To Find a Crime Scene
Drew tried to find Chester R. Ewins. He searched the name after work for three nights. Pam was unable to help in the investigation. She was swamped with bookkeeping work, spending most of her time hunched over rows and rows of numbers laid out on the kitchen table, muttering to herself about the values of basic math and calculators. Drew left her alone for the most part, only bugging her to make sure that she ate the dinner that he usually found in the crock pot when he got home and to pull her away from the table at night when it was time for bed. As soon as he got his wife away from her work, Drew did his best to get her to relax and unknot her brain, staying up later than he really should to make love to her and make sure she was going to sleep and not sneaking back out to the kitchen to work because she would. When Pam was dealing with a bookkeeping mess like this, that’s what she was prone to do; Drew had to rescue her from herself before.
Add to this the impending family dinner that they were forced into hosting and Pam was teetering dangerously close to overload. Drew was dragging ass himself, but he’d run himself into the ground to make sure his wife was well away from the edge of that cliff.
As a result, Drew hadn’t mentioned anything about his fruitless search. There was really no reason to add to the weight she was already carrying, even if it was the light weight of finding nothing.
Because that’s what Drew had. Nothing.
It seemed that Chester R. Ewins didn’t exist. Despite being a city of 70,000, there wasn’t one person in any directory that Drew could find that had that name. Not even close. If he widened the search to the state or the country, he came close, but never exact. By the second night, Drew began to believe that whoever pawned the watch used a fake name, but Drew just had to be sure. He spent one more night of searching before he gave up. Chester R. Ewins as an actual person was a dead end. He had to be made up. But who did it?
Drew came home from work to find the kitchen table free of the bookkeeping mess and a full dinner going on the stove and in the oven. Pam, the beautiful, happy, carefree woman he’d married ten-plus years ago, was singing in the kitchen as she stirred whatever was in the pot on the stove.
“Who are you and what have you done with my surly wife?” Drew asked with a grin. He walked over and kissed her on the neck, feeling her shiver beneath his lips.
“Your wife has been freed of her torment,” Pam said, smiling at him as she turned and kissed him on the lips. “I finally got that mess straightened out, they paid me extra for all of the hard work, and I didn’t have any other work to do today. So to celebrate the end of my torture, I cleaned the house for that stupid family dinner next week. And I made you a wonderful dinner because I appreciate the way you put up with me when I’m at my worst.”
“Food is a great way to show me that you appreciate me,” Drew said, going in for another kiss. “Among other things.”
They would have gotten carried away and perhaps carried down to the bedroom had Pam not pulled away and said, “The cheese sauce is going to burn and you smell like dirty socks.”
Drew laughed, gave her one last kiss, and hurried down to the bathroom to hose off the day’s grime. When he returned, he found that dinner was ready and he had a plate waiting for him on the coffee table in the living room; Pam sat on the couch with her own plate in her lap.
“I’m tired of looking at the kitchen table,” she said, patting the spot on the couch next to her. “Besides, this way we can cuddle and eat.”
“My two favorite things,” Drew said sitting down next to his wife. He kissed her again and then picked up his plate, balancing it in his lap.
Pam had gone all out: baked chicken, homemade macaroni and cheese, green beans, and rolls. She usually saved this sort of cooking for Sundays when she had the time and the energy to use that time. This was a true mid-week treat.
“So, tell me,” Pam said as Drew shoveled mac and cheese into his mouth, “did you find out anything about Chester R. Ewins?”
Drew shrugged as he chewed. As soon as he swallowed, he spoke.
“Yes and no.”
“How definitive.”
“I found out that nobody with that name exists, at least not in Murderville,” Drew said, taking a drink of iced tea. He cleared his throat. “Somebody pawned that watch, we know that, but he gave a fake name to do it.”
“So, who do you think did it?” Pam asked, tearing apart her roll.
“I still think it was one of his business buddies,” Drew said with a shrug. “Doing that revenge joke thing, giving a fake name so he wouldn’t be caught. But I don’t know which one of them did it. I guess I’d have to go back to the pawn shop to get a description from that employee. Of course, that probably wouldn’t help me much. Most of the business guys that I saw at the funeral looked like Winchester Harmon. They’re practically interchangeable. My only hope would be that it was the young guy that did it. Or one of Harmon’s sons.”
“It’s probably a dead end anyway,” Pam said. “You said that the pawn shop guy said something about it being a joke.”
“Yeah, that’s what it feels like this whole thing is,” Drew said with a chuckle. “One big joke.”
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