“So, Sunny,” my father said. “This case of yours—”
“I imagine it must be going quite well,” my mother said, “seeing how it made you an hour late for dinner.” She polished off her glass of Chablis and poured herself another.
I exhaled. Took another bite. “Great scrod, Mom.”
“Gerald James Bordelon ate fried sacalait fish as part of his last meal,” Cody said.
“I don’t know that I’m familiar with sacalait,” my mother said. “Is that a white fish?”
“I want to hear about our daughter’s case, Emma,” my father said.
My mother sighed dramatically. She drank more wine and started clearing the table. I told my dad about the case. I covered everything—except for my Hail Mary phone call to Desmond Burke back in the car, when I’d asked if he could set me up with a good hacker. Former police captain Phil Randall would not have approved of uncovering someone’s identity without a warrant, or, for that matter, a crime. At any rate, Desmond had said he might know of a guy. Barring miracles (which had been known to happen, but not very often), that guy was Melanie Joan’s and my only hope.
When I was through talking, Elizabeth piped up first. “I love Book Babe,” she said.
This surprised me. Elizabeth had always been an avid reader, but not of the genres favored by Book Babe. I’d known her as something of a literary snob.
“Really?” I said.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she said. “I’m actually in a book club, where we read nothing but Book Babe’s five-star books. Right, Cody?”
Cody said nothing. He was back on his phone.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve discovered so many good authors I’d never heard of before.”
“Like who?”
“Leila Donnelly. She’s fantastic.”
“Seriously?”
“Why does that shock you?”
“Because,” I said, “you don’t read romances.”
Elizabeth stood up. She collected her place setting, as well as Cody’s. “Yes, I do.”
“Since when? You always said they were silly and childish.”
“People change, Sonya,” she said. “I know that’s hard for you to believe. But you should try it sometime. Expand your horizons. Stop doing the same old tired, boring things everyone expects you to do.”
Like dating someone born in the same century as me?I wanted to say that, but she swept into the kitchen before I could get a word in.
“Are you sure the actress was telling you the truth?” Dad said once I was through. “Actors can be very convincing liars.”
“Natalie Blythe?” I shrugged. “I feel like if she was that talented an actress, Melanie Joan wouldn’t have been able to derail her career.”
“Good point,” he said.
“Any other ideas?” I said. “What would you have done back in the day, hypothetically, if Book Babe was at large and suspected of an actual crime?”
Behind me, I heard the kitchen doors swing open, the clackof my mother’s heels. “Sonya, you know that I don’t like you getting your father involved in your cases,” she said.
“Your hearing is excellent, Mom.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “You know it’s bad for his health. His blood pressure. His stress levels. Yet you keep persisting. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a terribly insensitive and selfish person.”
My cheeks heated up. On one hand, my mother calling me insensitive and selfish was a pot-meet-kettle kind of thing. But on the other, she had a point. My dad did have high blood pressure. He’d been shot a couple years ago and still walked with a cane. He wasn’t getting any younger or healthier, and here I was indulging the very thing that had sapped so much of his energy: his drive to investigate. Was this another symptom of main character syndrome?
