“Did you find out anything new about the fire at MJ’s house?” I ask Lana.
“No, too early for the report to be filed.”
“You think you could check on the 911 calls, too?”
“What are you up to, Chanti?”
“I was just curious about the response time. You know how you said the nearest fire truck should get to our house four minutes after dispatch?”
“Yeah?” Lana says, slowing down on her fish dinner. Yep, I figured this would be the right lie to tell.
“Well, it seemed a lot longer than that to me, more like seven or eight minutes. And you know more than one person usually calls in a house fire. If someone called in before me, that means the response time was even longer.”
“It had better not be eight minutes, unless the city wants a lawsuit. I’ll check the call records, too.”
There won’t be any lawsuits because the report will show the firefighters arrived when they were supposed to, but that little lie was extra insurance Lana would pull the information for me.
“You never can be too careful,” I say, mostly as a reminder to myself of how to approach my next question for Lana. “So, don’t you have something you want to discuss with me?”
“What?” Lana says all innocent, like she actually has no idea.
“You promised. You said you’d tell me everything you know about my father—the reason we don’t want him in our lives, why you changed our phone number.”
“Not now, Chanti. I’ve got some work to do,” she says, getting up from the table and hurriedly putting the rest of her food in the refrigerator. That means she’s really trying to avoid me because she always finishes the fish dinner combo. “I’ll be in my office the rest of the night.”
“Mom, what are you hiding from me?”
“Don’t you have homework to do?” she asks, her back turned to me as she pauses before leaving the kitchen.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Better watch yourself,” Lana says without giving me the evil eye that usually goes with that threat. Now she can’t even look at me when I ask about him.
Chapter 10
Coffee. I don’t want to see, hear, or think about anything else right now. I didn’t fall asleep until three in the morning when my body finally overtook my brain. I couldn’t stop worrying about MJ and Lux, my mother’s refusal to tell me what’s going on, and last but surprisingly least—Marco. Maybe I’m actually getting over him if I’m willing to put him last on my list of things to worry about. And as if I’m somehow putting that vibe out into the universe, a text from Reginald woke me up this morning. He seems like a nice guy, and definitely nice to look at, but for now, I ignore his offer to hang out this weekend. I have enough to deal with. Hey, Universe—if you’re listening, I said I’m getting over Marco, as in, still working on it.
The coffeemaker is just gasping out its last puff of steam when I get to the kitchen, but there’s no Lana. She wasn’t in the bathroom, either. I checked her bedroom and found the bed made. We don’t have one of those fancy coffeemakers that you can program, just an ancient Mr. Coffee that was a housewarming gift when Lana moved into her first apartment years ago. She must have dashed when she heard me up. I find a note propped against the coffeemaker. It’s so freshly written that I smudge the ink when I pick it up.
Have an early meeting this morning, and don’t expect to be back until after you’re asleep tonight. Don’t wait up. Left $20 on the kitchen table—order a pizza and keep what’s left.
Translation: I’m avoiding you, Chanti. And also bribing you with pizza and change.That’s okay. I’ll give her a break until the weekend when she’ll have nowhere to run. I’m avoiding Reginald’s text, so I’m guilty too.
The coffee raised me enough from the dead that I was able to shower, dress, and get out the door in time to catch my bus, but not enough to keep me from being uncoordinated. I stumbled over the threshold as I walked out onto the porch, spilling the contents of my unzipped backpack. As I’m down on hands and knees trying to find a lip gloss that rolled behind a planter full of long-dead mums, I hear voices coming from Mrs. Jenkins’s house. No, a little farther away than that, and it’s a guy’s voice. I don’t think Mrs. Jenkins has had a guy at her house since Mr. Jenkins passed away seven years ago, which is probably why she’s so mean. I stand up to see MJ on her porch talking to Lux.
I back up to my door so they can’t see me. I can’t make out the words, but Lux’s voice is angry. I step back out onto the porch enough to watch them and hope they’re so deep in conversation that they don’t catch me spying. Okay, so it isn’t exactly a conversation. Lux is doing all the talking, though it sounds more like the kind of yelling you do when you don’t want anyone to overhear. When he puts his finger in MJ’s face, I’m expecting her to break it along with his arm because MJ has a good four inches and forty pounds on Lux, not to mention she’s an all-around badass. So I’m shocked when she not only backs away from him, she starts talking so softly to him that I can’t hear her voice at all, making gestures like she’s trying to explain herself. MJ Cooper does nothing softly, and apologizes to no one even if she probably should. Lux must be satisfied with MJ’s response, because now he’s walking to his car.
Before I leave the porch, I wait a few minutes to make sure Lux is long gone and MJ is inside her house. My bus is also long gone, but it’s worth missing most of first period to have caught this scene. Now I know for sure that MJ is lying about Lux being her side dude.
I’m at my locker between second and third periods reading a note from Reginald. He must have had his mom stick the note through the slots because it wasn’t here before second period and unless he’s skipping, he should be in class at North Denver Heights right now.
Sorry for the old-school approach, but I think I must have your number wrong.
