“Thank you,” Cookie said, surprised.

“Not at all.” He led us down the street toward a small white adobe in serious need of a weed whacking. “I’ve been keeping a man on you twenty-four/seven.” He glanced down at me as I walked beside him. “Or at least I thought I was keeping a man on you twenty-four/seven. Apparently, the one from yesterday evening felt he needed to break for a late-night snack without waiting for his relief. Around three in the morning?” he asked. I nodded, my teeth clamped together in anger. “Your life was in danger, in case you didn’t get the message.” He fished out a paper from his back pocket.

“I got the message loud and clear when I was stabbed in the chest.” I glanced to my side. Cookie totally had my back with a determined nod.

He rolled his eyes. It was very unprofessional. “You weren’t stabbed. You were sliced. And I heard back from your Mistress Marigold—speaking of which, really? Mistress Marigold?”

“What did she say?” Cookie asked, enthralled. It was funny.

“Well, I told her I was the grim reaper, like you said—” He hitched his head toward Cookie. “—and she told me that if I was the grim reaper, she was the son of Satan.”

I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. Garrett caught me as I glanced back at a wide-eyed Cookie.

“I tried to e-mail her back,” he continued, eyeing me warily now, “but she’ll have nothing to do with me.”

“Can you blame her?” I asked, faking nonchalance. Holy cow, who was this woman?

“This woman’s name is Carrie Lee-ah-dell,” he said, struggling with the pronunciation.

“Mistress Marigold?” How the hell did he know that?

He frowned. “No. This chick.” He pointed to the house. “She’s a kindergarten teacher.”

Oh, right. I drew in a deep breath, then glanced at the paper, at the name Carrie Liedell, and giggled. “It’s pronounced Lie-dell.”

“Really? How do you know?”

I stopped my trek up the sidewalk and pointed to the paper. “See this? This i-e? When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”

He furrowed his brows at me. “What the f**k does that mean?”

I started for the door again, casting a humorous glance underneath my lashes at Cook, and at that very moment in time, I realized how ultracool the click of my boots on the concrete sounded. “It means that you never learned to read properly.”

Cookie hid a giggle behind a cough as Garrett met me at the door. He waited while I knocked. Just as the doorknob turned, he asked in a low voice, “Where does that leave freight?”

He had a point.

“Or said.”

A thirtyish woman with a short, dark bob that squared her already square jaw to a harsh extreme cracked open the door.

“Or, I don’t know, blood.”

Now he was just showing off.

“Yes?” she asked, her tone wary. She probably thought we were selling something. Vacuum cleaners. Magazine subscriptions. Religion by the yard.

Before I could say anything, Garrett leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Or should. And yes, Charles, I can do this all day.”

I was fully prepared to beat him to death with serving tongs. “Hi, Ms. Liedell?” I held up my laminated PI license. Mostly ’cause I looked cool doing it. “My name is Charlotte Davidson, and these are my colleagues Cookie Kowalski and Garrett Swopes. We’re investigating a hit-and-run that happened about three years ago.”

Having no idea what actually happened to Dead Trunk Guy, I was taking a huge risk. If she was involved with his death, any number of things could have happened. But since he probably died in the trunk, a hit-and-run made the most sense. I figured she was driving home late one night and just didn’t see him. Fearing she would get in trouble, she coaxed him into her trunk? It was thin, but I had nothing else.

My gamble paid off immediately. I felt a surge of adrenaline rush through her, a sharp spike of fear as guilt descended like a dark cloud, though her face showed only the slightest hint of distress. Her eyes widened ever so slightly. Her mouth pursed the tiniest degree. She’d practiced this moment, which made her a murderer.

I decided to push forward, to deny her system a chance to recover. “Would you care to explain what happened, Ms. Liedell?” I asked, my voice knowing, accusing.

A hand closed the collar of her blouse self-consciously. Or it could have been the sudden chill of having a dead homeless man standing over her, staring down with a spark of recognition coming to light in his green eyes. I’d never had a departed hurt a living human—I didn’t even know if they could—but I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to tackle the guy. He was huge. And since I was the only one who could see him, it would look odd.

“I—I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

Noting the telltale quiver in her voice, I said, “You hit a homeless man, locked him in the trunk of your 2000 white Taurus, then waited for him to die. Does that about sum it up?”

Garrett’s jaw clenched in my periphery, and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was concerned about my line of questioning or if he was angry at what she’d done.

“It was on Coal Avenue,” Dead Trunk Guy said, his deep voice clear and sharp. It startled me at first, but even crazy people had their lucid moments. He turned to me then, pinning me to the spot with his fierce gaze. “In a parking lot, believe it or not.”