Wait! There’s A Hair
In My Soup!
Or
Fowl Play
The call logged in at 10 o’clock. When I showed up the paramedics were just leaving. “Looks
like blunt force trauma,” one of them said, “Someone wacked him good.”
Mary Weber, Fred’s wife, said she’d been making the bed when
she heard shouting and then a slamming door.
It was hard to keep my mind on the questions I needed to
ask; the delicious smell of soup on the boil wafted through the house. Mary said she’d chucked a whole frozen
chicken into a pot with water and spices then left Fred reading the morning
paper while she tended to neatening the bedroom. “Fred never helped me no matter how poorly I
felt,” she sniffed. “Now I’ll never get
to tell him I’m sorry for the terrible things I shouted at him.”
“Blunt force trauma,” the Medical Examiner confirmed. “Someone nailed him hard up alongside the
head.”
“Any sign of a weapon?”
“No, but look for something rounded and hard enough to crush
a skull; I’d say maybe about six inches in diameter.”
I hated to leave Mary in the kitchen. Damn that soup smelled good!
An hour’s search yielded no weapon.
Mary had made a remarkable recovery, even offered me some
soup. “Best I’ve ever made,” she
smiled. Then came the frown. “Oh, look, it’s awful! There’s a hair in my soup!”
It hit me an hour later.
Mary had long, flowing locks. The
hair she’d spooned from the soup and washed down the sink was short; like Fred’s.
