Chapter 28

"We are here to investigate a murder!" Mac snapped at the smarmy man.

"Murder?! There ain't been no murder here! Not since I bought the place anyway!" he protested.

"When was that?" Woody asked.

"Six years ago! And we ain't had no murder! Been a few hum dingers of fights and a couple of minor shootings, but no one's gotten dead over it!"

"This murder happened a few years before you took ownership of this fine establishment. But we only just found a clue linking apartment 312 to the crime. We would just like to go up there and look around for a few minutes, just to get a feeling for where the killing might have happened," Mac said sweetly, giving the guy a big smile.

"Well, why didn't you say so at first?! Go'in to given a poor fellow a near heart attack. Surin enough if you want to see the place you can. It's empty now because this isn't our busy season." He turned around and pulled a key from one of the numbered cubby holes on the wall behind him. "I hope you won't mind me not comin' up with you, but my back has been bothering me somethin awful since the war," he smiled at Mac as he handed him the key and pointed to the stairs.

"What about the elevator?" Woody asked.

"Aw shucks that ain't worked since a year after I bought the place," he told Woody.

As they headed towards the stairs Woody muttered, "Maybe you should have it fixed!"

Mac suppressed a giggle as she nodded her agreement.

The climb to the 3rd floor was not a hardship on either of them because they both were required to be physically fit for their jobs. The walked down the hall to apartment 312 and even though the owner had told them the apartment was empty, Mac still knocked out of curtsey before using the key she'd been given.

Looking around the single room apartment Woody said, "Wow, how depressing."

"I bet some of this furniture could have been here thirty six years ago," Mac commented.

"I can certainly understand why no one stays here for any length of time," Woody responded pulling a small flashlight out of his picket. He shone it around the room looking for blood. The flashlight had a special filter on it that picked up blood traces even if they had been cleaned up.

Even though the room was not that big, Woody wanted to make sure he was doing a through job. Although he found many spots of what might have been drops of blood in the past, it wasn't until he'd been searching for about three minutes that he came upon an area of carpet that showed a large circle of blood. "Mac, here," he called out to her and then pointed out the spot.

Assessing the space she told him, "If we move the two easy chairs and end table we might be able to roll the rug back far enough to get to that spot."

He agreed and they began to work. Before very long at all, they were rolling up the corner of the rub. Mac and Woody turned to grin at each other when they found the dark rust colored stain in the carpet padding. Woody pulled out his pocket knife and cut out a square of the padding. Then he wrapped it in his handkerchief because he hadn't brought any evidence bags with him.

They replaced everything they had moved and went downstairs to return the key to the owner of the building. The man leered at Mac as she handed over the key and asked if she was single.

Woody, ever the chivalrous, boy scout, that he was, jumped in to help, telling the man, "No, she's my wife!"

At the same time Mac, who had always been able to take care of herself, stated, "I'm a lesbian."

The apartment owner's jaw dropped at these two comments and Woody had been married just long enough to Jordan to want to try and see if he could shock the guy anymore. He turned to Mac with a happy grin and said, "That's great honey! I don't know why you didn't tell me before! Now I can have my girlfriend move in with us and we can be a threesome!"

To be continued…