He grabbed me firmly by the shoulders. Time slowed. But before he could shake me, or headbutt me, or do whatever he was going to do next, the bouncer yanked him backward and shoved him out the front door.
For a moment, you could’ve heard a lipstick drop. Then a gossipy murmur rippled through the club. The bouncer returned, looming over me. A bear-sized mass of muscle encased in a lavender suit and cowboy boots.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Cheyenne said, standing on tiptoes to lean over the bar. “That piece of trash pushed her. Can we eighty-six him from the club already? It wasn’t her fault.”
The bouncer glared at me, lifted a chin at Cheyenne, and stalked off.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Let’s be honest,” she said. “This world would be better off without guys like him in it.”
My new pole friends surrounded me. Never in my life had I tossed a drink, much less scratched the shit out of someone’s face with my fingernails. For a second, I let myself consider there was something to this pole dancing alter ego nonsense. But I decided it was probably just good old-fashioned Mom Rage coming out sideways. The Pole Virgins hugged me, reassured me, asked me what had happened.
“He said something really awful,” I said, not wanting to repeat the slurs. “And Nikita wasn’t having it.”
Everyone laughed, tension dispelling. My gimlet went down quick.
And after that? After that I don’t remember a goddamn thing.
Seven
Monday, Presidents’ Day
My headache could cleave a boulder. My mouth filled with nausea water. I had the kind of hangxiety that can only be achieved after blacking out and finding a murdered man in your trunk. And my Next Right Thing was searching Mr.Neck Tattoo’s phone and wallet for clues as to who might’ve wanted him dead. But luckily I hadn’t forgotten the iPad. If there’s one thing that could buy me a few precious minutes, it was plugging my kiddos into the Matrix. WithThe Parent Trapplaying, Phoebe and Alice would happily sit alone in the back of the Impala until frostbite set in.
Layna and I stood by the trunk of my car. For a moment I hesitated to bring her further in on this, but since she’d seen the body, I figured I might as well. There were no passersby, no one watching, no nosey co-op cashiers having a smoke break behind the dumpster. I hit the key fob and the trunk unlatched. At the sight of the dead guy’s contorted face, I shuddered and turned away. But then I forced myself to look again.
“It’s him,” I repeated. “For sure, it’s him.”
“That is not good,” Layna said. She reached right in, wrenching a wallet and phone from his pocket. “It’s creepy his pants are undone, right? He might’ve deserved it.”
A bloodstain on the front of his checked flannel and another on his thigh had dried to a dark maroon. The purple egg on his forehead was nasty, but hardly looked lethal.
My stupefied brain tried to understand why this man was dead inmy car. This guy and I. We’d fought in the club. He’d been thrown out. Then what? He could’ve waited for me in the alley behind the club. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Not under normal circumstances. But to fight him off? Maybe. And my pole dancing alter ego, Nikita? She wouldn’t hesitate.
I couldn’t confess this worry to Layna. To anyone. “Do you think someone really stabbed him to death with my scrapbooking scissors?” I asked. “There’s not that much blood.”
Layna shrugged. She glanced side to side to watch for passersby.
This was absolutely one time in my life where I could not misstep. I needed to pull it together and make good choices. As a solo mom, I’d spent the last seven years handling any disaster life threw my way. I forced myself to click into that competent-adulting mode now. Leaning forward, I pulled down his T-shirt to study his neck. “No strangulation marks. No obvious bullet wounds. Maybe someone smothered him.”
“Without a forensic exam, who knows?” Layna said.
A forensic exam might prove I’d killed him. I mean, I didn’t think I had. But before I acquired a pole alter ego, I would’ve sworn I’d never get in a bar fight with a strange man either. I held his phone up to his face to unlock it.
“Come on, baby,” Layna said.
I glanced at the screen. “Bingo!”
Thankfully, it seemed All-Business Layna was back online too. She shut the trunk, and I followed her to her car. I hadn’t imagined Layna as a purple Porsche kind of gal, but it suited her. She started the engine so we could run the heater. From the passenger seat I had a clear sightline to my Impala, and thus my kids.
“I’ll look through my phone for clues about where the hell I was last night. You look through his. Okay?” I said. Layna nodded.
Emmylou had said I’d stumbled in at 4:30 a.m. and headed straight to my room, swearing I’d give her a full report in the morning. The “My Trips” tab of my Uber account revealed I’d been picked up fromHuckleberry’s at 4:16 a.m. But according to Layna, I’d left Huckleberry’s with Shade at 9:30. What had I been doing for almost seven hours?
Layna was equally absorbed in the dead guy’s phone. “He deletes his text threads so there’s not all that much in here.”
“What kind of psycho doesn’t have thirty-two thousand text messages on his phone?” I said.
