Considering my legs felt like they might slide out from under me at any given second, I decided to give up on creating a staging plan and started picking through Ryan’s remaining belongings instead. Unfortunately I hadn’t realized the real estate agent was showing the house ahead of officially listing it, and I walked in on her touring the house with clients.

I should have abandoned the entire project since I had pulled out of the station, clipped a bush and the curb, and promptly U-turned right back into the parking lot. I ordered an Uber, hugging my Coach purse to my chest and reciting the alphabet forward and backward. A-B-C, what the frick is the matter with me? Z-Y-X, what stupid thing can I do next?

I don’t drink. Two glasses of wine was the equivalent of a gallon in my system. Not to mention that I hadn’t eaten breakfast and had only managed to choke down three bites of chicken at lunch before my throat rebelled. The pricey red Marner had ordered hit me like cheap wine in a box and sent me reeling.

Mind whirling at the thought of the police report from Marner I had in my purse, and sauced up on Chianti, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from going to Ryan’s. I needed to be there, in his space, when I read the report.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize anyone was here. I’m Bailey Burke,” I said, after walking in on a woman Ryan’s parents’ age and her clients. My mouth lost control midway between the second and third consonant. But hopefully they’d just think I had a lisp.

They were a young couple and they looked like they had embraced the concept of conserving water. I know that I am excessively hygienic, bordering on compulsive, but I have a thing about nails. Fingers and toes. I immediately homed in on them, and I could see this couple hadn’t touched soap in a while.

Their presumably white T-shirts were gray, with big yellow sweat stains in the pits, and the woman’s pale-pink flip-flops had black toe outlines. Untrimmed toenails curled into her flesh, and her fingernails bore the remnants of a manicure from last winter, Christmas red, with cuticles the thickness and width of an old growth forest tree trunk.

My stomach did another sick flip.

“We need a place for our hissing cockroaches,” the guy said to his agent as I went about my business measuring the living room. “Does this house have a basement?”

“Absolutely. It’s full size and partially finished.”

Ryan had kept his weights down there, along with a rather impressive collection of beer cans, both empty and unopened.

Ryan hadn’t exactly been a super housekeeper, but he had never been dirty. I had felt comfortable sitting down when he lived there. His furniture was still in place and it was only two years old, a rustic plaid, heavy on the oak accents. His parents had taken most of his personal belongings, but in some ways that only made it worse. It was obvious he was never coming back. The house felt lonely. Abandoned.

I was supposed to be looking at it objectively, as a home stager. Not as his best friend. As a friend, I saw him sitting on that very masculine couch giving me a smile. From a design standpoint, it was dated and crowded. Yet it was hard to even think about that when there were strangers invading Ryan’s space.

I’ve been in hundreds of houses, and they all have a unique feeling, an aura, a sense of calm or fatigue or excitement. Ryan’s house felt empty, and that was hard to swallow.

Or maybe it was the wine belch that snuck up on me that was hard to keep down.

But I didn’t want the cockroach lovers to have Ryan’s house.

He wasn’t coming back, but nice people without insects should have it. Maybe people with children who would laugh and run around.

“What’s the yard like? We like to have parties in the summer.” The wife snuffled up something from the back of her throat and let it fly into the sink.

“Uh…” The real estate agent seemed flummoxed.

I personally have never in my adult life witnessed spit leave a woman’s mouth, unless it’s my own and I have a cold. My head did a sort of disco twirl and my stomach strained to keep the wine in place.

“The yard is rather small,” the agent said.

“As long as there’s a spare room for our boa. We like exotic animals,” the man explained.

Which was probably why he was fond of his wife, who was currently digging her panties out from their burial in her crotch.

“You know, now that I understand your needs better, there’s a different house I’d like to show you. Can we reschedule for tomorrow? I can set up a new appointment for something I think will be a perfect match for you.”

I could have kissed the agent. She gave me a grimace and a shrug when they both turned. I realized she was actually friends with Ryan’s mother. I’d seen her at the church festival.

