“Anything?” Theo asked from the doorway.
“No women’s clothing.” I eased the doors shut again.
Theo was already turning around. “So that eyelash didn’t belong to Freddie.”
I glanced toward the drawer of the bedside table, but there was no way I wanted to know what Freddie kept there, so I scurried after Theo. “Maybe he had a girlfriend.”
“If he did, she has terrible taste.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“You’d better bag it,” Theo said with a nod toward the eyelash.
“I don’t have a bag.”
“Then put it in your pocket.”
“I don’t want to touch it. What if the person who wore it had pink eye?”
Theo let out another heavy sigh and fished a packet of tissues out of the bag hanging on the back of her wheelchair. She handed one to me and snapped a photo of the eyelash before I carefully picked it up with the tissue and tucked it in my pocket.
“Keep searching,” she ordered.
“What, exactly, are we looking for?” I asked, wandering around the living room. My gaze skipped over a chess set—all its pieces in their starting positions—and the red toolbox I’d seen in Freddie’s possession on more than one occasion.
“Anything that might tell us why he was killed. Evidence that he owed someone money, threatening notes, things like that.” She pulled up in front of a battered bar cart. “The guy sure liked his booze.”
I joined her by the cart. An array of bottles cluttered the three levels, with a couple of dirty glasses among those on the top shelf. The collection included vodka, whiskey, tequila, and rum. The contents of most of the bottles were running low, although a dark brown one with a yellowing label declaring it to be whiskey was still three-quarters full.
We both lost interest in the alcohol and moved on in opposite directions. I drifted over to a bookshelf that was home to only three actual books—military fiction by the looks of them. Otherwise, the shelves held odds and ends, like nails and elastic bands, a framed and faded photo of a red Corvette, and a silver trophy with no inscription.
I reached for the photo but froze when Theo snapped, “Don’t touch anything without gloves!”
“I already touched the closet doors!” I reminded her.
“So wipe them off.” She held out a pair of purple disposable gloves.
“Why didn’t you say you had these?” I accepted the gloves and started pulling them on.
“I forgot, okay?”
I heaved out a sigh that sounded uncannily like Theo’s earlier ones. Maybe they were contagious.
With my purple gloves on, I reached for the framed photo again. I checked the back of the frame and even peeked between the backing and the photo itself. No clues appeared, and there wasn’t even any writing on the back of the picture.
As I set the frame back on the shelf, my elbow bumped the silver trophy. Before I could catch it, the trophy toppled off the shelf and fell to the floor with a crash, breaking into three pieces on impact. I stood frozen, expecting someone to pound on the door, demanding to know who was in Freddie’s apartment.
I looked up to meet Theo’s wide-eyed stare. Five full seconds ticked by before she spoke.
“And you thoughtIwas being too loud?”
I dropped to my knees and gathered up the pieces of the trophy. I thought I’d broken it, but as I handled the parts, I realized that they were meant to come apart. It wasn’t an ordinary trophy; it was a cocktail juicer and shaker disguised as a trophy.
Relief flooded through me. I hadn’t harmed the silver cup, and no one would ever know that I’d touched it. With all the pieces put back together, I carefully returned the trophy to the shelf and stepped back, reluctant to touch anything else.
Theo was rifling through the open mail, empty take-out containers, and other junk on the coffee table, so I moved into the kitchen. On the counter was a colorful flyer advertising plastic food-storage containers with a brand name I’d never heard of: Grub Tubz. I spared it little more than a glance and peeked into the cupboards, where I found three different sugary cereals, mismatched dishes, and a half-empty box of pasta.
I shut the last cupboard door. “Anything?” I asked Theo.
