Crazy for You by Juliet Rosetti

unlikely, since Brookwood was miles across town—it would look as though she were here to bowl, rather than to pass confidential information to the media.
    “Okay, so here’s what happening,” Josie said. “The medical examiner did the autopsy on Rhonda Cromwell this afternoon. Top secret, hush-hush, this document will self-destruct in sixty seconds, and all that jazz, so naturally I got my grimy little paws on that report before the chief did.”
    Labeck and I strained to hear above the thump and bump of the alleys.
    “Cause of death was compression of the aortic arteries by ligature strangulation,” Josie recited. “The implement used was a fifty-four-inch brown shoestring. Considerable force was used, which caused the shoestring to dig deep into the victim’s neck.”
    Josie seemed to be quoting verbatim from the report. “The victim would most likely have lost consciousness within thirty seconds. Brain death would have occurred within three minutes.”
    “Do they know the time she was killed?” Labeck asked.
    “Sometime between ten p.m. Monday and one a.m. Tuesday. Later they’ll nail it down to a more specific time.”
    Not good. Labeck said he’d dropped Rhonda off at ten thirty.
    “You guys gonna bowl or what?” a guy behind us yelled.
    Labeck turned around and eyeballed him. Labeck can be scary when he wants to be. He’s big and tall and has large hands that form large fists. The guy shut up and slunk away.
    “Where was Rhonda killed?” I asked.
    “In her house,” Josie said. “A chair was knocked over in the living room, there were drag marks on the carpet, and a piece of her skirt fringe got snagged on the back door. You’re up, Mazie.”
    Darn. I’d been hoping they’d forget about me. I picked up my ball. Strung out on nerves, I barely bothered to aim. My ball flirted with the gutter cliff before finally plinking off a single pin. In duckpins, you get three tries, so I tried two more times andmanaged to knock down five more pins.
    Mike the pinsetter made a razzing noise from his post above the lanes. “My two hunnert-year-old grammaw can bowl better than that.”
    Mike’s insults are part of the Koz’s tradition. Oddly, they never seem to hurt his tips.
    “Did the killer leave fingerprints?” Labeck asked Josie.
    “They think the killer was wearing gloves. Rhonda wasn’t sexually assaulted. No trace of saliva, semen, or sweat in or on her body or clothing. She had a Betty Boop tattoo on her left ankle and a lot of surgical scars. That woman must have had every inch of her body nipped, tucked, or enlarged.”
    The bartender yelled that he had a table for us, so we scratched on the game and trooped over to a narrow wooden booth at the back of the bar. A vintage advertising poster for Pin Up Ale was tacked on the wall above the booth, showing a woman in a skimpy costume straddling a dolphin-sized bowling pin. The ad copy read: “Grab your balls and strike!”
    A man with white hair like dandelion fluff came to take our orders. He was wearing a towel as an apron and his face said he’d seen it all, but against all the evidence believed that a few decent human beings still inhabited the planet. Ordering at Koz’s is easy. You have whatever the cook feels like making that night. Tonight we were all having sloppy joes. Labeck said he’d spring for beer, an offer that wasn’t as generous as it sounds, since Koz’s only charges five bucks a pitcher.
    I described my encounter with Lieutenant Trumbull that afternoon. “He practically accused me of killing Rhonda.”
    Josie shook her head. “Blowing hot air,” she said. “Vince Trumbull likes to throw his weight around. I ought to know, because I work with the guy.”
    “I’ve had run-ins with Trumbull,” Labeck said. “He plays for a police hockey league. Last time we played, my team beat his team, and he didn’t take it well.”
    “You need to watch out for that guy,” Josie said. “Trumbull is dangerous. He’s stubborn,