Chapter 19
19
10:49 a.m. Saturday, November 2
R iley had done her best to clear the decks. She’d walked Burt, started a load of laundry, and made sure that everyone else in the house was occupied and entertained. The power tools and other contraband were locked in the kitchen pantry. And everyone was under strict instructions not to bother her or let any strangers through the front door unless it was a contractor who could fix the roof next door.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off with the whole Griffin thing, so she was going to close her eyes and concentrate until she figured out what it was…or until she fell asleep. The late-night movie watching had taken its toll, and she was already planning a nap.
With Burt snoring peacefully in his dog bed and a relaxing playlist in her ears, she settled on the cushion on her office floor and closed her eyes.
Her brain was a blur of thoughts, images, and to-do lists. Life was chaotic enough under normal circumstances, but throw in an ex-husband that wouldn’t go away, a dead body, and five new roommates, and Riley felt like she was on an out-of-control merry-go-round.
She needed to go to the grocery store, or they were going to end up ordering out again. Or worse, Lily and Fred would use every dish in the kitchen on some other complex dish that had a fifty-fifty chance of going horribly wrong.
That reminded her, she needed to find a reasonably priced new set of baking sheets since Lily’s burnt-on cookie goop wasn’t coming off theirs.
Ugh. Burt needed his toenails trimmed. But he was such a baby about it. Maybe she could send him to one of those doggy day spas and make it someone else’s problem? But if Griffin didn’t pay them like she was almost certain he wouldn’t, there would be no cash for doggy day spas and bakeware.
Ugh. She needed a nap. And maybe a snack. But her roommates had decimated the snack population in the house, which brought her full circle to her grocery list.
Oh my God. Focus , she told herself.
She needed to concentrate on the thing that made her sit down in the first place: Griffin Gentry.
An involuntary shudder rolled up her spine, but Riley persisted. She brought an image of him to her mind’s eye. The expensive suit, the shellacked hair, the lifts in his shoes. She frowned as her mental image of Griffin seemed to stretch and grow taller.
The front door burst open. Even through noise-canceling headphones and her rain flute playlist, she would know Nick’s agitated stomp anywhere.
“How did it go?” Riley asked him. She cracked open one eye, then jolted. “Ah!”
Mrs. Penny was sitting in front of her, trying to fold her legs into a semblance of crisscross applesauce.
“Where did you come from? I thought you were napping!” Riley said.
“Naps are for old people. Did ya get the money?” Mrs. Penny demanded as Nick stormed into the room.
“No. Where’s my TV, Penny?”
“Back ordered. Where’s my money?”
“ Our money is in the tiny, freaky doll hands of that cheapskate weasel Gentry.” Nick flopped down on the floor and put his head in Riley’s lap.
“Don’t get your boxers in a twist. I’ve got a plan—” Mrs. Penny began, but Nick steamrolled on.
“He’s hiding from me so he doesn’t have to pay up. And when I reminded his dingbat girlfriend what will happen if he doesn’t cough up the cash, Detective By the Book overheard and spent an hour questioning me.”
“Why?” Riley asked.
“Because apparently Lyle Larstein didn’t electrocute himself. He got his ass murdered.”
“The stiff in the shrubs was murdered?” Mrs. Penny asked.
Nick scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. Only Weber won’t say what evidence they have. But Jonesy was there, and all I could get out of her without getting thrown behind bars was that they got something while reviewing Larstein’s home security footage.”
Riley stroked a hand through his short hair. “You’re not an actual suspect, are you?”
“Of course not. Weber was just being a dick about me being a dick.”
“You know, you two might get more accomplished if you stopped antagonizing each other and worked together,” she pointed out.
“I would rather gargle dish soap and eat those leftovers your mom sent home with us.”
“So that’s a no then?”
“Weber’s probably going to show up here later to question both of you since you were on the scene,” he said.
Mrs. Penny rubbed her hands together. “It’s been a while since I got to outfox the five-oh.”
“Yeah, well, it gets worse. We still have to solve this case if we want a snowball’s chance in Costa Rica of getting paid. If Gentry was the intended victim and he ends up dead, his corpse sure as hell won’t be shelling out any cash.”
“To the whiteboard!” Mrs. Penny said, pointing a finger in the air.
