Chapter 7

"He's dead?" I practically shout the words as Cooper quickly calls it into the station, and within seconds, the sound of sirens does its best to eclipse the creepy music and intermittent screams here at the Tavern of Terror.

The house of horrors behind us is flooded with bodies, and now we've got one in the alleyway, too— a dead one.

My heart thumps like a jackhammer as I take in the scene. Lights flicker and shadows elongate as the spooky music fills the air. It feels as if I've just stepped into a horror flick, and I have a feeling I'm playing a starring role.

Sal the Sausage lies splayed out. His face is an eerie shade of blue and his white dress shirt is punctuated with two bright red dots where the bullets took him out. Whoever did this was either a good shot or was close enough to reach out and touch him—with their gun.

"I can't believe this," I mutter as my heart thumps like a jackhammer.

"Somehow I believe it," Cooper says, handing Watson to me, and now my arms are filled with two wiggling puppies—who, by the way, look identical. "It's like you're a calling card, Effie."

"A calling card for what?"

"The Grim Reaper."

"You know what they say." I cringe at the thought. "'Tis the season."

He shoots me a stern look.

I lift my shoulders to my ears. "Too soon?"

Within moments, the area is swarmed with officers and soon they're cordoning the area off with bright yellow caution tape.

I spot Niki, my Aunt Cat, and Carlotta headed this way.

Great. Just what I need.

The three of them gasp as they spot the body.

"What have you gotten yourself into now?" Niki shrieks, and if I'm not mistaken, there's a hint of delight in her voice. She's wicked that way.

"Don't look at me. I was just chasing this one"—I say, nodding to the Watson look-alike in my arms—"when a corpse decided to crash the party."

Technically, the corpse got here first, but the three women before me have never been so hot on accurate details. They're more interested in gossip and making a ruckus. Come to think of it, they're experts at both.

"Sounds to me like someone is working on an alibi." Aunt Cat squints at me with suspicion. Her dark hair is teased to high heaven and she's dressed in some sort of Roaring Twenties' outfit—a short beaded frock with lots of long pearl necklaces and a feather sticking out of her head. "Are you sure this wasn't one of Jimmy's assignments?"

I frown at the woman for daring to go there, and with a cast of thousands around no less.

"No," I say. "For all I know, it might be a Halloween prank gone wrong."

Carlotta grunts as she inspects the corpse, "Remind me to never invite you to a dinner party." She shrugs. She happens to have that same Roaring Twenties' vibe happening but with darker back alley intentions written all over her. Come to think of it, that's sort of her MO in general when it comes to life. "But then, I don't throw dinner parties so we're good there." She takes a moment to give me the stink eye. "I think my Lot Lot's luck might be rubbing off on you."

Lot Lot would be my boss, Lottie, who happens to be Carlotta's biological child. Carlotta left Lottie at a fire station when she was an infant, and luckily Lottie was raised by a decent family, the Lemons.

But Carlotta is back in town and she and Lottie share the same caramel wavy locks, more gray than caramel for Carlotta. In fact, Carlotta looks exactly like my beautiful boss with the exception that someone hit the fast-forward button and aged her about fifty years.

"Lottie has nothing to do with my rotten luck," I grunt. "I've been walking around like a broken mirror for a lot longer than I've known just about anyone." Not a fact I'm particularly proud of but true, nonetheless.

The pooches in my arms wiggle and dance and Niki quickly takes Watson's look-alike from me while I let Watson down and wrap his leash around my wrist so he can't accidentally lead the way to another body. Not that it was him who did it in the first place. But I'm sort of a lightning-strikes-twice kind of a gal and I'd hate to tempt fate twice in one night.

"Who the heck is this little furry cutie?" Niki asks while the ball of blond fur licks her face silly.

"No idea. There's no tag on him. I just found him out here," I say. "Why don't you go try to turn him in to the lost and found or something? I'll stick around and look for clues."

