There it was, next to the law offices of Sexton and Hoare. “You should come eat with me at Super Dog.”
“No.”
“Is it because of my questionable morals?”
“No, it’s because I’d have heartburn all night if I ate a Super Dog this late in the day.”
“So the morals thing doesn’t bother you?”
“Not as much as my heartburn.”
That was good to know. At least the people in my life weren’t completely appalled by me.
I pulled up to Super Dog and walked inside, keeping a weather eye for a name tag with JENNY on it. As luck would have it, she was my cashier. I ordered my food first, knowing that once I gave Jenny the message from Ron, the departed clown I’d found in my living room that morning, I’d be bombarded with questions and my dreams of eating a chili dog would die a sad and lonely death.
In the interest of all things romantic, I decided not to repeat Ron’s message word for word. Jenny was a pretty girl with dark blond hair and supermodel eyebrows and probably deserved better than a quick
After she handed over my chili dog and fries, I said, “Jenny, my name is Charlotte Davidson. I have a message for you from a friend.”
She refocused on me. Grief had moved in and set up shop, seeping into every nook and cranny of her being. “For me?” she asked, not the slightest bit interested.
I could hardly blame her. “Yes. This is going to sound really odd, but I just need you to work with me a minute.” She laced her long, thin fingers together and waited. “Ronald said that he loved you very much.”
She swallowed as my words sank in, slowly, methodically. Then her eyes filled with tears that pushed past her lashes and streamed down her cheeks like the floodgates of a damn opening, only her expression didn’t change. “You’re lying,” she said, her voice suddenly edged with bitterness. “He would never say that to me. Never.”
She turned and walked to the back room as I stood there dumbfounded. All in all, the experience rated somewhere between the Bedouin woman who crossed when I was twelve and wanted me to take care of her father’s camels and the wannabe porn star who’d refused to cross until I called him Dr. Love. So not too out there, but not too in there either. I walked around the counter and headed for the back room.
Someone yelled, “You can’t be back here!” just as I spotted the break room. Jenny sat huddled in a plastic chair, staring at a cat poster encouraging its readers to hang in there, her cheeks wet with grief.
“Jenny, I’m so sorry,” I said.
She wiped her face on a sleeve and looked up at me. “He would never have said that.”
Damn, I hated to be caught in a lie. I much preferred my lies to go unnoticed, like a movie star’s career who’d been arrested and sent to rehab. “He didn’t.” I lowered my head in shame and vowed to self-flagellate later.
Her mouth opened as if to ask me something, her expression suddenly filled with hope.
“He said, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, ‘Bite me.’”
Her face transformed just as slowly, just as methodically as before, and she threw her arms around me. “I knew it!” she yelled as a couple of coworkers came into the cramped room to see what was going on. “I knew that’s what he said.” She leaned back and tried to explain past the lump in her throat. “He couldn’t speak well at the end, and I could barely understand him, he was just so weak.” She stopped and leaned back for a better look at me. “Wait, you’re the light,” she said, realization dawning in her eyes.
“The light?” I asked, all innocence and myrrh.
“Of course. When he was … right before he died, he said he saw a light, only it was coming from a woman with brown hair, gold eyes, and—” She cast a quick glance at my feet. “—motorcycle boots.”
“Really?” I asked, stunned. “He saw me? I mean, he should’ve gone into the other light. You know, the main one, the direct route. I’m mostly reserved for those who’ve passed and didn’t go up immediately.” I glanced down at myself, annoyed that I couldn’t see what the departed saw. My brilliant, come-hither beacon. “I totally need to check my wattage.”
“He said bite me?” she asked, already over the fact that I was a light the departed went into. It would hit her later.
“Yes,” I said with a wary grin. “What did he mean?”
A smile that resembled those searchlights on cop cars flashed across her face. “He meant he wanted to marry me. It was kind of our code.” Her long fingers picked at a thread on her Super Dog shirt. “We never liked to argue in front of people, so we made up codes for everything, even the good stuff.”
“Ah,” I said, understanding her earlier outburst, “and ‘I love you very much’ was code for—?”
With a sheepish smile, she said, “I would rather suffer the sting of a thousand fire ants on my eyeballs than look at your face another minute.”
“Oh, wow, so you came up with a code for that, huh?”
She giggled, but soon the grief caught up with her again and her smile faltered. She caught it and pushed it back up for my benefit.
“No,” I told her, placing a hand on her shoulder, “you don’t have to pretend for me.” In an instant the tears reappeared and she hugged me again. We sat like that a long time as boys and men alike passed by the room to look in, mostly for a glimpse of the girl-on-girl action.
Chapter 6
Ask me about my complete lack of interest.
The minute Jenny started putting two and two together and asking me questions about how I got the message from Ronald and could I communicate with the other side, I suddenly had to be somewhere. Thankfully, she understood and offered to buy me another chili dog before I left, as mine had literally become chilly, but by then, I was out of the chili dog mood and had careened into hankering for a guacamole burger from Macho Taco. Plus Macho Taco had excellent coffee. Which would explain my presence there.
I decided to call the FBI agent who’d been assigned to the Yost case, see what I could dig up. “Yes, is this Agent Carson?” I asked as I sat at a booth and piled jalapenos onto my guacamole burger.
“This is her,” the woman on the other end of the phone said.
“Oh, awesome.” I plopped the bun back on, licked my fingertips, then groped through my handbag for a notepad. Instead, I came up with a napkin that had some long-forgotten phone number on it. It would have to do. I flipped it over and clicked my pen. “My name is Charlotte Davidson and I’ve been hired by Teresa Yost’s family to look into her disappearance,” I said, lying a little.
“Well, then, you must be in contact with them. You probably know everything we do.” Her tone was sharp and brooked no argument, but there were few things I liked better than brooking arguments. I’d dealt with the FBI before, and not just those annoying Female Body Inspectors. I’d dealt with the real FBI on several occasions. Apparently, one of the prerequisites to becoming a federal agent was the inability to play well with others.
“Oh, I’m sure I do, about the case. I was actually wondering about Dr. Yost.”
“Really?” Her interest piqued. “Didn’t he hire you?”
“Well, yes and no. Let’s just say I haven’t accepted any money from him. I’m out to find Teresa Yost, not to make friends.”
“That’s good to hear,” she said, a smile in her voice. “But I’m still not sure—”
“Nathan Yost was arrested in college. While going to medical school, in fact. Surely, you’ve checked into that.”
After a long silence where I tried really hard not to ogle a transvestite in the most beautiful ruby stilettos I’d ever seen, she said, “It’s nothing you can’t find out on your own.”
“True, but this is faster. I’ll make a deal with you.”
“This should be good.” I heard the squeak of a chair as if she’d leaned back in it, possibly to put up her feet.
