Dark Streets, Cold Suburbs

by Aimee Hix

  I trudged up the stairs longing for a cup of coffee (and, yay me, for ratcheting down that addiction just in time for me to really need it to come through for me) and a stout bat to smack the living crap out of people I had yet to meet and already hated. I dredged down deep for something, anything, from the therapist—a calming mantra, the Serenity Prayer, a power object—and found nothing. All strength of will then. I settled as nonthreatening a look on my face as I could muster. Less you’re going down in a crumpled heap of pain and tears, mofo and more I can’t do anything to you legally or physically but you will not enjoy my tone.

  The woman person had glassy eyes that damn well better have been from unshed tears and the man person looked gassy. My mood? Not improved.

  Mom sat across from them in a body posture I’d best seen described as on tenterhooks. I had no idea what tenterhooks were but the fact that they were hooks didn’t make them sound comfortable.

  Dad had his patent-pending Face of Doom which made the unshed tears and gassy extremely understandable. Aja looked … like a girl who would rather be anywhere else in the world having anything else in the world done to her. Ben looked clueless.

  All caught up on the nonverbal communication, I stomped over to the parents, stuck out my hand, and played grownup.

  “Willa Pennington, your daughter’s private investigator.” Damn how I wished I’d had the foresight to print up a bill and hand it to them. They were definitely getting one via email once I figured out how much to charge them for the services their daughter shouldn’t have needed.

  The mother person popped up and grabbed me in a hug that felt too weak and too strong at the same time. It was like Pilates had met WASP apathy and I just barely resisted curling up my lip and nose.

  “You’re an angel.” Okay, dial it back a dozenty hundred notches and while we’re at it too.much.perfume. I felt like I’d just been accosted by thirty perfume spritzers at the mall. I hated the mall.

  “Heh.” I gently pushed her away. “I guarantee my mother would quibble with your angel remark but …”

  The father person didn’t meet my eyes so I stared at him until even I was uncomfortable and his wife dug her bony, be-ringed fingers into his arms. Her appendages looked like giant chicken claws and I wondered how someone’s fingers even got that skinny.

  He stood up, a little taller than I was, looking shorter, and jammed his hands into his pockets. What a dick.

  “Yeah, I can see how grateful you are too. No need to get mushy.”

  I felt rather than saw Aja roll her eyes behind my back and decided that I didn’t care who had what legal leg to stand on, jump on, or cut off, she wasn’t going any damn where with these people unless I saw her take a polygraph and say, “Yes, I absolutely cannot wait to go anywhere with these cold, unfeeling, assholes.”

  I rolled my head on my neck and Nancy popped up out of her seat. “Coffee?”

  I stared down Aja’s papa and grinned a very unangelic smile. “Love some, Mom. Maybe Aja and Ben would like to help.”

  My scalp tingled with anticipation and then the damn doorbell rang. Jan. SONUVABITCH. I had been about to release the Kraken. I stared hard at him and then blew out a breath. While it would have been such a great release to unload on this asshole who couldn’t find a tiny bit of humility to offer to the people who’d taken in his daughter and helped her, Jan would cut him up one side and down the other and that would be wonderful to watch. Surgical and yet he’d feel every cut.

  I ushered her in and she gave me an amused look. She knew me well enough to know I was full-on nuclear angry and she knew who it was directed at. He didn’t dare not shake her hand and I watched with relish as he squirmed under her look-right-through him gaze. She’d sized him up in a moment and let him sputter and choke on his explanations of why Aja was alone for so long. Aja’s mother twisted a tissue in her hands, little flakes of it floating down to the rug with each jerk. They were both extremely nervous, almost too nervous, in Jan’s presence and I wondered if they were stupid enough to be holding. To do that knowing you were getting ready to meet a cop, one who had been handling a murder that was directly tied to your parental negligence, took a level of dumbass and arrogant privilege I knew existed in the world but hadn’t personally witnessed.

