The Harem on the Hill (Part LXXXVII) (Patreon)

"Tell the coroner to bring friends.  The deceased is...big."

"Roger."

You stare at the police scanner on your dash as the dispatcher, Betty, responds to the commands being barked by the unidentified responding officer.  Meanwhile, the face of the recently departed, Jada Jenson, stares up at you from a blurry photo glued in the journal on your lap.

"Shut-in?"  Dispatcher Betty asks the question with the casual monotone you might offer someone coffee.

"Probably.  The girl was a pig."

You wince.  Officer what's-his-name had abandoned all pretense of discretion and protocol.  In his defense, there wasn't a tactful police code for the situation, but still...you'd expect more reverence for the dead.

Jada deserved better.

You glance down at the girl in your lap.  You never met, but after observing her, off and on, for the better part of three years, you feel like you knew her.  That's probably why you feel a twinge of guilt.

Your first photo of Jada--taken as she left for a night of bar-hopping with friends--showed a fresh-faced hottie with a top-heavy body.  She sported a few extra pounds, which, judging by the gaps in the buttons of her satin blouse and the puckered creases of her black leather miniskirt, were recent developments, but while she might have been called "thicc," no one would have ever guessed she was sick.

The same couldn't be said for the last photo.  It was taken just a few months ago and showed Jada making what had become her longest daily pilgrimage--the mailbox.  Bloated, pale, and frumpily dressed in an oversized sweatshirt with undersized sweatpants, she looked at least fifty pounds heavier and ten years older.  The joie de vivre of the first photo was gone.

Never to return.  

"I doubt we can get her through the front door," the gruff-sounding officer continued. "We may need to break through the sliding glass doors in the back."

"Roger.  Should I send fire and rescue?

"Affirmative."

Something was amiss.  Your gaze returns to Jada's final photo.  She was unquestionably fat, but nowhere near the circus fat-lady proportions intimated by the officer.  You had chalked up his callous remarks as juvenile hyperbole, but there was no way he'd call fire and rescue to assist with a decedent in the two-hundred-pound range.  He'd be a laughing stock.  However, there was also no way Jada could have eaten her way into housebound oblivion in such a short time.

Unless she had help.

"Have them bring a tarp."

"A tarp?"

"Yeah, the only thing the girl is wearing is a silver bracelet."  The insensitive officer chuckles wryly,  "And it doesn't cover much."

What do you do?