I tripped over the carpet runner Ryan had laid down in front of the door to the backyard. With the grace of a geriatric elephant, I slammed into the wall. “Oops, that rug just grabbed my shoe,” I said, giving a brittle, over loud laugh.

They just looked at me. The client scratched his head. “I’m kind of busy tomorrow. I thought we were just seeing this house. It’s not bad, but it’s overpriced and man, this furniture is just garbage. It’s hard to visualize how our stuff would go in here.”

For some reason, that made me irrationally angry. It was so violating to have them there in the first place, then to hear them criticize the price sent me into emotional overload. Good. Let them think it was overpriced. Bye, bye, exotic pet people.

“I know the sellers,” the agent said. “They won’t budge on the price. It was their son’s house and they can’t take a loss on it. Let’s look at something that has a little more property.”

They drifted toward the front door and the agent gave me a final smile. “Should I put the key back in the lock box?”

“Yes, thanks.” The minute they crossed the threshold, I shut the door as fast as I could. Something was wrong with my balance. I let the wall hold me up so I didn’t puddle into a heap on the ceramic tile that marked the two by two foyer.

Going over to my purse, I fished out the police report. I had to see what it said. Angle of the body, blood spatter, weapon discharged once… It was very clinical. Very nauseating. Now wasn’t the time to read this. I crammed it back into my purse and went for the couch, but then decided I needed a cold surface to soothe my hot and clammy face.

I went down on my knees, then stomach, oozing into a jellyfish impersonation, legs and arms sprawled out.

“What are you doing?” a familiar voice asked.

My cheek nice and cool on the tile, I tried to lift my head, to no avail. It had become too heavy for my neck. Amazing how that could happen. “Ryan?”

“The one and only.”

His voice sounded far away and I tried to look over my shoulder and locate him, but that made me dizzy. I clamped my eyes shut.

“Why are you on the floor, Bailey?”

“I’m just resting.” My wrist started to hurt from lying on it. I shifted a little and discovered a black streak from shoe tread on the tile. With my index finger I rubbed it out, then realized that was stupid because my purse with my antibacterial squirt foam was on the other side of the room.

“Are you sick or have you lost it?”

“I think I might be drunk.” I gave a little giggle because it really did seem extraordinarily funny. I was talking to my best dead friend and I was plastered off a measly two glasses of wine. Or was it three?

“Drunk?” He sounded thoroughly shocked. “Drunk on what?”

“Wine. Marner took me to lunch and got me drunk.” Blame him. I wouldn’t have touched the stuff without his bad influence.

Ryan snorted. “Nice. Did he at least give you the report before he got you smashed?”

“Yep. It’s in my purse.”

“Go get it.”

“You go get it. I’m paralyzed.” Talking was an effort. And the room was doing a fair approximation of a Tilt-A-Whirl.

Concerned about the cleanliness of the floor, I put my cheek on my arm.

And promptly fell asleep.

The problem with a dead best friend is that they can’t help you when you pass out drunk on their floor. I woke up twenty minutes later according to my FitBit app, stomach churning and head pounding, the muscles in my back locked in a painful spasm.

“All right, sleeping beauty, time to get up.” Ryan was pacing back and forth in front of me. “You only drink like once every three years and you pick today to get trashed? Unbelievable.”

“I’ve had a challenging day,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster from the floor. But I did feel refreshed. The buzz was gone and despite the mild headache, I felt normal. As normal as a woman can feel talking to her dead bestie.

“Well, I’ve had a challenging three hours waiting for you to wake up while I sat in my empty house. I figured something out. I can’t appear anywhere that you aren’t.”

I felt a rather selfish pleasure wash over me at that, despite the frustrated tone of his voice. “It was twenty minutes. Don’t be melodramatic.”

“I’m stuck being a shadow man and you’re sleeping off having a good old time saucing it up. Do you know how bored I’ve been? I can’t even read the damn report because I can’t open your purse.”

