Page 9 of The Accidental Detectives

And when they made me put on a skirt and heels I can barely walk in after slapping this goop all over my face that left me itchy and annoyed, it confirmed this wasn’t my deal.

But here I was, in a skirt, blazer and heels with a pound of slop all over my face, right back where I started with these two quintessential specimens of femininity I loved to fucking infinity and beyond.

That’s the only reason I’d relive this nightmare.

Avoiding touching my face again, I propped my hands on my hips. “So what the fuck are we doing here again?”

“We’re snooping around. The crime scene is still fresh. Maybe we’ll see something thehuman,” she whispered the word, “police didn’t. Maybe we’ll smell something they didn’t. We do have keen senses, right? That’s got to help in an investigation. So let’s use them.”

Wanda nodded, the tip of her nose red from the cold. “What Marty said. Also, we’re going to talk to some neighbors. See if they saw anything. And we do have ears. You can bet your bippy everyone’s talking about their neighbor being murdered. So we do a little eavesdropping at doors. Bobbie-Sue is the perfect cover.”

“Except, Marty put an end to door-to-door sales a long time ago, Wanda. Because the world is a scarier place than when we first sold this junk. No one even does this shit anymore.” I plucked at my blue skirt and clicked my heels together. “It’s gonna look more like we’re scammin’. Besides, did you forget how people would hide from us? Remember that one lady we saw standing on her porch, mindin’ her own damn business, and when Marty got a glimpse of her from the corner of her eye, she went in for the kill? That poor lady ran the fuck inside and pretended Marty wasn’t pounding on her door with her fist while her dogs barked their tiny heads off?”

Wanda began to giggle, covering her mouth. “Do you remember how Marty spun it?” Wanda batted her eyes, letting her eyelashes flutter to her cheeks. “‘Oh, it’s fine. She’s just afraid of unlocking her true potential. Everyone’s a little scared to be their absolute best and outshine everyone around them,’” she squealed, in a pretty damn good imitation of Marty.

We’d been in tons of humiliating situations during our Bobbie-Sue time, once at an IHop, but Marty had always turned that baloney into a positive. No matter how awful people were to us.

Marty swatted the air with a frown, tucking her scarf tighter around her neck with a wrinkle of her nose. “I donotsound like that, Wanda Jefferson.”

I barked a laugh. “Ya dotoo, Marty Flaherty, and it’s a badass quality to have when you’re tryin’ to foist your shit off on some unsuspecting schlub. But I get it. Your ass was desperate to make it to sky blue and get that convertible. Totally worth selling your soul for while you hunted your prey, right?” I teased.

Back in the day, becoming a sky-blue saleswoman was the ultimate level of success on the Bobbie-Sue ladder. It meant you got a sky-blue convertible for the most sales and the worship ofall your underlings. It rarely happened because the stakes were nearly unreachable, but Marty had done it.

When I met Marty, she’d been determined to scale the walls of Bobbie-Sue victory no matter the cost. She’d been deep in the cult of the Color Wheel—that was the infamous opening line to every sales pitch, by the way.

What’s in your color wheel?

Am I ever glad when she inherited the company, she put the kibosh on all that shit after we finally managed to make her see it for what it really was. A kooky makeup cult with ridiculous sales expectations nigh-on unobtainable.

But a lot has changed since the days when Marty became a werewolf—mostly for the better of all of us and her zillion employees. Marty was a smart business woman and a good boss.

Wanda sighed a long-winded sound of exasperation as she scanned the parking lot around us, the cars of the apartment’s tenants covered in a light dusting of snow.

“You have any better ideas, Dark Lord? We have to start somewhere. We can’t keep Brenda hidden in the murder basement forever, and we certainly don’t want the clan to find her before we figure this out and prove her innocent.”

While we’d gotten into disguise and Marty had put foundation on me with a trowel, we’d spent some time getting to know Brenda while we asked questions about who she thought could have killed Owen. But because she’d been catfished, she didn’t know a whole lot about the real people in his life.

Regardless, Brenda was a nice, if not naïve lady who’d gotten in too deep. She was smart and even a little funny when she chilled the hell out.

I didn’t want to see the clan eradicate her. I liked her. And if I’m honest, I sure as hell didn’t want the clan to find out we were harboring a fugitive, because it’d be just as fucking ugly for us as it would be for Brenda if we got caught.

I shook my Bobbie-Sue bag at her as snow began to fall and the day became grayer. ”Fine. Let’s get this shit over with then. We goin’ together, or splittin’ up to cover more territory?”

Marty shivered, probably with nervous excitement, if I knew her. This revisit to her glory days was her dream come true. “Let’s do the first couple together so we can warm up. It’s been a long time since I did this and I’m freaking out a little about revisiting my cosmetic past.”

“As if the sales chick in you isn’t alive and well, dying to bust out and torture some poor, unsuspecting woman with blush colors. Please,” I scoffed.

Marty made a face at me. “Together.Please.”

I motioned for them to head up the stairs ahead of me, mostly because I can’t get a handle on these damn heels and if I fall on ’em, I don’t want them crying about how I ruined their makeup and hair. “After you, chickenshit.”

I made chicken noises at her, clucking the whole way up the stairs to the tune of Wanda’s laughter.

Just like the old days. Good times, good times.

“Hi!I’m Marty Flaherty! Do you know what’s in your color wheel?”

I fought a groan when the guy who answered the door—scratching his bare belly, no less, beer in hand—gave us the finger and slammed it in our faces.

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