"You mean for the killer?" Aunt Cat clasps at her throat, and yet she, too, has a look of unmitigated glee in her eyes. I'd say it's contagious, but the fact is, all three of these women are more than slightly deranged.

Okay, so I fit the bill, too.

What can I say? We like to dole out justice with the best of them.

"No, I want to look for the owner," I say. "But for the killer, too."

I so meant the killer.

Niki takes off and the three of us do our best to scour the area as we split ways.

A crowd has gathered so there's not a lot of room to hunt and peck. I'm about to give up when I see something just shy of the caution tape that catches my eye. It's a trail of red sequins that glitters just past the gate and out into the street.

I quickly take a few pictures of it.

"What are you doing?" a deep voice resonates from behind and I jump just as Cooper squints in the direction that my phone is pointed.

"I, uh…" I grimace because he's not going to like what I'm about to say. "Look at that." I point right at the menacing crimson trail. "The red stuff." I nod his way, waiting for him to do the DNA math.

He steps over and picks one up by way of the tip of his finger. "It's not blood. It's just a piece of some silly costume."

"I know it's not blood, it's red sequins." I nod expectantly, but still he's giving me nothing.

Watson wiggles and barks up at him as if saying, come on, you're supposed to be the detective around here.

"Who was wearing red sequins tonight?" I wave my hand back at the patio, but that look of confusion on his face only continues to grow. "Salmonella."

"What?" He inches back as if I've just accosted him with my words.

"Your sister, Salmonella."

"You mean Loretta Solemina." He frowns. "Okay, so it's hers. She's been in and out of this place all night. It's her boyfriend's deal. And if you'll learn anything about my sister, it's that she likes to take over. Speaking of which, would you mind taking Watson home tonight? I won't be heading to my place any time soon."

"No problem," I say and he leans in and lands a kiss to my cheek.

"Thank you." His eyes stay hooked to mine a moment too long and I bite down on a smile because, holy moly, the detective has turned up the charm like nobody's business this evening.

He steps away and that goofy grin glides right off my face.

I'll admit, his sudden uptick in interest does make me wonder.

"What do you think?" I ask, scooping Watson up. "Am I irresistible or am I irresistible?"

Before Watson can so much as give me a bark of approval, Niki comes back and hands me the look-alike pooch.

"No dice," she says. "Nobody knows who he belongs to. Tag, you're it. I don't do dogs. But I'm open to ogres and I've got a hot one on the hook. Naomi says she'll put up some posters. We'll talk in the morning. Try not to kill anyone while I'm gone. Try not to hog all the fun." She takes off, presumably to have a little fun herself—seeing that she suddenly has a hankering for not-so-little green men.

Aunt Cat and Carlotta come back looking dismayed.

"We've got nothing," Aunt Cat says.

"That's right," Carlotta snips. "Just another dead end. Get it? Dead end?"

"Stop," I tell her as the pup in my arms wiggles and licks my face. "I've got a killer to track down."

I crane my neck toward the crowd, on the hunt for a certain female Lazzari. After all, I did see her arguing with the deceased just minutes before I found the body. And if I know anything about the Lazzaris, they're prone to spicy tempers and are not above popping off a few shots as a way to end an argument.

"Forget the killer," Carlotta says, giving the pooch in my arms a scratch. "I need to find me a man who licks like this."

"I'd take one half as excited to see me," Aunt Cat grunts.

"Cheer up," Carlotta says, bumping her hip to her bestie. "I know a man who will be twice as excited to see us. The pizza delivery guy. Let's head to my place and try to beat him there. We can play a hand of poker. I'm in need of some quick cash and I know you're good for it."

"That's because you cheat," Aunt Cat says as the two of them take off.

I glance back at the body on the ground as the coroner's office shows up and begins to photograph the scene for themselves.

My Aunt Cat isn't the only cheat around here—Loretta accused Sal the Sausage of the very same thing.

Someone out there killed a man in cold blood tonight.

My eyes stray back to that trail of red sequins that leads straight to the body.

And I wonder if I've already cracked the case.