“I think you'd fit.”
“Nope, unh ah, I know I wouldn't fit.”
I considered the spiders. “I might not fit, either.”
“I'd fit,” Sally said, “but I'm not doing it. I paid twenty bucks for this manicure, and I'm not fucking it up crawling under some rat-?infested porch.”
I hunkered down for another look. “Maybe we can stick a rake in there and pull the jar out.”
“Nuh ah,” Lula said. “A rake isn't gonna be big enough. You gotta go in from the end here, and it's too far away. Where you gonna get a rake anyway?”
“We can ask Mrs. Nowicki.”
“Oh yeah,” Lula said. “From the looks of this lawn she does lots of gardening.” Lula stood on tiptoes and looked in a window on the side of the house. “Probably not even home. Seems like she'd be out by now what with us up on her porch and all.” Lula moved to another window and pressed her nose to the glass. “Uh oh.”
“What uh oh?” I hated uh oh.
“You'd better look at this.”
Sally and I trotted over and pressed our noses to the glass.
Mrs. Nowicki was stretched out on the kitchen floor. She had a bloody towel wrapped around the top of her head, and an empty bottle of Jim Beam was on the floor beside her. She was wearing a cotton nightgown, and her bare feet were splayed toes out.
“Looks to me like dead city,” Lula said. “You want a rake, you better get it yourself.”
I knocked on the window. “Mrs. Nowicki!”
Mrs. Nowicki didn't move a muscle.
“Think this must have just happened,” Lula said. “If she'd laid there for any amount of time in this heat she'd be swelled up big as a beach ball. She'd have burst apart. There'd be guts and maggots all over the place.”
“I hate to miss seeing the guts and maggots,” Sally said. “Maybe we should come back in a couple hours.”
I turned from the window and headed for the car. “We need to call the police.”
Lula was on my heels. “Hold the phone on the we part. Those police people give me the hives.”
“You're not a hooker anymore. You don't have to worry about the police.”
“One of them traumatic emotional things,” Lula said.
Ten minutes later, two blue-?and-?whites angled to the curb behind me. Carl Costanza emerged from the first car, looked at me and shook his head. I'd known Carl since grade school. He was always the skinny kid with the bad haircut and wise mouth. He'd bulked up some in the last few years, and he'd found a good barber. He still had the wise mouth, but under it all, he was a decent person and a pretty good cop.
“Another dead body?” Carl asked. “What are you going for, a record? Most bodies found by an individual in the city of Trenton?”
“She's on the kitchen floor. We haven't been in the house. The door is locked.”
“How do you know she's on the floor if the door is locked?”
“I was sort of looking in the window, and . . .”
Carl held up his hand. “Don't tell me. I don't want to hear this. Sorry I asked.”
The cop in the second car had gone to the side window and was standing there, hands on gun belt. “She's on the floor all right,” he said, peering in. He rapped on the window. “Hey, lady!” He turned to us and narrowed his eyes against the sun. “Looks dead to me.”
Carl went to the front door and knocked. “Mrs. Nowicki? It's the police.” He knocked louder. “Mrs. Nowicki, we're coming in.” He gave the door a good shot with his fist, the rotted molding splintered off, and the door swung open.
I followed Carl into the kitchen and watched while he stooped over Mrs. Nowicki, feeling for a pulse, looking for a sign of life.