“Anyway,” Wysdom waved into the air. “I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help you with your investigation before we headed out of town.”
I paused to sip my coffee, looking at her over the rim. “Maybe that’s a good idea. I could use a fresh set of ears.”
Wysdom tugged on her earlobes. “Cleaned and ready to listen!Oprah knowsyou’ve listened to me yammer on plenty of times when we were searching for Luke.”
I nodded. “Something is bugging me about the case that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s like I left the door unlocked. Or didn’t turn off the iron or something. I can’t quite place it. It’s driving me crazy.”
Wysdom nodded. “I know all about that. It means your subconscious noticed something your consciousness ignored. And it’s trying to tell you. The best way to find the hidden clue is to start from the beginning. Tell me all about the investigation.”
She was right. It’s Investigating 101, but my brain had been split between solving Octavio’s murder and imagining Flint naked. Possibly oiled up.
Flint. Not Octavio. I never wanted to see my ex-husband oiled up. Even when he was alive.
“Someone stabbed Octavio with scissors in the entryway of his house,” I began relaying the clues. “There were no signs of forced entry into the house, so we believe it was someone he knew.”
“Was the door opened or closed when the police got there?” Wysdom tilted her head.
“Closed.”
“Any footprints through the blood? Any voids on the walls?”
“Voids?”
Wysdom stood up, balled her hand into a fist, then faced me, mimicking a stabbing. “When someone stabs you, especially if it’s something short like scissors, they’re going to be right in the blood spray.”
She motioned to her body, then pointed to the wall behind her. “The blood splatter creates a void, like a negative, where the person was standing.”
My heart started racing as I pulled up the crime scene photos to show her. “Oooh, yes. You’re right!”
I pointed to the wall. There was an almost perfect outline of a person. “Why didn’t we see this the first time?”
Wysdom shrugged. “You’re not detectives? Which begs the question, why didn’t the actual detectives find this?”
I shrugged and frowned. “That is a good question. I think they’re newbies. They didn’t wait for me or Echo to be face-to-face with them to tell them the bad news about the murder.”
“Fucking rookies,” Wysdom swore. “Okay, then all we have to do is measure the void, and you’ll have an approximate height for your… oh shit. We can’t do that.”
“Because the house burned down,” I finished. “Yeah. But it doesn’t matter because someone cleaned up the blood splatter. Flint and I visited the house a few days before the fire. No remaining signs of the crime scene.”
Wysdom wiggled her eyebrows and hips. “Brown chicken brown cow!”
“What the hell?”
“It’s what you say when you’re imitating cheesy porn music,” she winked. When I shook my head, she frowned. “Dang, woman. Flint needs to open your eyes to a little wider variety of Sexy Time!”
I held up my hand as my heart clenched. “Don’t. He’s not interested. Which is fine by me because I don’t have time for anything else in my hot mess of a life right now.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I tried to push away your brother before we became Facebook official,” Wysdom waggled her eyebrows. “Flint has it for you - bad.”
“You haven’t seen him in a few days. Maybe he changed his mind.”
Wysdom snickered. “Doubt it. That man is like a heat-seeking missile when you’re in the room. Nothing else matters but getting right next to yourreceiving dock.”
I groaned.
“He wants tocouple with your International Space Station!”
“Seriously, stop.”
