Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) by Virginia Brown

the trail.
    She turned around to hit the light switch again, and bumped into Harry Gordon.
    “Oh shit!” she yelped, leaping backward. “You scared the crap out of me. I didn’t hear you—hey, are you all right?”
    Harry Gordon didn’t answer. He just stared beyond her, his bright blue eyes faded and opaque. His mouth sagged open, and his face was gray as putty—and as unanimated.
    Something wet and warm smeared her palm and she looked down, staring blankly for a moment at the bright red stuff like ketchup. Then she looked up at Harry Gordon again. The tip of some kind of animal horn protruded from his chest and, apparently, was all that held him up.
    Oh boy . She’d known meeting up with Harry Gordon wouldn’t be pleasant. She just hadn’t thought it’d be fatal.

Four
     
    “How the hell do you do it, Harley?” Mike Morgan shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a magnet for murder.”
    “Oh, gee thanks, I appreciate your comfort, but really, it isn’t necessary.” She gulped a big swig of hot coffee he’d brought her, still shivering with reaction despite the night’s heat.
    She’d called Mike first, and he’d called in the police. Harry Gordon still hung from an elk horn in the storage area, waiting for the coroner to finish his investigation. Macabre.
    Mike peered down at her. “So why are you here alone? I thought you told me you had to do something with your aunt tonight.”
    “No, you never listen. I said had to do something for my aunt tonight. This was it. Oh no, not murder—I was just checking on some stuff for her.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “What, are you working homicide now?”
    “Practicing.” He shifted position, moved closer, his voice dropping. “These aren’t hard questions, Harley, but someone’s going to ask them. Better be ready.”
    “I am ready. Ready to leave.”
    Morgan smiled and looked at something beyond her. “Too late.”
    She didn’t have to look. She knew who it had to be. Bobby Baroni. She turned and put on a bright smile when she saw him stalking toward her. Bobby was tall, well-built, and Italian to the roots of his black hair. His parents were third generation Americans, his grandparents still spoke in their native language at home, and his great-grandparents had never learned English at all. They hadn’t had to, living downtown near the river in what used to be the Italian quarter of Memphis, selling pasta and pastrami to mostly Italians but a surprising number of Irish as well.
    “Hi, Bobby!”
    “Shit, Harley.” He didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked distinctly grumpy. He gave her a look from his dark eyes that was both wary and professional. Bobby never let friendship interfere with his duties as a homicide detective. Unfortunately.
    “Why is it,” he began, flicking his gaze from her to Morgan and back, “that I always seem to find you near murder victims lately? If I didn’t know better—and I’m not sure I do—I’d think you were some sort of aberrant serial killer.”
    “Isn’t that redundant? I thought all serial killers were aberrant.”
    Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “This is no time to try funny, Harley. How’d this happen?”
    “Hell, I don’t know!” she said indignantly. “He was dead when I got here, hanging off that elk horn like a winter coat.” She couldn’t help a shudder. A sick feeling sat in her stomach.
    “Did you give a statement yet?”
    She nodded. “To that officer over there. You’re not going to make me give it three or four times again, I hope.”
    “As many as it takes, Harley.” He wrote something down in his little spiral notebook, then turned to Morgan. “You called this in. Were you with her?”
    “No. She called me, hysterical—”
    “I was not hysterical!” she protested, but both men ignored her as Mike kept talking.
    “—because she’d found the vic. I told her not to touch anything, to wait outside in her car with the doors locked, and then I called it in.”
    “Yeah. Well,