And it was scary. Its eyes weren’t on right, and its neck looked like the stuffing had been pulled out so that it sat lopsided on its little shoulders.

I left it there and exited Harper’s house unnerved and un-caffeinated.

* * *

After informing the security guard of what I found, leaving him unimpressed again, I gave him my card and made him promise to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. Then I started for home with my tail tucked between my legs. According to Angel, Reyes was going to be at that warehouse tonight, so I had some time to kill. I could do that on my sofa just as easily as I could running around Albuquerque like a chicken with my head cut off.

Wait. Somehow the word chicken struck a chord. I played with it in my mind. Rolled it over my tongue. Then came to a conclusion: It was me. I was a chicken butt. I was suddenly scared of everything.

I pulled off Academy and into a shopping center to stew in my own astonishment. I was a chicken of the most cowardly kind. Like a roosting hen. How can the grim reaper do her job if she’s a roosting hen? Suddenly every sound, every movement, caused an adrenaline dump the size of Australia to flood my system. This would so not do. I had to get my act together.

I looked at Misery’s dash. Being with her was comforting on some level, but not as comforting as my sofa. Then it hit me. An atrocity I’d overlooked for years. I’d never named my sofa. How could I do that to her? How could I be so callous? So cold and selfish?

But what would I name her? This was big. Important. She couldn’t go through life with a name that didn’t fit her unique personality.

Filled with an odd sense of relief at the new goal in life, I put Misery into drive. I could worry about being a roosting hen later. I had a sofa to name.

With renewed energy, I pulled back onto Academy—after hitting a drive-through for a mocha latte—and had just started for home when my phone rang.

“Yes?” I said, illegally talking on the phone while driving within the city limits. Scoping for cops, I waited for Uncle Bob to stop talking to whomever he was talking to and get back to me.

My uncle Bob, or Ubie as I most often referred to him, was a detective for APD, and I helped him on cases from time to time. He knew I could see the departed and used that to his advantage. Not that I could blame him.

“Get that to her, then call the ME ay-sap.”

“Okay,” I said, “but I’m not sure what calling the medical examiner ay-sap is going to accomplish. I’m pretty sure his name is George.”

“Oh, hey, Charley.”

“Hey, Uncle Bob. What’s up?”

“Are you driving?”

“No.”

“Have you heard anything?”

Our conversations often went like this. Uncle Bob with his random questions. Me with my trying to come up with answers just as random. Not that I had to try very hard. “I heard that Tiffany Gorham, a girl I knew in grade school, still stuffs her bra. But that’s just a rumor.”

“About the case,” he said through clenched teeth. I could tell his teeth were clenched because his words were suddenly forced. That meant he was frustrated. Too bad I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I wasn’t aware that we had a case.”

“Oh, didn’t Cookie call you?”

“She called me a doody-head once.”

“About the case.” His teeth were totally clenched again.

“We have a case?”

But I’d lost him. He was talking to another officer. Or a detective. Or a hooker, depending on his location and accessibility to cash. Though I doubted he would tell a hooker to check the status of the DOA’s autopsy report. Unless he was way kinkier than I’d ever given him credit for.

I found his calling me only to talk to other people very challenging.

“I’ll call you right back,” he said. No idea to whom.

The call disconnected as I sat at a light, wondering what guacamole would look like if avocados were orange.

I finally shifted my attention to the kid in my backseat. He had shoulder-length blond hair and bright blue eyes and looked somewhere between fifteen and seventeen.

“You come here often?” I asked him, but my phone rang before he could say anything. That was okay. He had a vacant stare, so I doubted he would have answered me anyway.

“Sorry about that,” Uncle Bob said. “Do you want to discuss the case?”

“We have a case?” I said again, perking up.

“How are you?”

He asked me that every time he called now. “Peachy. Am I the case? If so, I can solve this puppy in about three seconds. I’m heading down San Mateo toward Central in a cherry red Jeep Wrangler with a questionable exhaust system.”

“Charley.”

“Hurry, before I get away!”

He gave up. “So, the arsonist just got serious.”

Sadly, I had no idea what he was talking about. Uncle Bob was a homicide detective and rarely worked anything but murders and the like. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why are you trying to find an arsonist? And why is he just now getting serious? Was he only kidding before?”

“Three questions, one answer.” He mumbled something to another officer, then came back to me. “And that answer is because our arsonist is now a murderer. The building he torched last night had a homeless woman in it. She died.”

“Crap. That would explain why you’re on an arson case.”

“Yeah. Have you heard anything?”