Kinsey and Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

edged into the room like cartoon characters, bumping into
     each other, exchanging wary looks. There was still no body. David checked the closet
     and Emily got down on her hands and knees to look under the bed.
    She opened the bed table drawer. “Well, here’s my gun,” she said, reaching for it.
    “Don’t pick it up!” I snapped at her. “Just leave the damn thing where it is.”
    Startled, Emily withdrew her hand. “Sorry,” she murmured.
    “Let’s just find Gerald.”
    Hermione peeked in the clothes hamper. In the interests of thoroughness, I backtracked,
     checking Althea’s room and the hall linen closet, noting with interest how tidy it
     was. I can’t ever make my sheets lie flat and I usually have the towels all shoved
     together in a bunch. Emily’s towels were color coded and her sheets were starched
     and pressed flat. She even had a nice empty space left over for the set coming back
     from the laundry. I wondered if she ironed men’s underwear for them. She seemed like
     the type.
    I was just returning to the bedroom when we heard Pat scream. It was a doozy, like
     something out of a butcher-knife movie only more prolonged. I was out of the apartment
     like a shot. I spotted her standing in the courtyard, two doors away, face white,
     mouth working helplessly. She pointed and I pushed past her into the empty apartment,
     which apparently had belonged to Caroline. Pat followed on my heels.
    There was a body sprawled on the floor in the living room. I hoped it was Gerald and
     not someone else.
    “It’s him,” Pat said. “Oh my God and he’s dead just like she said he was. I thought
     I’d open the apartment to let it air before the people showed up to have a look. The
     door was unlocked so I walked right in and there he was.” She burst into tears.
    I couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten here. Was it possible that he was still alive
     when Emily had seen him this morning? Could he have
crawled
all this way? That couldn’t be the case or he’d have left a trail of blood. Emily
     had said when she found his body, he was already cold. I bent over the body briefly,
     puzzled by what appeared to be a soft pile of white powder near the dead man’s right
     hand. It looked like soap powder and the granules adhering to his right index finger
     suggested that he’d tried to leave a message of some kind. A word had been spelled
     out almost invisibly on the surface of the spilled soap.
    “What is that?” David said, coming up behind me.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “It looks like M-A-F-I-A.”
    “Jesus, a Mafia hit?” he said, anxiously.
    “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” Pat murmured, blowing her nose. “What would they want with
     him?”
    I moved into the kitchenette. The detergent box itself was on the floor near the sink,
     empty by the look of it. It was one of those one-load sizes, dispensed from machines
     in commercial laundromats. I left it where it was, figuring the crime scene fellows
     would want to dust it for prints.
    By now, of course, Emily Culpepper had joined us, along with Hermione and a couple
     I’d never seen before. The four of them clustered just outside the door and I saw
     the woman lean over and whisper to Hermione.
    “Is this the one for rent?”
    Hermione nodded, putting a finger to her lips. I guess she hoped to discourage conversation
     so she could hear what was going on inside.
    The woman’s voice dropped. “The ad said there were built-ins. Do you know if the refrigerator
     is frost-free?” Maybe she thought Hermione was agenting the place.
    Hermione shook her head. “I just got here,” she whispered. “There’s a body in the
     living room.”
    “The former occupant?” the woman asked.
    “Someone else,” Hermione said.
    The woman nodded, as if this were not an unusual occurrence in the course of a housing
     search. She conveyed the news to hubby and he lifted up on tiptoe, trying to get a
     better view.
    “Look,” David said, “I’m