Braking for Bodies by Duffy Brown

was . . . you know . . . done in.” Zo pointed at me. “Ask her about the bike riding. We passed each other. She’s the only person on this island who rides a bike worse than I do. Besides, how could I have pushed Peep . . . my darling Peepy . . . off the porch without being noticed, tell me that, huh?”
    She held out her arms. “I had on a red biking outfit that I, like, bought in the hotel shop ’cause red is . . . was . . . Peep’s favorite color? Red does not blend in with the evening dinner crowd in the hotel lobby around here. Like, someone would have remembered me, don’t you think? Instead, they remember seeing that stupid purple hat Fiona wears all the time! She’s just a terrible person. I told Peep not to hire her and that she was nothing but, like, big trouble.”
    Zo yanked a ruffled pink pillow off the bed and swung it at Fiona, hitting her smack in the face. “How could you, like, do this to Peep? To me?”
    â€œI didn’t, like, do anything.” Fiona’s eyes shot wide open. “Did I just say
like
?” She smacked Zo with a green pillow. “You’re contaminating us all.”
    â€œDon’t you like make fun of the way I talk, you . . . you hillbilly.”
    â€œThis is the Midwest, you geographically challenged Valley girl.”
    Zo clobbered Fiona over the head, and feathers fleweverywhere into the room. “I’m the only one who loved Peep. You, like, hated him, and his rotten wife only wanted his money. That’s all she ever thought about; she never had enough. He was my little Peepy and there will never be another one like him.”
    â€œGod willing and a little bit of luck.” Fiona pillow-punched Zo in the gut.
    â€œThat’s it!” Sutter stepped between Fiona and Zo and a flurry of pillow feathers littering the floor. “Fiona, you need to come down to the police station.”
    â€œMe? What about the avocado queen here? I don’t care what the evidence is, she’s in this up to her eyeballs.”
    â€œAvocado queen? Like, you’re nothing but a two-bit pencil pusher.”
    Sutter yanked away the pillows and tossed them on the bed. “There is no way Zo could have been dressed for dinner, pushed Peep off the porch, run around and clobbered him with the olive oil, then changed and pedaled off for Evie to see her on the way to the hotel. The timeline just doesn’t work. I was at the Grand and would have remembered seeing a red sweatsuit in the throng of evening wear.”
    Sutter took out his handcuffs and faced Fiona. “I need answers right now from you, and you keep running off. It’s not going to happen again, and how’d you get the split lip and bump on your forehead?”
    Fiona took a step back. “Nate, we . . . we’ve known each other forever, I sold you Girl Scout Cookies, and saved all the Thin Mints just for you. You owe me!”
    â€œAnd I got you through geometry. We’re even.”
    â€œYou can’t put Betsy Ross in handcuffs,” I added. “What will the kiddies in the lobby think of Betsy Ross, seamstress of the first American flag, in handcuffs, huh? They will all be in therapy for years over that one, their Fourth of Julys ruined forever, and they’ll cry when they salute the flag. And . . . and the mystery groups will assume Fiona’s the killer and that the game is no longer afoot.”
    â€œAfoot?” Sutter arched on eyebrow.
    â€œYou have to admit that you aren’t one hundred percent certain Fiona is guilty. What about Madonna?”
    â€œShe’s on the list.” Sutter reached for Fiona.
    â€œSee? Not one hundred percent,” I shot back. “And it will crush Fiona’s parents, who are here for your very own mother’s wedding. What will they think of their darling daughter hauled out of the Grand Hotel,