“Don’t get pissy with me.” I lifted up onto my elbows and did a head check. It was still there on my shoulders, which was promising. The room didn’t spin and my gut only felt like the wave pool at Cedar Point. This was probably as good as it was going to get. “For your information, I was crying over you at lunch—about how much I miss you, as hard as that is to imagine—and Marner, being a guy and clueless what to do when a woman shows the slightest sign of distress, plied me with Chianti to plug the tears.”

I sat completely up and pushed my hair back off my face. Ryan was biting his fingernail.

“I’m sorry, Ryan, I didn’t mean to spend my afternoon on your foyer floor. I only had two glasses of wine. Or maybe it was three.” Possibly four.

He sighed. “I’m sorry too. I know this whole thing is a lot to ask of you, but I need answers.”

“I do too.” I grabbed an end table and hauled my sorry butt up. “So let’s find some answers.”

On wobbly legs, I went to my purse, which I had set on the table in the dining area. It couldn’t be called a dining room since it was really a corner of the living room. But its tile flooring and brass chandelier gave it the privilege of being titled a dining nook.

“Here’s the report.” I set it down on the table for Ryan to look at and went into the kitchen.

Pulling a glass out of the cabinet, I searched under the sink for a sponge and dishwashing liquid. I knew they were still there because Ryan’s mother came over once a week or so and dusted and cleaned the house to keep it from falling into disrepair. I’d often thought how hellish a chore that must have been for her, cleaning a house her son was never coming back to.

Sponge in hand, I washed the dust out of the glass and swallowed the thick, hot bile that had taken up residence in my mouth. With a country blue dishtowel, I dried the glass, ran the tap to get the water cold, and filled it to the top.

After draining two full glasses, I felt completely back. The water was sloshing around in my gut, but the pounding in my head had stopped and I could practically hear my cells quivering in gratitude at the promise of rehydration.

“I need you to turn the page,” Ryan said in a tight voice.

I went and turned it without saying a word. He didn’t look happy. I could understand why. The report was from the scene and it was not only gruesome, it was short. No one seemed to have questioned that it could be anything but a suicide.

“Where’s the rest of the file?” he asked a second later when he’d finished scanning the page.

“That’s all Marner gave me. The report from the scene. He flat out refused to give me the autopsy report. And the rest he said is psychological stuff—interviews with people you worked with, tracing your movements from that day, and interviews with family and friends. But I have to tell you, they interviewed me and they only asked me three questions.”

“What did they ask?”

“When was the last time I’d seen you.”

Twelve noon, February seventeenth.

“What your mental state was like at that time.”

Agitated from my confession (not that I had shared that little piece of info).

“If I knew anything you might be upset about.”

Nothing that he’d kill himself for.

“What’d you tell them?”

“You left my house at noon and you were fine. And that you were the least suicidal person I know.”

Ryan smiled at me over the table. A real Ryan smile, where his eyes crinkled at the corners and his mouth spread wide. “Thanks, Bailey.”

“It’s true. That’s why I’ve been such a freaking mess. I just didn’t, couldn’t believe you would kill yourself.” I hadn’t been able to believe it. But everyone had convinced me it was possible, and well, it appeared he had, so I had been forced to accept it. “They said you were upset over getting passed over for detective and that you owed quite a bit for student loans.”

“I wouldn’t kill myself because I owed ten thousand bucks for community college. You know money isn’t important to me.”

I shrugged. “Everything can be made to fit the puzzle. I had no choice but to believe the experts.”

He made a fist and punched my shoulder, only I didn’t feel anything. “It’s okay, gorgeous, we’re going to figure this out. Here’s what we’ve got so far.” He pointed to the file. “I’m in the park, why. We don’t know. I left your house at noon… Is that an exact time?”

I nodded. I’d glanced at the clock when he’d left to record the moment I had ruined our friendship forever. “I looked at the microwave clock as you headed out the garage door. It was 12:03.”

Ryan glanced at the report again. “I was found by Mikaela Stevenson and Barry Morris, both twenty years old, high school friends, both students at Cleveland State. They live in Lakewood in a duplex.” He shook his head. “Who names their kid Barry? God, I’d shoot myself.” Then he laughed. “Shoot myself. Damn, I’m a riot.”

