by Lucy Score
Gabe was aghast. “Why would Aunt Gert lie to Lily?”
“People lie,” she said, feeling like she was telling a kid there was no Santa Claus. “People defraud. People do bad things to advance their own agendas, and they take advantage of other people.”
“That is very sad. Lily will be devastated when you tell her this terrible truth.”
She blinked. “Hang on. I don’t think we really need to tell Lily,” she said.
“But she should know that her aunt disliked her and gave her another person’s refuse rather than a treasured family heirloom.”
“Should she?” Riley asked. “If the truth is just going to hurt someone, what’s the point in telling it?”
He frowned again. “I must think about this.”
He closed his eyes, and she waited a beat. She waved her hand in front of his face, wondering if he’d fallen asleep sitting up. Nope. Just meditating.
She heard a creak from outside her door. Burt popped his head out of the cushion and stared at the door. “Relax. It’s probably…” She didn’t know who it would be. But her spirit guide people seemed to know something because the hair on her arms stood straight up.
Uh-oh.
“Stay,” she said firmly to the dog.
Burt ignored the command and followed her to the door.
Holding her breath, she sidled up to the peephole. Burt shadowed her movements and put his front paws on the door. He gave the wood a lick. She spotted a man in the hallway standing in front of the police tape over Dickie’s door.
It definitely wasn’t one of her neighbors. He was youngish and well-dressed in khakis and what looked like one of those sweat-wicking golf shirts. Nerves. She could feel them shimmering off him. He stalked to the left. Then back to the door. His movements were jerky, tense. He reached out, testing the doorknob.
“Fuck.” Riley wasn’t sure if he’d said it or thought it.
He paced again and came back to the door. With a squaring of his shoulders, he took a step back and landed a kick to the door above the knob.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed, turning away from the door. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Where’s my phone?”
“Watch.” Riley looked over her shoulder, expecting Gabe to be standing there. But the whispered command hadn’t come from him. He was still meditating over truth and lies.
She grabbed her phone on the coffee table and raced on tiptoe back to the door.
Riley: Everyone go to your rooms and lock the doors now! We have an intruder!
Lily: Where? Is it a he? Do you think he’s single?
Mr. Willicott: Who are you people? How did you get my number? How did I get a phone?
Fred: Relax, everyone. If this were a real drill, Riley would have used the code word.
Mrs. Penny: You mean I loaded my Beretta for a drill? Thanks a lot, Riley. I could have shot Willicott.
Fred: Maybe we should have a code word for drill emergencies.
Riley: This is not a drill! Someone just broke into Dickie’s apartment!
Lily: She’s really dedicated to this practice run.
Riley: Not a practice run!
Fred: THEN USE THE CODE WORD!
Riley smothered a growl.
Riley: Cabbage Casserole. Intruder on the third floor.
Lily: You don’t mean the census taker I let in, do you?
Mrs. Penny: Christ. I just unloaded the Beretta. You are terrible at this!
Burt gave a low “boof” and stared at the door.
Riley tried to pull up the camera on her phone, but Lily and Mrs. Penny were arguing about the merits of calling the cops with their “Code: Cabbage Casserole” situation. Mr. Willicott was asking where his falafel leftovers were.
She pushed her face up against the peephole again. The man was coming out of Dickie’s apartment. He was empty-handed and looked even more frustrated. He dragged the hat off his head and swiped a hand over his face.
“Oh, crap.” She’d seen that face before. Where?
The screen in her head coughed up an image from Nature Girls. He was the cute, nervous guy who’d cornered the busty server. Betty? Bitsy? Betsy!
He was still cute, still nervous. But now there was a stink of desperation. She didn’t know what he’d been looking for, but she was sure he hadn’t found it.
He glanced toward the main staircase, then changed his mind and headed to the back stairs. Riley held her breath and counted to ten before launching herself out of her own door and running down the front stairs.
“Come near this door, and I’ll fill your face with lead,” Mrs. Penny shouted from the second floor.
“Yoo-hoo! Intruder, is that you?” Lily called coyly from behind her first-floor door.
Riley made it down to the first floor without hurling her body into gravity’s forces. As quietly as possible, she slipped out the front door and onto the stretch of lawn.
There was a car. A late-model Mercedes in a glossy gray paint job pulling out of the lot onto Front Street. She ducked behind a tree to avoid being spotted.
She pulled out her phone and texted Nick.
Riley: Guy medium height, medium build, looked like a golfer just kicked in the door to Dickie’s apartment. Left empty-handed. Drives a new gray Mercedes. Saw him at Nature Girls trying to chat up a waitress. Tried to get video of him, but my neighbors are pains in my ass.
Her phone rang seconds later. Riley sat down on the bottom step of the porch. “Hi, dear, how’s your night?” she asked Nick.
“Har har. I’m on my way. Be there in ten,” he said. She could hear the RPMs of his engine and knew he was speeding to get to her. “Are you okay?”
“Slow down, Cannonball Run. We’re fine. He didn’t seem murdery.”
“A guy breaks into the apartment where a murder took place a week ago across the hall from my girl? I’m comin’ in hot. Where are you?” His voice was casual, but she could sense the urgency from him.
