Another jogger, this one in a hot-pink sports bra and matching leggings, approached.
“My, my. Look at the buns on— Oh dear lord! Is that soft serve coming out of that dog?”
* * *
On their way back home,Gabe chivalrously insisted on carrying both doody bags—because one definitely hadn’t been enough—and walked Riley through a simple technique for warding off psychic attacks by both projecting a defense and producing an offense.
“I think I’ve got it. It’s like putting up a screen over my open, psychic garage door,” she said as they followed the cracked walkway from the driveway to the front porch. The concrete would need to be repoured and the landscaping ripped out. At this point, she couldn’t tell what was weeds and what was on purpose. It was all on the list.
“That sounds like an adequate analogy,” Gabe agreed amicably.
The door burst open, revealing Mrs. Penny on the threshold, holding a piece of pizza in one hand. “Where’d that doody come from?” she demanded, pointing with the pizza.
“From Burt. Don’t you remember feeding him an entire platter of Chinese food and then a burrito?” Riley said.
Mrs. Penny either couldn’t hear her over the chewing or she wasn’t interested in what Riley was saying. “I better take it down to the lab and have it analyzed. This could be the break in the case I’ve been waiting for.”
“This literally just came out of him five minutes ago,” Riley argued as she let the dog in question off his leash.
“A good investigator never takes a suspect’s word at face value.”
“I’ma suspect?”
“Everyone’s a suspect until proven innocent,” Mrs. Penny said. “Hell,Icould be the Dog Doody Bandit. I won’t know for sure until I complete my investigation.”
“I’m starting to worry about you,” Riley confessed.
The elderly woman tossed the pizza crust over her shoulder and reached for the doody bags. “Gimme those.”
Burt took a flying leap across the threshold after the crust.
Riley heaved a defeated sigh as Gabe handed over the bags.
“How do you even have access to a lab anyway?” Riley asked.
“That’s need-to-know,” Mrs. Penny said, slipping a gigantic pair of tinted wraparound shades over her glasses. “I’ll let you know if you’re the Dog Doody Bandit.”
“Gee, thanks,” Riley said as the woman left with her “evidence.”
Inside, it sounded as if the pizza party reunion was still underway. They followed the laughter to the Room of No Purpose and found Kellen, Nick, Brian, and Sesame sitting around the battered poker table Riley had brought up from the basement. Nick, though distracted by his search for Beth, had seemed briefly excited about it. At the time, Riley had thought it sweetly optimistic of him to assume he would have more than one friend to play poker with. His track record with male acquaintances trended toward combative.
Josie was in the opposite corner, stress-eating a slice of pepperoni pizza and glaring at the happy crew.
Wilhelm the limo driver was doing squats and lunges in the corner.
“That’s not weird or anything,” Riley observed.
“Do you remember the time I auditioned forAmerica’s Next Pop Star?” Sesame asked.
“You mean the first time Mom disowned you?” Kellen teased. “You climbed out of your bedroom window while you were grounded and talked a high school senior into driving you to Manhattan.”
“That was pretty ballsy of you to audition for a singing show when you sound like a cat in a washing machine when you singHappy Birthday,” Nick remarked.
Sesame tossed a cherry tomato from her kale salad at him. “Very funny, Nicky. It wasn’t about being a talented singer. It was about being interesting enough to get discovered.”
Kellen rolled his eyes. “I forgot. You were born to be famous.”
“You need to do something,” Josie hissed as she approached them. “This chick just recounted the plot ofDumb and Dumberto explain how she got here from Arizona, and those idiots—including my idiot husband—ate it up like she was spoon-feeding them chocolate syrup.”
