There was a snort from behind Clay. He turned to look at Harry, who had a handful of gold chains in one hand and a silver pleather jacket in the crook of his elbow.
“What? It was funny,” Harry said. “And only a bit creepy.”
“Shut up,” Clay told him.
Grade turned his back as he opened some cabinets and swept the contents out. Spices hit the counter and spilled open, the smell of garlic and cumin strong enough to make Clay’s nose itch.
“If the house had been more isolated, I could have just staged a fall,” Grade said. “But someone is going to see the van outside or two men hauling a rug into the house at—”
He stopped to look for a clock. Harry checked the one he had clutched in his hand and said, “Nearly midnight.”
“And that means it wasn’t natural causes, and if nothing was taken, it wasn’t a robbery either,” Grade said. He fastidiously brushed garlic powder from his gloved hands. “Only fourteen percent of burglaries are solved. The stats for murder are much more impressive.”
Clay held up his hands. “It was just an observation,” he said. “This shitshow is all yours. I cause problems; I don’t fix ’em.”
For a second Grade looked flustered as he glanced at Clay’s hands, still in close-fitting leather gloves. He flushed a little, just around the ears, and had to clear his throat before he could push on.
“Good to know,” Grade said.
“Didn’t skip those grades in school for being observant, huh?” Clay said. He shrugged when Grade scowled at him. “Not like I was hiding it.”
Harry dumped two handfuls of jewelry into a pillowcase.
“Yeah. He can get references,” he said. The back of an earring caught in his glove and ripped the latex. “Shit.”
Grade pulled another pair out of a pocket and held them out, wrinkled and blue as they dangled from his fingers.
“You’re about to have a new experience, then,” he said. “Help us move the body into the hall.”
“Where is she?”
They’d left her in the study.
“You take the feet,” Grade said as he lifted books off the floor and relocated them onto the dead woman’s desk. “Harry, get the head.”
“Couldn’t you have waited to trash in here until you were done?” Grade asked.
Harry straddled one end of the plastic-wrapped corpse and bent from the knees as he got ready to lift her. “It was like this when we got here,” he said. “I thought the place had already been turned over.”
“Wrong end,” Grade told him absently as he moved a brown leather kitchen chair out of their way, one hand on the files stacked on it to keep them in place.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes,” Grade said.
It didn’t. Clay could tell when Grade was just being a dick for the sake of it. They could fight about that later, when they weren’t under a deadline. Right now, he just gestured at Harry for them to swap places.
“What about the other one?” Clay asked. “Franklin.”
Grade stopped what he was doing and looked annoyed. That was Clay being a petty bastard back at him. Clay knew Grade didn’t like to think of corpses as people; it made it easier to keep a professional distance.
“How invested was the client in them not being found together?” Grade asked.
“Like my first boyfriend’s dad about me,” Clay said. “Very.”
Grade sighed. “Then we’ll need to go back and get the Lexus.” He pulled his sleeve back and frowned at his watch. His lips moved slightly as he counted off the hours. “I’ll have to cut it close, but there should be time. Well, there will be if we get on with it here.”
He nodded pointedly to the body.
