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“Okay. Twenty minutes.”
“Thank you, Ms. Loretta.” Heidi turned back to Carine to explain. “Bachelorette life. One learns to do only what she finds pleasure in at home.”
“Waste of a gourmet kitchen,” Carine said.
“How would you know what kind of kitchen I have? You’ve never seen the inside of my condo.”
“But I have.” Carine pointed a crinkle-cut French fry at her. “You forget what I do for a living. I like to tell people I’ve seen the insides of their deepest, darkest dreams.”
“Come now, darling, if you really had done that, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now. My dreams aren’t the stuff for dabblers.”
Carine’s fry hovered just in front of her mouth. She was doing thegotta-think-this-one-throughstare, looking at nothing in particular.
Sometimes Heidi had that effect on people. Sometimes she even trained them to behave that way. She preferred to be opaque. People couldn’t form expectations of her if she didn’t give them anything solid.
Carine set down the fry and locked her gaze studiously on the glove compartment. “From a distance, you look like sunshine and cheer. You might even be able to fool ninety-nine percent of folks up close.”
“What of the one percent?”
“You’re terrifying.”
“That’s so sweet of you to say.”
Carine groaned and finally unwrapped her sandwich. She’d gone with the crab cake.
Heidi didn’t trustanyone’scrab cakes except Valerie’s grandmother’s. The busybody retiree had sent a box of them to her, likely as a bribe for Heidi to not fly into a fit of jealousy and murder her grandchild because she’d married Heidi’s ex-husband. No one had told Mrs. Lawson yet that Heidi was a devout lesbian. Valerie had suggested that Heidi keep the lid on that if Heidi wanted the crab cake pipeline to remain open.
Kevin had discovered the most recent stash soon after delivery. Heidi had found him warming four of them under the broiler at one in the morning, and she’d nearly evicted himandhis girlfriend. His girlfriend hadn’t even been awake. Kalimah had crashed there after working a long CNA shift. Heidi hadn’t wanted her driving drowsy across the river bridge.
Crab cakes made Heidi irrational. In truth, she was quite fond of Kalimah.
“I mean it.” Carine offered a bite of her sandwich, probably because Heidi had been staring for too long.
Heidi took a minuscule nibble out of sheer curiosity.
It was edible.
It was not the flounder, though.
She broke off half of what was left of her sandwich and set it atop Carine’s makeshift picnic. “I’m terrifying, yet here you are sitting in my truck. I didn’t think you were a masochist. May have to revise how I behave around you.”
“I am not a masochist. Still plain-old boring Carine. I do wonder every now and then if I’m on track for a Darwin Award, though.”
Heidi snorted and opened the console storage compartment. She found a metal straw at the bottom, wiped it on her blouse, and shoved it into her Coke Zero bottle. “Plain” and “boring” weren’t words she’d ever associate with Carine Bennett, but Heidi had an advantage over most people. She was good at watching, listening, and waiting. She noticed subtle quirks and poked at them until she was sure they weren’t just standard deviations of a personality. And she exploited them. She made little holes in Pandora’s box for her own pleasure and watched the victims of the chaos squirm until the changes settled.
“That seems criminal. You know that?” Tim had once told her.
She’d licked his cheek and told him that Poison Ivy probably had a much warmer bed than Batgirl.
“If you want to know about my dark dreams, you could ask me,” Heidi said and took a sip.
Carine gave her head an emphatic shake. “Nah. I need fewer words from you. You got that phone sex voice thing happening, and I don’t need any reminders about my batting average.”
“I thought you were hitting it off with that person at Clay’s.” Heidi took a generous sip and kept her expression neutral. She was a bitch, and she knew it.
She shouldn’t have asked Carine if she’d eaten or told her to bring her lunch to Heidi’s truck. Thoughtful, caring Heidi would have waved goodbye back at Janet’s and, at most, sent a text message later saying,“Hey, you get home all right? Saw there was hail heading that way.”
“I don’t know what to think about that anymore,” Carine said dolefully. “It’s not really going anywhere. I keep showing up because, shit, he knows what he’s doing. Knowing my luck, though, I’ll accidentally find out who the guy is, and he’ll be someone like Frank, and I’ll die of mortification.”
