“So, who lives here, and why are they a suspect?” Wyatt asked in a low voice.
I gave him the lowdown on Rosario as I pulled on the purple disposable gloves I’d stashed in my clutch. Wyatt watched with what I thought might be respect. He, I observed, hadn’t come so prepared.
“What kind of pets does she have?” Wyatt asked, surveying the kitchen and living area. “I don’t see or hear any.”
“Huh,” I said. “I’m not actually sure. I’ve never seen her walking around with a dog or taking a cat to the vet or anything like that.” I slid open a kitchen drawer, took a peek inside, and shut it again.
Stopping in front of the combination fridge/freezer, I opened the fridge and studied the very ordinary contents. Would Rosario’s penchant for expensive ketchup tell me anything about her persona as a possible killer?
Doubtful.
I shut the fridge and yanked open the freezer.
I stumbled backward and slapped my hands over my mouth, suppressing a scream that instead came out as strangled garbling.
Wyatt was at my side in an instant. “What’s wrong?”
Too horrified to form coherent words, I simply pointed at the freezer. The door had drifted shut when I’d let go of it, so Wyatt opened it warily and got an eyeful of what had freaked me out. Inside the freezer, between a pint of ice cream and a bag of peas, Rosario had a stash of frozen mice and lizards.
Wyatt seemed a little surprised, and maybe slightly disgusted, but he remained calm.
Me? Not so much.
I stumbled out of the kitchen and collapsed onto Rosario’s couch. “Is she a psychopath? A serial killer?”
“A serial rodent killer?” Wyatt shut the freezer.
“Those could be trophies.”
“She only kills owners of rodents and reptiles and freezes their pets as trophies?” He sounded more than a tad skeptical.
I shot to my feet. “Maybe! How would I know how a psychopath’s mind works?”
“Interesting…” Wyatt now stood with his back to me, staring at something on the living room floor, over by the wall.
My curiosity overrode my lingering disgust and my annoyance with Wyatt. When I reached his side, I saw what had caught his attention.
A hand-drawn portrait of Freddie lay on the floor, half hidden behind a credenza. It was a good likeness, done in pencil by a skilled hand. At least, that was the impression I got. It wasn’t easy to tell for sure, considering that holes had been pierced through his eyes and other parts of his face.
I raised my eyes to the dartboard hanging on the wall above the credenza. I tugged out one of the darts and picked up the paper. The point of the dart was a match for the size of the holes in the portrait. Someone had used Freddie’s picture for target practice.
“Well, that’s”—I struggled to find the right word—“freaky.”
“I’d agree with that assessment,” Wyatt said.
He took a picture of the dart-pierced portrait with his phone, prompting me to do the same before I set it back on the floor where we’d found it. I realized that Theo would want pictures of the frozen mice and lizards too. Not that I reported to a seventeen-year-old. If she wanted photos of frozen dead things, she could break in and take them herself.
I imagined the scathing way she’d look at me when I didn’t supply her with photos of everything. I cast a sidelong glance at Wyatt, who was now searching the drawers of a nearby desk.
I absolutely could not ask him to take the frozen-dead-things photo for me.
You’re an independent woman, Emersyn,I told myself.You’re brave, not squeamish.
Or you can at least fake it till you make it.
I straightened my shoulders, mustered all my courage, and returned to the kitchen. I got the freezer door open, but I couldn’t bring myself to look inside again. Instead, I turned my head away and scrunched my eyes shut while I blindly snapped several photos. Then I opened my eyes a crack to check the results on the screen without actually looking at the subject matter too closely.
Good enough, I decided with a shudder before I slammed the freezer door shut.
