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mouths. I like to call it a maggot’s version of
The Last Supper
.”
    My empty stomach turned.
    Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, Lanahan lifted Annie’s skeleton up by the hair as maggots tumbled off. “I’d say they did a pretty good job, wouldn’t you?” he chuckled.
    Forensics humor—I’d never get used to it.
    Henry clamped the cigar between his teeth and carefully stuck a finger through the bullet hole lodged smack in her skull. The tip of his finger wriggled in the air like a puppy dog’s tail.
    “Looks like a .38 slug to the front of the head,” he attested.
    Annie’s skeleton grimaced in horrified silence as Henry lowered it back down. Then he directed his attention to the wall directly behind her. Closing his eyes, he ran his fingers over the hole there like a pianist playing a riff, probing for unseen clues.
    “Yep. I’d say the bullet lodged right in here,” he stated.
    “How long has she been dead?” I was curious to know how much time it took to descend to this state.
    Henry shrugged. “Maybe a month. Hard to say right now. Give me a few days, and I’ll know more.”
    I looked at Annie’s corpse and felt exonerated for my junk food diet. If this was the way I could end up, I didn’t see the sense in torturing myself with wholesome food and exercise.
    Henry turned to face me. “Now let’s check the pooch.”
    A halo of dried blood enshrined a skull picked nearly as clean as Annie’s.
    “Same thing here. A .38 right between the eyes. Nice shot!” Henry turned the head in my direction. “By the way, if you want to take a gander, you can get a good look at those maggots chomping away at what little flesh is left.”
    My stomach catapulted into a series of somersaults. Averting my eyes, I noticed the neon-green imprint of a tortoise on the wall near the sink. Stepping over bugs and past Lanahan, I moved in for a better view. It appeared to be identical to the one I had spotted at the Center.
    I hated to admit it, but Holmes might have been onto something, after all. Maybe there
was
a group of eco-nuts practicing their own form of vigilante law. Still, I’d found no sign of reptiles being kept on Annie’s premises. Adding it up, the shooting of an old woman who lived in a shack with nothing of value just didn’t make sense.
    “Looks like we’ve got the gun over here,” Henry called to me over his shoulder.
    I skirted the dog, joining Henry and his cigar on the floor, where we stared at the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver nestled beneath the claw-foot tub.
    I shuddered as a bug skittered by. “How do you suppose the gun ended up all the way under there?”
    Lanahan pulled on the nub of his cigar. “Good question. I suppose we could ask old Annie, but it don’t look like she’s gonna do much talking.” Henry chortled and gave me a wink. He was turning into both a comedian and his own best audience.
    At this point, Brady dragged his body back into the room. An unnatural pallor had replaced his normal ruddy complexion. I couldn’t help the twinge of a smile as I caught him mopping the endless stream of sweat that had begun to pour off the top of his head.
    Brady caught my eye and glared. “Don’t start with me, Porter,” he warned.
    Propping himself against the doorjamb, Brady listened as Lanahan filled him in on what we had found so far.
    “Sounds like a suicide to me,” Brady proclaimed.
    I stared at him in amazement as he wrung his handkerchief out onto the floor. “You’re going to write it off as a suicide? You can’t do that!” I exclaimed.
    “What the hell would you call it?” he challenged.
    I would have called it shoddy police work but kept that opinion to myself for now. “Murder is good for a start.”
    I quickly gave Lanahan and Brady a thumbnail sketch of the theft of the tortoises and then pointed out the hand-stenciled imprint that had also been found at the Center.
    “It can’t be a coincidence. There has to be some sort of a tie-in here,” I