Page 123 of The Body in the Backyard

“Not that. I mean, definitely also that. But I need you to poke around in Griffin’s head while I interrogate the little fucker.”

It was Riley’s turn to sigh. “Fine. But can I be drunk when I do it?”

“If you can get drunk in the next thirty seconds,” he said. “Gentry! Get in here.”

Brian hit a button, and screen savers of his wedding day with Josie filled all six monitors. The bride wore black.

Riley slid off Nick’s lap and perched on the counter in the corner.

Griffin appeared, carrying a spoon of what looked like straight mayonnaise. He slurped it up like it was soup. Brian gagged.

“Okay, spirit guides. Don’t let me get lost in there,” Riley said in her head.

“Does someone want an autograph?” Griffin asked hopefully.

She felt herself drifting. Her body was still in Brian’s office, but her mind was floating up, up, up into the clouds.

“Tell us about this accident you were in back in May,” Nick ordered. He sounded like he was far away.

“What accident? I wasn’t in an accident,” Griffin insisted, licking the spoon.

Riley cast her mind forward, slipping around Brian, who seemed amused, and then Nick, who was a roiling mass of frustration, before landing on Griffin’s unwrinkled brow.

Either her connection wasn’t good or there wasn’t much of anything going on in Griffin’s brain. She had a feeling it was the latter.

“The one that required you to take a three-week medical leave of absence from the morning show,” Nick prompted.

“Oh,that,” Griffin said, catching sight of his reflection in one of the monitors and combing his shellacked hair to one side.

“Yeah. That,” Nick repeated. “Tell us about the accident.”

“Well, there I was, driving down Second Street, when the car in front of me stopped for a yellow light…”

Riley’s nose twitched, and then she found herself following along with Griffin in his spiffy little sports car as he waved to people on the sidewalk with the audio of the morning show blaring from his speakers. But it wasn’t a recording of the show, it was a compilation of everything Griffin had said on the show.

Spirit World Riley rolled her eyes.

Griffin leaned forward to check his teeth in the rearview mirror just as the light ahead changed from yellow to red.

Smack!

She found herself up close and personal with the license plate of the city bus Griffin had just rear-ended.

“Not that accident. The one where you sued the driver,” Nick said through clenched teeth.

“You’ll have to be more specific. I sue a lot of people,” Griffin said amicably.

“The airport. When you hit a woman in the crosswalk.”

She could feel Nick’s molars gnashing together.

“Oh,thatone,” Griffin said, sounding to Riley like he was underwater.

She tried to navigate her way around conceited mental wonderings about whether his left profile or his right was the more perfect before landing in the back seat of an SUV as it approached the departures drop-off at the Harrisburg Airport.

“I didn’t hit anyone. I wasn’t driving,” he explained.

She was treated to an image of Griffin holding up a hand mirror and admiring himself. Everything else seemed to be blurred.