  Dad had gotten up and meandered into the kitchen as Jan was coming in. It was starting to get crowded in there, and then she looked at me with a tilt to her head. I was being dismissed? Just when it was getting good? She flipped open her portfolio to pull out Aja’s combined statements.

  “Being Aja’s legal guardian requires one of you or a court-

  appointed guardian ad-litem representative to review her statements before we can make them official.”

  Her words hung ominously. The mother reached forward with a shaking hand to take the pages. My last view of her was her bent head studying the pages.

  Four sets of expectant eyes turned to me when I walked into the kitchen.

  “What’s going on?” Aja whispered. Her face was screwed up in a half anxious, half tough girl look. I pressed down the anger it stirred in me to use for another day on another person.

  “Jan’s just having them review your statements. It’s a pretense to make them see what you’ve been dealing with. She doesn’t have to get their approval on anything.”

  Aja nodded. “I have to go with them, don’t I?”

  I opened my mouth but Dad cut me off. “You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to with anyone you don’t want to go with.”

  That settled it. Dad had spoken. This was why he had been a great cop and was a good PI. He cared about people. It didn’t always seem like it, he didn’t always act like it, he’d deny it if anyone ever accused him of it, but he cared deeply. His duty was to other people. He served and protected in the truest sense of the words. I didn’t. It wasn’t about that for me. I was in it to solve the puzzle. I was still working on the people part of it.

  Aja looked at my father and then my mother. “I think I do have to. Like I need to. Does that make sense?”

  Mom hugged her. “This is always home to you, sweetie.”

  And that was why they were the perfect couple. They were both more interested in other people’s feelings and needs than their own. And I was just like Leila. It was all about my own needs. That didn’t feel good. At least I was applying it to trying to right wrongs. She taught people how to cry on cue. I know, mean and unfair. Chalk it up to cross-fire anger directed at the Peter Pan parents in the other room.

  Aja asked Nancy to help her go pack up. I stomped downstairs ignoring Jan and Aja’s parents as they all made serious and sober-looking faces at one another.

  The files on the cold case taunted me from the table. All the pictures, all the reports, all the statements and I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who the killer was. I contemplated sorting through them one more time but admitted that I was only hiding from how I felt about Aja leaving with those people. They didn’t deserve a second, or whatever number, chance. Admittedly, I wasn’t big on second chances anyway.

  As if on cue, my phone binged. Seth.

  I screwed this all up. Keep the faith, please. I’m the one hanging out the window this time.

  Well, shit. If anyone deserved a second chance, it was Seth. Us. Or whatever number chance we were on at this point.

  No more picking stupid fights. No more keeping things from you. I promise.

  Double shit. How could I say no? If it had been me … hell, it was me. I kept stuff from him all the time. So he didn’t worry. So he didn’t try to White Knight me. So he didn’t make me think about someone else’s feelings and needs.

  Triple shit. I truly loved the asshole. Thinking about giving up on us made my stomach hurt. I wasn’t good at picturing the future but when I tried, all I saw was my family, Aja included. And Seth.

  Quit being a dumbass. You know I’d nev
er let you go even if it meant we both burned to death.

  I really needed to start giving those texts an edit before I hit send. I waited watching the dots cycle as he typed his reply.

  I was a teenage girl. I was a stupid teenage girl worried about texting with my boyfriend. I should shoot myself right now and get it over with.

  The dots blinked at me. Was he writing the Gettysburg Address? Jeez, how long did it take to tell me I was weird or stupid? Maybe he was being smart enough to not tell me those things. I didn’t need context though. I just needed words.

  But the dots hovered and disappeared.

  Fargo had laid down directly behind me and as I took the step back, she yelped and I pulled short at the last minute, falling into the table and launching my phone into the brick fireplace surround five feet away.

  It shattered, loudly. Eggs were sturdier than my phone model, apparently.

