Free Malicious Mischief (A Rylie Keyes Mystery) (Entangled Select) by Marianne Harden

and not on his head.”
    “Maybe the killer knocked it off when they smothered him,” Solo suggested.
    “Don’t touch,” Zach warned Mackenzie as she started to reach down. “It’s evidence.”
    The kippah was a yard away from a crushed rhododendron and in the middle of a dirt trail that twisted the two hundred feet from the street above to Leland’s lakeside house below. Clear to see were drag marks across the trail, through some stinging nettles, around a stack of firewood, and into the woods to my driveway, where I had parked the van last night.
    “What are you looking at?” Solo asked.
    I considered. “Maybe Otto was killed up there,” I said, eyeing the balcony outside Leland’s street-side home office.
    “You think someone threw him over the rail,” Solo said, staring uphill, too.
    “Possibly,” I said. “Otto was a small man, way too small to tumble over a large rhododendron like this one and crush it. No, he had to drop on it from above.”
    “Oh, get real, Rylie,” Mackenzie said. “How do you know that rhoddy wasn’t already like that? It’s not like you walk this way a lot to Zach’s place, not like” —her eyes met his— “others.”
    They were involved. The thought struck me that they had been for some time, even though Zach often insisted since the shooting he didn’t want long-term relationships. I dropped my gaze, in a moment of hopelessness. Mackenzie was so dynamic, so self-assured, and not for the first time, I resented that everything I wanted—parents, stability, Zach —she possessed.
    “This is now a crime scene,” Zach said.
    Mackenzie curled into him, her eyes on me. “Hold me, Zach. I’m frightened.”
    He wrapped her in his arms, shifting his gaze in my direction, a sliver of sorry in his eyes.
    I looked down again, thinking, wondering, how I could ever compete with her.

~Life is short. Don’t be a dick~
    I felt better after I had showered and changed and eaten a cheese stick. There was a quiet peace about our little home, as though family long gone watched over me. Still, another five minutes of my own pity party must have passed before I was able to grab a pencil and scribble a note to Granddad. No vivid exposé on this morning’s accident would do, nor would a barefaced fib. I may not be completely up-front with Granddad on all the goings-on in my life, but I don’t like to flagrantly lie, either. Plus, with Leland as my neighbor, there was zero chance of this disaster staying hush-hush for long.
    I decided to carry on Joe Friday-like, “Just the facts, ma’am.” I stared at what I had written before I erased the part about finding Otto Weiner dead in the back of the van. Naturally, Granddad would never leave town with me involved in a murder, and in order to investigate this case, he had to be gone— had to be ! I ended with “See you tomorrow. Love, Rylie.”
    Next, I called Leland’s house from the landline Granddad refused to give up. It was an added expense to our budget and hard to remember the last time I’d used it, but with my cell phone AWOL at Suicide Trestle, I was happy to have it. The phone, meanwhile, was still ringing in my ear. Five rings later, I stood blinking in the sunlight glancing off the lake and into the windows.
    There came a squeak of the front door, and Solo with a heaving chest and gasping breath appeared. “There are way too many steps to climb up from the dock.”
    “Granddad says that if he ever wins the Lotto he’s gonna buy a tram like Leland’s.”
    “It’s a lemon, that tram,” he said. “It’s always breaking. And it squeaks. Stick with the Desmonts’ brand. It’s ironclad. Who are you calling?”
    “Leland. But there is still no answer, so I’m calling Tita now.”
    The instant I uttered her name, Tita answered, “What!”
    Typical Tita. Gruff. “It’s me, Rylie.”
    “I noticed,” she said. “But more importantly, how come you’re not at work?”
    Tita Iglesias, head chef at FoY and a former