Uh no, I’m just evil and ignored your texts.
Doing anything this weekend? I have tickets to a Broncos game. Hit me up if you’d like to go.
Three hours in the cold watching a sport I don’t like. Now that I’m not with Marco, I never want to endure that torture again. See what I mean about the things a cute boy will make you do?
“Hey, Chanti. You got a second?”
It’s Marco. I’m serious about that whole Universe thing. I really believe it has a LoJack on my love life. I throw the note into my locker guiltily, as though just being near it Marco will know I’m talking to another guy. As though he’d even care.
“That’s about all I have,” I say, pointing to my wrist and an imaginary watch. “Third-period bell is about to ring.”
“What I said the other day before you left my house . . . that was out of bounds. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay, Marco. This whole thing is kind of weird, but we’ll get used to it. Seriously—no worries.”
“This isn’t just about my parents hating you, or me not wanting you to play detective. It’s about the attention you tend to attract—cop attention—that my family doesn’t need right now.”
“Is something going on?”
“I told you about my cousin living with us.”
“Your cousin?”
Marco looks at me like I should know exactly why his cousin should have anything to do with whether we’re together or not.
“Remember, not long after we first met? I told you my cousin David’s parents had recently been deported and how he was supposed to go, too, but my aunt and uncle brought him to us before INS took them away. When we were dealing with the whole school burglary ring and Donnell, I told you then I couldn’t have the cops in my business.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about David. You hadn’t talked about him since that first time, so I thought everything must have worked out.”
“How could it work out? The INS fairies let his parents back into the country and they lived happily ever after? The immigration laws magically changed? You say I want to be the center of everything, but you should check y
ourself, Chanti.”
While I may concede his point, how is this conversation going any better than the one he came to apologize for?
“You could have just reminded me that was the real reason you had to break up with me instead of saying your parents think I’m dangerous.”
“It was kind of a big deal, at least to me and my family. I didn’t think you’d forget it. You remember every little detail about your investigations, but can’t remember a huge one about me.”
Ouch.
Marco continues, “Anyway, I kinda regret I told you in the first place. It was a slip. The fewer people know David’s undocumented, going to school when he was supposed to be deported, the better. Besides, if I’d reminded you, would you have dropped the whole Bethanie and Cole investigation? Would you stop trying to track down this guy you think is an arsonist?”
I’m quiet, trying to think of a way to tell him he’s right, but not because I don’t care about him.
Before I come up with the right words, Marco turns to leave and I hear him say, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Chapter 11
Instead of heading home after the bus drops me off, I make a stop at the Center Street bodega to check if MJ is lying about her new boyfriend or not. If she wasn’t lying about never missing school, she should be in class right now and Eddie should be working the cash register.
The day started out cold, but the sun has made the afternoon warm enough to bring people out, including Crazy Moses, who is standing outside the bodega leaning against his shopping cart/home, money cup in hand. I have to tell him twice that I’m not working at TasteeTreets anymore and can’t give him free coffee like I used to. I actually had to pay for it with my employee discount, but I always told him it was free. Moses didn’t get the Crazy added on to his name for no reason. Half-priced coffee was a small price to pay to keep things peaceful during my shift at the register whenever he was there. Now I can’t afford to subsidize him.
Moses being here tips me off that Eddie’s father isn’t working today. Mr. Perez would never let Moses hang around his door harassing his customers like that. Eddie doesn’t care. He’s just killing time while he figures out what’s next. He was recently kicked out of college for being a slacker and never showing up for class, and his father is making him work in the bodega to earn his keep. Eddie couldn’t care less about his father’s store and is probably the last person to be trusted with it, but MJ made me promise to stay out of their family business. She’s got a point—I have my own father issues to deal with. But that doesn’t mean I’m staying out of MJ’s business when doing so could mean letting my friend get herself into a world of trouble.
“Tamale girl,” Eddie says when I walk into the store, like he’s announcing the queen.
“It’s Chanti,” I say.
“Yeah, I know—MJ’s friend. But you usually only come in on Freebie Friday for the buy-one-get-one tamales.”
It’s true, and apparently I’ve got an easy-to-mark pattern even though Eddie hasn’t been working in the bodega very long. I need to work on that—not a good trait for a detective, even one who isn’t really a detective. Now I’ll have to buy something to keep my cover. Good thing I took Lana’s twenty off the table this morning, not that I plan on spending more than I have to. There’s an extra-cheese-and-pepperoni pizza calling my name right now.
“I come in other times, like now, when I get off the bus from school.”
“Yeah? I must not have been working those other times,” Eddie says.
If it was anyone else, I’d think he was reading me, but from what MJ has told me, Eddie didn’t just fail in college because he was a slacker. He probably believes me and really thinks he wasn’t working those times, even though this is his regular shift.
“You have any Bubble Yum?” I ask. “I wanted to buy some for MJ because I’m always mooching off her. You know what her favorite flavor is?”
“Really? I’ve never seen MJ with gum.”
He’s right; it is a bad cover story. He’s reading my habits and my lies—I’m way off my game. Thanks to Marco messing with my head. And my heart.
