The Senior Siren
Did she know her killer? Detective Sam Branson mused as she looked at the fresh red blood roses on the window ledge. They were less than a day old. A small card stood propped against them. She turned the card over in her hand. It was signed from a dear friend,
“Any idea who the dear friends might be?” she enquired of the dour faced landlady. The middle-aged woman shook her head. “She was terribly secretive. Old bitches like her can be like that, you know. Didn’t like me or anybody else for that matter minding her business, as she called it….”
“Are all your residents like her?”
“Like her?”
Sam was reluctant to speak ill of the dead but it was obvious the dead woman on the bed didn’t fit into the usual category of senior citizen.
The landlady fidgeted with the buttons of her cardigan. “Will I be blamed because I wasn’t poking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted.” she said indignantly. “This is an independent living facility. I’m not supposed to wet nurse them.”
Sam shrugged. “But you do mind their business,” she said crisply. “So tell me, who is this friend she had that you turned a blind eye to?”
The woman blushed. “His name was James. He always came on the nights I was out.”
“How do you know that,” Sam shot at her as she looked around the room. “You gleek through the keyhole? Or have you a resident who spies on the other residents for you when you’re out?”
The landlady puffed out her chest indignantly. “I’m no peeping tom! He always wore a certain kind of after-shave. It lingered…”
Sam inhaled the stale smell of the room. The body was barely cold but she didn’t get the smell of aftershave.
“When can I re-let the room? I have a waiting list…”
The detective raised her eyebrows. She couldn’t imagine a waiting list for this dump. The room was bare and basic except for the new camera equipment that sat on the scarred sideboard amongst the jars of creams and clutter.
The landlady followed her gaze. “Yeah, some of the residents signed up for night class at the local college for photography… and technology.” She cast a disparaging look at the dead woman. “She liked to boast she was a silver surfer.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “And we can all see what that led to,” she said piously crossing herself.
Sam took a leap of imagination. “Is James a …male model at the photography classes?”
The landlady startled. “He was…in the beginning.”
Sam smiled grimly. “She stole him from you, didn’t she?” she said turning abruptly to stare into the woman’s eyes. “You killed her.”
The landlady’s eyes glittered with malice. “She stole him from all of us with her fancy panties and body selfies. I didn’t kill her. She killed herself with her selfishness,” she spat.
The crime squad could hardly keep the smirk off their faces as the landlady told them how she had hidden a camera in the dead woman’s room to record her betrayal with James. “She stole him from us. He was ours – the photography students – all my residents – to share amongst us. She denied it. But I got the proof,” she cried triumphantly.
“How did you kill her,” Sam asked.
“I put a video on UTube of her and James. It was better, much better than Mr Grey. It got thousands of hits. – went viral.”
She sniffed. “Overnight she was a star. Business boomed. She was, as they say a victim of her own success.
James was a success too. He got a part in a porn film. He moved on. In true dramatic stardom fashion she took all her prescription pills…”
“You let her die!”
“I sent her roses,” didn’t I? And then I called you.”
Gemma Hill 2017
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