“A murder board!” she squealed. It was a high-piercing sound that’d probably carry exceptionally well underwater. But, holy crap, that was not meant to be unleashed on human ears. She could take down armies with that. I touched my ears to make sure they weren’t bleeding.
“Tulip! Stop!” Gideon snapped. “You can’t do that on land.”
“Oops!” Tulip covered her mouth with her hand. “I thought that was my quiet one.”
“Did you say a murder board?” I asked over the ringing in my ears.
“It’s amazing. Come look!” She scurried to the back of the store, and we followed.
The meeting room had been transformed. Elwood had two movable boards that people could pull out and use when they booked this room. They were ancient things I remembered him using when I was a kid. One was a whiteboard and the other a corkboard. And now, they were full of all things murder.
“Wow,” I whispered as I walked over to them. “This is like what they do in TV shows. This is awesome.”
“Good job, you two.” Gideon was nodding. “Where did you find all this?”
Eugene’s shadow shivered in the corner as if he was pleased with Gideon’s praise.
“Well, I said I helped, but it was mostly Eugene,” Tulip said.
The corkboard was covered with images and red yarn.
In the center of the board was a plan of the murder building—yeah, I probably shouldn’t call it that, but I couldn’t help it. Along one side were details about it, including Xalvador’s obituary, which joked about his supposed treasure; Winston’s purchase contract for the building; a list of all the other businesses that’d ever been in the building; and a list of who else had bid on the building.
That was all very interesting, but my gaze kept snagging on the cartoon-like outlines of bodies in the sketch, showing where Winston and Jim’s bodies were found. The outlines overlapped. I wasn’t sure if I could ever be in that building again without thinking about those outlines.
Red yarn had been stretched from one of the outlines to a picture of Winston. The streaky image looked like it’d beenstolen from his social media and printed on Elwood’s old printer. Winston appeared happy. He was laughing and holding a glass of red wine—or I hoped it was red wine. Since he was a vampire, it could’ve been blood. Another bit of string connected it to an image of a crystal like the one he’d been killed with, which then had a string to one of Elwood’s Mystic Menagerie flyers, presumably to denote where the murder weapon had come from.
The second body outline also had a red string, which linked it to a picture of Jim. Jim’s image might have been grabbed from his website. It was one of those boring headshots that didn’t show any personality. A picture of his murder weapon was there, too.
Wait. How did…?
“Are those pictures from the police reports?” Gideon asked, as if reading my thoughts.
Eugene’s shadow didn’t move, as if he was frozen in place.
“Eugene? Did you break into the police station and go through their files?”
The shadow shrank.
Gideon squeezed the bridge of his nose. “You aren’t supposed to do that. Remember all the trouble you got into when you went through the evidence boxes and started returning things to people? Grady barely kept you out of jail.”
“Umm… how do you keep a shadow in jail?” I asked. Everyone ignored me.
“But he didn’t remove anything this time.” Tulip jumped to her friend’s defense. “He just copied the originals. Right, Eugene?”
The shadow quivered as if in agreement.
“Will anyone realize you’ve been in the files?”
I don’t know how he did it, but Eugene’s shadow undulated in such a way as to suggest Gideon’s question offended him.
“You need to be careful, okay?” Gideon said, seeming to give approval to what Eugene had done.
“We have a bit of new information,” I said, pulling the conversation back to the murder boards and away from Eugene’s breaking and entering. “I’m sure the dagger that killed Jim came from Leon’s stall at the festival. So, we can add that to the board.”
Eugene’s shadow vibrated as if he was excited.
“And Lily suggested there was a love triangle between Jim, Leon, and a woman,” Gideon added. “Maybe Hazel could ask around about that.”