He made a motion like he was hitting a drum for the punchline.

I rolled my eyes, which only made me dizzy. “Maybe you can start a stand-up act in purgatory.”

“So Mikaela and Barry are jogging together and they stop because Barry needs to tie his shoe, according to this report. You know what that means.”

Of course I did. Duh. “That his shoe was untied.”

“Try again. Mikaela and Barry live together so they’re clearly a couple. Technically they could just be friends, but they’re jogging together, heading into a very secluded part of the park where there aren’t any trails to speak of, just a whole lot of trees, and rough, uneven ground. They’re not expecting any cars because it snowed the day before and the little observation parking lot should be empty, the drive unplowed.”

I was thinking really hard, but didn’t see where Ryan was trying to lead me. “So why did they go there if they weren’t jogging?”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “Get with it, Bailey. They were going to get it on, or at least have a little alone time make-out session. They probably really were jogging, but then Barry’s turned on by the way the wind is ruffling Mikaela’s hair, and with a wink and a nudge he has her over in the trees. Because while it’s not unusual for friends to jog together, going off trail would be odd for a platonic relationship when it’s February and freezing outside.”

I could feel my jaw drop. Not because of Mikaela and Barry’s alleged relationship, but because it made a whole lot of sense that they were not just out for a stroll, and it had all been so easy for Ryan to see. A to B to C, he had logically taken the scenario through to its natural conclusion, all while I was pondering shoelaces.

I had no idea if Barry got Mikaela hot on the trail, but I knew I was turned on.

Ryan’s cop thoughts were damn sexy. I needed to start dating again. It had been far too long since I’d even considered making out, let alone taking a walk in the woods, if you know what I mean. Though in February? Hell no.

Banishing the sudden need for a jog, I cleared my throat. “Okay, so assuming anyone is insane enough to have sex, or even make out, in a snow bank in the dead of winter, they were off the jogging path for a reason. So why was your car there? Same reason?”

Ryan grinned. “Good question. But if I was, at least I was smart enough to have a car to do it in.”

If he had gone straight from my confession of love to another woman’s arms, I really didn’t want to hear it.

“But I seriously doubt that’s what I was doing, since I distinctly recall having a guy with me, and that’s not my type.”

He wanted me to ask what his type was, but I refused to go there.

“Or maybe it was a woman. Or maybe I was alone.” He frowned. “I don’t know. It’s fuzzy.”

“Okay. Then?”

“So almost immediately Mikaela and Barry realize they aren’t going to get the privacy they were looking for, but before they can jog on past, they notice something. There’s something all over the window of the car. They can’t see into the car on the driver’s side, but it looks like someone has thrown up or splashed something over it, according to Mikaela. So they knock on the door, and as they’re knocking, and the person inside isn’t moving, they slowly start to realize that what they’re seeing is blood and brains.”

My stomach lurched and it wasn’t from the wine. “Ryan.”

He tapped his thigh, not looking the least upset. Just serious. Thinking. “So Barry pukes his guts out in the snow, while the girl calls 9-1-1. First officer on the scene is at 3:17 p.m., Officer Rick Pannaconi. After determining the victim is deceased, he secures the scene, takes Mikaela and Barry’s statements, let’s them go. He doesn’t realize right away that this is a cop until he runs the plates and they come back as mine. He calls homicide, tells them its my car, calls the coroner. Enter DeAngelo. Exit Pannaconi and the end of this very worthless report. Why does DeAngelo immediately assume suicide? I don’t get it.”

I swallowed, forced myself to speak. “There was a text. One to your mom.”

“That part bothers me. That means someone was planning to kill me, or panicked and pulled out my phone and sent a text. What did the text say, by the way?”

“I don’t know. They never told me, but from what DeAngelo said, it wasn’t elaborate.”

“So a suicide text, probably something like “I’m sorry.” How could I have let myself get into a situation like that? I must have had my head up my ass that day. Jesus.”

