“What the hell is right.”
She looked up. “Sothat’swhere all the parlor furniture went.” They were staring at a wall of stuff. The fainting couch and wingback armchair from the parlor were shoved just inside the doorway, and three occasional tables were stacked atop an old trunk. Beyond was a tangle of rolled-up rugs, Mrs. Penny’s bar, two hutches, and the organ bench.
“Uh. Marco?” Brian’s voice came from somewhere on the opposite side of the room.
“Polo,” Riley called back as Nick hauled her to her feet.
“We need a new fucking office,” he muttered under his breath.
“You guys are going to have to come to us unless you want us to Tarzan and Jane it across Mount Yard Sale,” Josie said from somewhere beyond the wall of crap.
“Hang on. We’ll climb over,” Nick said gamely.
Riley stopped him and shook her head. “I’m not dressed for rock climbing. We’ll meet them outside.”
They skulked back into the hallway around sweaty strangers. Wander and Gabe were lighting several dozen candles in the parlor around the video equipment.
“Wow. That feels almost refreshing,” Riley said, airing out her armpits in the humid, thick air on the front porch.
“It’s ninety-three degrees inside,” Nick said proudly. “There’s no way your grandmother is going to go through with it.”
She hoped he was right.
They found Brian and Josie in the yard, eyeing what Riley could only assume was the finished “ramp.”
“You’vegotto be kidding me.”
Behind her, Nick was muttering a lot of f-words and something about rainforests.
After weeks of work, the two stooges had propped a pair of two-by-sixes side-by-side over a half-crushed traffic barrel, forming a kind of lopsided teeter-totter that led to the end of the porch where they’d hacked off the railing.
“Figured it was safer on the ground,” Brian observed.
Nick jumped to the ground, then turned to chivalrously lift Riley off the porch.
“Knock knock.” Kellen wandered around from the back parking lot to join them. His only concession to the heat was the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down. “Nice outfit, Miss Cleo,” he said.
“I hate my life,” Riley muttered.
“Here’s something else you’ll hate. No video cards were recovered from the Hornberger’s. So if the glitter bomb was recorded, the killer took the evidence with him.”
He was right. Riley did hate that. Dead ends sucked.
Brian cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve called you all here tonight to reveal a murder.”
Josie gasped theatrically.
“What have you got for us, Brian?” Kellen asked.
Brian held out his hand, and Josie produced his laptop from a bag on the back of his wheelchair.
“The coroner’s report had some interesting notes,” he began, firing up the computer.
“Wait. How didyouget the report? I haven’t even seen it yet,” Kellen demanded.
Brian cracked his knuckles. “It’s not my fault county security is garbage. The report is still in draft. But it looks like cause of death was digitalis toxicity.”
“Strubinger was poisoned?” Nick asked.
