Not A Girl Detective by Susan Kandel Page B

happened to me. And something strange is going on.
    Someone’s been in there. Edgar’s bedroom is a mess.”
    “How can that be?” asked Lael.
    My hands were trembling as I dialed Jake’s cell. “I’m sorry, you have reached a number that is no longer in service.”
    Of course, he didn’t pay his bills. The next number
    was Edgar’s cell. Time to get to the bottom of this.
    It rang several times.
    “What’s that?” asked Bridget.
    “What’s what?” I asked, thoroughly confused. I
    hung up. Who else could I call? Edgar’s was the last
    number on the list.
    “That noise I just heard.”
    I hadn’t heard a thing.
    “It was probably nothing.” Or it was them. Some-
    where out here.
    “Edgar? Jake? Are you in the backyard?” I cried.
    “Please come out.” I stepped around an enormous palm
    tree embedded in some cement, and toward a sea of
    boulders leading to the mountains beyond.
    “Where are you going, Cece? You don’t have any
    shoes on,” Lael said.
    “Only bloody paper towels,” added Bridget. “And
    they’re going to get bloodier if you keep heading out there.”
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    “I’m coming to help you. C’mon, Bridget.”
    They got out of the pool and huddled next to me.
    “I’m going to try Edgar’s cell again. I didn’t let it ring long enough.”
    “There’s that noise again,” said Bridget.
    This time I heard it, too. Coming from beyond the
    boulders.
    I hung up. The noise stopped. I dialed Edgar’s num-
    ber again. The noise started again.
    It sounded like a phone ringing.
    Like when you’re home, but you don’t want to get the
    phone, and you’re waiting for the answering machine to pick up, to release you from some obligation you don’t want. But the ringing goes on and on, insistent, like a reproach.
    I headed toward the edge of the property, my heart in my mouth. I went past the boulders, through the cactus, and deep into the brush. And that was where I found
    him, Edgar Edwards, with a small hole in the middle of his forehead.
    His cell phone was lying next to him, still ringing,
    still insisting.
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    The Eames chairs in Edgar’s living room were unre-
    lenting. I guess that was the theme of the day.
    “Let’s go over it just one more time.” Detective
    Mindy Lasarow tucked a strand of prematurely gray
    hair behind one ear and smiled grimly at me.
    “No problem,” I said.
    “Why are you ladies here, in this house?” She looked
    at me as if she were hoping for a different answer, if only to relieve the monotony.
    “We were invited here,” I recited. It was the fourth, maybe the fifth, time I’d explained it.
    “By whom?”
    “Edgar Edwards.”
    Her partner, Detective Dunphy, scribbled madly, as
    if this were brand-new information.
    I turned to Detective Dunphy. Cindy. She didn’t
    look like a Cindy. Cindys have dimples. This one had
    a single furrowed brow. “I’m talking about the dead
    man.”
    “Uh-huh.”
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    She wasn’t exactly the conversationalist Detective
    Lasarow was.
    “Okay. The dead man invited you here, to stay at his
    house.”
    “Right.”
    “And your friends, too.”
    “We have every right to be here,” exclaimed Lael.
    “We were planning to leave a carrot cake.”
    Detective Dunphy spoke up. “If you just answer the
    questions, ma’am, we’ll all get out of here sooner.”
    “Don’t you ma’am me.” Lael outraged was a thing to
    behold, but now was probably not the time.
    “Should we be contacting our lawyers?” asked Brid-
    get, who was sweating profusely, as if she were already locked up in a Third World prison. “Don’t we get a
    phone call?”
    “Don’t be silly, Bridget,” I said. “We aren’t suspects.
    Right, Detective Lasarow?”
    She glanced at her partner.
    “Not yet, Ms. Caruso.”
    They were so cool, these two. But Edgar was dead,
    and they were wasting precious time. Surely we didn’t look like the type of lowlifes they usually