Russ stared at Shanna. “You’re Celine? The one with Xenon? The missing girl everyone’s talking about?”
“I was. For almost three weeks.”
“Why? I mean how? I mean . . .” He stared at me. “You thought it was Danya.”
“I goofed. It was her bride.”
Lucy laughed softly.
Danya shot her a look. “We’re married. So what? Maybe you could act like you’re at least fourteen.” She used the same look on me. “And ‘bride’? You could clean up your act, too.”
“Sorry. Groom didn’t seem to fit. But if you want to take a stab at it, be my guest.”
“Je-sus, you’re . . . you’re . . .”
“Let’s back up,” Russ said quickly. “Who took those videos you just showed me?”
So, with Shanna butting in from time to time, the two of us told him about Arlene, Arlene’s Diner, Shanna’s night at Xenon’s hideaway, and the super-gluing of the rapper appendage.
He stared at Shanna in wonder. “You super-glued his . . . his . . . but why?”
I knew why. I leaned closer, wanting to hear this. She wasn’t going to put Josie into this, so what was the lie this time?
“Because,” Shanna said, “he never said anything about sex before he got me up there. Then that’s what it turned into, and it was hard to get him to back off, take no for an answer.”
“But he did,” Russ said. “Back off, I mean.”
“Eventually. He was drinking and I helped that along. I got him really drunk, but before that, it was like attempted rape. It’s a good thing I’m strong. After a while he finally passed out, but I was still super pissed off.”
“Man, I guess so.” He shook his head. “So you’re the one who did that. Jesus. This’s getting complicated. Who else knows you did it?”
“Far as I know, everyone at this table, no one else. I figure he got separated from himself at some doctor’s place, but I doubt he’d tell his doctor who glued the dork to the dork.”
Lucy laughed. “Perfect.”
Separated from himself. I would have to remember that if the situation ever came up again.
“You went up there with him,” Russ said. “Why would you even risk doing that?”
Shanna shrugged. “Everyone thought he had a place, a secret hideout. If he did, I wanted to see it, that’s all. He never said anything about sex. I told him up front that wasn’t gonna happen, then he comes onto me like a freaking maniac.”
“So, now you’re caught up, Russ,” I said. “The issue now is, what’re we gonna do about all this?” I looked at the two girls. “Jonnie-X was in your garage. It’s become public knowledge that you two are married, although the world at large doesn’t know you were Celine, Shanna. You’re both wanted for questioning. Your father and father-in-law is a cop.” I couldn’t resist that. No way. I think I caught Lucy’s chuckle with an elbow right before it leaked out.
The father-in-law thing went by without comment. What I’d laid out was serious, and it was evident that no one had a ready solution to put out there. In fact, it wasn’t easy, in thirty words or less, to say exactly what the problem was.
“Your thoughts, Russ,” I said.
He let out a breath, as if he’d been holding it for the past twenty minutes, then he gave Shanna a piercing look, as cops do. “Why? Why were you Celine?”
Right to the crux of the matter. It wasn’t my place to bring Josie into it, tell Russ that one of the world’s greatest lowlifes had raped his youngest daughter. That was up to Danya. Or Josie. I gave her a silent questioning look. One word and Russ would turn into Vesuvius, but how could Danya explain Shanna’s being Celine without bringing Josie’s rape into it?
I was about to find out.
“For the money,” Danya said. She gave me a rock-hard look that warned me to keep my mouth shut or die.
“What money?” Russ said.
Shanna took up the lie. “Money for school and like a decent car since mine is old and always breaking down. Jonnie gave me twenty thousand dollars a concert, and a thousand a day. Just to go places and be seen with him and be up there onstage to . . . to wear what I wore and show myself off.”
“Twenty thousand . . .” Russ stared at her. But he shook it off quickly and said, “Then the guy ends up in your garage with bullet holes in him. How’d that happen?”
“That’s the totally insane part,” Danya said. “We don’t know a thing about it, who put him there or why.”
That “why” couldn’t go unchallenged. It left too much up in the air. Time to bring more into it, now that the Josie factor had been sidelined. “There was a sort of weird blackmail note, Russ.”
“A note? Blackmail?” His head whipped between Danya and me. “What for?”
For an instant, she gave me a cold stare, then she shrugged and slumped in the booth. The note was their out. The note made her and Shanna innocent. “It was left in our mailbox,” she said. “Some idiot demanded a million dollars.”
I got a Xerox copy of the note out of my wallet, handed it to Russ. He read it twice and I read it again: Get $1000000 redy in smal bills by tusday and I will get him down and take him away no problum. I will fon monday and tok to you.
Russ set the note on the table. “Mind if I keep this?” he asked me.
“All yours. The original is in Reno if you need it.” I got out my cell phone and took a picture of the note. My copy.
“At first we thought it was a joke,” Danya said. “The kind of stupid thing kids do. But then I thought it might not be a joke since Shanna was Celine, or had been. By then she’d left Jo-X, but it would be a big huge deal if it got out. The note didn’t make sense. We didn’t know Jo-X
