“Might as well come in as long as you don’t stay long. I need to get to bed.”
“Thank you,” Kellen said.
They followed the woman inside. The house was small but tidy. The small living room was taken up almost completely by a drum kit.
“Was your son a musician?” Kellen asked, eyeing the drums.
Mrs. Strubinger snorted. “That lump of misery wouldn’t know a back beat from a click track. I’m the drummer. The gig last night went late. I just got home.”
Riley was impressed.
“Mrs. Strubinger,” Kellen began again.
“Call me Sticks.”
“Okay. Sticks, we were wondering if your son knew this woman.” Kellen produced a picture of a—thankfully—alive Bianca Hornberger.
Sticks slid her glasses off the top of her head and squinted through them at the photo and then snorted. “If you think she looks like the kind of person my son would know, you must not be very good at your job.”
“He gets that a lot,” Riley quipped.
The detective shot her a “har har” look.
“You’d take one look at his bedroom and know those two never had anything in common,” Sticks boasted. “What’s this about? Did Plastic Petula there say my son was an ass to her? Because she wouldn’t be the first. Guess now she might be the last.”
“Did your son have problems with many people?” Riley asked.
“Titus hated everyone,” Sticks said, fishing a vape pen out of the pocket of her robe. “He was about to get fired from the Game Emporium. You know how much of an ass you have to be to get fired by those special-brownie-eating gamers?”
Riley guessed a really big one.
“Would you mind if we looked at his room?” Riley asked.
The woman shrugged. “What do I care? Help yourself. But know this: That misogynistic idiot lived like a pig in a sty, expecting me to clean up after him. He wasn’t raised that way, but every nest has a bad egg, if you get what I’m sayin’.”
She led the way into the kitchen with yellow linoleum floors and cabinets painted robin’s egg blue.
“Titus lived down there,” Sticks said, gesturing at a battered door next to the refrigerator. “Haven’t touched a thing since they carted his lard ass out on a gurney through the Bilco doors. I took no responsibility for his mess when he was alive. Don’t much feel like dealing with it now that he keeled over from that heart attack.”
Kellen reached into the dingy stairwell and flicked on the light switch. A bare bulb cast a yellow glow down the narrow wooden steps.
“Ladies first?” he offered.
Riley shook her head. “Uh-uh.”
Kellen took the lead, and she followed, closing the door behind them. The stairs were rickety and stained from years of foot traffic.
“I don’t know. This isn’t looking good, Miss Cleo,” he said.
“Donotlet my grandmother hear you say that.”
Riley was no longer the worst smelling thing in the house.
Titus’s “room” smelled like a decade of stale farts. Her sister’s psychic snoot would have a field day in it.
It was a standard basement with block walls, a concrete floor, low ceilings, and a whole lot of junk.
Come on, spirit guides. Mama needs a win.
