“You two have a ride, or you wanna come with?” Ted asked, nodding toward his vintage red pickup parked right next to Jude’s Volvo.
“I can give Ella a ride if she needs one,” Jude offered, with a side glance to me.
I nodded vigorously. I didn’t want to be trapped in the truck with Ted Anderson. He liked to talk about his search for the perfect fishing lure. I’d take discussion about cheese fermentation any day of the week.
“You kiddos stay outta trouble, and do not make official comments about this—to the police, online, anywhere. Tammy will probably wanna make you a hot dish, so maybe she’ll bring it by later this week, and then we can talk about what to do next, if anything.”
I doubted Tammy would want to make me one of her famous casseroles, which she usually saved for deaths in the family and serious illnesses. But if she did, I’d still take it. Tammy might be the worst, but even I had to grudgingly admit she was the queen of cheesy potatoes.
“Thank you, Ted,” Jude said as Ted clambered into the cab of his truck.
“No, yeah.” Ted threw up a hand.
Jude and I watched Ted rev up his truck as he backed out of his spot. He turned the truck a little too fast, and we scurried out of the way.
“Ope, sorry!” Ted called through his half-open window. “Watch your toes!” Ted pulled away from us.
“Do you want to get out of here as much as I do?” Jude asked, standing near the Volvo. Hector eyed us from across the parking lot. He didn’t smile.
Jude hit his key fob and unlocked the Volvo, and I hurriedaround to the passenger side and hopped in. I waited as Jude went through his usual ten-point-safety check as he did every time he got behind the wheel. I fastened my seat belt.
Jude slowly inched back out of his spot at the speed of a hundred-year-old tortoise.
“I’d love to get home sometime tonight, you know.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being careful,” Jude protested.
“God, you and Oscar,” I groaned.
“Oscar give you a lecture on law and order?”
“When doesn’t Oscar lecture me?” I pointed out.
“It’s because he cares. He feels responsible.” Jude glanced both ways three times before he inched out of the parking lot. “Because of that day on the ice.”
“Well, everyone should just get over that, because I’m fine,” I snapped. “Also, it wasn’t my fault.”
Jude snuck a glance at me. Then we slipped into a noticeable silence. The line of felt fall banners hanging from the antique streetlamps with messages like “Happy Autumn!” and “Pumpkin Spice Is Nice!” in cursive letters inched by.
“I’m glad you didn’t drown,” he said, voice low. He cleared his throat. “And we all want to keep you fine and not murdered.”
“I don’t want to be murdered, either, and for the record, I’m against vigilante justice. I was the one who talked about it on the podcast!”
“I know. You pointed out so well how the Canceled Killer created more problems than he solved. While Chicagoans ran around with Canceled Killer tees and high-fiving each other about how terrible people got what they deserved, the reality was quite different. I mean, that woman and the lemonade stand?”
Right. Heather Johnston, the woman who called the police onthe kid selling lemonade and turned over the stand. She’d been taking care of her dying mother, but after the Canceled Killer murdered her, Johnston’s mother was left to fend for herself with her terminal cancer. She spent her last painful days in the apartment alone.
“And then there was the GoFundie dog killer,” I said and sighed. Her story was one of the saddest. The GoFundie dog killer seemed bad on the surface—you raise money for a dog’s surgery but then put him down anyway. But a second vet’s opinion told her the expensive care for her dog would likely have given him less than a 5 percent chance of living at all, and it would have been painful.
The woman happened to be the foster mom of two six-year-old sisters. She opted to use the money to pay adoption fees and for a lawyer to navigate the adoption process. So, she made the hard choice to use the money meant for her dog for her girls, who’d been in her care since they were toddlers. The Canceled Killer murdered her before the adoption was finalized, and without her, the sisters were remanded back to the state, separated, and sent to two different homes on opposite sides of the city.
Jude glanced at me. “The whole point is that’s why we have a court of law where both sides present evidence, and not one angry jerk who gets to decide for everyone without even knowing all the facts.”
“I know,” I said. “Innocent until proven guilty… yeah, yeah.”
“And everybody makes mistakes. Aren’t we supposed to let people make amends? Like that influencer?”
“The one who mocked the Special Olympics athlete. Yeah.” She’d decided to make amends for her comments by pledging to sponsor ten participants who otherwise would not have had the funds to go. She’d learned how harmful her jokes were and trulywanted to change. She was killed the day after she made the announcement, but before she could donate. Her assets were frozen in probate court, and the athletes never got the money.
