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She said indignantly, “I know it’s not a game!Weknow it’s not a game. Don’t you see? Our best chance of making sure we don’t all end up like poor Chelsea is to figure out why he killed her.”

Ellery stared. “He?”

Lenny’s face scrunched up in pain. “Ell, you’re not going to pretend you don’t know who killed Chelsea? There’s only one real possibility, and you know it. Weallknow it. We might not want to believe it, but who else could it be?”

Chapter Nineteen

Ellery was ransacking the contents of the counter drawer designated “Watson’s stuff” when Tosh walked into the kitchen.

“I thought I’d lend a hand with the Irish—” She stopped in her tracks, frowning. “What are you doing?”

Ellery, clutching a small plastic pill bottle, jumped about a foot and said, “Looking for sugar.”

Tosh considered him for a moment. “You keep your sugar with the Bravecto?”

Ellery closed his eyes in pain. “No. Tosh...”

Her eyes widened in alarm. “What’s in your hand?”

He expelled a long breath and held up the bottle. Tosh had to join him to read the tiny print.

“Trazodone?”She stared at him. “That damn well better be for Watson, Ellery.”

Talk about awkward (and/or difficult) conversations.

“Look, Watson’s a little dog. There’s not enough here to do him harm. Even if I dump in the gabapentin, it’s probably not going to knock him out. But it might make him sleepy. He had a-a strenuous night. He’s going to need to crash soon.”

After a moment, Tosh said, “We’re not talking about Watson, are we?”

“You know we’re not.”

Tosh smacked the counter and then glowered up at the ceiling. “No. No, you’re wrong. This is all Lenny and Flip. They’ve got this crazy idea—and by the way, they’re not being very subtle about it!”

That was exactly what Ellery was afraid of, and why he felt it was imperative to act.

“Tosh—”

“Ell, you’re not thinking this through. We all heard her scream seconds before we came out of our rooms. Freddie wasright there. He couldn’t have killed Chelsea in the library and made it back upstairs in thirty seconds. He wasn’t even out of breath! And he’d have been covered in blood, wouldn’t he?”

The fact that she had thought this through, worked it out, was significant in itself.

Ellery said, “He’d have had to kill her earlier during the night.”

“We’d have heard it!”

“Not necessarily. You can’t hear anything in the library from upstairs. Besides, she might not have had time to scream.”

“Weheardher scream.”

“We heard what sounded like a woman’s scream.”

“Exactly.”

Ellery trilled very softly, “Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo...”

Tosh gasped. Her expression was stricken.

“What are you two whispering about?” Freddie asked from the doorway.