Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door - Lucy Score Page 0,1

half a second to appreciate the irony that it was other peoples’ lives and not her own. Because that’s what her quest for normal had earned her. A too-quiet, forgettable life.

“I should have stayed in school!”

“I never should have given that guy a BJ!”

“I should have had that second hot fudge sundae!”

Riley never should have answered the knock on her door two weeks ago.

Boom.

2

6:55 a.m., Tuesday, June 16

The soothing sounds of digital wind chimes and chanting monks yanked Riley from an unsettling dream about an elderly woman obsessed with lymph nodes.

She slapped at the buttons on the expensive gradual progression monstrosity she’d stolen from a very stupid man and pulled the blanket over her head. Here, in the space between sleep and work, she was alone. Blissfully, quietly alone.

No intrusive thoughts from strangers to acknowledge. No dead grandmothers to appease.

Here, under the covers, everything was normal.

Well, as normal as a broke, divorced, 34-year-old proofreader who hailed from a long and distinguished line of female… Never mind. She didn’t like to think about the special “talents” that ran in her family. Especially not first thing in the morning.

It was a summer Tuesday. Which meant her cubicle mate, Bud, would bring in sushi just past its expiration date and then spend most of the afternoon in the bathroom. Donna, the front desk gargoyle, would be wearing a withering glare and take out her Monday night church bingo losses on anyone who wandered past her desk.

It also meant that Riley would treat herself to the one and only fancy coffee drink she budgeted for the week.

With the siren’s call of caffeine fresh in her mind, she dragged herself out of bed and shuffled for the bathroom in the hall.

“Riley!” A thin, reedy voice called from one of the lower floors. “Fred needs help with his Kindle again.”

“Okay, Lily,” she yelled back.

Riley’s mother took a ceramics class with Lily Bogdanovich. So when Riley had found herself on the other side of a changed lock on the front porch formerly known as hers, Lily had happily opened her attic.

The crumbling stone mansion on Front Street belonged to the Bogdanovich twins. Lily and Fred were elderly siblings who had inherited the house, half of a racehorse, and every issue of Playboy Magazine published between 1972 and 1984.

Never having families themselves, the Bogdanovich twins had set up an off-the-books flophouse in the mansion, opening up their guest bedrooms to complete strangers.

Riley had space on the third floor that included room for a bed, a small living area, and a microscopic kitchenette that couldn’t handle much more than microwave popcorn and toast.

The plaster ceiling followed the odd, grandiose rooflines of the ancient architectural wreck in hard angles and weird slants. But the dormer windows offered a decent view of the Susquehanna River as it meandered its way south on the other side of Front Street.

The downside?

“Keep it down out there,” the downside snarled from behind his closed door.

Riley shared a bathroom with the tenant across the hall. Dickie Frick was a grumpy, presumably perverted old man. His welcome mat said Fuck Off, and he always left his dirty underwear on the floor in front of the sink. She didn’t know much more about him except that he sometimes remembered to flush the toilet, had a job that involved working late, and that, depending on his mood, he liked to watch NCIS reruns or porn.

Ignoring Dickie, she left the bushy rose wallpaper and hunter green woodwork of the hall behind and stepped into the bathroom.

There they were. The tighty-not-so-whities. On a yawn, she reached under the sink and pulled out the pair of plastic salad tongs she’d stashed there. Trying not to look too closely—she’d made that mistake once—she made the short journey to Dickie’s door and tossed the briefs over the knob before returning to the bathroom.

The room had a decades-past-its-heyday charm. The sink was bile yellow as was the clawfoot tub. The floor was covered in a dingy black and white checkered tile. It creaked dangerously whenever she got into the tub, but it had yet to give up the good fight against gravity.

She shoved a toothbrush into her mouth and a hairbrush into her thick, shoulder-length hair. Her mother’s side’s Ukrainian genes had won the genetic wrestling match. Her hair was dark brown. Her eyes were the same, just a little too big for her face. Heavy lids made her look bored even when she wasn’t. The upside was, if she took the time to bother