Chapter Eight
Chapter
Eight
“Oh, God.”
I turned at the sound of the familiar voice.
Bodie stood a few feet back from our group, holding a black gym bag and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that hugged his toned body. I was so used to him looking like the picture of health and fitness that it came as a shock to see him looking like he might faint.
Usually, the Mirage’s female population flocked to Bodie whenever he made an appearance, but apparently the bloody croquet mallet had such a grip on their attention that nobody other than me seemed aware of the clearly squeamish, but still hot, bartender.
Even with all the hoopla, I couldn’t help but notice him.
He always drew my gaze and set off happy fizzing in my chest.
I sat next to him on the stairs. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? A murder in the Mirage.”
Bodie groaned and raised his head, his blue eyes radiating distress.
“That’s not the worst of it. Yesterday, when the cops asked me if I knew of any conflicts Freddie had with others, I told them how Mr. Nagy chased Freddie around with his croquet mallet.
I didn’t mean that I thought Mr. Nagy had killed him.
It was just the only thing I could think of when they asked that question. ”
As Bodie’s words sank in, I felt a bit faint too. “You think the police will believe that Mr. Nagy used his own croquet mallet to kill Freddie?”
He turned his troubled eyes on me. “I don’t believe it, but if you were a cop, wouldn’t you suspect him?”
I would.
Sure, Mr. Nagy was in his eighties, but I wouldn’t call him feeble. He was a sweet, grandfatherly man, but the cops wouldn’t know that. No, the police would look at the evidence.
The murder weapon.
Mr. Nagy’s recent altercation with the victim.
I swallowed a burning lump in my throat and tried my best to sound positive.
“The police won’t really suspect a sweet man like Mr. Nagy. Not for long, anyway.” I gave Bodie’s knee what I hoped was a comforting pat. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”
I should never have said those words.
Why was it that I could easily manifest bad outcomes but never good ones?
Maybe I was doing it wrong, despite having watched about a gazillion TikTok videos on manifestation. Or maybe it was the fact that I could never keep the negative thoughts from creeping in and infecting the positive ones with their poison.
The words I’d spoken to Bodie left me with a heavy weight in my chest that compelled me to knock on wood every five or ten minutes as I sat in my apartment, combing through online job boards.
Late in the afternoon, I’d just submitted my résumé and a writing sample to a company looking for someone to write blog posts about car insurance—a soul-draining job was better than no job at this point—when I heard a commotion out in the hallway.
Thankfully, Livy was at a friend’s house for an after-school playdate, so I didn’t have to field any questions from her about why the police had descended on Mr. and Mrs. Nagy’s apartment next door.
I stood in my open doorway, mouth agape as I watched uniformed officers file into my neighbors’ unit. One officer remained in the hall, stationed just outside the door. I crept closer, but the officer blocked my way before I could go more than a few steps.
“Ma’am, please return to your apartment.”
“But what’s going on?” I asked, craning my neck to see around the very tall and very muscular officer.
“Ma’am.” His voice brooked no argument.
I didn’t know if he could really ban me from the hallway—legally speaking, anyway—but I also didn’t want to press my luck. It didn’t really matter, though, because I’d already caught enough of a glimpse through the open door of the Nagys’ apartment to see that the police were searching the place.
I backed away, my legs having suddenly taken on the consistency of jelly.
It’ll be okay, I told myself. They won’t find anything to incriminate Mr. Nagy.
Except, my brain so unhelpfully reminded me, they’ve already got the murder weapon that probably belonged to him.
I returned to my apartment and was about to shut the door when Theo came cruising through it. I jumped back just in time to avoid getting my toes flattened.
“Shut the door,” she commanded.
Her voice carried such authority that I found myself obeying before I even realized that I was being bossed around by a teenager in my own home.
By the time I decided that I wanted to protest her dictatorial attitude, Theo was already wheeling her way across the kitchen, which shared a wall with the Nagys’ apartment, and appeared to be looking for something there.
Her gaze zeroed in on the air vent near the ceiling. She wheeled closer to it with an annoyed frown on her face. “Of course it’s way up high.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Get a chair.”
I planted my hands on my hips, determined not to let her push me around. “Bossy much?”
She leveled a stare at me through her purple-framed glasses. “Don’t you want to know what’s happening next door?”
“I know what’s happening,” I said, feeling a hint of smugness. “The police are searching Mr. and Mrs. Nagy’s apartment.”
“I meant don’t you want to know if they find anything?”
