Page 10 of The Accidental Detectives

“Asshole!” I crowed. “Can’t a girl try and make a living anymore?”

Marty deflated a little, but I poked her between her shoulder blades, swallowing a cackle. “Maybe look before you leap, test the waters and all, Ms. Color Wheel.”

She stomped her foot, kicking up some snow. “How rude was he?”

“That was just a warm up, Marty…uh, practice.” Wanda stabbed her finger in the air for emphasis. “Forget him and knock on the next door,” she soothed with encouragement, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “You never let a closed door stop you before.”

My head fell back on my shoulders in irritation. I’ll admit, I felt whiny AF. I have zero patience for tea and sympathy. Call me a dick, but that’s my truth. I wanted to get the show on the road.

“For the love of Canada, why can’t we just sneak into Owen’s dumpy apartment and snoop around instead of playing these stupid fucking games? Why do we have to be undercover?”

Wanda made a face. “Because we need information, Nina! Who knows if someone saw something. We can’t just show up and ask people to tell strangers if they saw or heard something surrounding Owen’s death.”

My eyes bulged. “Isn’t that what private investigator’s fucking do, Wanda?”

Wanda’s lips thinned. “Yes, Nina. That’s what they do, but in this particular case, we have to be extra careful. Owen was a human, withhumanneighbors. If the police come asking questions, we don’t need them telling the authorities some private investigators were snooping around. With human police involved, we can’t have it lead back to us. We need to carefully ask questions, and selling Bobbie-Sue is the perfect opener. Now put a sock in it and move along.”

Much like back in the day, I trudged reluctantly behind them as they stopped at the apartment two doors down from Owen’s—one with a dilapidated Christmas wreath and a crooked bow.

The moment the door popped open, a middle-aged lady with yellow-blonde hair and enough perfume to choke a horse poked her head out, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

Fighting a gag from the thick scent of whatever she’d doused herself with, I watched as Marty held up her Bobbie-Sue bag, her smile bright while she flapped a hand at the puff of smoke. “Hi there! I’m Marty Flaherty. Do you know what’s in your color wheel?”

The woman blew a ring of smoke at us, making Marty cough. The lines around her mouth from her bad habit deepened as she frowned, eating up the garish red lipstick on her mouth.

She wrinkled her wide nose. “What the hell’s a color wheel?”

Marty tapped the bag with her sparkling saleslady smile. “It’s all right here in this cosmetics bag. I’d be happy to show you, if you’d like.”

She flicked her cigarette out over the balcony with a sour expression, her forehead wrinkling in a suspicious frown. “Is it gonna make me look like her?” She pointed at me, which I found ridiculous. I was the most awkward of the three of us, for Christ’s sake. Who’d want to look like me?

But I nodded and grinned the best grin I knew how to grin. The one that would hurt my face if I could still feel it.

“Just like me,” I assured her with a sweet tone. If I’ve done nothing these past years, I’ve watched and learned from my friends how to appease, how to persuade. Marty and Wanda turned their back to her for a moment and gave me their “what the fuck?” eyes. But I shooed them toward her with a wink and a nudge of their shoulders. “Go on and work your magic, ladies. Do it for the team! While you do that, I just remembered something that would be perfect for… What’s your name, ma’am?”

She blinked, tucking her old, pilling sweater into the waistband of her rumpled jeans. “Sonja…” she said with obvious hesitance.

“Sonja,” I repeated. I lifted my shoulders in that cute way Marty and Wanda do when they’re playing coy, and grinnedagain. “I’ve got the perfect lip stain just for you, but I forgot it in the car. Be back in a jiff!”

I scurried off before my nutty friends could stop me. I was gonna go snoop around at Owen’s place while they tiptoed through a bunch of bullshit about makeup just to try and get some miniscule bit of information from Sonja.

As I made my way back toward where we’d started, Owen’s place wasn’t hard to find. It was cordoned off by a bunch of yellow police tape.

The welcome mat in front of his door was ratty, scuffed by time, the door crisscrossed with crime scene tape.

I don’t know what I thought I was gonna uncover, but it couldn’t hurt to poke around and it beat talking about shit I knew next to nothing about.

Peering over my shoulder to make sure no one was around, I gripped the door handle and gave it a quick pop, trying not to leave any damage behind before looking at my hands and realizing I’d forgotten to put on the plastic gloves Marty had given me, along with some paper shoe covers.

Shit. I wiped it with the edge of my blazer before I pushed at the door. It opened easily enough, the stench of death instantly assaulting my nose.

I slipped under the crime scene tape and took my first step inside, closing the door behind me, making sure it was locked.

Christ, it was dismal in here. The walls, painted a dull gray, were slightly warped, but there was a poster of Paw Patrol, reminding me he had children who were young.

Then I saw a picture of Owen, his wife and his kids, and my chest got tight. It hung lopsided on the wall, above the couch. I eyed it from across the room and the pit in my stomach grew. His kids were dark like him, cute little munchkins who now had no father. Owen and his wife sat behind them, smiling for the camera, their hands on each of the kids’ shoulders.

I had to look away and focus on what I was here to do before the sadness rooted me to the spot.

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