a building he bought for next-to-nothing because there was a seven-foot round hole blown into the side of a wall back when it was a liquor store fifty years ago. The thieves thought they were robbing a bank, but instead of ending up with dough, they ended up destroying one-hundred thirty bottles of wine.

Montresor was on vacation when the crime happened. When he returned to his broken-down building, he found not only his wall repaired and the room finished, but a dead body chained against it.

Whoever did it, knew Montresor was going to be on vacation. They took full advantage of the seven days he would be gone. They ordered the paint and the bricks and went to work as soon as the old man left town.