Lois Lowry - The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

"Yes. Now go back down and stand guard. I'll be down in a minute."

11

Caroline was gnawing half-heartedly on a chicken leg when the apartment door finally opened and J.P. came in, carrying the three envelopes carefully in his gloved hands. She glanced behind him nervously, to the hall, but there was nothing there. For a moment she had been afraid that he might have dragged the body down the stairs.

She locked the door carefully and followed him to the kitchen, where he was returning the gloves to their place under the sink.

"What did you find? Tell me everything you found. Warn me if there are any gross parts so that I can steel myself."

J.P. laid the three envelopes in a row on the kitchen table. He sat down and closed his eyes. "I have to reconstruct everything by seeing it again in my mind," he explained.

"I'm going to take notes. We need it all written down," said Caroline. She sat down across from him with her pencil and paper.

"Okay. Here goes. First, it's just a studio apartment—just one big room, with a little kitchen area, and a separate bathroom. In the main room it's just your standard stuff. A couch—I think the couch must open into a bed—and a coffee table and a couple of chairs. By the window, there's another table and a chair. He's not very neat. There's a dirty shirt hanging over the back of one chair—"

"What do you mean, 'dirty'?" asked Caroline. Her pencil was poised over the paper, but she hadn't written anything down yet. "Bloodstains?"

J.P. shook his head. His eyes were still closed. "No, just dirty like it needs to go to the laundry. There's a cup half-filled with cold coffee on the table by the window. Also on that table is a typewriter and some books and yesterday's newspaper and the letter you read, the one from the agent that says not to use cyanide."

Caroline wrote that down. "Cyanide letter. Evidence #1."

"One of the books was a dictionary," J.P. went on, with his forehead wrinkled as he strained in his photographic memory to see the titles. "And one was History of Baseball, and one was Forensic Toxicology— "

"Poison book," wrote Caroline. "Evidence #2. It's way overdue at the library by now."

"—and the last book was Yeats: The Complete Poems. "

"Was there a wastebasket?" Caroline asked. "Did you look through his trash?"

J.P. opened his eyes. "Today was trash-collection day. All his wastebaskets were empty, except for the one in the kitchen. I'll get to that. I'm still in the main room."

He closed his eyes again. "A television set. Black and white. On top of the TV was the latest copy of TV Guide— "

"Open?"

"Yeah. Open to last night's programs. Just some dumb comedies and 'Quincy.'"

"'Quincy,'" wrote Caroline. "Crime show. Evidence #3."

"Next, the bathroom," said J.P., with his eyes still closed. "Terry-cloth bathrobe hanging on a hook on the back of the door. Towel. Sponge. Toothbrush, Aim toothpaste. In the medicine cabinet, a razor—"

"Wait," said Caroline. "Slow down. I want to write that. "Razor," she wrote. "Evidence #4."

J.P. opened his eyes. "Why did you write that down?" He reached over and picked up a piece of chicken.

"You can kill someone with a razor."

"Not with that kind of razor," said J.P. with his mouth full. "It was a twenty-nine-cent Bic."

"I bet you could if you tried real hard. What else was in the medicine cabinet?"

J.P. licked his fingers and closed his eyes again. "Aspirin, mouthwash, and—here's something, Caroline. Powder. Write that down."

"Powder? Why?"

"I dumped some in the first envelope. It can be analyzed. The can just said Baby Powder, but that could be a fake. Arsenic is a white powder."

Caroline wrote, "Arsnick. Powder. Evidence #5." She looked up. "How do you know that, J.P.?"

He shrugged. "Everybody knows that," he said. He opened his eyes and took another piece of chicken. "Don't touch those envelopes. They could be lethal."

Caroline glanced at the three white envelopes. Two were bulky and bulging, and the third—obviously the one that held the Baby Powder Arsenic—was flat. "Is that all for the bathroom?" she asked.

Her brother nodded. "Now the kitchen." He closed his eyes again. "Refrigerator: two beers—"

"Wait," said Caroline. "Alcoholism," she wrote. "Evidence #6."

"—half of a pizza with pepperoni. A dozen eggs. Chunk of cheese with mold on it—"

"Wait. Is mold poison?"

"No. It just looks poisonous. Refrigerator, continued: half a pound of butter. Wilted lettuce. And some hamburger."

"That's it?"

"That's it for the refrigerator. Moving along now to the cupboards. Mostly bare. Just a few dishes and some canned soup. The wastebasket—"

"Yeah, the wastebasket. That's important."

"A crumpled paper towel and a crushed beer can."

"Wait." Caroline moved her pencil back to #6 and added a word. " Severe Alcoholism," it said now. "Do you think I should put 'inhuman strength'? Because of the crushed beer can?"

J.P. opened his eyes and gave her a disgusted look. " Anybody can crush a beer can, Caroline. A small baby could crush a beer can."

Caroline shrugged. "What else? What's in those other two envelopes?"

He closed his eyes once more. "Under the sink—write this down, Caroline: rubber gloves."

Caroline sat there with her pencil poised. "What's wrong with rubber gloves?" she asked. "Mom has rubber gloves."

"These are pink," said J.P., his eyes still closed.

"So?"

"So a man would never buy pink rubber gloves. No man in his right mind would buy pink rubber gloves—not unless he needed them for sinister reasons.

That made sense to Caroline. "Oh," she said. "Fingerprint-proof gloves," she wrote. "Evidence #7."

"I took one of the gloves," J.P. said. "It's in the second envelope."

"What about the third?"

J.P. grinned without opening his eyes. "We're still under the sink. Ivory Liquid. SOS pads. Ajax."

"Ajax is a white powder. Could it be arsenic too?"

J.P. shook his head. "It really smelled like Ajax. Anyway, there wouldn't be any way to get it into the can. You'd have to put it in through all the little holes."

"What's in the third envelope, J.P.?"

He paused dramatically. "The corpus," he said.

"The what?"

J.P. grinned again and opened his eyes. "You said we needed a corpus? So I found us a corpus. Dead mouse, still in the trap!"

Caroline jumped up from her chair and looked at the third bulky envelope. "Yuck!" she said. "Did you have to bring it home?"

"What good is evidence if you don't have it? And it's kind of cute. It has a pink nose."

"Evidence #8, corpus," wrote Caroline, making a face.

J.P. opened his eyes and reached for the last piece of chicken. "This chicken sucks," he said. "It's ice cold."

***

After they had dumped the remains of the TV dinners in the trash and eaten some ice cream, Caroline looked again at the envelopes of evidence. "What are we going to do with this stuff, J.P.?"

"Save it to show the police. They'll have to analyze it in their lab."

"But where can we keep it? Tomorrow's cleaning day. I suppose I have some secret places in my room, but I don't want the corpus in my room—it'll smell."

"How about the freezer?"

"Mom would see it."

"What about inside that big vase on the table by the front door?"

Caroline eyed the vase and shook her head. "Every now and then she washes that. Maybe she'll decide to wash it tomorrow."

"I could fit it inside the back of the TV, I think. But when the TV's on, it gets warm in there. We might end up with roasted corpus," said J.P.

"Yuck. Wait," said Caroline. "I have an idea. Let me see if they're still there." She went to the closet by the front door and pushed through the winter coats. She shoved the vacuum cleaner aside. "Here they are! This'll be perfect!"