by Raven Snow
The hostess showed us to our bright, wooden seats with a cheerful smile. Feeling like I had stepped into the opposite of the Funky Wheel, I sat with a bemused smile. Then, something about Wyatt’s earlier statement hit me.
“Wait, just how many siblings do you have?”
“Two older brothers and one younger. I was the best behaved, of course.”
That meant there were three other men out there with his good looks, charm, and stubborn jaw. “Your poor mother.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t you know my whole story?” I asked dryly.
He gently pushed the menus back to our waitress before she could set them on the table, ordering two of the house specials for the both of us. “Nah, I just like people to think I know everything.”
Even though this was supposed to be an interrogation— with no funny business— I told him. He listened without comment through the death of my mother at eighteen, leaving me to fend for myself in a wild Miami. How a year later, I’d been in a little trouble with the law—this earned me a chuckle— and I’d gotten the news of the inheritance like a life raft for a drowning person.
“So, I came to Waresville, and the rest you know.”
“What kind of trouble were you in?” he asked in a forced casual voice.
“The kind of trouble I wouldn’t tell a cop about,” I replied without missing a beat. “Nothing like finding a mutilated body on my funky floor, that’s for sure.”
I expected him to lose all his good charm at the mention of the case, but he just said, “I can’t talk about that with you.” The smile never left his face.
“You realize, of course, that I only came here to grill you.”
Still no frown. “As long as you’re here.”
Two chicken dishes were set in front of us. I shoved a forkful in my mouth, not bothering to be lady-like as I watched him eat with perfect manners through narrowed eyes. The chicken was good— really good, in fact, but I barely noticed.
“You eat like someone’s trying to take your food,” he said conversationally.
“With the leftover pizza at the Funky Wheel, it’s a free-for-all between the staff. You learn to eat before Stoner Stan comes back from his smoke-break-slash-bathroom-trip.”
“He takes both breaks consecutively?”
I took another bite, trying to slow down and enjoy it this time. “Don’t be ridiculous; he smokes in the bathroom.”
After a moment where we shared a giggle, I continued, “You know, it’s really pointless to try and keep anything from me. I have sources.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so. No one whose name I could divulge, of course.”
The corner of his lip twitched. “Of course.”
“But he— or she— told me that you matched the rope to Hardie’s, but more importantly, you found Irina all over Matt.”
Leaning back in his chair, Wyatt sighed and adjusted his tie. “The hair and nail are circumstantial at best, because they’re married. You’d expect to find bits of her on the victim.”
“Nail?”
“You only knew about the hair, right?” He looked like he wanted to kick himself, but after a moment, he said, “Well, we also found a broken, synthetic nail on his body that matches Irina.”
My voice rose of its own accord. “You have all that on her, yet Jeb is the one in jail? That’s criminal!” I knew people behind us were turning around to stare.
To his credit, he didn’t tell me to calm down or lower my voice. “Look at the facts, Harper,” he said in a no-nonsense fashion. “He was sleeping with her— he admitted it. They couldn’t be together until Matt was out of the picture, and Irina’s not the kind of person to run away with someone who has nothing.”
The waitress silently took his credit card, her eyes downcast. Wyatt didn’t pay her or any of them any mind. “We found the same rope used to tie up the victim and the same cloves in Jeb’s locker—“
“Anyone can get into those!” My fist slammed into the tables. “The whole lot of them has faulty locks. By that logic, I’m a suspect.”
“I just don’t think she did it, Harper, and I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
We drove back to my place in silence, the heater on full blast. Thankfully, that filled in some of the quiet, making it seem a little less hollow and awkward.
Despite my other intentions, I hadn’t meant to yell at him in the middle of a packed, little restaurant. He wasn’t a bad guy, all things said and done. In fact, he was kind of great— even if admitting that felt like a betrayal to myself, the Funky Wheel, and to Jeb.
Some friend I was.
The breath rushed from my lungs when we pulled into the parking lot and I looked up at my home. I was out of the car the next second, before it had even stopped. Ignoring Wyatt calling my name, I sprinted up towards the Funky Wheel, a profound numbness spreading through me.
Like I’d told Wyatt, the roller rink was originally a church, big windows and all. That’s a problem for a 70s skating place, because sunlight and disco don’t mix. So, my dad had painted each one of the windows a starry night blue, the richest color in the whole wide world.
Now, shards of those colored windows littered the ground like leaves in fall, making everything sparkle sharply. It made the parking lot ten times as beautiful, but at the Funky Wheel’s expense.
Where the windows used to be, there were now gaping holes, like wounds in the Funky Wheel. Shards stuck inward at odd angles and made each window look like a screaming mouth.
On the large, metal front door, a message had been written. The letters were crimson and dripped down towards the ground with the pull of gravity. It took me a full minute of staring to realize it was written in blood.
Stay out of it bitch
A warm hand closed over my shoulder, squeezing lightly. He was little more than a stranger, but I turned around, resting my head on his chest and trying not to see those broken windows my dad had painted.
“Dispatch, I need backup at the Funky Wheel. There’s been a break in.”