“On the front porch.”
“Damn it, Thorn. Get inside and lock the door.” All casualness was gone.
“Look, I keep locking the door, and my neighbors keep letting criminals inside.”
“I’ll yell at them,” he promised.
She snorted. “Good luck with that.”
She opened the front door and stepped inside.
A shot rang out, and Lily’s bedroom door exploded.
“What the fuck was that?” Nick yelled in her ear.
“Mrs. Penny, what the hell?” Riley shouted.
The woman poked her head out into the hall, followed by Lily. “Whoops. And that’s why you always cancel the code,” she said, waving a handgun.
“Did your neighbor just try to shoot you?” Nick demanded. Riley heard him lay on his horn. “Move your goddamn horse trailer off the goddamn road!”
She covered her phone. “You’re in so much trouble,” she told Mrs. Penny.
The woman shrugged.
“Riley?” Nick bellowed.
“Everything’s fine,” she assured him. “Door’s locked. Overzealous amateur security contained.”
“I’ll be there in four,” he snapped.
“Should I call the cops?” she asked.
“No,” he told her. “I’d like to avoid it if possible. Give them a chance to forget about you for at least a few days.”
“I doubt Detective Weber is going to give up tailing his primary suspect,” she said dryly.
“Weber’s off the case,” he said. “He got suspended.”
“Over what?”
“Dunno exactly. Sounded like dirty cop insinuations to me. Burt and I met the new detective for a drink today.”
A picture of a pretty blonde with a badge surfaced in Riley’s mind. “You took my dog on a date with another woman?”
“How did you—never mind. It wasn’t a date.”
“Could Weber be the reason behind all those cases that were being ignored? What about the tip line “accidents”?” she asked. Her phone vibrated, signaling another
call. “Crap. My mom’s calling. I better take it.”
“Don’t you dare hang up—”
She switched over to her mother. “Hey, Mom,” she said.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” her mom demanded. “My spidey senses are tingling. You’re upset. Or in danger. Or your bowels are flaring up.”
“Mom, I’m fine. Everything is fine,” Riley said, ducking into the front parlor to wait for Nick… and avoid getting shot at by the near-sighted Mrs. Penny.
“Oh! Good. Well, since I have you on the phone…”
Her mother never gave up that easily on an interrogation. Riley was immediately suspicious. “What do you want?” she sighed.
“I want you to bring Nick to dinner tomorrow night,” Blossom announced.
Riley could hear the typical domestic background noise on her mother’s end. The monk chant album she always played when she and Roger did the dishes together. There was the customary pop of a wine bottle cork, and Riley could envision her dad pouring two glasses to the rim.
“Mom, we’re not actually dating.”
“You’re also not actually engaged,” Blossom pointed out. “But if I have to hear from Lily one more time about how charming and polite and ‘smoldering with sexuality’ my daughter’s fiancé that we’ve never met is, I’m going to blow a spiritual gasket. Cheers,” she said.
Riley heard the clink of glasses.
“I don’t think it’s a great idea. It might give everyone the wrong idea,” she told her mother.
Blossom scoffed. “Riley, sweetheart, you know I can’t lie. And the next time Lily mentions to me how tight your fiancé’s butt is, I won’t be able to control myself, and I’ll just blurt the whole thing out.”
“Are you blackmailing me, Mom?”
“I’m not proud of it, but yes. I want to meet him. Even if you’re not getting married, he’s important to you. Your father and I—”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about some fake boyfriend,” Roger shouted for Riley’s benefit. “This is all your mother.”
“You do too care, Roger,” Blossom shot back.
“She’s just doing this so someone can help me move the couch again,” Roger yelled.
Blossom was infamous for inviting guests to dinner with ulterior motives. She’d once invited their gastroenterologist neighbor over for cocktails and proceeded to grill the woman about acid reflux.
Her parents bickered back and forth, and Riley rolled her eyes to the night sky. “Okay. Fine! I’ll ask him if he wants to come to dinner. But we’re not together, and I don’t want you getting any ideas.”
“Great!” Blossom said cheerily. “Oh, and bring Gabe too. I need to get the Fourth of July decorations out of that cabinet no one can reach.”
“Mom, stop putting stuff up there. Half the reason Wander married Raphael was because you needed someone to reach the canning supplies.”
But Blossom was already too busy starting her to-do list for her dinner guests, and Nick was flying into the parking lot, sending gravel in all directions.
“I gotta go, Mom,” Riley said as Nick slammed his door and stalked up the front porch steps.
She hung up and opened the door for him.
He didn’t slow down, just picked her up, kicked the door closed behind him, and kissed the hell out of her.
40
6:02 p.m., Friday, July 3
“Do you like chicken?” Riley asked her passengers.
“Are there people who don’t?” Nick asked.
“I am very fond of chicken. And ice cream,” Gabe piped up from where he was crammed into the back seat of her Jeep with Burt.
“Ask these guys if they know the difference between a spinnerbait and a buzzbait,” Uncle Jimmy demanded from deep in the recesses of her mind.
“Not now, Uncle Jimmy.”