“It was only once or twice I bummed off her. It’s not like she has a Bubble Yum addiction or anything.”
“Well, I know she likes grape slushes.”
“You know MJ pretty well, don’t you?” I say, finally getting the opening I was so ineptly looking for. “Things must be going great for y’all, huh?”
“Oh yeah, me and MJ are definitely tight. I never thought she’d be my kind of girl, her being all roughneck and everything. I was chasing pretty girls around campus and didn’t know what a real woman would be like.”
Unbelievably, he says this all dreamy-like. I suppress a smile.
“MJ is about as real as it gets,” I say, putting the pack of grape gum, two protein bars, and Lana’s twenty on the counter.
“Yeah. Ain’t nothing pink and frilly about her. You never know what you want until it hits you.”
“It hits you? You mean like—”
“Nah, man . . . it’s like . . . you know,” he says.
Like most guys, he fumbles the four-letter L word like it can’t possibly relate to him, so I let him off the hook.
“Right, I know. And MJ won’t ever hear it from me,” I promise as he gives me my change.
On my way out, I give Crazy Moses the protein bars. I’ll probably regret it the next time I see him when I’ll have to explain why I can’t give him free coffee or Power Bars now.
“You can pay me back when you have a little extra,” I tell him, hoping he’ll remember I said it and won’t expect freebies whenever he sees me. I know he’ll never have a little extra. Some panhandlers probably make more than I ever did at Treets, but Crazy Moses isn’t one of them. People generally cross the street to avoid him; he scares off too many people to actually make any money.
“Not to worry,” he says and nods, taking the bars. I’m never sure what this means because, outside of demanding money, food, or coffee from people, I’ve never heard Moses say anything but those three words. He says them all the time, whether he’s pushing his cart up the street, panhandling on the corner, or sitting on the sidewalk in front of Seoul BBQ enjoying someone’s donated leftovers—you’ll hear him repeating those same three words over and over. I always figured he was trying to convince himself, not the rest of us, but sometimes I wonder.
I should take Moses’s advice, but that’ll never happen. Right now, I’m worried about MJ. Either she’s lying about things between her and Eddie not being serious or the poor guy is completely deluded. The way he kept looking all stupid-in-love whenever I mentioned MJ, that delusion theory is not improbable. But there are other ways to get information than from the source, and sometimes they’re even more reliable than the source. This is especially true when a would-be informant thinks of gossip as a sport and she’s training for the gold. On my walk home, I call in a pizza order and then text Tasha to come over for a slice in about fifteen minutes.
Before I go home, I make a stop at Ada Crawford’s house, the weight of the heavy lighter reminding me that it’s been in my coat pocket—and on my mind—for a couple of days. After I explain I might have found something of Ada’s to her housekeeper, who I am certain is the only one working on Aurora Avenue and probably a five-block radius, I am shown into the house. I only have a second to get over the surprise of actually being let in before I am struck by the house itself.
Like with my first visit to Marco’s place, Ada’s house is nothing like I had imagined, which involved leather furniture, feather boas, and black lights. Or at least something like her car, a gold Lexus with gold medallions, gold spinners, and gold everything else. Instead, it looks like someone forced Ada to only shop at Laura Ashley for the rest of her days. Pastel flowers bloom on the walls, curtains, pillows—everywhere.
While I wait for Ada in the foyer—she actually has one and again, I’m sure it’s the only one on the block—I look around for cl
ues that she is who I have always suspected she is despite her sweet and innocent interior design. Like maybe a guestbook with all her clients’ names that I could sneak a peek at like they always do in the movies. But I guess it isn’t like she’s running a bed and breakfast, even though her décor might suggest it.
“You have something for me?”
I turn around to find Ada dressed the same way she does on those rare times I run into her around the neighborhood—normal. No leather bras or those little shoes with the feathers on front. I really watch too much TV, and possibly the wrong kind.
“Well, I’m not sure it’s yours.”
“So why would you come see me about it?”
“Because I found it on your—on the sidewalk in front of your house.”
“What is it?”
“I was wondering if, uh, you could tell me,” I say, a little nervous. Something about Ada is intimidating, even surrounded by pale flowers. Maybe because she’s really pretty, even prettier than everyone on the street thinks she is, when you get up close. Or maybe because I know what she does in this house of flowers. “I thought if one of your, uh, visitors had lost something, you could describe it to me. It probably would have been last Sunday—likely Saturday night—that they lost it.”
“So whatever it is,” Ada says, smiling a little, “you’re suggesting it’s something a man would own.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m suggesting. Ma’am.”
“No, none of my visitors have lost anything. Could I have a look at it, anyway?”
Reluctantly, I fish the lighter out of my pocket and instead of handing it to her, hold it up for her to see. I don’t know why I think she’s going to take it, but . . .
“Hey!” I say as she grabs it from me.
“This is nice,” she says, appraising like she’s looking at a diamond through a jeweler’s loupe. “What do you think this design on it is?”
Sweet 16 to Life Page 6