Chapter 31

31

I was curled up on the couch next to Giovanni and Luka watching Shark Tank , a show we frequently watched at night together. My body was spent, but my mind was active, and it showed no signs of slowing just yet.

After discussing the frustrations of my day, Giovanni agreed that nothing I'd learned so far seemed to fit together in the right way. And I was running out of people to question. As I sat with him now, snuggled beneath the arm he'd wrapped around my shoulders, I felt myself begin to fade at last, and Giovanni suggested we retire to the bedroom.

As we stood, my cell phone buzzed.

I glanced at the time.

It was past midnight.

No one would call at this hour, unless …

"Is everything all right?" I said as I answered. "Is it Phoebe?"

"Your sister is just fine," Foley said. "She's sleeping."

"If you're not calling about her, what are you calling about?"

"I'm sorry, I know it's late."

"I assume there's something you need to tell me. What is it?"

"Your mother's neighbor, Eddy Westwood … I know why he hasn't been home. The man's dead."

Dead.

That threw me for a loop, but it did explain why Eddy hadn't been to work and why he hadn't been seen at home in a while.

"How? When? What happened?" I asked.

"There was a power outage across town a couple of days back," Foley said.

"Yeah, I remember. It lasted a few hours."

"A resident who lives on Gardenia Street was walking her dog past her neighbor's house today, and she got a whiff of something horrible coming from the garage. She called us to check it out, but we've been so busy, we didn't get around to it until a couple of hours ago."

"Who owns the house?"

"Eddy and Rosalyn Westwood. They bought the house as an investment rental, had it up on VRBO and a few other places. Here's the kicker. Until a couple weeks ago, the house had been rented out on a consistent basis. It was almost always booked. In the past three weeks, the listing is showing as unavailable on the web page."

"What about future bookings?" I asked.

"There are no openings for the next three months. Based on what we read on the listing description, it appears they've been taking care of the rental themselves, meaning they don't go through an agency."

"If that's the case, either Eddy or Rosalyn paused the listing. And since Eddy's dead, my money's on Rosalyn. I stopped by her house earlier today. She wasn't home, and my mother said she hadn't seen any sign of her."

"If she had something to do with Eddy's death, I'll bet she's on the run. Seemed like such a sweet lady when I talked to her. Shame. First Cordelia, then her husband … would have never pegged her as a murderer."

"I wonder why Eddy's body was left in the garage."

"I'll tell you. During the power outage, we believe a refrigerator they kept in the garage short-circuited. When the electricity came back on, the refrigerator did not. As it thawed out, the door popped open. It's an old fridge. When we inspected the seal, we noticed it was worn."

"Have you determined Eddy's cause of death?" I asked.

"Not yet. As of now, there's nothing to explain what happened to him. There were no visible wounds of any kind and no signs of a struggle, nothing to explain how he ended up in that refrigerator."

"I'm guessing you don't know how long Eddy's been dead yet."

"We aren't sure, but Silas is working on it."

"It makes a lot more sense to me now. I talked to Eddy's boss today. He left a Rolex watch behind in his locker. Even if he quit his job, he would have come back for a watch like that. Now we know why he didn't."

"Seems so, and now to the bigger question. Where's Rosalyn? And what's her involvement in Eddy's and Cordelia's murders?"