I was about to say that of course the police wouldn’t find anything, but then I remembered how much the universe enjoyed proving me wrong. Besides, the truth was that I was itching to know what was going on in the next unit.
Grabbing the least rickety chair from the four arranged around the kitchen table, I dragged it over to the wall and stationed it beneath the air vent. I climbed onto it, but given the Mirage’s high ceilings, standing on the chair still left me far short of the vent.
“The table,” Theo suggested.
Actually, it was more an order than a suggestion, but I decided to pretend it was the latter.
Making as little noise as possible—I didn’t need the police coming to investigate what we were up to—I dragged the table over to the wall, kicked off my shoes, and climbed first onto the chair and then onto the table, reminding myself to clean it before Livy and I ate dinner that evening.
I leaned in close to the vent, almost pressing my ear against the metal grate that covered it. At first, I couldn’t hear anything other than muffled voices and cupboards opening and closing. Then a man’s voice called out, “Sir! I think I’ve got something!”
Those words lodged a heavy stone of dread in my stomach.
There was a rustling noise, and then another man’s voice. I had to strain to hear his words.
“What is it?”
The first man spoke again. “Looks like gold leaf.”
“Get photos, then bag it.”
A loud bang sent me dropping to the tabletop and then sliding to the floor in a heap, expecting to see a SWAT team bursting through my broken-down door.
Except the door was intact and Theo and I were alone in the apartment.
“What the hell?” I pressed a hand to my heart, looking left and right for the source of the noise.
“It’s just a saucepan,” Theo said, leaning over the side of her wheelchair to pick up the offending item. “You left it sitting on the edge of the counter, and I accidentally knocked it off. Kind of spectacularly, actually.”
Great. I’d lost five years off my lifespan to a falling saucepan.
I took some deliberate deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart.
“What did you hear?” Theo asked, apparently unconcerned by the fact that I’d nearly suffered a heart attack at the tender age of twenty-eight.
I scrambled to my feet, remembering what I’d overheard now that I’d recovered from my near-death experience. “They found gold leaf!”
Still shoeless, I dashed over to the door and burst out into the hallway, just in time to see the police leading a handcuffed Mr. Nagy out of his apartment. His balding head shone with perspiration, and all the color had drained from his face.
Mrs. Nagy lunged out of their apartment with a distraught wail that nearly broke my heart. The blond detective I’d seen earlier caught her before she could throw herself at her husband.
“No!” she cried with tears on her cheeks. “Not my Zoltán! He’s innocent!”
As the uniformed officers led Mr. Nagy away, his wife collapsed into the detective’s arms. He picked her up like she weighed nothing and took her back into the apartment. I tried to follow, but the officer on guard blocked my way.
“But Mrs. Nagy—”
“She’ll get medical attention,” the officer assured me.
Doors opened along the hallway, and curious heads poked out.
Theo had her chair parked in the entrance to my apartment.
She gestured with her head that I should follow her, and then backed up, disappearing inside.
I darted after her, not because I liked being bossed around by a kid, but because I knew that my neighbors would bombard me with questions if I didn’t make a quick getaway.
After dashing into my apartment, I shut the door and leaned against it, my brain too numb to fully process everything.
Theo spun her chair around until she faced me. “Why’d they arrest Mr. Nagy over gold leaf?” Theo asked. “What’s that got to do with the murder?”
“There was some on Freddie’s body,” I explained. “I was there when Agnes found him.”
“I know you were.” The duh was clearly implied. “That’s why I came to see you. You took pictures, right?”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“Because that’s what any competent investigator would do.”
“I’m not an investigator! I’m a…” I trailed off, on the brink of an existential crisis. What was I? A jobless auntie? A hot mess? Yes and yes. But was I anything more than that?
“Next time, take pictures.”
Theo’s words managed to interrupt my rapid descent into panic-laced self-pity.
“Next time?” I echoed the two words with a mixture of confusion and disbelief.
“For now, write down everything you can remember about the scene. Every tiny detail.” She wheeled toward the door as she rattled off those instructions.
“I already gave a witness statement to the police,” I said.
“This isn’t for the police.”
“Then why would I do it?”
Theo swiveled her chair around until she faced me again. “Hello? Do you want to solve this murder or not?”
“Um, the whole detective agency thing is fake, remember?”
“So, you’re okay with Mr. Nagy rotting in jail?” Disapproval hardened her voice and her eyes.
“I didn’t say that!” I protested. “And of course I’m not. He’s the nicest man I know.”
“Exactly.” Theo yanked open the door. “Remember, every little detail.”
With those parting words, she was gone.