A Jeep Cherokee cruised by on my right, Miranda Carson behind the wheel, her mother riding shotgun. Miranda stared at me, eyes wide with alarm. Could the dead guy’s hair be hanging out of my trunk?
“It’s the pretty lady you don’t like,” Alice said. “Why’s she staring at us?”
“Maybe she’s surprised I’m driving Grandma Lulu’s old muscle car?”I said, voice trembling. Blessedly, Miranda sailed through the yellow light. I stopped and Layna pulled up behind me. “Nothing scarier in this world than a CPS worker who thinks she’s doing the right thing,” I muttered.
“What’s a CPS worker?” Alice said.
“They snatch people’s children,” I replied. “Sometimes for good reason. Sometimes not.” This was perhaps my worst parental explanation ever, but it was the best I could do in my current state.
“Can we go to the YMCA?” Alice asked.
“We love it because it reminds us of Grandma Lulu,” Phoebe said. No subtext with these two.
“Not today, love.”
After my mom closed Cosmic Treasures, the vintage junk store she’d owned for thirty years, she worked the front desk at the downtown YMCA. I was a member there now, not to get fit or even because it reminded me of my mom, but because they offered one hour of free childcare daily. The catch? Parents had to remain in the building, ostensibly working out. But instead of using the hour for self-improvement, I’d drop the twins at the Kids’ Club and hurry to the sauna, where I’d lie on my back in the boiling-hot, cedar-smelling room and let my silent tears run into my ears. But I was way too hungover today for the sauna.
The light turned green and I started driving, Layna still tailing me in the purple Porsche.
In the stark daylight, Huckleberry’s looked like the sort of establishment where a horny grandpa might go to drink himself to death.
“This place is spooky,” Alice murmured.
“Yeah,” Phoebe chimed in. “Why are we here again?”
“When we picked up our car, there was no one here, so I couldn’t get my keys. I left them here last night.” I cruised around the alley behind the club, parked, and handed the kids their one-eyed babysitter. “Wait here,” I said.
As Layna parked, I tromped through fresh snow to check the back of the Impala, which still sported my mom’s LuvLife vanity plates. From the outside, there was no sign of a dead man.
That was the last of the good news.
Layna and I turned in futile circles, craning our necks for security cameras. But no dice. I marched up to the back alley door of Huckleberry’s and knocked. A skinny man in a dirty dishwasher’s apron and a backward ball cap answered.
“You again,” he said.
I’d never seen him before in my life. “I think I left my keys on the bar last night. They have a My Little Pony keychain?”
“We’re doing this again?” he said. He blew out a vape cloud that smelled like a piña colada car deodorizer. “I told you. Your keys aren’t here.”
“Wait. What?” I could feel myself rapid blinking, trying to understand.
“I told you. You’re. Keys. Aren’t. Here.”
“Told me when?”
“At four this morning,” the dishwasher said. “After you were pounding on this door.”
“Any chance you saw me before then?”
He shook his head while sucking on his vape.
“Dammit,” I said. “Are there any security cameras back here?”
The dishwasher gave an amused hoot. “As if the Orca’s gonna splurge on something that doesn’t make him money.” He blew a vape ring, reached out with both hands, and spun it into two vape rings.
“The Orca?” I said.
“Yeah. The club owner. Can I ask? Like, how’d you get that asshole’s ugly vest?”
