Read Online Adventures In Murder Chasing (Funeral Crashing #3) by Milda Harris - Free Book Online

and Nico were like Ariel and I: complicated. If someone who didn't know Ariel asked about her, I would definitely have problems deciding where to start the story. Or maybe Troy was just sad. He did just lose a friend after all. I suddenly wished that I didn't have to prod Troy into continuing. He might need some space like Ethan still needed when it came to talking about his half sister, Liz. Wait. Why was my brain still on Ariel? I really needed to get her out of my head.
    Troy sighed, bringing me out of my thoughts, and said, "Well, Nico was a good guy. We used to spend weekends collecting stuff from junkyards. He was an auto shop geek and I was already doing art with random materials. He fixed cars although he also liked to tinker with anything mechanical. He could fix almost anything if he stared at it long enough. He just had to figure out how it worked. Mostly he worked on cars, though. I did art. It worked for a high school friendship. After high school, Nico's dad convinced him to go to business school. Nico probably would have been just as happy being an auto mechanic. He said school was great, though. He had some girlfriend for a while that was supposedly super hot. It ended, but you know, he had one for a little while and he had a great job on campus where he pretty much did homework and got paid for it. He didn't get to work on cars as much, though, unless he came home for the weekend. Car permits on campus cost a fortune and he lived in an on campus apartment or dorm room or something, so it's not like he had tons of space for parts and stuff."
    "Okay, so Nico's a cool guy," Ethan said when Troy paused in thought. "But if someone killed him, there has to be more. What's the real dirt on him? Anybody hate him? Was there a jealous girlfriend problem? An illegitimate kid? Did he piss off the wrong person?"
    Troy frowned, thinking, "No to all of those, as far as I know, but we didn't talk all the time. I maybe saw him every six months when he was at school and maybe a little more often in the summer, when he was home from school. We grew apart, you know? Different lives. We were still cool, but I don't know. His life was at his school, my life was at mine and I was absorbed in doing art. We didn't talk as much. Things changed. We were both busy doing our own thing."
    "Yeah, I get it," I said.
    It had just occurred to me that even though that had happened to Ariel and I - the friendship changing over time, maybe it happened to everyone. Maybe it was just normal for some friendships to implode or deteriorate or just drift away into nothingness. Troy didn't seem too broken up about his friendship deterioration with Nico, though. So, why was I still so hurt by what happened with Ariel? Plus from the conversation we had almost started at Wired, I wasn't so sure that Ariel was over our friendship either. What did that mean exactly?
    Troy smiled at me, "Thanks."
    I wondered if Troy knew that I was thinking about Ariel. I hoped he didn't tell her, being her boyfriend and all.
    Troy continued, "I do want to help you guys, you know. Nico and I may not have been as close when he died, but he was a really good guy. If there is something weird about how he died and it's not a freak accident, I want to help."
    "I think we're good," Ethan said automatically, "But thanks."
    "Sure! The more the merrier," I said at the same time.
    Ethan frowned at me. I looked at him, confused.
    "What?" I asked. "It's true. And who knows, we might need Troy's help getting to talk to Nico's friends. I mean, how else are we going to talk to them about Nico?"
    Believe me, I knew from experience that just bumping into people and asking them about a dead person, didn't always work. Sometimes it ended in disaster, actually. Ethan looked at me for a moment and then nodded, thoughtfully.
    "Okay," Ethan said.
    Troy looked at us, "Cool. So, what can I do?"
    "I'm not sure yet," I said. Troy looked disappointed, so I continued, "Um, we pretty much need to get a