“Or donations for the funeral. I can’t read it from here, but there’s definitely a photo of Nick and some text underneath.”
“Anything suspicious?”
“If you mean any sign of the mob or of the police, then no. It’s business as usual, but everyone looks upset. Sal looks like he’s aged ten years over the weekend.”
Not surprising, if Jacquie had been right about his relationship with Nick. Then again, it could be guilt as easily as grief.
“Keep watching,” I told him. “Let me know if anything changes.”
“Will do. What about you?”
“I’m outside Nick’s place, and there’s nowhere to park, so I’m going to have to think of something else. But I stopped by Kenny’s, and there was no sign of red paint outside his place.”
“Let me know if you want to trade places.”
“So you can drive around with nothing to do instead? Just stay where you are, Zach. You’ve got a job. Stick with it.”
We hung up, and I sat there for a moment, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.
Coco Miller. Sal Gomorra. Jacquie Demetros. And Kenny.
Those were the suspects, in addition to the mob, and I was leaving Izzy Spataro and Gio Abruzzi to Mendoza and Megan. I wasn’t getting paid enough to tackle them.
Jacquie was at the bottom of the list due to having hired us.
Zachary had Sal and the Body Shop covered. Mrs. Miller’s house was a bust for now—I’d have to come back after dark if I wanted to watch it properly. Kenny wasn’t home, and it would do me no good to sit and watch his empty apartment. And if Kenny was in East Nashville with Daniel, working on the bar, staring at those papered-over windows wouldn’t do me any good, either. But Sal’s house...
Sal was at the Body Shop. Which meant his house in Pegram was empty.
I thought about the five-car garage, the No Trespassing sign with its shotgun silhouette, the long gravel driveway.
Going there was a terrible idea. Trespassing on a potential murder suspect’s property, especially when he had a sign (with a picture of a gun) specifically warning people not to trespass. Mendoza would kill me if he found out.
Then again, Mendoza didn’t have to know.
I was just putting the Lexus back in gear when a sharp rap on the window made me jump.
Mrs. Miller stood beside my car, bent at the waist to peer in at me, one hand raised to knock again.
I rolled down the window. “Hello again, Mrs. Miller.”
“I thought that was you, dear.” Her voice was friendly, but her eyes were sharp. “Sitting out here all by yourself. Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee? It’s the least I can do after you found poor Nick.”
My first instinct was to decline. It wouldn’t be the first time an elderly woman had tried to poison me, nor the second or third, really.
But then again, this was an opportunity to get a look inside the other half of the duplex. Maybe I could determine whether she really had had a reason to want to get rid of Nick, or at least we could talk about who Mrs. Miller suspected. After five years, she ought to have a pretty good idea about Nick’s private life.
“That’s very kind of you,” I said. “I’d love to.”
Mrs. Miller beamed and stepped back so I could open the door.
Chapter Sixteen
The inside of Mrs. Miller’s duplex was exactly what you’d expect, and worse than I could have imagined. There were cats everywhere. On the sofa, on the chairs, on top of the bookshelf, curled up in a basket by the door. I had definitely underestimated when I mentioned the number six; there were probably twice that, and that was if I saw them all. And the faint smell of eau de chat that I had noticed in Nick’s place on Saturday morning was many times magnified in here. My head started spinning as soon as I walked through the door and had it shut behind me.
“Don’t mind the mess,” Mrs. Miller told me, shooing a gray tabby off the sofa so I could sit down. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
The duplex had the same layout as Nick’s—living room in front, kitchen in the middle, bedroom in back. But where Nick’s had been sparse and masculine, Mrs. Miller’s was cluttered with the accumulation of decades. Doilies on every surface, porcelain figurines on the mantel, framed photographs covering one entire wall.
