Page 150 of The Body in the Backyard
“Honestly, none of us would blame you,” Belinda told him sympathetically.
“It wasn’t me! I swear,” Henry insisted, sweat coursing down his face. “Maybe it was the lighting guy? I saw him adjusting it after me and thought maybe he saw what I’d done. I swear I didn’t cut the cable. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted him to look bad!”
Henry looked more than a little green around the gills, and the suspects sitting in front of him took notice and spread out.
“A likely story,” Nick scoffed.
“Aw. My candy’s gone,” Griffin said, holding up the empty baggie before throwing it on the ground. “What’s everybody talking about?”
“You being a pencil-dicked moron who deserves to be tortured and publicly executed so I can piss all over your corpse.” Ingram Theodoric III rose from his seat in the front row, face ruddy with rage.
“Oh, hi, Gingham! Haven’t seen you on the pickleball court in a while,” Griffin said cheerily.
“It’s Ingram and you know it, you trust-fund fungi!” Ingram started toward Griffin, which meant he was actually starting toward Riley and Josie since they were standing between him and the man who had stolen his girlfriend.
Nick jumped off the coffee table and put himself in Ingram’s path. “And there’s the man of the hour. Mr. Ingram Theodoric the Third, everyone.”
“I thought I was the man of the hour?” Griffin complained.
Josie turned and shoved her hands into the news anchor’s hair. She ruffled them back and forth. “Go fix your hair, you dumb little idiot.”
The messy-haired Griffin headed toward the powder room down the hall.
“Step aside and let me finish this,” Ingram snarled.
“Looks like the boss caught his killer,” Josie mused.
But Riley frowned as Nick slapped a hand to Ingram’s chest. Something didn’t feel right.
“I’d love to, man. But you see, I can’t. Because I was hired by this tangerine pain in my ass to find out who is trying to kill him. And if I let you get your gin-soaked hands on him, I won’t get paid,” Nick said.
Twin veins in Ingram’s neck pulsed dangerously. “Fine! Then I’ll go through you.”
Riley heard a faint thump upstairs, but no one else seemed to take note. They were all watching Nick and Ingram’s standoff.
“Let’s talk about why you’ve been at the top of the list from day one,” Nick said.
Riley’s nose twitched, and she surrendered to the vision, willing the chaos around her to disappear.
The clouds enveloped her in warm blues and pinks before breaking open before her.
“Did Griffin get taller?” A bodiless voice echoed around her.
There was something flying toward her. A thin silver object rotating end over end. The light from Cotton Candy World caught it and glinted off the razor-sharp tip.
“He looks taller,” another voice noted, floating through the ether.
The object was still coming at her in slow motion. Riley put her hand up and caught it.
It was a knife. But not just any knife.
She snapped out of the spirit world. “Wait! Griffin, stop!” He turned around, hands in his hair.
“Now what? I need to fix my award-winning hair.”
“You said the first threat was stabbed into your pillow in your bedroom, right?” Riley asked.
“That’s right. It was very scary because that pillowcase had my face screen-printed on it.”
