Page 13 of The Accidental Detectives

Bertrand frowned, rocking back and forth on his feet. “Who?”

“Never mind. Just beat it.” I pointed to the other end of the room.

He sighed his discontent, long and forlorn, but he went to the farthest corner of our office and plunked himself down in one of the puffy chairs.

“Where’s Brenda?” I hadn’t seen her since we’d been back from our Bobbie-Sue escapade.

Marty hitched her jaw toward the spiral stairs leading to the first floor of my castle. “She’s in the kitchen charming the pants off Arch. She really is delightful.”

I chuckled, dropping my phone on my desk. “Arch is fine, but my Tater Tot better keep his pants on. He knows I’m the only girl for him.”

“Tater Tot is terrified of you. If you’re his girl, it’s only by force,” Wanda teased. “Tottington is, as we speak, getting her pets.”

“You let him goalone?” I crowed. “What if he gets caught? The cops are probably crawling all over her place, waiting for her to come home. They want to talk to her because they have no other leads.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wanda scoffed. “I sent Darnell with him. He’ll make sure no harm comes to your side piece. Plus, he’s going to take a peek around her place and see if there’s anything that can help us solve this.”

Darnell would indeed keep my Tater Tot safe. He’s my big teddy bear of a demon who loves animals as much as I do. According to Brenda, she’d been away from home, in hiding, for two days. I couldn’t stand the idea that her dogs and her iguana, Doug, hadn’t had anyone to look out for ’em.

I didn’t know what having an iguana around was gonna be like with my dog Waffles, but I love all animals. We’d figure it out.

Wanda tapped her pen on her desk. “So, let’s get down to business. Can you think, now that all that junk’s off your face?”

I wiggled my feet, encased in my bunny head slippers with the floppy ears. “Much better. So what did you torture out of Sonja? Did you trash her bank account with a bunch of useless moisturizing undereye cream?”

Marty tsked, giving me a sour expression. “Hush. We didn’t torture her. We made her over and she looked beautiful. We also gifted her the makeup because she gave us so much help. So there, smarty. No torture required.”

Wanda blew at the hair in her face. “Yikes on a bike, that woman has the gift of gab. Once she got going, we couldn’t stop her. It was exhausting but worth it.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Because?”

“Because she’s got eyes and ears on every single person in that apartment building, and seeing as Owen only lives a couple doors down, she knew an awful lot about him and his children and the troubles in his marriage.”

“She also knew an awful lot about that horrible Coraline Brown,” Marty said on a mock scowl. “If I heard one more time about what a cheap jezebel she is, a new man in and out ofher apartment every other day, I was going to scream. But in the midst of her hate-fest for Coraline Brown, she yapped about Owen. She actually heard him arguing with someone on the phone the day before he was killed.”

“Does she know who he argued with?”

Marty’s pretty face fell, a frown forming on her forehead. “That’s part of our problem.”

Wanda nodded, gnawing on her lower lip as she looked at her notes. “She thinks it was his wife, because he called the other person on the line ‘babe’…but he also said Brenda’s name, Nina. This phone call was a day before Owen was killed. Granted, Sonja didn’t hear the whole conversation, so who knows what it might mean in context, but he said, and I quote, ‘I don’t know who the hell Brenda Bronkowski is!’”

Oh, hell. I sat up straight, shoving my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “So he knew about Brenda? I guess he found out about the catfish?”

Marty sucked in her cheeks. “She also heard him arguing with his wife one day in the parking lot, when she was dropping off their children for a visit. Sonja says he was so angry, his face looked like a ripe tomato, and they were arguing about him stepping out on their marriage once before.”

“Something else to consider. He was asoftware engineer. He could very well have discovered the fake profile and the messages with Brenda. Maybe he hacked into it? But Sonja didn’t have any idea how his wife found out about his alleged cheating because she, of course, didn’t want to pry.” Wanda rolled her eyes at her words. “Maybe Owen’s wife meant someone else entirely. He could have a history of cheating.”

Crap. “We need to talk to this dude’s wife. She should definitely be considered a suspect. I found her Facebook page. Her name’s Astrid.”

“Yes! She should definitely be considered a suspect.” Marty hopped up from her chair and clapped her hands with glee, making her way to a whiteboard that had appeared almost out of nowhere. “Speaking of suspects…”

“Is that what I think it is, Blondie?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“If you mean a murder board…” She flipped it over with a wide grin. “Uh-huh! Surprise!”

Headshots of Brenda and Owen were on the board, with a blank black square labeled “Owen’s wife”. There were red strings, and question marks, numbers, and a whole bunch of arrows that made my head hurt.

I groaned. I don’t know what it is about these two and the opportunity to make everything a GD production, but if it involved sticky notes and colored Sharpies, they were all over it like flies on strawberry pie.

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