Page 41 of The B!tch is Bad

Chapter 13

Creed

“It’s on like donkey Kong!” yelled Wolf Glaser. Leaping to his feet, he fist pumped the air. The flashlight, pepper spray, arrow pull, and measuring tape attached to his utility belt swayed like reeds. And so he signaled his return from Disney World where he’d gone Soarin’ Around the World on a hang glider taking photos of the Great Wall of China, to prove he was Joe King on Constant Azarin’s tail.

Nobody else jumped.

Lytton, his features perfectly composed, stared levelly at me across my oval dining table. “Did Wildstar tell you he filed embezzlement charges against Klozov?”

“He told me he was going to. He went to Wine on Main, our storage area, where walls of Two Buck Chuck were hiding his missing Pinot. Apparently they’d gone in on a brewery together that failed, and Oliver wasn’t good for his half. Amber said the day of the murder, Sean was supposed to go with Oliver to Wine on Main where Oliver promised to ‘show’ him where the missing wine went. None of it made any sense.”

“Like nothing about that guy made sense,” muttered Tanner Principato, owner of Hang Town Ranch for stray dogs. We realized we needed dog people around to solve the dilemma of the poo in Wildstar’s dog run, our only clue so far since no fingerprints had been found. Killer had obviously worn gloves.

I added, “I haven’t made a move to kick Oliver off my property. Don’t wanna give him a clue we suspect him.”

“Yeah, hold your mud,” said Ford Illuminati, Prez of the MC. Half-brother to Lytton, they were almost identical with caramel skin, sloe eyes that seemed made up with eyeliner, and elegant fingers.

“You know,” said Pippa. She was there because she’d been a chemist in her past life. “Thomas Massengill died in a similar way. Except he was in his scrapbooking room.”

Ford asked, “Was he in business with Klozov?”

Pippa shrugged. “We can find out. He was the sommelier at Goodfellas Winery down Dancing Apache Road.”

I asked, “Is he the guy who made every girl he dated wear a cougar print scarf?”

“That’s the one,” said Pippa.

“What a douchenozzle,” said Wolf, who had taken his seat again. “Maybe Klozov just hates crafts.”

Everyone looked at him blankly.

Wolf tilted his palm to the ceiling. “What?” he asked from one corner of his mouth. “How long can you scrapbook for? You make one scrapbook, and that’s it. Boom. The story of your life. Do you need a whole room for it? Real talk!”

Across the table from Wolf, his nemesis Tobiah grumbled, “You’re speaking Dothraki again, Glaser.”

Ford rolled his eyes. “I don’t think any Bare Boner would be caught dead scrapbooking.”

Lytton said, “Tuzigoot does. He’s got a little room at The Citadel where he puts photos he takes of the airplane hangar and prints them out. You know, of the men, the equipment.”

“That’s different,” said Ford. “That’s record keeping. It doesn’t involve pasting in family recipes or ticket stubs from a Doobie Brothers concert.”

I asked, “Is scrapbooking when you glue photos and flowers into a binder? Little stickers like baby diapers, or ones that say ‘Live Your Dreams’?”

“That’s it,” said Pippa.

Lytton said, “Tuzigoot does that. Except he has stickers of dozers and loaders.”

“Actually,” I said, “we did find a room upstairs in Sean’s house where he had binders like that full of old family photos.” Some had appeared to show an ex-wife and kids, one a boy about ten playing basketball. Wildstar had never mentioned kids.

Ford swiped the air with his hands. “All right. Forget scrapbooking. Elektra, you’re running the dogshit test?”

Elektra was a glamorous, Latina model sort, a forensic geneticist who’d opened her own DNAnon company in Flagstaff. She’d helped indict a rogue Bare Boner who’d murdered his wife years before patching in. Not the sort of fellow they imagined deserved a “Filthy Few” patch, so they welcomed Elektra into their fold. Now she scrunched the fur of Beetle, a Great Pyrenees-Leonberger mix belonging to Wolf. Beetle was evidently accustomed to sit-downs, as he lay his head over the table, resting his chin on it, not even sticking his tongue out at the charcuterie platter or chocolates I’d placed there.

Elektra said, “Well, it’s challenging getting DNA out of feces. But a genetic profile can be generated. It’s too bad we don’t have Sean’s dog to swab his cheek. We can use the same machinery we use on humans. As long as the resulting profiles all match, we’re good. The first dog evidence used in a trial successfully was blood from a dog defending its owner found on a killer’s shirt.”

I was surprised when Patience, next to me, piped up. She’d been quiet all this time, I imagined mulling over all the murders taking place that week. “I got something for you, Elektra.” And she withdrew a white plastic bag she’d placed beneath her chair. They both had to halfway stand to pass the bag over the table.

“Be careful,” warned Patience.