“Funny thing about that,” I continue, pulling out my phone to show her the crime scene photo. “You left your calling card. That antique copper measuring spoon with the pearl handle? Very distinctive. Very you.”
Nadine’s face goes pale beneath her flour-dusted makeup. “Sothat’s where I dropped it,” she gasps, the words tumbling out before she can stop them.
And there’s the confession,Fish notes with satisfaction.Criminals always trip themselves up with the details.
The silence stretches between us like a taut wire until Nadine’s shoulders sag in defeat. Just like a soufflé, criminals always collapse under pressure.
“Fine,” she says with bone-deep weariness after carrying a terrible secret for so long. “Yes, I killed her. That woman destroyed thirty years of my life, and she was about to steal my future, too.”
Georgie and Ree step out of the shadows where they’ve apparently been lurking, and Nadine realizes she’s surrounded by amateur detectives and their zombie vampire backup.
“You don’t understand,” Nadine continues, but she’s already edging toward the exit. “She was going to force me into retirement, take credit for everything we built together, and leave me with nothing!”
She makes a break for it, but Fish and Chip leap out of my arms with the agility of furry ninjas, landing squarely in her path.
Citizen’s arrest!Fish declares with authority.Nobody moves!
I’ve got her ankles!Chip adds, wrapping himself around Nadine’s legs with impressive determination, but Nadine presses on, determined to make a break for it.
We all follow her to the next section—a graveyard scene complete with fog machines and mechanical zombies—just as Nadine is about to escape through the emergency exit.
I jump on top of her with all the grace of a flying squirrel, followed immediately by Fish and Chip, who apparently think this is the best game ever invented. Delora throws herself into the mix with surprising enthusiasm, and soon it’s a tangle of bodies, paws, rolling pins, and accusations. Chip gets tangled in the woman’s hair, her braid circling his body like a noose.
And for the record, that marble rolling pin camedangerously close to my skull. Way to almost make it look like another accident happened on the premises, Delora.
“Everybody freeze!” comes a familiar voice that makes my heart do inappropriate things despite the homicidal circumstances.
Jasper and Dexter burst into the room with their weapons drawn, looking like the cavalry arriving just in time to save the day.
Just then, Dilly’s ghost pops out from behind one of the tombstones with mechanical precision.
“BOO!” the hologram shrieks with terrifying timing. “Did I scare you?”
Everyone screams, including the hot detectives, and Dilly’s ghost laughs herself silly while we all try to untangle ourselves from the pile of humans and cats.
Delora sits up with Chip glued to the top of her head, his paws knotted up in her silver hair that now looks like cotton candy that’s been through a hurricane.
“She did it,” I announce, pointing at Nadine while trying to extract Fish from my vampire cape costume. “She confessed to everything.”
Dexter cuffs Nadine with professional efficiency while Jasper hauls her to her feet, both men looking slightly shell-shocked by the chaos they’ve just witnessed.
“I’ll take care of the suspect,” Jasper announces, leading Nadine out of the haunted house and presumably toward a patrol car that doesn’t feature mechanical ghosts and seizure-inducing lighting.
As we all make our way back through the maze toward the exit, Georgie announces that she needs churros to recover from the trauma, and Ree agrees with the enthusiasm that only comes from narrowly escaping a murderer.
They walk off like a couple of zombies, which honestly fits their current aesthetic perfectly.
“Mother,” Dexter says once we’re back in the relatively saneenvironment of the costume party, “what were you doing in there?”
Delora gapes at him as if he’s just questioned her sanity. “What was I doing? I was trying to stop her from getting in the path of danger!”
Dexter frowns at me with intensity as if he’s torn between pride and exasperation.
“I caught a killer, didn’t I?” I point out reasonably.
Technically, we all caught the killer,Fish corrects.It was a team effort.
I provided crucial ankle support,Chip adds proudly.Very important tactical contribution.
