As class ended, I snapped back to the fact that I was there for areason. I hurried up to Shade, who was wiping down his pole.
“If it isn’t Little MissHoudini,” he said. “You make it home okay Sunday night?”
“What do you mean, ‘MissHoudini’? Wasn’t I with you?”
“We were outside waiting for my Uber. But I ran back in for my gloves. When I came back out, you were nowhere to be seen. I figured you grabbed a Lyft or something. You get home okay?”
“What can I say?” I managed weakly. “I’m a woman of mystery. Even to myself. What about you?”
“At the last minute I decided to meet friends for karaoke at the Neurolux. Did I do an impromptu version of ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ that TinaandCéline would’ve approved of? Yes, ma’am.”
So Shade had been hitting high notes in front of hundreds of people. Meanwhile, I now had no hope of figuring out where I’d been from 9:30 p.m. to 4:16 a.m. the night in question.
Shade nattered on, oblivious to my distress. “I swear on my granny’s grave it’s almost time for me to debut my drag queen persona, Ida Hoe. But I don’t want to lip-synch! I want to SING!” He belted out the last word like Lady Gaga at her Vegas residency.
But I wasn’t listening. Pinpricks of sweat had broken out all over my body. I excused myself and stumbled into the chill room. After yanking my coat and shoes out of their cubby, I burst out into the cool night air, my breath coming short and fast. My one chance at answers about Sunday night was shot. A frozen, rigor mortis-ed dead guy was still crammed into my trunk and heaps of evidence pointed to me as the killer. This was a disaster, a nightmare of epic proportions. The sort of thing that would give you a delicious thrill of horror to watch on-screen because you knew deep down it could happen to sad desperate fictional movie characters but never ever to you. But now it had happened to me. I was deeply and truly screwed.
Layna followed me out a moment later. “So?” she asked.
“A total bust,” I managed.
“Oh, hon,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She unlocked her car.
As I sank into the ridiculously luxe leather seat, an idea came to me. A flimsy, improbable idea. But it was something. “Do you think it’s weird Salma Hayek didn’t show up to teach?”
“Not that weird.” Behind the wheel, Layna snapped down the mirrored visor to admire her cascading pigtails.
“Salma Hayek did bring the first shots to the table,” I said.
“You seriously think Salma Hayek roofied you while she was proselytizing about how pole would give you a chance to reclaim your zest for life?”
As Layna gunned the engine, I gripped the door handle in anticipatoryterror. “For all we know she had a long-standing vendetta against that jerk,” I said.
“I suspect lots of people might’ve,” Layna agreed.
“So say she murdered him and stuffed him in my trunk. She could’ve left the country by now. She might plan to lay low until the whole thing blows over. Or until after I’m convicted.”
“That is dark,” Layna said. But she didn’t say it was unlikely.
“Yeah, well, this whole thing is dark,” I muttered.
We spent the remainder of the drive in gloomy silence. I directed Layna to pull into the alley behind my house. As she cut the lights and the night enveloped us, a phone dinged inside my coat. The dead guy’s phone. After charging it last night, I’d kept it in my pocket on the irrational pipe dream a clue might come in. (Like what? A text from someone apologizing to the dead guy for murdering him?)
I whipped out the phone before the alert disappeared.
“It’s a voice memo,” I said. “From someone called Ralphie the Lizard.”
Thirteen
Even in the dark of the parked car, I had no trouble sensing Layna’s disdain when I asked her to unlock the dead guy’s phone again. “So you just want me to dive back into the trunk with the mansicle?” she said.
“I feel like you’re rising to the level of your incredible competence here,” I replied. “Puh-leeeese? Otherwise we can’t play the voice memo.”
“Oh my god, fine! But you are a serious wuss.”
Outside the warmth of the Porsche, our feet crunched crusty snow as we walked a few feet down the alley to my Impala. Maybe it’d all been some sort of joint hallucination. Maybe the dead guy would be gone. But the trunk light revealed his cramped figure and shadowy, contorted face.
“Shine your phone flashlight in here to brighten him up,” Layna said as she reached in.
