Page 8 of The Accidental Detectives

Huh. Interesting. So what was the end game if not cash?

Wanda gripped her hand. “What did Owen say he did for a living that made him so unavailable to you, Brenda?”

Her snort was derisive and bitter as she tucked her purse close to her chest. “He said he was a geologist and that hetraveled often to digs in far-off places. He knew so much about the subject, I never once doubted him.”

Narrowing my eyes as I looked at his picture on her phone, I asked, “You do know you were catfished, right? Somebody stole his profile particulars, did a little research and pretended to be him on this dating site.”

Brenda rolled her eyes at me, sitting up straight. If she still had breath in her, she’d sigh in exasperation. “Of course I know thatnow. I watched some YouTube videos about catfishing—of which there are plenty, if you wondered. I understand how it works. I know I was lucky that he didn’t ask for money. I also know I was an idiot. But now I’m an idiot wanted by the law, and you know what will happen if the clan gets hold of me. A mere whiff of this kind of sticky involvement with a dead human is enough to have me in deep trouble with them.”

When we sat silent, absorbing her words, she squeezed her temples.

“Look, ladies, I’m not a bad person. I work hard at various charities until things start looking suspicious because I don’t age. Then I move on to the next one. I volunteer at libraries for story hour. I volunteer at homeless shelters. I donate. I…I’m trying to fill my life up with things that have meaning and are of service. I was just…”

Lonely.

I hated how miserable she looked, so I reached out and patted her hand. “You don’t have to say anything else, Brenda, but we kinda need to get into the particulars here. So send me all the shit you guys sent each other. Emails, texts, any and all correspondence between you two, and we’ll get started.”

Both Marty and Wanda looked at me with wide eyes, and they didn’t have to say a word. I knew exactly what they were thinking—because we’re BFFs like that.

“What? Too sensitive? Not squishy enough? Jesus, you two. Pick a frickin’ lane.”

Chapter

Three

The part of the story where we go undercover sniffing around where we don’t belong, hunting for clues and looking like dingdongs while we do it…

“This is so damn dumb,Marty. Why can’t we just go as ourselves?” I complained, swiping at my eye.

She swatted at my hand, the wind nipping at her long blonde hair. “Stop doing that, Nina! You’ll mess up your mascara!”

“As if she needs mascara. I almost forget how utterly gorgeous you are even without makeup, until you put some on and I’m reminded there’s nothing anyone can do to dull your level of beauty, young lady,” Wanda said, licking her thumb to wipe at the corner of my mouth. “Now stop moving your lips and start walking up those steps.”

She pointed to the long set of steel stairs to the second level of the apartments, leading to Owen Barker’s place.

The place he lived inalone.

It turned out, Owen and his wife were separated and he was bunking by himself. It was easy enough to find out once I’dfound the real Owen’s page and done some digging around on his wife’s page—digging Brenda had avoided doing, so her love bubble wouldn’t pop and bleed all over her fantasy, I guess.

If she had, she’d have probably realized Owen’s cloned page wasn’t connected to anything but more fake profiles…but hisrealFacebook page provided a shit ton of insight—like his wife’s name.

I threw up my hands to keep from smudging anything else on my face. “I feel ridiculous, Wanda.” I couldn’t actually say because I can’t see my reflection, but I’m still pretty sure I looked ridiculous. “Did you have to put so much crap on my face?”

Wanda smoothed the edges of her classy dark green trench coat as the December wind fought to ruffle it against her knees. “Not that you needed it, but we have to look the part, Nina. We’re cosmetics saleswomen, for Pete’s sake. You have to advertise the product you’re hawking, silly. You know that.”

She held up the bane of my existence. An old Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics sales kit. The round, sky-blue suitcase contained everything you needed topresent to the world the best you possible.

So sayeth Marty. That was the spiel she used to use to sell the stuff while I trailed behind her, stomping my feet in loud reluctance. In the cold. In the rain. In a heat wave. One time in a flippin’ blizzard.

Marty had been hell-bent on getting to the level of sky blue on the rung of Bobbie-Sue success and she’d dragged us along with her. Well, me anyway.

At that time in my life, I was jobless, close to homeless, and desperate to make some cash. Wanda, on the other hand, had been a gazillion times better at it than me. But if you only knew how much I hated that damn case full of colored garbage, you’d know why I’m draggin’ ass.

Not that it didn’t eventually add an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle to my life and bring me everything I have now, or at least played a significant part ingivingme my current life.

But like I said, it came from a time when shit had gone sideways for me personally and selling cosmetics door to door was the only job I could get, even though I sucked hard—and I do meanhard—at it.

But Marty had made a very successful life from selling Bobbie-Sue, and eventually owning the company. It wasn’t all bad. Her products were honest, no animal testing (duh), and all organic. It just wasn’t my schtick.

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