She giggled softly, grabbing a purple brush as I sat down. “So what did this lady smell like that was so bad, Owen?” I casually asked, as he went back to playing with his firetruck.

He paused like he was giving that some thought, and then he said, “Like my grampa’s shirt. My grampa from Arizona. Not the one from Colorado.”

His grampa’s shirt. Did that mean like Old Spice or Stetson, maybe? That was probably popular for a guy his grandfather’s age. That’s not what I’d classify as stinky. Though, maybe to a kid it was smelly.

As Lacy brushed my hair, twisting strands into what she called braids, I didn’t know how to dig any deeper if Owen couldn’t define the smell, and when I asked what she looked like, his description wasn’t really clear. She was old, and that was all he had to say on the subject.

Owen had officially tapped out of the conversation.

I don’t know if it meant anything, anything at all, but maybe this stinky lady had played a part in Owen’s demise.

But then Lacy said something that made me sit up straight. “I think Owen means the lady who has sparkles on her fingers.”

“Sparkles? Do you mean like her fingernail polish?”

Lacy shook her head. “Nuh-uh. She has sparkles right here.” She pointed to the pad of her finger. “I sawed ’em when she didn’t know I was looking.”

A lady with sparkles on her fingertips, who was stinky and might have nothing to do with Owen’s murder.

We were killin’ it.

Chapter

Seven

Operation Find a Clue (JFC, any clue will do)

Wanda looked at me in the rearview mirror of Marty’s SUV. “How is it that a five-year-old can convince you to wear a dozen butterflies in your hair, but we can’t convince you to wear anything but hoodies and work boots?”

“Because neither one of you two nutcases are anywhere near as cute as a five-year-old?”

I couldn’t get those two out of my head. They were sweet kids who faced a fucked-up situation and it pissed me off, but it also made me sad.

Marty plucked at my hair and chuckled. “You’re so fancy,” she cooed at me. “My one true wish is that you could see it. The new swear words we’d learn would be off the charts.”

I didn’t have to see it to feel it. I had more clips in my hair than a teenager had pimples. They were hanging in my face, swinging by my ears. Oh, and there was ribbon threaded through this mess in my least favorite color—yellow. I’m pretty sure I looked like My Little Pony had exploded all over my head.

But I’d promised Lacy I wouldn’t take it out until I washed my hair. I never break a promise—especially to a kid.

“I know you hate the color yellow, but I still say it’s in your color wheel.” Marty tugged the length of my hair, still wrapped up in a weird sort of ponytail on the side of my head.

I swatted at her intrusive hands. “Forget my damn hair and focus on what I’m telling you about the sparkles Lacy said she saw. That sounds fishy…maybe even paranormal…”

I’d given that some thought as we prepared to scour Brenda’s place for anything that might help us figure out if she was being framed. From everything she’d told us so far, it didn’t seem like she had any friends, let alone enemies who hated her enough to frame her for murder.

But if the lady who was stinky was a person of interest, and nothing the kids had said really led me to believe she was, it was still fucked up the way Lacy explained her fingertips. It felt like it meant something.

Paranormals walk among us. We’re all over—mingling with humans, living our lives right beside them while they’re completely unaware. Maybe it was just a paranormal who lived in the apartment building…or maybe it wasn’t…

“Sparklesonher fingertips, you say?” Marty asked as we pulled up a few streets away from Brenda’s house. “What in all of heaven’s name does that mean? Did she say what the lady looked like?”

I pushed a strand of my bedazzled-to-death hair out of my face. “Neither one of them had a whole lot to say about what she looked like. Owen said they saw her sometimes when they were going to their dad’s apartment. So she lives in the apartment building or visits someone there—they didn’t know for sure. She’s old was the best I got out of ’em. No name, and Owen Sr. told them to mind their business and not talk to her. Maybe she sent up parental signals—you know, stranger danger?”

Marty clucked her tongue. “The bit about his grampa from Arizona, too. That stuck with me. Astrid said her parents werecoming from Arizona to help. Maybe we could pop back over and give him a sniff?”

Wanda turned the car off, planting her hands on the steering wheel. “Well, I don’t know about a smelly grampa, but sparkles could definitely mean someone paranormal, which leans toward Brenda being framed, but why? Who’d want to frame her?”

“That’s definitely the million-dollar question. We also need to question this dude, Derek…did you get his last name and information?”