Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door - Lucy Score Page 0,2

with eyeshadow, she could really rock the hell out of a good come-hither stare.

Not that she was come-hithering anyone right now. The divorce still stung. And there was that whole being broke thing. She didn’t want to meet someone new and have to explain to him why her roommates were all on Medicare. If anyone with a badge asked, she was supposed to call them all Aunt and Uncle So-and-So.

Morning bathroom business taken care of, Riley returned to her room, still yawning. She’d been short on sleep for most of her life. It was the dreams. They’d only gotten more… annoying, more insistent, the older she got. Turning on the TV, she listened to the perky news team banter about the latest vigilante activity in the city while she dressed. A group of unidentified adults in masks had tracked down a repeat offender of the litterbug classification and filled his car—incidentally illegally parked in a handicap spot—to the roof with trash.

“Harrisburg Mayor Nolan Flemming had this to say about the vigilantes.”

The screen cut to a shot of the mayor—whose main claim to fame since his election was his Kennedy-esque hotness—on the steps outside his office building downtown. “I have full confidence in our police department. No one in our fair city is above the law, and citizens must remember that though justice may move slowly, it will still be served. Taking the law into your own hands is not only dangerous—it’s illegal.”

Dressed for the day, Riley grabbed her leftovers out of the fridge and headed down the skinny back staircase. It was a tight corkscrew, dangerous for anyone who wore a shoe size above a woman’s eight. Down three flights she went, catching signs of life on every floor.

She peeled off into the kitchen on the first floor, a sunny room with butcher block counters and ancient mint green cabinets that required a step ladder to access.

Fred, the oddly muscular senior citizen, was wearing his side-part toupee and a Hall and Oates t-shirt. He happily handed over his e-reader to her so she could work her youngish person magic, which consisted of connecting to the Wi-Fi and hitting Sync.

“You’re the best, Riley,” Fred chirped while his Yoga Poses for Sexy Seniors downloaded.

“Don’t pull any muscles,” she warned. “See you later, Mr. Willicott,” she said to her other neighbor.

“Who the hell are you?” groused the elderly version of Denzel Washington as he poured coffee into a bowl. She wasn’t sure if his memory was faulty or if Mr. Willicott just didn’t give a shit about anything.

Ducking out the backdoor, she inhaled a breath of fresh almost-summer. June in Pennsylvania was nice.

Maybe she’d take an hour or two of vacation time and leave early today, she mused as she unlocked her Jeep.

“Yeah, maybe do some fishing.”

“I’m not going fishing, Uncle Jimmy,” she muttered, turning the key and cranking the stereo. The Jeep had belonged to her now-deceased uncle. It became hers after she’d had to return the BMW her ex-husband had tried to surprise her with after forgetting her birthday. Again.

Jimmy, her father’s brother, had died doing what he loved best. Napping in his boat after drinking a six-pack of cheap beer. The coronary took him out before he could wake up and finish his triple-decker roast beef and fried onion sandwich. The man was dead but not exactly gone. His spirit lingered in the Jeep she’d inherited. Her sister refused to ride anywhere with Riley, claiming she could still smell the ghost of the Styrofoam cooler of fish the man had once forgotten about for a week in the dead of summer.

She pulled out onto Front Street with the river to her right and Harrisburg to her left. As the state capital, parts of the city were almost impressive. The capitol complex, with its green-glazed terra cotta dome and post-modern fountain, drew crowds for tours year-round. Then there were the not-so-nice parts. The “don’t walk down the street alone at night” parts, the easily flooded parts, and the “what’s that weird smell?” parts.

Of course, it wasn’t just crime and weird smells that had given Harrisburg its notoriety. There was that brush with bankruptcy thanks to an incinerator debacle, and then there were the millions of city dollars tied up in a collection of Wild West artifacts for a museum that never happened.

Despite all this, revitalization was slowly oozing in from the city’s borders. Festivals along the riverfront drew huge crowds. Family-friendly 5ks snaked their way down city streets. Breweries and restaurants