Free Dead Weight by Susan Rogers Cooper Page A

of the TV to watch Sponge Bob , and walked casually into Mrs McClure’s bedroom. In the original book written for babysitters everywhere, it is not only OK but a downright requirement that you check out the lady of the house’s jewelry box and underwear drawer. You don’t actually take anything, for gawd’s sake – it’s just what one does.
    Mrs McClure had a dressing table with a rolling stool in front of it that was padded and had a ruffled skirt. It was rose colored to match the walls and bedspread. On top of it was an obvious jewelry box and two smaller Asian-looking round china boxes, and some perfume and cologne bottles. I only sprayed a couple of the cologne bottles because I didn’t want her to smell it and think I’d been riffling through her stuff. The smaller of the two china boxes held costume jewelry earrings. Some really cute, some old-lady-looking. The larger box held an assortment of junk: fingernail stuff – emery files, cuticle sticks, scissors, etc. – key rings, and an ornate, old-fashioned key attached to a bejeweled key ring. The jewelry box – the big wooden one – looked like a miniature hutch or whatever you call that thing in the dining room that holds china and stuff. The two doors on either side of the piece held necklaces – long ones with pendants, and short ones with pearls and diamonds and stuff. This box, I think, was where she kept the good stuff. The top you lifted up and it showed a velvet ring holder thingy with some really, really nice rings – like diamonds and rubies and stuff. Real expensive. Under that top part were drawers that held bracelets – one tennis bracelet with so many diamonds it made me almost swoon! – and pins and stuff. My mother’s jewelry was nothing like this! She had a diamond in her engagement ring, but it was way less than a karat. I know these things. I think I was born with this knowledge.
    Then I moved to her dresser and found her underwear drawer. OMG! Mrs McClure was a slut! There was a teddy with the nipple holes cut out, and panties with the crotch cut out, and – yes, you guessed it! – handcuffs with pink rabbit fur trim! Not only was she a slut, she killed a bunny to further her erotic fantasies! I was flabbergasted. I got on the phone immediately to Azalea and D’Wanda. There was no way I was keeping this to myself!
    We picked the wrong day to visit the Codderville Police Department. It seems, I gathered from bits and pieces I overheard while waiting for Luna, that CPD had raided a meth lab at the crack of dawn this morning and now had in custody eight guys who were actually there to cook the meth, plus ten women and seventeen children who were asleep in various parts of the house. All except the men were milling about while CPD officials tried to figure out if the women were culpable and, if so, what to do with the children. And the children were what you’d expect from kids raised in a meth house: slightly, but not by much, better behaved than my own.
    After an hour of sitting on our butts on a waiting area bench, Luna stuck her head out of a door I knew led to the homicide division and crooked a finger at me. Trisha and I followed like good puppy dogs.
    Lt Luna had been upgraded from a desk to an actual office. It was a little smaller than my under-the-stairs-closet-turned-office at home, and, relatively speaking, as or more crowded than the bullpen out front. Luna sat in a big chair behind her desk. There were two visitor’s chairs – in a room that could barely house one – in which sat Tom McClure and Berta Harris. I hugged Berta while Trisha stayed outside, then traded places so Trisha could hug her and glare at her husband.
    ‘How was I supposed to know she was a friend of yours?’ Tom demanded. Well, actually, it was more pleading than demanding.
    ‘Are you releasing her?’ I demanded of Luna.
    ‘And why should I?’ Luna demanded back.
    ‘Because she’s innocent!’ I said rather loudly. I had pushed my way back