Grant waves at Hernandez and tilts his chin toward the crowd. Hernandez reaches into their car and retrieves two notebooks and pens. He hands one of each to Grant then makes his way to the outer edge of the crowd.

"May I take your name?" Grant removes the cap from the pen.

"Elaina Hayes," she says through sobs. She takes a deep breath and leans against Adam. "But everyone calls me Lanie."

"When was the last time you saw Che-, Ms. Morgan?"

"About an hour and a half ago," Lanie replies. "I got a text from my neighbor saying there'd been an accident and I needed to get home A.S.A.P."

Lanie fidgets under Grant's stare. Adam starts to say something, but seems to think better of it. Instead, he embraces Lanie and whispers to her. She bristles at his words and shrugs out of his arms.

Grant watches them for a moment, like he is sizing them up. "By any chance, is that your apartment?" He points to a window on the seventh floor. Her curtain is flapping in the wind and appears to be caught on a jagged piece of the pane.

I count across three windows and imagine the pale blue curtains with cute, pink flamingos embroidered onto them being torn to shreds. I shiver at the gruesome image in my mind.

"Yes, it's my apartment."

"Would you mind taking me up there so I can look around?"

Lanie starts to say yes, but Adam shushes and interrupts her before she can give her consent.

"Do you have a warrant?" he asks. "Lanie's had a rough night."

"I can easily obtain a warrant, but my hope is that Ms. Hayes will cooperate fully with the investigation. Surely she wants to know what happened to her friend." He stares at Lanie. "Unless, of course, you have something to hide."

Lanie flinches at his insinuation and for what is probably the first time in her life, she is left speechless, her mouth open in surprise.

Adam steps between Lanie and Grant. I fully expect him to beat on his chest and scream about being Tarzan. "I know what you're trying to imply, but Lanie had nothing to do with this. I've been with her since she parted company with Cheline. I will not have you mistreating her right after her best friend has been found dead."

Lanie purses her lips then takes a deep breath.

He's really laying it on thick. Convenient that he gave himself an alibi while attempting to appear chivalrous. I hope Grant doesn't buy a word he is saying because if I was murdered, he's my number one suspect. Now that I'm out of the way, Lanie's heart is ripe for his vulturous picking.

"I'm not mistreating her. I'm doing my job, which right now is determining if a crime has been committed here." He fishes his blackberry from his back pocket and begins to text with the precision of a teenager. Somehow he maintains eye contact with Adam.

I hover above him to peek at his message and gasp at the warrant request.

Adam is still in Grant's face. I almost think he's intentionally making things worse for Lanie and I can't help but wonder if he's trying to send her to jail.

Lanie circles around and looks from Adam to Grant. "Please don't speak like I'm not even here. I have nothing to hide. You're more than welcome to search my apartment."

"I apologize for that. Judge Knight should be able to issue the warrant in a matter of minutes, so it'll be nice and official." A hint of a smirk on his face, he turns to Adam. "And what is your name?"

He chicken-scratches Adam's name and number onto the paper as he needles him about me. Adam claims again to have been with Lanie for the past two hours, but Lanie bristles as he says it. Something is amiss.

As I ponder what they're hiding, Hernandez asks for the name of the man he's interviewing.

"Clive Garret," Mr. Salt-and-Pepper replies. He gives an address north of Kennedy as his residence, and my curiosity is piqued. He's hot and all, but doesn't live on the right side of the harbor for someone as esteemed as Margaret to date, even with the designer suit.

"A few in the crowd said you were rifling through the deceased's purse and wallet."

An uncomfortable look crosses Clive's face. "Yes, I was searching for her identification, nothing malicious about it."

"But wasn't the body already identified at that time?" He doesn't wait for a response. "You didn't think it was the police's responsibility to conduct the investigation?"

"I was trying to help, officer." Clive peeks at his watch while Hernandez continues to scrawl on the paper.

"Are you in a hurry, Mr. Garrett?" Hernandez says without breaking his attention.

Clive's shoulders sag a few inches. "No, I'm just tired, been a long day."

"Expect a phone call if we find anything suspicious in Ms. Morgan's death. You may leave now."

"Am I a suspect?" Clive asks, his tone respectful but unwavering.

"You tell me." Hernandez sets his steely gaze on Clive as he tucks the pen into the spiral of the notebook.

"No. I've been with Margaret Bertwinkle the entire night." His ego seems to puff up as he mentions her name. Typical male. At least I know what he's like and there's no chance of my mom hooking up with him. Jeesh.

Unimpressed, Hernandez says, "If she can verify your whereabouts, you have nothing to worry about. If she can't...."

A car screeches to a halt behind the ambulance. A man wearing a squirrel tail toupee and a suit climbs out of the car and stalks over to my body. His suit is wrinkly, like he's worn it for the past twenty hours, and his shoes have splotches of mud on them. He peels back the tarp and announces that I am dead and need to be taken to the morgue.

I feel like the heavens should part, or maybe lightning should strike, or some death knell should ring, but it's all very anticlimactic. I'm a little disappointed. l deserve a much better send off than this. I deserve at the minimum a lightning strike that would wake most of Tampa. Lightning capital of the USA, and I can't even get that. What's a girl to do?

The paramedics wheel my body into the ambulance. Mohler takes his seat behind the wheel as the younger medic takes his on the passenger side.

Curious about the whole process, I dart into the back of the ambulance as it pulls away. The tarp flies off my corpse as we round the corner, and nausea threatens to overtake me. Surely, a ghost can't puke, right?

I heave and heave, but fortunately nothing comes up. A ghost puke? Hmmm. Not going to stick around long enough to find out. I launch myself out of the ambulance as it crosses the bridge to South Tampa, and smile when I don't bang up my knees or tear my skirt. I float over the river and return to Palma D'Oro within seconds.

Clive is nowhere to be found. Hernandez is interviewing John. The crowd has dispersed to just a few people, and Grant is still interviewing Lanie and Adam.

His cell phone beeps and he pulls it from his pocket. He scrolls through the text message and hands the phone to Adam, with a hint of a smirk on his face. Grant's actually challenging the jerk to act up, and Adam's probably stupid enough to fall for it.

Glaring at her ex-fiance, Lanie takes the phone and stares at the approval from Judge Knight.

"Shall we?" Grant asks Lanie as he nods at Hernandez.

"We shall," I answer.

I let weightlessness overtake me and I rise to the window. Shivers creep up my spine as I view the blood-streaked glass.

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