Fresh guilt swamped me. He had probably been distracted by me, wondering how to let me down easily. How to tell me to take my lips and go find another cop to throw myself at.

“If someone was in the car with you, wouldn’t they have wound up covered in blood? And how would they leave without anyone seeing them? Footprints in the snow and stuff like that?”

“Good point, Bailey. But I’m guessing any footprints were wiped out by Mikaela and Barry, then Officer Pannaconi walking all around the car. Preserving a crime scene wasn’t on their minds at that point. If all evidence at the scene pointed to suicide, they wouldn’t have any reason to think homicide initially, though usually detectives make no initial judgment. They wait for facts. But any evidence they overlooked would be gone in a day. Drops of blood in the snow, footprints, all would have disappeared with the first melt or next snowfall. But I don’t like the fact that they were so quick to rule it suicide. That’s not like those guys. You know. You know how meticulously they pour over a scene.”

Lowering myself into a dining room chair carefully, afraid of any residual head spinning, I scanned the report again. It seemed very cut and dried, clinical. The only revealing fact was that Officer Pannaconi couldn’t spell worth a damn. He had a repeating consonant issue. Arrive was arive, pattern was patern, and officer was oficer. In reading it, I was tempted to put on a French accent.

I was starting to wonder if Ryan had it wrong. He didn’t remember, after all. Maybe he did commit suicide. I didn’t even know what to think at this point.

“Where is my car?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t know.” The truth was, I hadn’t asked a lot of questions. The answers might have been something I didn’t want to hear. My stomach rumbled.

“You hungry? I guess its dinnertime, isn’t it? Why don’t you order a pizza?”

Hunger might explain that burning feeling in my intestines, or it might be a lacerated ulcer. I was figuring the latter was probably closer to the truth. “I’m fine.”

“No, come on. You need to eat. It’ll be my treat.”

“You have money?” I asked in amazement.

He frowned. “No. Guess not. Sorry. But you still need to eat something. Maybe there’s food left in the kitchen.”

Not likely. His mother was a very thorough housekeeper. She wouldn’t leave Shredded Wheat around for six months, getting stale and attracting mice. “I’ll just order a pizza. Though I sure in the heck can’t eat a whole one all by myself.”

Ryan lay on the couch, eyes closed, fingers pressed to his temples, in deep thought as I ordered a pizza. I argued with the pizza guy when he said I couldn’t get just a personal pan pizza delivered. By the time it was hashed out to our mutual satisfaction (upgraded pan pizza to small, two toppings, with a 2-liter of Pepsi) Ryan had sat up straight, feet on the carpet, hands in his lap.

“Earlier you said they concluded it was suicide because of the texts, and because the park was meaningful to me. How did they found out about all of that shit? I never told anybody but you about Cami with the big chest in the park.”

My sympathy for Cami grew. What is it about men and breasts? Freud had it completely backwards—I don’t know a single woman who feels an ounce of penis envy, but every man I know wishes he could walk around all day playing with breasts. If they could squeeze a pair at random intervals whenever the urge struck maybe the world would be a less violent place.

Of course, I wasn’t the least put out that Ryan was a breast man and I had none to speak of. It didn’t matter. We were Just Friends, and he was dead, after all. But that didn’t stop me from throwing my shoulders back and thrusting out a bit. Damn it. I didn’t want to be like that.

“Why would DeAngelo notify you that I had been killed?”

Right. That was the important part of this discussion.

The timing was confusing me now, but after that first horrible conversation with DeAngelo, Marner had come to see me. “DeAngelo was the one who told me, and he didn’t spare me any details. He’s the one who asked the basic questions. I’m guessing it was because we had been texting that morning. He wanted answers, I guess. But then later that night, Marner stopped by. He’s the one I told about Cami. I didn’t know you made out a will. It was Marner who mentioned it when he was trying to explain that it was suicide.” I squirmed at the memory. “I had sort of flipped out on him.”

