All too soon, Hunt was looming in front of me, his eyes like blue chips of ice. “We’ll interview them separately,” he said to the officer standing at his side. “You take her, I’ll take this one.”
I started after him until a hand tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me, Miss, we’ll talk in here.”
The hand belonged to an African-American woman with a kind smile. I looked back at Hunt who was guiding Etta to an interrogation room. Etta’s step was light and airy as if they were on their way to collect fairy floss. I felt a stab of dismay for her, then steeled myself to hold up my end of the story.
Officer Green probably asked me the same kind of questions Hunt would have, but she asked them in a warm, understanding way that made it an entirely different experience. It was still tiring and designed to detect any lies on my part, but she made me feel safe. Almost. Unfortunately, that meant that when I explained again how Mr. Black had been shot trying to save me, her sympathy peeled away my fragile facade, and I bawled my eyes out. She passed me some tissues, brought me another cup of tea, asked a few last questions, and offered me a ride home.
“Thanks, but I’ll wait for my friend,” I said.
The thought of how Etta might be faring with Hunt made me want to cry some more. She was tough of course, but Hunt was tougher, and I felt guilty that I’d gotten off so lightly. It didn’t help that she had actually broken the law. What if Hunt trapped her into admitting it? She was smart, but then she wasn’t nearly scared enough of prison as she should be. If he set her up the right way, she might even boast about it.
She came out about twenty minutes later, the same spring to her step she’d walked in there with. If her little-old-lady outfit had taught me anything, though, it was that she was a superb actress.
I went to her and looped my arm through hers, waiting until we’d left the building (a feat that in itself made me feel about a hundred times better) to ask, “How did it go with Hunt? Are you okay?”
“Yes, it was fine. He invited me to dinner actually.”
My arm tightened around hers, pulling us to a stop. “What?” Maybe I’d lost it. Maybe I was hearing things. “Did you say yes?”
She looked at me, her face neutral. “I might have.”
When I didn’t say anything else, she tugged impatiently. “Come on, don’t you want to see Abe?”
“But”—I searched around for a reason that didn’t give away Taste Society secrets and Hunt and my history together—“didn’t you tell me he was too old for you?”
Too old meaning a mere five odd years younger than her.
She lifted her chin. “Well yes, but I thought it best to keep him on my good side. Since our story about how we ended up in that shoot-out is a touch thin. Now come on, let’s go.”
I allowed her to pull me along. I was incapable of stringing together a single coherent sentence anyway.
We reached the parking lot, and there, leaning against my Corvette, was the best thing I’d seen all day.
Connor put the thermos and bakery bag down on the roof of the car and wrapped me in a long, hard hug. We stood like that for a while. His body telling me more clearly than words ever could of how relieved he was to know that I was safe and whole. And as I returned his embrace with Etta looking on and giving me a thumbs up, it occurred to me that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad start to the new year after all.
Mr. Black seemed to be falling out of both sides of the hospital bed at once. His tan skin was several shades lighter than normal, and instead of the usual white dress shirt that I always thought must’ve been specially altered to fit around his biceps, he was wearing a typical hospital gown that he somehow managed to make a snug fit.
His gentle brown eyes lit up when Etta, Connor, and I entered.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Never better,” he lied.
I licked my lips. “Thank you. For saving my life.”
“I could say the same thing to you. If I’d had to go to prison and leave my girls behind, I wouldn’t have had a life worth living, but a nice policeman came in an hour ago and told me they’re dropping all charges.” His smiled so broadly I could count his molars.
Etta clapped her hands. “That’s fabulous news, Abe. We always knew you were innocent.”
Well, one of us had.
He was still beaming. “Thank you for believing in me when no one else would. Especially you, Ms. Avery, after what I did.”
My honesty wanted me to admit that I hadn’t, not at first, but a confession would only clear my conscience and sadden his. “How did you manage to come to my rescue at that critical moment?” I asked instead.
“Well. Ever since I got fired and then Etta told me about that firebomb in your apartment, I was worried about you. I didn’t want you to get hurt for my sake. So I started following you, from a distance so I didn’t get in your way, but close enough that I could help if anything went wrong.”
He’d been protecting us for days, and we’d never even spotted him. Great detectives we were.
It confirmed my suspicions that if Mae ever did surveillance on me, I’d never know.
“It’s lucky you did,” Etta said. “I was hiding in the cupboard waiting for a chance to take them down, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without risking Izzy. Darned if I know how I would’ve rescued her ass without you.”
I coughed. Yeah sure, she’d rescued me. I would never have been in that mess if it wasn’t for her.
Connor’s lip twitched with amusement.
Hallie and Joy saved the situation by returning from the canteen. There was much hugging and thanking and watery eyes all round. Except for Connor who’d planted himself in the corner with his back to a wall as if the rest of us were volatile entities.
