Page 29 of The Accidental Detectives

She popped open her iPad and held it up, a picture of the whiteboard appearing. “Like this!” Pointing to a sticky note that read “possible murder weapon,” she said, “Now, here’s what we have so far. The electrical cord the police found at Brenda’s house. We don’t have confirmation that it’s the murder weapon yet, but why else would there be a cord hidden in her house, that Darnell heard the police say belonged to the lamp, if it wasn’t?”

Wanda nodded, tapping her gloved hands on the steering wheel. “Then there’s the fingernail Nina found. I haven’t heard back from Mara about DNA yet, but we can’t find any other explanation for it being at Owen’s. If they couldn’t get DNA from it, we’re all the better, but along with the cord, if they did find a nail, and she’s got a zillion pictures of herself on her human Facebook page with those dang things on her fingers, it’ll help prove their case against her, I’d guess.”

Jamming my hands into my hoodie, I nodded. “But we think it was planted there, just like the cord at Brenda’s. Not that it’ll matter if we can’t find out if she’s being framed by someone. But framed is still the working theory, right?”

“Yep. Then we have the doorbell video of her leaving Owen’s apartment right around the time of his death. I mean, obviously she says it wasn’t her, but she doesn’t have an alibi for the night he was killed. So who was it if it wasn’t her?”

“That video…” I murmured. “I know that shit kinda damns her, but I still don’t believe it was Brenda. It sits wrong with me.”

“It sits wrong with all of us, Nina,” Wanda reminded me.

“Then there’s the picture of Winston, Brenda’s long-lost love.” Marty turned and looked at me from the passenger seat. “Did you have any success finding anything on this guy?”

“Not a fucking thing,” I replied. “But I did find that ball Brenda was talking about. Someone documented it, and it did happen, though, they don’t say it was vampires who instigated the carnage. Over a hundred and fifty people were wiped out, including her brother and his wife. No lies detected there. But I was hoping to find somethin’ on this dude Winston so maybe we could at least tell Brenda what happened to him, so she finds some peace—closure. But I can’t find a damn thing.”

Marty tapped the iPad, sliding her fingers over the screen. “So a no-go on Winston. But he’s the least of our problems. If we’re to believe Brenda, she knew nothing about the photoanyway. What we need to worry about is, who put his picture under the mantel and what this witch magic is about.”

“We can’t just go around asking people in the apartment complex if they’ve seen a fucking witch, Marty, but what else explains the sparkles Lacy talked about and the glow around that picture? Maybe whoever this person is put a spell on the picture?”

“Put a spell on it,” Wanda murmured softly. “On a picture of Brenda’s lover…”

That made me sit up straight and grip the seat under me. “Remember we talked about grudges? Maybe this is a grudge? And it has to do with Winston? But Brenda didn’t mention anything…”

“Well, she forgot to mention Owen looked like the guy she was once bananapants over, too, but there we were, in her house with the furniture barreling down on us like an NFL team. We need to talk to Robbie and see if she can help. I texted her to see if she could add anything to this sparkly picture phenomenon, but I haven’t heard back yet,” Wanda said.

I nodded. “But if Brenda didn’t know about any grudge, she couldn’t tell us about it. I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt here.”

“I’ll text Arch and have him ask her if there was ever any jealous rivalry over the stable boy, how’s that?” Marty offered.

Wanda pulled into the apartment complex and began to drive around, looking for a parking spot. We pulled in under a carport just beneath Owen’s section of the apartments.

“So what’s the plan? Are we just gonna skulk around with our ears to fucking doors, or are we knockin’ on ’em again?”

Wanda’s finger whipped up as she scrolled her phone. “Hold that thought. I just got a text from Arch with a link to a news report. Derek, according to a source at the police department,wasn’t even in Long Island when Owen was killed. He was in the Bahamas…”

Wanda pressed play on her phone so we could listen to the news, my stomach sinking with every word. According to the report, Derek was questioned extensively and released due to a solid alibi. Astrid must have told them about him, and the argument he’d had with Owen.

“Damn it all!” I barked from the backseat. “He was pretty much all we had in the way of suspects, for fuck’s sake!”

Wanda and Marty both blew out breaths of air, fogging up the windshield. “It isn’t over yet, Nina. Maybe they did as poor a job questioning Derek as they did when they tore up Owen’s apartment. Maybe there’s something they missed just the way they missed that fingernail behind his nightstand.”

“Maybe, or maybe he was in the fucking Bahamas, Wanda, living it up with the money he ripped off from Owen,” I spat.

Marty held up her hands—her universal sign for peace. “Let’s not give up the ship yet. Who knows what we might find here. We never got much further than Sonja before we had to run away so Nina wouldn’t get caught by the detective because she went rogue on us.”

Flicking my fingers in her face, I groused, “Piss off, Marty. I went rogue and found a clue, which was more than you two found with your lip gloss and eyeshadow, thank you very much.”

“You sure did. A clue that strengthens the case against Brenda, Columbo,” Marty taunted me, craning her neck and sticking her face in mine.

I hated when she did that.

“Marty, I swear on all that’s fake blonde, I’m gonna kick your werewolf ass?—”

The sharp slap of Wanda’s hand against the steering wheel made us both jerk our eyes in her direction. “Enough! The two of you are like toddlers. Stop arguing and behave like adults.We have a murder to solve and a woman who’s going to end up exterminated by the clan because you two can’t get a grip on yourselves. Do you have any idea how awful an extermination is? Just ask Heath or Arch. Now get it together, apologize to one another, and join me when you’re done”

She popped open the door, leaving both of us in the car, simmering.

I rolled my eyes while Marty sat with her arms crossed over her chest, lips thinned.

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