To My Fellow Crime Scene Investigators,

    “What is that smell?” I said, sniffing the air like an elephant sensing danger. I was in the family office.

    Number two son mumbled, “What smell?”  He did not look up from his computer.

    Now audibly sniffing, I said, “That . . . ” Sniff. Sniff. “ . . . that funky smell.”

    The mumbler mumbled something.  I was left to make my own interpretation.

    “That smell . . .  you can’t smell that? It smells like bat guano in a crock pot.”

    The mumbler may have shrugged, but I was already on my hands and knees sniffing behind office furniture. The family cat blinked and stretched as I pushed the daybed she was sleeping on away from the wall.  She may have shrugged.

    A trail of wispy feathers spun wildly as I sniffed my way along the baseboards behind the daybed. My hand landed in something gunky,  just as I noticed a gicky stain on the back of the daybed skirt. I knew at once what I was looking at—a crime scene.  I studied the swirl of feathers around my head. I measured the gicky stain. I sniffed.  “Either that’s bat guano in a crock pot or something’s dead,” I concluded to absolutely no one; son number two had left the crime scene.  Suspicious I thought.  Make a note.

    Pushing the daybed farther into the room I uncovered the source of the smell.  Immediately I began my assessment. Out loud I reported, “The victim seems to have been deceased for an extended period of time judging from the amount of gicky gunk that has been allowed to soak into the tile grout.  Victim appears to have been a bird, note wings, feathers, and beak. The body may have been placed under the daybed in a ritualistic fashion with the head pointing to the wall socket and the feet pointing to the ottoman—possible cult overtones.”

    The family cat stretched, meowed, picked a feather from her teeth, and jumped from her perch on the daybed.

    I prepared to start my interviews with everyone even slightly connected to the office, daybed, ottoman, and baseboards. My questions: How could you not have smelled that smell? Were you aware there was a dead bird corpse under the daybed? Did you know about said bird corpse and simply ignored it so you wouldn’t have to clean it up? Where were you when that bird was murdered? How could you possibly not smell that smell? Let me see your nostrils! 

    Everyone had an alibi. I was back to square one.

    But then I formulated a theory to explain the inability of absolutely everyone in this house to smell a decomposing animal under the office daybed except for ME!!   Mostly I live with boys—grown boys. And it is my belief that because of a propensity they have to sit at their computers in a haze of of their own bio-methane they were unable to detect the presence of a dead body in the same room due to an advanced case of numb nose syndrome.  It’s just a theory.  DNA testing will, of course, prove inconclusive.

    What it comes down to is this. I had to dispose of the corpse (I used a dust pan), strip the ruffled skirt off of the daybed, vacuum up the bed feathers, and scrub the grout tile with bleach. I also had to dispose of a dead field mouse, two dead moles, and a dead snake. (Note: Not all on the same day.) There’s only one conclusion that can be made.

    That’s right. I’ve got a serial killer on my hands.

Sign Me,

Linda (Book ‘Em) Zern

PS 
        Please note that son number two swears that he does not produce bio-methane—ever.  And husband number one swears that everyone produces bio-methane at least and on an average of twelve times a day.  I’ve got my nose on both of them. 

   

   

            

Linda L. Zern (Still Me)

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