  Ben was pounding down the stairs in a second. “Hey, what was that? Something break down here? Are you okay, Fargo?”

  Nice that his concern was for the dog. Although she’d made a noise of distress and I hadn’t. My phone was incapable of making any noises ever again.

  I pointed at the debris. “My phone. At least it wasn’t a wood chipper.”

  “Can I?” Pointing at his phone, omnipresent in his hand. He gave it to me and then examined Fargo from the tip of her floppy ear to the tip of her unhurt paw.

  I called up his contact list and found Seth’s entry.

  Hey, Fargo knocked into me and I dropped and broke my phone. But I just wanted you to know that we’re cool. Okay? We’ll figure it all out when you get home.

  Love you.

  I deleted the text conversation and handed it back to him. I was sure Ben had some way of recovering it but there wasn’t anything in it I needed him to not read.

  “Will? Are you okay? You don’t look okay.”

  “I really liked that phone.”

  We had multiple sim cards for that model but not extra phones. Not that model anyway. Burners it was until I had time to get a replacement. Another insurance bill.

  “Aja’s getting ready to leave with her parents. Do you want me to send her down?”

  Was today Make Willa Deal with Uncomfortable Emotions Day? I nodded, not trusting my voice. I had a hard lump in my throat and I knew from experience that meant my body was trying to force me to cry. I hadn’t evolved that much that I was going to cry in front of people. People did not include my mommy and I was desperate for just a moment to let go. I was exhausted and overwhelmed.

  Aja came down the stairs slowly. She was dragging out leaving. I knew she was only going because she wanted to give her parents a chance; for them, not for her. It hurt in a way that was all about me and understanding the feeling of wanting your parent to be okay when it wasn’t your job to make sure of that. But it was a lesson she had to learn on her own. And she had a safe place just like I did.

  “You may regret how this turns out but you won’t regret giving them another chance, kiddo. And we’re always here.” I could be mushy and big sisterly when I needed.

  She nodded and swallowed hard, looking away. She was trying not to cry.

  “Don’t do that, Aja. Don’t push the feelings down anymore. You need them and they need to see them.”

  She nodded again and flung herself at me. I cleared my throat around the lump and closed my arms around her, hard. I heard her whispering “thank you” over and over. I nodded into her shoulder and tightened my grip a little more.

  “It was my pleasure. You’re a great kid. Don’t forget it.”

  She pulled back, sniffing, and went to wipe her nose on the non-existent hoodie sleeve. That made both of us laugh and I did the grossest thing I’d ever done as an adult. I picked up my arm and wiped her nose with my sleeve. We started laughing harder, falling against one another. One of us snort-laughed and we both laughed harder. It felt good to lean into her and just let out the tension. We stayed like that for a few minutes until she smiled at me sadly and turned away.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she turned back. “I want to be just like you when I grow up. Strong and brave and fearless.”

  I stared at her as she walked up the stairs and then was out of view.

  Fearless? Ha. That was a good trick. I’d fooled someone into thinking I was fearless.

  Nancy took a sip of her tea, staring at me over the rim of her mug. “What’s going on with Seth? Have you talked since the phone call the other night?”

  The coffee mug was a soothing warmth in my hands. A plate of cookies sat on the table between us, ignored.

  “He texted, apologized for just taking off and being weird and annoying in general, picking fights and all.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I responded that it was fine. That I got it. We were okay.”

  “And is it?”

  I took a sip of coffee, stalling. I set the mug down and took a cookie, breaking it into small pieces and eating each bit slowly, one at a time. I finished and made eye contact. If she was feeling impatient, she wasn’t showing it.

  “Maybe. I’m upset he kept the adoption a secret from me.” I considered for a second. “No, that’s not really it. I’m upset he kept a big revelation in his life a secret but proceeded to act like a jerk for what seemed like no good reason.”