I shook a little at that. It was just so surreal. Someone had invaded my groovy sanctuary— had violated it.
Wyatt pulled me gently back toward the car, sitting me down on the passenger seat with my legs facing out on the ground. He crouched down so he was below my eye level.
I avoided looking at him for a moment, because I knew if I saw pity in his eyes, I’d just lose it. But when I did meet his gaze, his face was completely closed off and professional.
He pointed to the blood writing. “Do you know anyone who would write that?”
“No.” I tried for a weak smile. “Surely they meant ‘witch,’ right?”
It wasn’t really funny, but it did make me feel a margin better to crack a joke.
“We’re gonna find who did this, Harper,” he said.
“Right.” I busied myself with the lock on the car door. “Because the police are always so gung-ho on victimless crimes.”
Instead of replying, Wyatt got in the driver’s seat and started the car. Watching the Funky Wheel fade into the sunset was almost the hardest part of the night. It felt like I’d never be coming back, as silly as that was.
By the time we arrived at the police station, I’d gained a little composure. “Why are we here?”
The cool night air whipped at me, frizzing up my short, dark hair. As the moon was the only light in the parking lot, I almost missed Wyatt shoving his hands into his pockets in frustration.
“I need a statement and an official assessment of the damages,” he said, pulling me towards the station.
I dug my heels in, firming my resolve. “You can do that at the Funky Wheel; I want to go home.”
To my embarrassment, a bit of my heartache leaked in that last word. The Funky Wheel was my home, and not just because I slept above it. Though it was absurd, it felt like the place had been specially made for me by my father. It was my place, and I wa
sn’t going to let anyone scare me away.
Wyatt’s jaw tensed, but his eyes remained kind. “You can’t go back there, Harper. Someone’s just made a threat on your life.”
Chapter Seven
Needless to say, I didn’t get any sleep that night. Wyatt insisted that I couldn’t go back to the Funky Wheel until they’d boarded up the windows, and I refused to go to my grandma’s. If the night had taken that deadly turn, I might not have made it out psychologically intact.
Instead, we walked around the town all night, stopping every few feet when Wyatt remembered a funny story from his past that pertained to a certain building. If he couldn’t come up with anything, he’d just tell me the history of it— the entire history.
“How do you remember all this shit?” I asked him after a humorous anecdote about the pizzeria that had served sliced rat instead of pepperoni until the 1960s.
He shrugged. “Waresville’s my home. Knowing everything about it helps with my job.” Running his fingers over the old brick, he said, “And it makes me feel closer to the town, like I have my finger in every pie.”
Stumbling out of bed, I wiped the hour’s worth of sleep I’d gotten out of my eyes and stopped reliving the previous night. Normal hours wouldn’t start for a long time, but a couple of weeks ago, I’d agreed to open for lunch for a bunch of school kids on a field trip.
So instead of going back to bed like I wanted to, I pulled on my disco garb and deeply regretted the decision to be a helpful, responsible adult.
The windows were all boarded up, taking care of the light problem, but they made the place look like a giant barn. The Funky Wheel was not a barn, because that would’ve made me a farmer, and lord knows I didn’t look good in plaid.
A strained-looking teacher in her late fifties pulled up with a school bus filled with children. Though they were behind glass and steel, I could hear their hollering like it was right in my ear, and I almost turned around and went back to my loft.
“Thanks for doing this,” Mrs. June said, stepping down from the bus to let the kids off. She directed them like a herding dog into the roller rink. “We were fresh out of ideas for field trips.”
While the kids skated around the rink like they had rockets attached to their shoes, I got the teacher a stiff drink. At first, she protested, saying she couldn’t drink while on duty, but then the screaming started to get louder and she caved.
“Who are you?” a short kid with braces asked, leaning against the half wall and into the dining area.
“Foxxy,” I said, pulling out one of the pizzas I’d had cooking. “I own this place.”
“That’s not your real name.”
“Oh, yeah, says who?”
“My daddy.”
Containing my snort, I said, “Well, your daddy doesn’t know everything, because Foxxy happens to be on my birth certificate.”
It was my middle name, but the kid didn’t need to know that. His eyes scrunched up, and I couldn’t help but feel there was something starkly familiar about him. Then, without saying another word, he skated off, disappearing into a cloud of children.
“Exhibit A of why I’m never having kids.”
Putting the pizzas down on a couple of spaced out tables, I watched with morbid curiosity as the tiny humans descended upon the food, tearing into it with a vengeance rarely seen outside of the animal channel. Each one of them had the potential to put away more pizza than Stoner Stan and I combined. It was almost inspiring.
“My daddy’s always right.”
I jumped out of my skin a little as the kid from earlier appeared behind me like a demon summoned. “Maybe I’ll believe that if he ever told you not to sneak up on people.”
He scuffed his dirty tennis shoe against the patched, purple carpet. “Yeah, he told me that.”
I walked back behind the concession stand to get some drinks ready, and the boy followed me. “What’s your name?” I called over my shoulder.
“Cooper.”
Snorting, I hauled a large cooler onto the counter and filled it up with carbonated sugar water. “And you’re making fun of my name?”
