“Well, here we have a chivalrous flirtation—your mansicle sent a contact called Baylee a picture of his junk. Wanna see it?”
Another wave of nausea hit. I fought back a tiny retch. “No thanks.”
“And Baylee wrote back: ‘Not tonight. He’s home.’ Sounds like somebody’s getting cuckolded.” Layna kept scrolling. “Sexting. Sexting.”
A whimpering sound escaped me. If we couldn’t find any clues, my situation was completely untenable. I could not have a corpse in my car and no alternate suspects. I could not.
“Here’s a thread with a woman named Korielle,” Layna said. “If I’m even pronouncing that right. But yeah, I’m going with Korielle rhymes with L’Oréal.”
“My mom dyed her hair with L’Oréal,” I said.
“Interesting, but not relevant,” Layna said as she studied the phone. “The dead guy’s all: ‘I’m still thinking about you, baby. Please can we meet for a coffee.’ And she’s like: ‘No. You know I’m not allowed to have you in my life.’ And he’s like: ‘Don’t listen to that stupid controlling—’ He used the C-word! And not in a complimentary Gen Z way! What a charmer.”
I was starting to suspect Layna was enjoying this. “At the bar, he told me he went to Huckleberry’s to forget ‘the one who got away.’”
“Sounds like Korielle’s got good instincts,” Layna said. “Run, girl, run.” She turned her attention back to the phone. “Okay. Here’s a text from someone called Natty Lite who’s all: ‘Let’s meet up this week to discuss some plans.’”
“That sounds depressingly not that suspicious,” I said. My headache blazed but I forced myself to look through the dead guy’s wallet as Layna plugged in his phone so it wouldn’t run out of juice. I found anIdaho driver’s license. A Visa debit card. A stack of ones. “His name was Connor Johnson. And I don’t think he was a big tipper at the club. I might be sick.”
Layna reached over to the glovebox and pulled out a piece of candied ginger. It was a tiny act of kindness. But still it felt wonderful to have someone taking care of me, even just a little bit.
“I don’t want to lean in to the diabolical stripper trope,” I said. “But Cheyenne—the bartender Salma Hayek is so hot for? She poured the drinks I had before I blacked out. She could’ve roofied me and stolen my car keys so she could murder him and pin it on me.”
“Hmm. Do you have any evidence to support this theory?”
“She said the world would be better without guys like him in it. Do you think that’s enough?”
“To take the suspicion off you?” Layna said. “No, hon. I don’t think so.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” I’d stayed calm when my appendix was about to rupture and I’d had to find emergency childcare for my kids and get myself to the ER. I could stay calm for this. “Maybe there’s security camera footage from the alley behind Huckleberry’s,” I said.
“Yes!” Layna yelled. “If there’s video of someone else stuffing this guy in your trunk, you’d be off the hook.”
I started to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just—that would be amazing.”
“Want me to follow you over there?”
“You don’t mind?” I said, letting out another little sob of relief.
“I’ll need to go to the police station with you after that anyway. They’ll want my statement. Now pull yourself together. For your kids.”
I nodded and wiped my tears. “Of course,” I said. “It’s what moms do.”
Eight
Monday, Presidents’ Day
“Did you kill him, Mommy?” Phoebe asked as I pulled the Impala out of the co-op parking lot. I almost hit a fire hydrant.
“Absolutely not!” I said. But did I know that for sure?
“So we still have a spider in the trunk?” Alice said, sounding terrified. “Is it poisonous?”
Relief gushed through me. “My new friend helped me get it out,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
Big white flakes had started coming down again. It’d snowed at least a couple inches overnight and the streets were in the ephemeral powdery state they achieved right before turning sloppy as a chili cheese dog. At the stoplight, Layna’s purple Porsche idled behind my Impala. As the hangover nausea swelled again, the dead guy’s waxy face appeared behind my eyes. I opened my door and heaved onto the snow.
“Mommy? Are you okay?” Alice asked. As I pulled myself upright, the twins’ worried faces filled my rearview. Bags of groceries were crammed in around their booster seats. Was this the day they’d remember as the beginning of the end of their (relatively) happy childhoods?
