“Sorry to scare you,” I told Emmylou. “Be right in.”
“It might be a minute,” Layna said, conspiratorially. “I’m going through a divorce and I need a little more advice from this one.”
“I’ve been there!” Emmylou said. “Why don’t you two go grab a drink and talk it out? I just started that movie. You know, the one where Emma Thompson hires a hot young prostitute to help her experience her sexual fantasies, but they actuallyconnect?”
“We don’t sayprostituteanymore,” I muttered.
“Tomato, to-mah-toe. I’m not budging off your sofa until this movie is over. Seriously, you two! Get!”
As Emmylou disappeared back into my side of the duplex, I closed the doors of the playhouse.
“I’ve told her a million times I don’t want that crossbow around my kids,” I grumbled.
“You ought to be thanking your lucky stars she babysits your horror-movie twins for free,” Layna said. “And at least it’s supposed to dump snow tonight.”
Six inches of snow would bury our tracks. But that could only buy me so much time. It’s like my mom used to tell my girls anytime we visited from LA and they complained of the cold: “Winter seems like it will last forever, but that spring thaw is coming, girls.” And I needed to figure out who killed the mansicle long before it did.
Fifteen
After hiding a dead body and finding myself in the sights of a loaded crossbow, I was as wired as a tween after her first Frappuccino. So when Layna said Zhang Xiu had texted to see if we wanted to meet her and the other Pole Virgins for a drink in Garden City, I agreed. Shade had been no help, and Salma Hayek was MIA, but maybe Gucci or Zhang Xiu had seen something at Huckleberry’s, and it would be easy enough to ask over a beer.
When I was a kid, locals called it Garden Shitty, but now people dressed for a night out thronged the riverfront area. I groaned when I saw who was working the door at Barbarian Brewing. Landry Arnold. We’d bagged groceries together at Albertsons when I was a sophomore in high school and once had a regrettable make-out session at a keg party.
“If it isn’t Tilly Turner!” he said warmly. “Back from Hollywood.”
“Hey, Landry.” It was unsettling to see glimmers of the skinny teenaged boy inside this hairy middle-aged man with bulky forearms.
“What was it like? Opening for Mickey Larynx? I love that guy so much.”
“Still?” I said.
“Of course. He’s not afraid of his urges.” He lifted his eyebrows suggestively.
I rolled my eyes.
“Cover’s ten bucks each,” he said. “Feminazi fundraiser.”
I started to protest, but Layna handed Landry a twenty and hurried me into the warehouse-style building. A Tribe Called Quest blared fromthe speakers. A metal second-floor balcony dangled a massive, hand-painted sign that saidSMASH THE PATRIARCHY(with the firstSinSMASHfully crossed out). In the middle of the room, hipsters dumped pots of clumpy white stuff into a huge kiddie pool. Artsy weirdos drank, chatted, and watched the proceedings. The whole scene was cooler than anything I’d expected to find.
Zhang Xiu waved from a long tall table where the Pole Virgins sipped craft beer.
“What’s up with the kiddie pool?” I asked.
“It’s this mashed-potato wrestling competition called Mash the Patriarchy,” Zhang Xiu said.
“Ah, those are mashed potatoes! I get it now,” Layna said.
“Why does everything in Idaho have to be about potatoes?” Shade mused. “You just missed the Potatohole competition. It’s like cornhole, but the bean bags were hand-sewn to look like Yukon Golds. I took third.” He blew on his nails and rubbed them on his shirt.
“Dammit!” I said. “I’m actually really good at cornhole. My twins are obsessed.”
As Layna headed to the beer line, Zhang Xiu explained the event was being put on by a feminist performance art collective called She Burns Bright. “I’m on the board,” she said. “We’re raising money for the National Sexual Assault Hotline.”
“Feminist performance art!” I said. “I’ve never felt so at home in my own hometown. How’d you get involved?” I always told myself once my life calmed down, I’d do more to give back. But right now my life was calm as a Category 5 hurricane.
“Worst thing that can happen to a mother is to not be able to protect her own child,” Zhang Xiu said. The tears in her eyes surprised me.
“You have a grown daughter, right?” I said.
