Page 18 of Joker in the Pack

Seriously? How could the man think it was normal to have a venomous menagerie in his lounge?

“Haven’t you ever seenArachnophobia?”

Sven’s eyes grew moist. “Those poor spiders. Murdered. All of them.”

Maddie swayed as I pulled her upright. “Is it gone?”

I glanced to the side where Margot was still advancing along the arm of the chair.

“No, but it will be. Run!”

With Maddie still unsteady on her feet, I half dragged her as we stumbled from the house of horrors into the street. Man of my dreams? Nightmares, more like.

“Tell me I just imagined that,” Maddie said.

“If only.”

With our last prospect a bust, we trudged back to the bus stop. Maddie had an early shift the next day, and if her yawn was anything to go by, house-hunting had left her as exhausted as me.

“This isn’t as straightforward as I thought,” Maddie confessed.

“Next time, we need to ask better questions. Like ‘Do you keep any deadly pets?’”

“And ‘Have there been any attempted murders recently?’”

Maddie giggled first, but I wasn’t far behind. We earned several odd glances as we stood laughing by the side of the road, and one woman gave us a dirty look as she led her toddler to the opposite pavement, well out of the way of the two lunatics. I kept laughing anyway. It was either that or sit and rock.

“Shall we take a break tomorrow?” I asked.

Maddie nodded. “Good idea. We can regroup and try again the day after. There’s got to be one habitable flat out there that isn’t filled with weirdos.”

The following afternoon, I swallowed a paracetamol as I updated Longacres’ website. “Make it colourful,” the owner had told me, and the bright flowers were entirely too cheery for my mood.

A knock at the door made me stiffen.

Please, let it be someone from the insurance company and not my downstairs neighbour. He’d already left me a snotty note yesterday, and a visit from him in person was just what I didn’t need. I totally appreciated how much I’d inconvenienced him, but shouting at me wouldn’t get things fixed any quicker.

Deep breaths, Olivia.I cracked open the door and peered through the gap. Phew. Not the man from downstairs, but a stranger, shifting from foot to foot as he looked up at me.

“Olivia Porter?” he asked.

“Are you from the insurance company?”

He looked like an insurance person—brown suit, clip-on tie, the shifty demeanour of a man whose clients hated him.

“Insurance? No, I’m not selling insurance.”

“That’s not what I meant. I had a small problem with a pipe, and… Actually, never mind. What do you want?”

He straightened an inch, meeting my eyes for a second before he looked away again. Nervous. Why was he nervous?

“I was wondering… Do you know Eleanor Rigby?”

CHAPTER 7

“ELEANOR RIGBY? IS this some sort of joke?”

Why on earth had a stranger showed up on my doorstep asking if I knew an old Beatles song?

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