Nick got to his feet and pulled Riley up.
Mrs. Penny scrambled her legs around on the floor and grunted, reaching for her cane.
“Need a hand?” Riley asked.
It took her, Nick, and two farts to get the eighty-year-old on her feet.
Mrs. Penny brushed them off and jogged out of the room, waving her cane. “We’ve got a Code Cold Burrito, people!” she yelled.
“Brian, I need you to get into Larstein’s security system and see if you can pull up whatever footage the cops got their hands on,” Nick said, pointing a stick of beef jerky at the whiteboard that was covered in photos and his spidery scrawl.
An all-hands-on-deck meeting called for snacks, according to Mrs. Penny.
“On it. I’ll park the van out front and see if I can slip through the Wi-Fi,” Brian said before shoveling a handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth.
“Is it really that easy?” Riley asked.
“Sure. As long as this guy never changed the Wi-Fi password from the ISP and he’s broadcasting his SSID with no encryption,” Brian said.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. That’s what I was going to say,” Mrs. Penny said, squinting at her iPad through bifocals thicker than encyclopedias.
“Sure you were,” Nick said before continuing. “I also need a background check on this Henry personal assistant guy. He was on scene but out of the room when Larstein got dead. He’s got access to Gentry’s house, and he hates working for the miniature pain in the ass.”
Brian gave a thumbs-up.
Nick slapped the beef stick to the next name and photo on the list. “Gabe, I need surveillance on Chupacabra Jones. Again, she’s got access to the house and seems to genuinely like both Gentry and Goodshine, which makes her suspicious. Josie, you’re on Claudia Mendoza. I want to know if she even breathes in Gentry’s direction.”
Josie was eating cereal doused with chocolate milk out of a glass mixing bowl. “You got it, boss,” she said with an enthusiastic crunch.
Nick circled a long list of names with the jerky. “The rest of you will divvy up these suspects and take turns following them. You will immediately report any and all suspicious activity as it relates to this case. Do not be suspicious. Do not get caught. If you do get caught, do not admit that you were following anyone. Do not utter my name. Do not tell the nice police officer or building security that you’re working for a PI or that you are a PI.”
He looked pointedly at Mrs. Penny, who was too busy examining the screen of her tablet to notice.
“What’s my assignment?” Riley asked.
“I’m glad you asked, Thorn. Since your readings seem to get more accurate the closer you are to someone, you’re going to be getting up close and personal with our top suspects.”
Riley perked up. Usually Nick was too protective to let her get too involved in the investigations. Now, not only was he embracing the whole my-girlfriend-is-a-psychic thing, he was giving her an honest-to-goodness, real-deal, I-respect-your-value-to-this-business assignment.
“I will, of course, be going with you everywhere,” he added.
Whatever. It still felt like a win.
“Okay,” she agreed, trying not to sound too excited.
“Now, if I can get that little tangerine turd to call me back, we’ll also be stepping up our personal security on Gentry. One of us needs to be with him at all times. And by ‘us,’ I mean me, Josie, or Gabe.”
Gabe tipped his head regally. “I am honored my sarcastic self-defense demonstration has convinced you of my prowess.”
“Uh, what sarcastic self-defense demonstration?” Riley asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nick said.
“I hurled your boyfriend to the kitchen floor for my own amusement,” Gabe explained.
“Did you do it shirtless?” Lily wondered.
“We were fully clothed, and I was minding my own business. He took advantage of me,” Nick said.
The doorbell rang, and Riley excused herself, confident that it would take at least five or ten minutes to get Lily back on track and forget about shirtless men.
She opened the door, then stifled a sigh when she spotted yet another complication. Weber stood on the welcome mat, hands on hips, badge and Glock on display. He looked like a man who wasn’t having a very good day.
“Riley.”
“Kellen. Tough day?”
“I wasted an hour of my life interrogating your boyfriend because he can’t share his toys.”
“Did you come to take another crack at him? Because I don’t think it’ll go any better than the first round,” she warned.
“I’m here to follow up with you and your purple-haired anarchist roommate. And you two had better be more forthcoming than Nicky, or else I’m going to get pissed off enough to haul someone downtown.”
