Half Witted

HALF WITTED A SQUEAKY CLEAN IN BETWEEN MYSTERY BOOK 1 CHRISTY BARRITT Copyright © 2023 by Christy Barritt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. CONTENTS 1. 10:56 a.m 2. 11:34 a.m 3. 12:18 p.m 4. 1:26 p.m 5. 1:55 p.m 6. 2:20 p.m 7. 2:46 p.m 8. 2:54 p.m 9. 3:16 p.m 10. 3:29 p.m 11. 3:46 p.m 12. 4:01 p.m 13. 4:21 p.m 14. 4:51 p.m 15. 5:56 p.m Also by Christy Barritt: You might also enjoy . . . Holly Anna Paladin Mysteries The Worst Detective Ever Complete Book List About the Author CHAPTER 1 10:56 A.M “Gabby, I just need you to stay here with the dead guy for thirty, forty minutes max.” Toby Palestine pressed a key into my hand as we stood outside a rundown house in a sketchy area of Norfolk, Virginia. I stared at my acquaintance, certain I hadn’t heard him correctly. “What? I’m here only as a favor to you. Why are you leaving me here with a corpse?” “My girl, Angelique, is mad at me, and I have to make things right before I lose her forever. I just need to see her face-to-face. I know I can convince her to forgive me.” Every word he said was expressed with animated hand motions and fervent inflections. My wiry, pale-skinned friend looked like a wreck with his wispy reddish-brown hair and oversized, shapeless clothes. I narrowed my eyes at his flimsy explanation. “This can’t wait until after the job is done?” “No, it can’t.” He stared at me with soulful green eyes, silently pleading with me to understand. “This girl is all I’ve got. She’s the night to my day. The shiver to my timbers. The rocks in my river. The—” I held up a hand to stop him before he got carried away. “So what you’re saying is . . . you really like her?” “Exactly. If I lose her, I lose everything. Understand?” The little con artist . . . Songs from “The Music Man” began to play in my mind as they did every time I sniffed out someone trying to manipulate me. I gave Toby a look before accepting the key from him and sighing. “Fine. But you’d better be back within forty minutes. Not one minute late either.” He grinned and clasped my shoulder with his bony, dry-knuckled hand. “I knew if anyone could handle this job, it would be you. You’re into all kinds of gross stuff.” “That sounds insulting . . . and weird.” Yet his statement was kind of true. But still . . . He gave me a look. “You know what I mean. You clean up bloody crime scenes for a living, so I figured you, of all people, could handle transporting dead bodies with me until Ricky gets back from his hospital stay.” That was nice. Just what I wanted to be known for. The girl who could handle gross stuff. Who didn’t mind hanging out with dead bodies. “Why is Ricky in the hospital again?” “We had a contest to see who could stuff the most Nerf balls up our noses. He won—but he also won a trip to the ER. Then he had some complications and—well, you don’t want to know the rest.” I resisted another sigh and nodded. Toby was right. I didn’t want to know. Before I could say anything else, Toby hurried back to his SUV—the one that the funeral home let him use for work. There was no way I was putting a dead body in the back of my van—even if it was my work van, a vehicle where I commonly placed hazmat materials to be taken to the hospital for disposal. I was talking bodily fluids, blood, and other things the average person would rather ignore. Toby had explained to me that most people assumed hearses came to get dead bodies to transport them to the funeral home, but they didn’t. Mostly because sometimes body removal technicians had to go places that were difficult to get to and required an all-terrain vehicle. I was learning new things every day. As Toby squealed away in the SUV, I sighed one more time and turned to the small, neglected house behind me. It was in a not-so-great area of town, about fifteen minutes from where I lived. News reports covered happenings in the area daily. The crime rate was so high here I was tempted to go door-to-door handing out discount flyers for my crime-scene cleaning business—buy one death-scene cleanup, get one 50 percent off. But I didn’t think local law enforcement would appreciate my entrepreneurial efforts. Instead, I turned toward the door and shoved the key into the lock. As soon as I opened the door and stepped inside, a horrible smell hit me. I recognized it. It was the beginning of decomposition—and it was only going to get a lot worse from here on. Unfortunately, I was all too familiar with the odor. In my line of work, the stench was a common occurrence—and one I never got used to. I left the front door open, but the screen door was closed over the opening. I knew if I closed the thick wood door, the smell inside would never air out. If I had known how bad it would be, I would have brought my air scrub with me. I still wasn’t sure why I’d let Toby talk me into this job. It had bad idea written all over it. I suppose I was desperate for some spending money. I’d met Toby through my job as a crime-scene cleaner. We’d struck up a conversation when he was late in removing a murdered body out of someone’s shed, and I’d arrived early to clean up the