  And that was it. Everyone’s got their own private stuff they don’t want to share and if that was his thing or even just one of those things, cool, great, bottle that shit up. But don’t try to provoke fights with me because you’re mad and you can’t or won’t talk to who you’re really angry with.

  My mother knew me well enough to know I’d said my piece on the matter. Unlike Seth, I knew how to express my anger to the person I was angry with.

  “How’s the murder coming? Murders.”

  I recapped the cold case for her. How frustrated I was with the lack of anything concrete.

  “No one had a motive. Not a good one, at least. Jan’s fairly convinced it was the brother but even she’s wavering on that now, I think. They’d had some fights but no one knows about what and everyone there’s a statement from agrees that they can’t imagine him hurting her.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “No motive as far as I can see. Alibi’s shaky but that’s not a surprise. It’s a holiday weekend and people are coming and going. People can agree they saw him but not a solid time. The brother’s got the same problem with his alibi.”

  “Mother?” Her voice didn’t even waver. I was a little surprised. She had been a cop’s wife though. And an ER nurse. She knew what people were capable of.

  “Alibi is solid. She was Black Friday shopping and has dated and timed receipts.”

  “And this boy Aja knew? Anything on that case?”

  I picked up my mug again, mulling over Aja and Damian. Damian and Cole. Damian and Cole and this mystery man in the Guy Fawkes mask who wanted back whatever was worth killing over.

  “Steroids is all I’ve got on that so far. We’re fairly certain Damian had been taking them based on his physiological changes and I assume the autopsy will confirm. Cole, the kid who came for Aja, was doing them too. And from what Cole said, Damian took something extremely valuable and hid it. It’s a straight line from Damian’s murder to Mr. X but other than that, we’ve got nothing.”

  I remembered that I’d wanted to pick up another coffeemaker for the basement in all the thinking and talking about the cases taking me round and round.

  Chapter

  19

  The store was blessedly empty as I grabbed a cart and headed straight to the appliances. There were a myriad of colors and sizes available for the single-serve coffeemakers. My brain was not in a place where I could deal with too many options so I self-soothed by detouring to the candy aisle.

  I grabbed bags of fruity
licorice twists and a ten-pack of candy that had mixed caramel, pretzels, and peanut butter all covered in milk chocolate. My rapid-fire synapses began to amp down and I made sure I picked up a half dozen boxes of breakfast pastries that deranged people toasted and sane people ate cold from the package just as god intended.

  Another jag down the cookie aisle and two bags of the butter cookies that made me feel in control of an uncontrollable world. I grabbed a small bear-shaped tub of chocolate-covered animal crackers which I then swapped for a large. Hey, they were called crackers because they were mostly healthy.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself back to the unnecessarily complicated caffeine delivery systems. I chose a dark blue one in the size determined best for “small offices and dorm rooms” reasoning that Ben could take it off to MIT. At the end of the aisle, as I was heading for the checkout area, there was a display of coffee pods and a box of Extra Bold caught my eye. Extra Bold was the existential choice I was craving at the moment plus it was likely to be Extra Kick in the Pants after another pointless night of reviewing a case I wasn’t making a damn bit of headway on yet was too stubborn to turn back over and admit defeat.

  Finally armed with more junk food than good sense (and both my therapist and mother would agree), I headed to the front of the store, mentally awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the genius who came up with self-checkout. I was in even less of a mood than usual for dealing with people. That included friendly cashiers, all of whom looked entirely too perky and ready to assist. I scanned the items and bagged them, feeling another soothing rush of dopamine at the sight of all my favorite mood levelers. The total made me wince a little but I swiped my card and pulled the receipt from the machine without thinking too hard about it.

  I hadn’t spent much of the reward money both Jan and Seth had strong-armed the ATF into making sure I got. There had been some whining from the higher-ups, always trying to save budget money for stupid crap no one really needed to do their jobs, but a few carefully chosen words about all the press the story and I, in particular, had been getting ended up with a check being cut.