Riley had always felt that she wouldn’t fare well in jail. Mrs. Penny on the other hand would probably end up running a profitable, illegal goods–based business behind bars.
“You know, now isn’t a great time,” she hedged.
“It’s never a great time to get murdered, but that’s exactly what happened to Lyle Larstein, and if you and your friend don’t give me ten minutes of your time here, I’ll drag both of you into an interrogation room.”
Interrogation rooms were small, and Mrs. Penny was a gassy woman.
“Fine. Come in, Detective Weber . You can wait in the kitchen while I get Mrs. Penny ,” she said in a near shout, hoping someone in Nick’s office would hear the warning.
“Very casual, Riley,” Weber said dryly. “I think I’ll come with you to get your friend.”
Freaking great.
Riley made a production of stomping her way slowly toward Nick’s office. “Can I get you anything to drink, Detective Weber ?” she shouted.
Behind her, he muttered something that sounded a lot like “I hate my job.”
Riley entered the room and found everyone still staring raptly at Nick and his whiteboard. Only instead of being covered with suspect names and photos, it was a mathematical equation with arrows and complex shapes.
“And that’s how quantum physics works,” Nick said, capping his marker.
“Ahhh,” the roommates said in unison, nodding their heads.
“Oh look, it’s my favorite ex-partner and current pain in my ass, Detective Weber,” Nick said, acknowledging their guest.
“That was sarcasm. I am laughing,” Gabe said with enthusiasm.
“Mrs. Penny,” Riley said.
“Present!” the woman barked.
“Detective Weber would like to have a word with us.”
Mrs. Penny heaved herself off the couch and straightened to her full five feet, two inches. “Lawyer.”
“You’re not under arrest. Yet,” Weber added.
“ Lawyer ,” she repeated with unnecessary enunciation. “Me and my pal Riley here won’t talk without a lawyer present. Fortunately for you, mine is already on his way.”
“He is?” Weber, Riley, and Nick all said together.
“Yeah, so you can either shut your trap and have a cup of coffee or cuff me, copper,” Mrs. Penny said.
“Honestly, it’s probably just easier if you go for the coffee,” Riley said out of the corner of her mouth.
“Fine. Whatever,” Weber said wearily.
Riley led him into the kitchen and programmed a cup of coffee in a Jasmine Patel Attorney at Law mug. “Still hungover?” she asked, sliding the mug in front of him.
“It’s like I got six cases of the flu at the same time. Everything still hurts, and I don’t remember what normal feels like,” he complained.
She was just beginning to feel sorry for him when Mrs. Penny strutted through the swinging door with a young man in an ill-fitting suit and a dinosaur tie. On closer inspection, he wasn’t just young. He was a teenager.
Nick brought up the rear, looking smug.
“I don’t get paid nearly enough for this,” Weber muttered into his coffee.
“Meet my attorney, Billy,” Mrs. Penny said. “Billy, meet the five-oh trying to trample my civil rights.”
“Detective Weber, is it?” Billy asked, holding out a hand that was nearly covered by the sleeve of his suit jacket.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Weber asked. “You’re twelve.”
“Actually, I’m seventeen. I just have a young face,” Billy said.
“He’s one of them there genius prodigy kids. Graduated high school at nine. College at eleven. And law school at fifteen,” Mrs. Penny said proudly.
“I took a gap year and went to med school for a little while,” Billy said humbly.
“And he’s about to lawyer your ass,” Mrs. Penny said gleefully.
Weber looked at Nick, who shrugged and grinned. “I’m just here to make a sandwich.”
“Fine. Whatever. Why should any of you care about a murder?”
“Kind of hard to care when the victim spent his life terrorizing others,” Nick pointed out. “But again, I’m just here to make a sandwich.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” Weber said. “Everybody sit down.”
“So to clarify, you didn’t see or hear anything besides The Price Is Right ?” Weber repeated, sounding as if he’d be willing to give up his pension if someone told him he could just go home.
Mrs. Penny had just gone on an eight-minute tangent about the price of toaster ovens. Nick had eaten his sandwich and was now noisily crunching his way through one of the bags of chips that had survived the happy hour snack massacre. Burt sat at his feet, patiently waiting for the first casualty of gravity.
