Stranger Danger (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 4)

“Oh, sure. I got an extra bottle of wine, just in case. I was going to drive around the block to kill some time until six, because that’s when I was expecting you to show up, but then I saw the police cars coming to my house.”

“Let me get this straight. Jefferson Pike came to your house around four thirty-ish. You left at five to go to the Piggly Wiggly. And since you were expecting me, you left me a note telling me the door was open.”

She blanches. “I practically invited the killer to come inside.”

“It’s not your fault, Betty Jean,” says Will.

I continue. “So someone came to your house sometime between five and five thirty, walked inside, found Jefferson sitting on the chair, maybe asleep, even, then got a knife from your kitchen drawer and stabbed him. They wiped the knife clean and left it on the coffee table and walked out the door again.”

“Pretty cold, huh?” she says.

“During the time Jefferson and you were together,” I say, “did you hear anyone come to the door? Or did your phone ring? Any strange sounds?”

She raises a brow.

Let me rephrase that.

“Any strange sounds coming from outside the bedroom?”

“Nope. Nothing. Of course, I did have the music kind of loud, so it’s possible the phone might have rung and we wouldn’t have heard it. We were kind of busy, you know?”

Just out of curiosity, I ask, “What music did you have on?”

“‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye.”

Figures. I clear my throat. “And that’s it. You can’t remember anything else?”

“Nope. I wish I could be more help. Maybe one of my pervert neighbors saw something.”

Will looks at me and frowns.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“One of my neighbors is a peeping Tomasina. Either that or a peeping Tom in drag.” She gets up from the table, goes into the guest room and comes back out with an earring, then lays it on the table in front of us. It’s the earring I found on the grass outside her window the night of Pike’s murder.

“That’s not mine,” she says.

I almost say I know, but I bite my tongue. “What has that to do with anything?”

“You said you found this underneath the second window on the side of the house, near the hibiscus bushes, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That window belongs to my bedroom. Someone, wearing this earring, has been spying on me. Maybe even that night. Whoever it was, I hope they got their kicks.”

“Do you have any idea who it might be?” I ask.

“Someone who likes sparkly things?” she says dryly.

Considering that Betty Jean was decked out recently a la Farrah Fawcett, she doesn’t have room to be critical.

I pick up the earring and inspect it once more. She has a point. It’s a rhinestone. And it is sparkly …

My heart starts to pound.

I realize now that this earring looks familiar. It looks exactly like the earrings Shirley Dombrowski had on the day I went by the rectory to see Sebastian, shortly before I discovered Jefferson Pike’s dead body.

Chapter Seventeen