She put on her turn signal and sent up a silent prayer to her spirit guides, asking them to kindly shut up all psychic messages.
She felt something like a garage door closing in her head and waited. No lure trivia. No monologue about river currents and mosquito hatchings. No Uncle Jimmy.
A tickle of guilt formed in her belly, but she brushed it aside. She was about to be smothered in family. The deceased ones could give her a break while she dealt with the living.
It had been another late night with Nick lecturing her neighbors on Stranger Danger and gun safety. She’d given him a description of the guy and the car, but without a name or a license plate, there wasn’t much to go on. Lily had added her own description, which hadn’t helped at all unless there would be a line-up to identify butts.
Nick had insisted on spending the night in the downstairs parlor to make sure no one else broke in or was admitted. Lily, the earliest riser, had the pleasure of finding him naked on the couch, pants tossed over a wingback armchair, underwear thrown over a stained-glass lampshade.
Riley had left for work while Nick installed security cameras on the front and back doors, and Lily described his penis to Mrs. Penny in great detail.
She hung a left into the fast-food restaurant’s parking lot.
“Aren’t we going to dinner at your parents?” Nick asked.
“Yep,” she said, rolling down her window at the speaker. “What do you guys want?”
She placed their order and pulled forward. Nick and Gabe wrestled for the honor of paying. Gabe won, enthusiastically shoving a credit card out the window at the cashier.
A minute later, with a bag full of chicken plus one hot fudge sundae, Riley pulled into a parking spot and distributed the food.
“Why are we pre-eating?” Nick asked her.
“Cabbage casserole,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Just trust me. Mom is an… adventurous, vindictive cook. It’s better to go on a full stomach.”
She popped a nugget into her mouth and handed one to Burt.
“Go easy on the people food,” Nick warned her. “We’re just starting to get his farts under control.”
They ate quickly, and Riley disposed of the evidence in the trash can before driving to her parents’ house.
“My family is a little… eccentric,” she warned Nick.
“I can handle eccentric,” he told her. “But how are we going to fake a relationship around a bunch of psychics?”
“They know we’re not together,” she said.
“Then why am I invited to dinner?”
“Yes. I, too, would like to know why he is invited to dinner,” Gabe chimed in, a vanilla ice cream mustache coating his upper lip.
She handed him a napkin.
“Why are you invited to dinner?” Nick shot back.
“I am a delightful dinner guest,” Gabe insisted.
“Ain’t she a beaut?” Roger Thorn asked, giving Daisy the Spite Cow an affectionate slap on the rump. She was black and white with dead cow eyes and a wet cow nose. “Did you know they hold auctions where you can show up and buy a farm animal?”
“Yeah, dad. They’re for farmers,” Riley said.
“And recreational livestock raisers,” her dad said triumphantly.
Daisy the cow and Burt the dog sniffed noses.
Roger beamed. “Look at her makin’ friends.”
“Speaking of—Dad, this is Nick. Nick, this is my dad, Roger.”
“Hiya,” Roger said, offering his hand.
“Really nice cow,” Nick said as they shook.
“She is, isn’t she?” Roger said with paternal pride.
“The best cow,” Gabe cut in, not wanting to be outdone.
“I might be biased, but I agree,” Roger said. “Good to see you again, Gabe.”
“Excuse me!” The shrill voice had Riley cringing and Burt’s hackles rising.
“Who the hell is that?” Nick asked out of the side of his mouth as a rail-thin woman in white capris and six inches of blonde bouffant minced down the sidewalk in gold stilettos.
“Chelsea Strump. Next-door neighbor and my father’s archnemesis. Y
ou met her evil aunt at my office. The eavesdropping receptionist.”
The dog let out a warning “boof.”
“Does anyone else smell sulfur and brimstone?” Roger asked loudly.
“Behave, Dad,” Riley hissed.
“Hello,” Chelsea said, brandishing a glossy pink clipboard and matching pink pen. “I’m distributing a petition to make housing livestock of any kind illegal in this neighborhood.”
“Ha! Good luck with that, Strump. I’ve already got the Yangs, the Smiths, and the Kapoors on my side.”
“Well, I’ve already got signatures from the Klomps and the Rotterdinks,” she said triumphantly.
“The Klomps don’t even live here anymore,” Roger bellowed. “They moved to Alabama three years ago.”
“Mrs. Klomp is prepared to testify that they moved because you threatened them with your livestock ownership plans.”
“We should probably go inside before we witness a crime,” Riley suggested.
Nick, Gabe, and Burt followed her up onto the porch and into the house.
“We’re here,” she called.
“Back in the kitchen.”
They found Blossom on tiptoe atop a stepladder, pretending to stretch fruitlessly for the out-of-reach cabinet.
Wander was peacefully chopping vegetables at the island. Her indulgent Zen smile wavered for a moment when Gabe walked in. “Hi.” Her voice was a high-pitched squeak instead of her usual throaty tone.
“Wander, you know Gabe,” Riley said.
Her sister nodded, eyes big, pupils shooting tiny cartoon hearts in the man’s direction. “Hi,” she squeaked again.