Leona Lavish of unit 412 clamped her bejeweled fingers around my arm. “Didn’t you find the body?” She peered at me with violet eyes that were heavily lined in black and shadowed with purple powder. Her hair was dyed a shade of reddish orange that looked garish next to her pale skin. One of her false eyelashes was slightly askew, and I caught a whiff of alcohol on her breath.
The smell transported me with a jolt right back to the murder scene.
I gulped a breath of air.
“She doesn’t want to talk about that,” Rosario admonished, tugging Leona away so that she had to release her clawlike grip on my arm. I was pretty sure her ridiculously long, fake fingernails had left deep imprints in my skin.
“Nobody’s been taken to the slammer,” Carmen Álvarez informed me. She was an elegant eighty-something woman with short gray hair—always nicely styled—and beautiful deep brown eyes. She had the air of a former movie star, but her tongue could be as sharp as a razor. “At least, not that we’ve heard.”
Leona pushed her way into the center of the group. Now well into her seventies, she’d once been a star of the long-running soap operaPassion City,and she never let anyone forget about that. Hercareer might have been in the past, but her theatrics were still very much a part of her daily life.
“Did I ever tell you about the time my character onPassion Citywas accused of murder?” she asked, a hand pressed to her generous chest. She had a Dolly Parton–like figure. Word in the building was that she’d had her plastic surgeon on speed dial until she lost much of her fortune to a divorce and a Ponzi scheme.
“Oh, God help us,” Carmen griped. “Nobody cares, Leona.”
As Leona let out an insulted gasp, I slipped away from the group, knowing that once those two women started squabbling, they could go on for hours. Sometimes even days.
Minnie Yang, another of the Mirage’s residents, came scurrying around the corner of the building, short of breath. She was a slender woman with dark hair in a long pixie cut. Although she’d told me once that she was sixty-two, she could have passed for ten years younger, and at the moment she was moving even faster than she did on her daily power walks around the neighborhood.
“The police found something in the dumpster!” Her words came out in a gasp. “They’re bringing it through the building!”
As a group, we surged closer to the steps. The cop stationed at the front door opened it for a good-looking blond man in a suit with an NYPD badge clipped to his belt. A detective, probably. A uniformed officer followed him, wearing blue gloves and carrying something wrapped in plastic.
The detective spared our group a brief, impassive glance before climbing into an unmarked car parked at the curb. The uniformed officer placed the plastic-encased object in the trunk of one of the police cruisers in front of the building. But not before I caught a glimpse of what the bag contained: a bloody croquet mallet.
Chapter
Eight
“Oh, God.”
I turned at the sound of the familiar voice.
Bodie stood a few feet back from our group, holding a black gym bag and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that hugged his toned body. I was so used to him looking like the picture of health and fitness that it came as a shock to see him looking like he might faint.
Usually, the Mirage’s female population flocked to Bodie whenever he made an appearance, but apparently the bloody croquet mallet had such a grip on their attention that nobody other than me seemed aware of the clearly squeamish, but still hot, bartender. Even with all the hoopla, I couldn’t help but notice him. He always drew my gaze and set off happy fizzing in my chest.
I sat next to him on the stairs. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? A murder in the Mirage.”
Bodie groaned and raised his head, his blue eyes radiating distress. “That’s not the worst of it. Yesterday, when the cops asked me if I knew of any conflicts Freddie had with others, I told them how Mr. Nagy chased Freddie around with his croquet mallet. I didn’t mean that I thought Mr. Nagy had killed him. It was just the only thing I could think of when they asked that question.”
As Bodie’s words sank in, I felt a bit faint too. “You think the police will believe that Mr. Nagy used his own croquet mallet to kill Freddie?”
He turned his troubled eyes on me. “I don’t believe it, but if you were a cop, wouldn’t you suspect him?”
I would.
Sure, Mr. Nagy was in his eighties, but I wouldn’t call him feeble. He was a sweet, grandfatherly man, but the cops wouldn’t know that. No, the police would look at the evidence.
The murder weapon.
Mr. Nagy’s recent altercation with the victim.
I swallowed a burning lump in my throat and tried my best to sound positive.
“The police won’t really suspect a sweet man like Mr. Nagy. Not for long, anyway.” I gave Bodie’s knee what I hoped was a comforting pat. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”
I should never have said those words.