Lots of screaming and crying and pounding my fists against him. A real cliché. No wonder the guy had panicked and poured wine down my throat that afternoon—he must have been terrified he’d be dealing with a repeat performance. Not wanting to dwell on either embarrassing episode, I quickly asked, “Why did you make a will?”

His reaction wasn’t what I expected. Ryan got sheepish. “There’s a law office across from the department. There was this woman lawyer. I’d see her going in and out of her office. She was hot. I mean, really hot.”

Oh, for the love of margaritas. I could see where this was going. “And?”

“I went over and made a will because I wanted to talk to her, maybe ask her out.”

What did you want to bet she had curves. “Did you ask her out? I didn’t know you were dating anyone.”

He waved a hand in dismissal. “She already had a boyfriend. But I got a will made, which, as it turns out, was damn good timing.”

I wasn’t going to point out that my feelings had been just a wee bit hurt that he hadn’t left me anything. I’d reassured myself that guys didn’t think like that. They didn’t leave their Gretzsky signed stick to their brother and their collection of beer cans to their cousin. They didn’t leave behind love notes for their female best friend indicating how they returned her feelings, and they didn’t have any jewelry to dole out.

At least not Ryan, anyway.

Everything had been left to his parents, with his modest insurance policy going for his funeral expenses and the remainder into a trust for his sister’s kids to pay for their education.

Colleen had cried when she had told me that, when I had run into her at Ryan’s house three months ago. She had been helping her mother clean up the yard, which had gone wild during the spring when no one had been able to bring themselves to tend to it. She had told me that while it was wonderful of Ryan to think of her girls, she’d give everything she had and then some to have her brother back.

Maybe I should tell him. “Colleen told me about the money for the girls… She said she’d give it all back and then some to have one day with you.”

Which reminded me what a gift I had. I couldn’t touch him, but I could talk to Ryan, and I needed to enjoy that.

Ryan shrugged. “It wasn’t much, but those kids are smart and they should go to college. Hopefully it will help her and Jim out.”

Apparently he wasn’t in the mood to get sentimental. All righty. His mind was still working around the facts of the case. I could appreciate that. I was a workaholic myself.

“It sucks that I can’t be in the station without you. Marner only gave you about a tenth of the file on me, I’m guessing. There aren’t even any photos of the scene. We need to see those to get an idea of the direction the blood spatter and blowback went.”

We didn’t need to see any such thing. There was no way I wanted to take a looksie at pictures of Ryan with half his face blown off.

“I can ask Marner, but I doubt he’ll give them to me.” He was a little more protective, more traditional. Ryan was the kind of guy who figured “hey, you asked to see it”, but Marner was more of a “you don’t know what you’re asking to see” kind of guy.

Maybe it was time for me to start listing the facts of the case as we knew them. Pulling out a pad of paper from my handbag, I gave it a header with my Bailey Burke, “Put it Where?” pen.

Evidence of Suicide

Will (actual result of lust, not depression)

Texts (what did they say?)

Location (coincidence?)

Lack of motive for murder?

Powder burns

When I wrote that Ryan stopped reading over my shoulder. “Hold it. Powder burns on what? My hands?”

“You tell me, Detective Conroy. But I distinctly recall DeAngelo talking about powder burns.”

“You had a hell of a conversation with him, didn’t you?” Ryan’s blue eyes were curious, his nostrils flaring just a little.

“At the time, it seemed disgusting, macabre, and the punishment for all my earthly sins, but in hindsight, yes, it does come off as pretty odd.”

“I think it’s time for you to pay a little visit to DeAngelo.”

Yuck. I pictured DeAngelo’s smarmy grin and that tuft of chest hair that always burst above his top button. Double yuck. Seeing him twice in the same day seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I’m not even really drunk anymore, which is a shame. He’s the kind of guy you need to see through wine goggles.”

“I’d do it for you.”

“I know.” And I’d do anything for Ryan.

Except show him my breasts.

No sense in deflating both of us.

“Can I at least eat my pizza first? I’m sure after talking to DeAngelo my appetite will be gone.”