Free The Sholes Key (An Evans & Blackwell Mystery #1) by Clarissa Draper

there wearing nothing but flannel bottoms.
    “Mr. Allen Barking?” Theo asked.
    “I’m busy, right in the middle of something,” he said, starting to shut the door. Before he could protest, Dorland held his warrant card in the man’s face.
    “We need to ask you a few questions about your neighbor across the hall. Can we come in?” Theo made sure it sounded more like a statement than a request.
    “This won’t take long, will it? I’m working.” The bearded man opened the door and allowed them to enter.
    The decor made them take pause. A panoramic scene from a Japanese outer space cartoon covered every inch of the man’s walls. A battle scene came at them from all directions, with a wide-eyed Japanese girl the main focal point, her laser guns blaring.
    Mr. Barking explained, “I draw anime, and that is what I was in the middle of when you interrupted me.” He pointed toward the drafting tables that took up half his sitting room.
    “You are very good,” Dorland remarked, heading toward a hand belonging to one of the large caricatures.
    “Don’t touch the walls, please.”
    Dorland stepped away.
    Mr. Barking went back to his tables, took up a beige pencil, and began drawing again. The sketches were only partially colored.
    “We want to thank you,” Theo started, “for ringing an ambulance for the boy.”
    “What was I supposed to do, let him die on my doorstep? Have you found his bloody mother yet?” Mr. Barking asked as he continued to color.
    “Do you have any idea where she could be?” Theo asked. “We’re looking for information, especially on the night she disappeared—Wednesday night.”
    “I’m her neighbor, not her guardian. I don’t sit here jotting down her movements on paper.”
    “So you don’t like her?”
    “That’s not what I’m saying. Stop putting words in my mouth. She annoyed me.”
    “What did you find annoying?” Theo said.
    “Everything about her annoyed me.”
    “Did she smoke?” Theo asked. Dorland was only inches away from the Japanese girl’s voluptuous right breast. If he touched it, Theo would kill him.
    “Yes. She would tromp up and down those bloody stairs at all hours of the night. Two, three, four in the morning, it drove me insane. Who bloody smokes at that time of night? Go to bed. And the boy, he’d practically have to yell at her to get her attention. Always reading books, everywhere she went, up and down the stairs, her head in the clouds. She would carry groceries and be reading. I don’t know how she did it. I always thought she would fall down the stairs.” He shook his head.
    “Have you seen her with anyone? A boyfriend?” Theo asked, checking the books on his tables. The Making of Origin. Drawing Game Characters. My Neighbor Totoro.
    “I haven’t,” Barking replied, grabbing a light blue pencil. “But if she did, I would be the last person she would announce it to.”
    “Have you seen anyone suspicious hanging about the building?” Dorland said. Theo noticed he was staring directly at the picture’s cleavage.
    “No.” Barking hesitated. He looked up from his drawing and asked, “Why? Do you think some crazed lunatic is coming in the building and kidnapping people? Am I in danger?”
    Theo wanted to tell him that if he were looking for lunatics he should look in the mirror but instead said, “These are just routine questions, Mr. Barking.”
    “When the police came to look for Mrs. McCauley,” Dorland asked, “how did they get into her flat? Did the landlord come?”
    “I don’t know. When the boy came to me, he left his door open. I went in looking for his mum, but I didn’t lock the door behind me when I left. I only shut it. Probably the police found it unlocked and walked in. Later, Lorna’s mum came by. When I heard footsteps up the stairs, I thought it was Lorna. I went to give her a right bollocking for leaving her son alone only to find I called her mum a few really nasty words instead.” He smiled. “She locked