“I need your lab contact,” Nick said.
“Well, hello to you too, partner. My investigation is coming along just fine. Thanks for asking. I’m staked out in front of a duplex with a basket of six different kinds of potato chips on the porch.”
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I’m in my house with a severed finger and a bunch of cops.”
“The cops cut off your finger?”
“No, damn it! It was someone else’s finger.”
“The five-oh cut off some poor sap’s finger and brought it to you?” she asked.
Nick’s eye twitched. “Listen to me, Penny. I need your contact at the lab. Now.”
“Well, okay. But I don’t know what you want her to do with a finger.”
“I don’t want her to dissect a finger. I need her to identify a liquid for me.”
“Does the Dog Doody Bandit have diarrhea?” Mrs. Penny demanded. “Try scooping it up into a Tupperware container, and I’ll be right over.”
“There’s no diarrhea,” Nick snarled into the phone. “Just text me her contact info.”
“You can count on me. As soon as I’m done with this bag of chips. My fingers are too greasy to work the screen.”
He hung up just as Wu clomped back into the room. “We put out a BOLO on the unidentified suspect’s car. If you can get me a recent photo of the Hemsworths, we can start the search for them.”
“I don’t have a picture of Tommy, but I’ll text you one of my sister,” Kellen said, returning from his quest for coffee.
Wu bobbed his head. “Appreciate that. One more thing. Captain said you’re on leave until this investigation is completed.”
Kellen’s face remained impassive, but Nick noticed the tightening in his friend’s shoulders.
“Understood,” Kellen said.
Wu nodded. “If any of you sees Beth, her husband, or the enforcer again, I want you to call me immediately.”
“We’ll do that,” Kellen promised like the natural-born kiss-ass he was.
Wu glanced at Nick. “This city has had enough vigilantism. Leave the police business to us.”
“Yeah, yeah. Save your speeches for the bad guys.”
“I’d encourage all of you to stay out of trouble,” Wu said and then headed for the door.
32
8:29 p.m., Tuesday, October 29
“So then, I jumped out of the closet and I was all like ‘Rawr! Give me back my clown baby,’” Josie said, cackling.
Nick, Kellen, and Brian were holed up in Nick’s office, poring over public and not-so-public records from Lucore Labs and putting the word out on the streets to be on the lookout for a pajama-clad doofus and his cleavagely gifted wife.
Josie and Riley had been tasked with getting one of the vials to Mrs. Penny’s lab contact. They’d met Delilah, a forensic science undergrad, by the recycling bins behind Harrisburg University’s lab building and handed over the vial, two hundred dollars, and a #1 with a Diet Coke from McDonald’s.
Handoff complete, they’d decided to drive around the city looking for Tommy.
After a few fruitless hours, they grabbed ice cream and parked the Jeep at the train station in hopes of catching Sesame’s return. Of course, nothing said Sesame had to return. Maybe she was moving to the city indefinitely.
Which meant Sesame’s shoes could become Riley’s shoes.