“It’s kinda hard to hear someone get murdered in the backyard when that Drew Carey is such a hottie,” Mrs. Penny said.
“My client is not saying she ignored a crime in progress. She is saying she had no knowledge of the crime being committed,” Billy interjected.
“Your client is giving me a migraine. Why the runaround, Mrs. Penny? Are you protecting someone? You recently became a partner in Santiago Investigations, which I can only assume makes you privy to case information,” Weber said.
“I’m more than privy, bucko!” Mrs. Penny said, pounding the kitchen table with her fist. “I run this place. I have my hands in every investigation?—”
“What Great-Aunt Jocelyn means is she is only a financial backer for this business endeavor. She is a retired eighty-year-old woman who doesn’t have the time or the inclination to involve herself in private investigations,” Billy said.
“Your name is Jocelyn?” Nick asked.
“Didn’t you know that?” Riley asked him.
He shrugged. “I just assumed she was hiding her first name from everyone like you do with your middle name. Wait a second. Is there a Mr. Penny somewhere out there?”
It was Weber’s turn to hit the table. “Isn’t it true that Nick Santiago and Riley Thorn visited the victim the day before he was murdered?”
It took two tries, but Mrs. Penny came halfway out of her seat to lean menacingly over the table. “You can’t handle the truth!”
Burt let out a concerned woof .
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, I have too much on my plate to deal with this,” Riley said. “Yes, Nick and I knocked on the victim’s door the day before his murder. Which, if you have access to Larstein’s security footage, you already know. We were knocking on doors asking neighbors if they saw or heard anything related to the shot fired at Griffin Gentry.”
“Yeah. Remember the guy the Harrisburg PD sent packing, telling him it was all just harmless pranks?” Nick interjected.
“Don’t start with me, Nicky.”
“Don’t continue with me, Weber.”
Billy was starting to look nervous.
“Okay, boys. Let’s keep it civil. You’re scaring the prodigy,” Riley cut in.
“You withheld information relating to an investigation,” Weber said.
“Yeah, well, back at you, pal,” Nick said. “You think I want to be working for Griffin Fucking Gentry? Fuck no. You have information that could help me protect this asshole and get me paid, but noooooo. You’ve got the law shoved so far up your a?—”
Riley’s phone buzzed on the table with an incoming call.
“It’s Griffin,” she said.
Nick rounded the island as Riley answered the call. “Hello?”
“Riley?” Griffin sounded far away and scared.
“Gimme the phone,” Nick said.
“What’s wrong, Griffin? Where are you?” Riley asked.
Nick reached for the phone, but Weber batted him away.
“I’m in my car. I just left…uh…an important meeting, and they’re chasing me.”
“Who’s chasing you?” Riley asked. She heard the squeal of tires through the phone. Nick lunged again, but Weber grappled him to the table.
With a roll of her eyes, she hit the speaker button.
“It’s one of those really small cars that the airport makes you rent when they say they’re out of SUVs.”
“Listen here, you little weasel. Where’s my money?” Nick barked as he planted his hand against Weber’s face and pushed.
“How do you know they’re chasing you?” Riley asked.
“A very large man leaned out of the passenger window and shot off my side mirror!”
“Are you sure you didn’t just hit something? You’re not a very good driver,” Riley said.
“Oooh! Wrestling! I’ll make some popcorn,” Lily chirped from the kitchen door.
There was another noise on the line that sounded a lot like gunfire to Riley’s untrained ear. She couldn’t concentrate on the call or the images she felt bubbling to the surface of her mind with Nick and Weber wrestling on the table like children.
She picked up her water glass and dumped it on them.
“Whoa,” the lawyer said.
Sputtering, Nick and Weber broke apart and frowned at her.
“You are adults. Act like it! Griffin, where are you?” she snapped.
“I’m heading down…street.”
“You’re cutting out. I didn’t catch that. Are you near a police station?”
“…front…house.”
A vision finally surfaced. Griffin speeding into their driveway with the bad guys on his heels.
“Uh-oh,” Riley said.
“What?” Weber demanded.
“He’s coming here.”
Nick snatched the phone from her. “If you bring your shit to my house after refusing to pay up, you’ll have more to worry about than a shooter in a smart car. Hello? Hello?”
But the call had already dropped.