Page 53 of The Body in the Backyard

“Bella, you have to save your voice for TV, right?” Riley asked.

“TV?” Griffin repeated dazedly, still staring up at the statue’s penis.

Bella hiccupped. “Oh my goodness! I was so upset I forgot I was on TV.”

“You have the morning show, and someone’s probably going to want to interview you about this, so that’s even more screen time,” Riley said. The siren was getting closer. “You two stay here and try not to scream,” she told them.

Riley returned to Nick and tried not to look at the body.

“Do we know who he is?” she asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Mrs. Penny said, whacking the rhododendron out of the way with the cane.

“Can you stop fucking up the crime scene, Penny?” Nick said. He was crouched down a few feet from the legs. There was a wooden block in the grass and a long pair of bolt cutters in the mulch.

“What exactly happened, Mrs. Penny?” Riley asked.

“We were inside watchingThe Price Is Rightreruns, and Griffin wouldn’t shut up about how much better a host he’d be whenbam!The power went out. These yahoos didn’t know what to do, so I came out here to investigate andbam!Dead guy.”

The electrical meter mounted on the wall above the corpse was still intact, but the tubing around the wires had been cut.

“Who puked?” Nick asked, eyeing a chunky-looking puddle of fluid.

“The assistant. Everyone acts like they’ve never seen a dead body before,” Mrs. Penny complained.

The siren blared into the cul-de-sac.

“I’ll go find Griffin’s assistant and let the cops in,” Riley volunteered.

“Thanks.”

She found the assistant rocking back and forth on the kitchen floor. “You okay?” she asked tentatively.

There was no response.

She walked up to him and clapped her hands in his face. “Staff!”

He fell over on the tile and curled in a ball. “I don’t want to die!”

“I’m not here to kill you. We just need to let the cops in,” Riley explained.

On cue, there was a pounding at the front door. “Harrisburg PD. Open up.”

Detective Kellen Weber and Sergeant Mabel Jones marched through the door when Riley opened it. To his credit, Weber barely bothered to roll his eyes when he saw her. “I should have known,” he muttered.

“Hey, girl,” Mabel said. “I take it Santiago’s here too?”

“He’s out back,” Riley said. “Follow me.”

She led them through the house and out onto the patio. Weber approached Griffin, who was still lying like a starfish on the ground.

“What in the ever-loving hell is that?” Mabel asked, wide-eyed as she took in the scene.

“That’s not the dead guy,” Riley told them. “Griffin’s just stunned. He ran into his statue’s erection. The body’s over there.”

Riley watchedfrom the kitchen as a uniformed cop unspooled the yellow crime scene tape in the backyard and the coroner’s gurney wheeled into view.

“I was just saying how I would be an excellent game show host because I’m so handsome and charming when the power went out,” Griffin explained to the officer. He and Bella were sitting at the glass and chrome kitchen table. He held an ice pack to his forehead, and Bella was delicately sipping on one of her creepy placenta smoothies.