The manager grunted. “You two look familiar. So does the dust bunny.” He switched his attention to Alice. “You’re the Deranged Bride, aren’t you? The one who just got married again.”
Alice cleared her throat. “I’ve been told I look a little like her. But actually—”
The manager cut her off with another grunt. “No two dust bunnies wearing dark glasses and a necklace in this town.”
Alice looked at Sebastian. Owen had been right, she decided. So much for her own attempt at a cover story. Sebastian was unmistakable.
The manager gave Owen an appraising look. “So you’re the new husband, huh? Got to hand it to you, you’ve got more guts than me. Marriage is scary enough, even if the wife doesn’t have a track record like yours.”
“Usually I’m risk-averse,” Owen said. He took some more cash out of his wallet. “But I decided I needed to move out of my comfort zone.”
“Good luck with that.” The manager snatched the money out of Owen’s hand. “You’re here now, so you might as well take a look. Come on inside. I’ll get the key to Voyle’s apartment.”
The manager retreated into the shadows of the hallway. Alice glared at Owen.
“Excuse me,” she said, remembering—barely—to keep her voice low. “Marriage to me was a way to move out of your comfort zone?”
“On an investigation you sometimes have to improvise.” Owen motioned for her to enter the hallway. “It’s not like your pied-à-terre story was working.”
She glanced at Sebastian in his sunglasses and necklace. “No, I guess not.”
Abandoning the argument, she walked into the dingy hallway. The manager handed her a key.
“Number three,” he said. “Upstairs and to your left. Be sure to turn in the key when you leave.”
“Thanks,” she said.
She led the way up the stairs to the second floor. Owen—Sebastian still on his shoulder—followed her down a hall lined with a carpet that was so thin the floorboards were visible in several places.
She got the door to number three open. A musty smell tinged with the unmistakable odor of aging kitchen garbage wafted out of the small studio apartment. She wrinkled her nose.
Sebastian sniffed experimentally but he did not seem to care about the smell. He vaulted down to the floor and began to explore.
Alice glanced at Owen. “Do you have to do this sort of thing a lot in your line of work?”
He eased past her and entered the room. “By the time I’m called in, the smell is usually a lot worse and the garbage is the least of the problems.” He paused, taking in the space. “Looks like someone else got here first.”
Alice moved across the threshold and closed the door. “I see what you mean.”
It was clear the studio had been searched—cupboard doors and drawers in the kitchenette stood open. So did the small closet. The lumpy cushions on the couch had been gutted.
“I doubt if we’ll find anything useful,” Owen said. “But you never know.”
She watched him move methodically around the sparsely furnished room, thinking about the kinds of scenes he must have encountered in the course of hunting the monsters. Her imagination painted terrible images.
“Why do you do it?” she asked.
“The crime scene consulting?” He glanced into an open drawer in the kitchen. “You know how it is. If you’ve got a talent for something, it’s hard to ignore it. There’s a need to use it.”
“You could have stuck with writing papers and conducting seminars on your inheritance theories.”
“Mostly that’s what I do,” Owen said. “But I can’t always limit my work to the theoretical stuff.”
She understood. “As long as the monsters are not theoretical, you are called to do the real-world work, too.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. The flash of energy that appeared in his eyes told her she had surprised him. The heat was quickly followed by something akin to relief, as if she had given him the response he had needed to hear. He turned back to his search of the cupboards.
“It’s the same for you, isn’t it?” he said. “You need to do the dream therapy.”
