by herself too.
It was nice here. Warm and happy. She felt a nudge on her consciousness. Not exactly a something, but also not a nothing.
“So, hey. It’s me, Riley. Just practicing here.”
She felt the nudge again and wondered if that was their way of saying, “What the hell do you want?”
What did she want? She wanted to find out who killed Dickie and stay out of jail, but so far those questions weren’t resulting in clear answers. Debating for a moment, it popped into her mind almost unbidden. Beth. The name had surfaced during Nick and Detective Weber’s last bro fight, and neither one had answered the question.
It wasn’t like she was prying into Nick’s mind. Asking her spirit guides was just an exercise.
“Okay, guides. Who’s Beth?”
The clouds thickened, then darkened before they began to thin again.
Detective Weber and Nick appeared through the mists in happier, younger times. There was a young woman with long, dark hair and bright pink lips. Short, curvy. Bright and happy. Her arms were wrapped around Nick, grinning up at him. “I thought I told you to keep your hands off her,” Vision Weber said to Vision Nick.
Suddenly, Vision Beth disappeared. Poof. Like she’d never been there.
Riley recoiled from the vision so fast she felt like she was having one of those falling dreams. The mists and clouds vanished, and when she reached out to steady herself, she knocked over her water bottle.
Her heart was pounding, and she was sweating. She collapsed back against her chair and tried to catch her breath.
What the hell had she just seen?
37
10:10 a.m., Thursday, July 2
After Fat Tony left, Nick returned to his apartment. The lingering odor told him that Burt was probably going to need a few more meals of organic kibble before his biome regulated itself.
He opened the windows, changed into his work uniform of jeans and a clean t-shirt, and put the dog on his new leash. Together they headed down the back stairs.
Nick wasn’t buying the Fat Tony angle of the investigation. He also didn’t like the feel of the gambling theory either. Dickie and his rec league gambling was penny-ante shit, and he’d paid his debt to Fat Tony.
He wondered where Frick got the money to pay Fat Tony.
“Yo, cuz. Whoa,” Brian said when Nick walked in with Burt. “You get a dog?”
Nick shook his head and unhooked the leash. “Not exactly. Long story.” Burt trotted in to sniff at Brian’s wheelchair, his hand, and his breakfast sandwich before wandering into Nick’s office.
“Does it involve why an unmarked cruiser drove by nice and slow twice this morning already?”
Fucking Weber.
“It factors.” Nick poured himself a cup of coffee from Brian’s fancy machine. His third of the day already.
“Well, table the story. Because I’ve got updates.” His cousin’s fingers flew over the keyboard in nerd fluency. Brian turned the screen toward him. “That LLC name that Riley got us at Nature Girls?”
“Shell company?” Nick guessed.
“Yep,” Brian said, tapping a pencil on the desk. “Still digging through the layers. But I should be able to find a name eventually. In the meantime, I did find something interesting.”
“Interesting like poodles doing parkour or case-related?” Nick had fallen for Brian’s YouTube rabbit holes before.
“This time case-related. But that poodle was fucking awesome.”
“Agreed.”
Burt seemed to know they were discussing dogs and wandered back out to them. He rested his head on the arm of Brian’s wheelchair and stared at the monitor.
“Nature Girls is a shithole, right?” Brian said, giving the dog’s head a scratch.
“The shittiest.”
“Then isn’t it interesting that despite the plethora of one-star reviews on Yelp, it’s never once been cited by the health department?”
“I saw a cockroach the size of a toaster walk across the bar while I was there,” Nick mused.
“I smell something fishy in Harrisburg.”
“There’s no way that hellhole would pass a health inspection,” Nick agreed. “Can you get me the name of—”
“The inspector? Way ahead of you.” Brian held up a sticky note between his fingers.
“Nice work, keyboard warrior,” Nick commented, pocketing the name and address. It was his turn to pay someone a visit. “You mind watching the dog for me for an hour?”
Walter F. Henry was a sweater. Despite the frigid air circulating in the drab downtown office building, the pit stains continued to grow on his jaundice yellow short-sleeved button-down. He had a bristly red mustache that twitched under a bulbous nose. Red patches appeared and spread on both cheeks under his wire-rimmed spectacles. He looked fifteen years older than his forty-eight.
“You