He frowned so deeply I was afraid his face would get stuck like that. It’d be hard to explain that to his drunken teacher. “My mom named me.”
Though I wanted to, I resisted taking a jab at his mother for her lack in naming skills, because I was a mature adult. Just ask anyone.
“Shouldn’t you be feeding with your friends?” I asked. “Or playing, maybe?”
“Not interested.”
I poured him a glass and added in a crazy straw for good measure. “You’re kind of a weird kid, aren’t you?”
I could relate to that. Even from the time I was small, I’d loved shiny outfits that set off blinding sparks of color in the sunlight. It’d made me kind of a pariah in a small, suburban school system. That and our lack of money meant Mom and I were always on the outside.
Still, I doubted any of my classmates were running their own disco skate at the ripe age of twenty-six. On the flip side, I doubted any of them had found a body or a threatening message at their place of employment, either. Life was full of give and take.
“What was this field trip supposed to teach you, anyway?” I asked Cooper after a long moment.
Heaving out a put-upon sigh, he rested his head in his hands. “Stuff about local business, I think.”
I made a humming noise in the back of my throat, studying the boy for a moment. “Wanna learn about cleaning bathrooms?”
“Okay.”
Hopping down from his seat, he followed me like a duckling after its mother. We waddled along in silence, grabbing the cleaning bucket from my office and heading into the men’s bathroom.
“It smells kinda funny in here,” he said, taking the mop from me and starting in the corner like I suggested.
“That’s genuine 70s stink, kid. Can’t find that in just any establishment.”
I took the toilets, since he wasn’t getting paid for the pleasure, and we shared the responsibility of the sink area. There wasn’t much talking on my end, but Cooper erupted like the sink in the girl’s bathroom did every other week.
He talked about his mom, who’d left when he was little. There was mention (a lot of it, actually) of his super awesome dad who put his life on the line every day and was a real-life hero. The corner of my mouth twitched as I thought about what a fine wingman the kid would be for his old man.
About an hour later, the parents started showing up to take home their little darlings. Most of the kids, however, didn’t want to leave the rink. Unfortunately, since I have a no shoe policy, this meant I had to drag them out, kicking and screaming.
And the kids weren’t too happy about it either.
Cooper skated after me the whole time, like a little shadow. It was cute, but it made me wonder if he really had no friends in the entire class. Sure, he was a little goofy-looking, but I could say that about any of the little urchins.
Finally, only Cooper was left. I’d even sent home Mrs. June in a cab after assuring her I could watch the boy and keep the bus safe until morning. Sitting across a booth from each other, our eyes were locked in an intense staring contest as we both sucked down our third extra large soda.
“So, I’m dying to meet the best dad in the world that you’ve been talking about all day,” I said slowly. “Any idea when he’ll be showing up?”
“Why? You got something better to do?”
“Fair point.”
I heard the metal clang of the door opening, and then someone called, “Cooper!”
Grinning, the kid bounded towards the door, but stopped halfway to turn back and look at me. “Aren’t you coming?”
Without giving me a chance to respond, he was gone, leaving me in his dust with little choice but to follow. Jumping down from the platform, I rolled after him, catching up with him just as we stopped in front of his dad.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, not even bothering to mutter it unde
r my breath.
Wyatt grinned, his suit as clean-pressed and appropriate as ever. “Who’s your friend, Cooper?”
“This is Foxxy,” he said in rapid-fire fashion. “She owns this place, and she knows how to skate, and she makes pizza, and she told me I was weird, and we cleaned the bathroom together.”
“Glad my tax dollars are getting you a good education.” Wyatt ruffled his son’s hair. “Why don’t you go wait for me in the car?”
Cooper bade me goodbye, then ran to the car like he was still in skates, the sugar high in action. This left his father and me standing alone in the Funky Wheel.
“You took my son into the pot bathroom?”
He didn’t look too mad, so I figured it was fine to tease. “We use it for other things, too: cock fighting, bootlegging. Sometimes it even doubles as a meth lab… You didn’t tell me you had a kid.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“It was implied.” I grabbed his arm so I could pull of my skates. “He’s not so bad, though. As far as urchins go, anyway. Why doesn’t he have friends?”
Wyatt bristled. “He has friends.”
“Not a single one.”
Without communicating it, he was walking me to my car. The rusty orange door opened, and the detective heaved a sigh. “I really don’t want to talk about Cooper’s social life with you right now.”
Grinning, I said, “Another time, then.”
I was halfway down the street when I realized Wyatt was still standing there, staring after me. That only served to brighten my smile, but it didn’t last. As soon as I was out of sight, a definitive frown crossed my face, and I drove towards the police station/ jailhouse.
They checked me at the door, scanning me, patting me down, and no one even laughed when I asked if I was going to get dinner out of this. They just kept eying my disco garb like they’d never seen an amazon in short shorts, groovy tie-dye, and a neon green Afro wig. It was baffling, quite frankly.
A half hour later, I was stationed on one side of bulletproof glass with an old-fashioned telephone in my hands. Jeb walked in, picking up the matching phone on his side of the glass and sat down.