Page 74 of Bad Intentions

“Yep. Stopped for tea.”

I roll my eyes. “Cut it out.”

“Chill, Boots. Go get your wallet. Maybe get an update on what those three are talking about. Unless their gathering is more intimate.”

“Seriously?” I stare at her as a Cheshire grin spreads on her face. “What’s with all these innuendos?”

“No innuendos. Just conspiracy theories.” She winks at me. “Don’t be a chicken. Go.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who found the body.”

“Boots?” she warns, her face turning serious in a second. “Shut up, yeah?”

I know, I know. We agreed not to mention it. Our phones are always listening. These days, you can’t go anywhere or say anything without it being recorded by some stupid device nearby. I’m not into conspiracies, but these days, it’s a fact.

Rika does as she’s told and veers her car into the alley behind my house. “See if you can get a scoop from the chief.”

“Yeah,” I say, getting out of the car. “I’ll call you straight from jail.”

“Oh, don’t be a drama queen, Bootsie.”

I spin back and duck inside the car. “You call me that again, and I’m gonna hurt you,” I say, only half joking.

“Got it, Boots,” she says and winks.

Gah, this girl, seriously.

She tosses her blue hair back and says, “Keep your eyes peeled, kid.” Those have to be Mrs. Snickett’s words.

I sneak through the side door into the enclosed patio. I want to get a heads-up about what’s happening in the house. There are voices coming through the glass door that leads into the kitchen. I tiptoe toward it and freeze, tilting my ear in the kitchen’s direction.

“Things don’t add up,” says the chief. “Her car was seen the day it happened. The knife at the scene is suspicious. Just the general calmness, it’s… There are signs. Everywhere. Something is not right. But we don’t have a way to prove it. I just need to put a finger on it. And it’s damn tricky.”

I think they’re talking about me. His mention of the car makes me uneasy. Someone could’ve seen me during the hit-and-run. Maybe someone took a video of me. Obviously, I have bad luck with videos. This sounds like I might be a suspect in something, but I walked in on the end of the conversation, so there’s no way to figure out what exactly the chief is talking about.

Except Mrs. Snickett is there, too. She’s the one who got rid of the body. No way she would’ve told him about it.

“He’s still missing,” the chief says. “Or on the run. That’s the official police statement.”

“More coffee?” my grandma offers, her voice weak compared to his deep one.

“I’m good,” says Mrs. Snickett.

The chief clears his throat. “That’s not the main thing I wanted to talk about.” There’s a rustling of papers. A squeak of heavy boots against the tile floor. “This.”

There’s silence again, and I wish I could look through the glass to see what’s going on.

There’s the sound of papers rustling again, then Grandma’s quiet voice. “Where did you get that?”

“A match came through with a criminal record.”

“A criminal record? Really?”

“K, don’t,” says Mrs. Snickett. That’s the first time in a while I hear anyone call Grandma by her initial.

A longer silence follows.

“Did you tell her?” asks Grandma, and I’m so confused and very curious as to what I’m supposed to know. That is, out of the gazillion things she’s been keeping a secret.