I guess to be fair, compared to Mr. Ocean of Calm Composure we were volatile. That and the last kid he’d seen had vomited on his shoes.
“Ms. Avery?” Joy asked. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure.”
We stepped out into the hospital hallway. “I wanted to thank you again. I know you took the case on mostly for Mom and me, and Etta said how your house got burned down in the process. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It was only stuff that burned. Stuff can be replaced, not like people. And you’re welcome.”
She threw her spindly arms around me again, and I thought again about how smart she was. Mature, as well as smart. Then as she stepped back, I noticed the Disney Princess watch strapped to her wrist. The one I’d used as a bargaining chip with Mr. Black the day he’d come to terrify me into paying my debt. “Can I ask you something?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“That watch of yours, um, does it have some special meaning?”
She glanced down at it. “You mean why am I wearing a commercialized fairy-tale product that promotes the idea that women need to be rescued?”
“Uh, yes.” Never mind that I’d needed rescuing by her father hours earlier.
She spun it around her wrist, the band way too big for her even on its smallest adjustment. “Dad bought it for me a couple of years ago, and he was so sure I’d love it, I didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.”
I grinned. “You two are lucky to have each other.”
We returned to the crowded hospital room where Hallie was giving Etta a rundown on the incredibly fortunate trajectory the bullet had taken through Mr. Black’s torso.
When she’d finished, I heard myself asking him, “How did you get that scar on your cheek?”
It was an inch-long jagged scar on his left side that lent a menacing edge to his visage and had helped scare the pants off me when we’d first met.
“Oh, Joy’s kitten got stuck up a tree a few years ago. I climbed up a ladder to help the poor thing down, but the ladder slipped and a branch caught my face as I fell.” He smiled, the scar creasing his cheek. “The kitten was fine if you were wondering.”
Man, almost al
l my preconceived ideas about Mr. Black had proven false. My mum had taught me over and over to make an effort to understand things from the other person’s perspective, but I hadn’t thought it applied to the bruiser who’d come to beat me up on behalf of my loan shark. Guess I should’ve known better. She would love to hear me admit she was right. As always.
“So how long until you’re outta here?” Etta asked him.
“The doctor said I could go home in about five more days and that it’ll be another week after that until I’m back to my old self. Except I won’t be allowed to do any heavy lifting for a while.”
I wondered how they’d pay the bills in the meantime without Mr. Black—Abe—having a job. He might have been thinking along the same lines, because he ran a giant paw over his giant head as he was apt to do and admitted, “I was kind of relieved to be fired from that job. But I hope I can find something else soon.”
Etta patted his hand. “You’ll find something. But I wouldn’t ask Mr. Bergström for a reference. You flattened him like a pancake.”
I glanced over at Connor, who was still standing in the corner, and an idea popped into my head. “How do you feel about protecting people or places for a living? I know someone who works in security.”
“I think I’d enjoy that,” he said.
“Great. I’ll give them a call and see if they’ve got anything available.”
We stayed and made small talk for a few more minutes until a nurse came and kicked us out. Apparently, there was supposed to be a limit of two visitors at a time.
As Connor and I strolled down the hospital corridor, he wrapped an arm around my waist. “So you know someone who works in security, do you?”
I was relieved to hear a faint hint of amusement in his voice.
“Not just someone. A very special someone.” I batted my lashes at him. “Do you think you could you give him a job?”
“I need people I can trust. Do you trust him?”
I thought about him carrying Dudley up and down the stairs for Etta, the tears in his eyes when Joy and Hallie rushed to see him after his bail hearing, the scar on his face from saving a darn kitten, and the panicked shout of “no” as he ran at the man who’d been about to shoot me. “Yes. I trust him,” I said, surprising myself with the answer.
Connor nodded once. “Okay. I’ll offer him a position with a probationary period. It will be useful if he works out. I’m short-staffed at the moment with a couple of my guys on paternity leave. It’s the main reason I’ve been so busy the last few days.”
I couldn’t believe it had been less than seventy-two hours since we’d taken down Scrawny Scientist together. Or that Connor had just volunteered some information about his company. But the biggest revelation was that he trusted me enough to take a chance on a bruiser he didn’t know from Adam.
I hoped he wouldn’t regret it. I wanted him to one day trust me enough to take a chance on sharing his deepest self too.
“Um, there’s one thing you should know first,” I said.
His lips flattened. “What?”
“Mr. Black gets nauseous at the sight of blood.”
Connor stopped and stared at me, wondering if I was joking. Then he resumed walking. “Remind me never to hire you in a recruiting role.”
“On the bright side, a person only bleeds after you hurt them, right? So he should only faint or throw up after he takes down the bad guys.”
24
A week later, I picked Oliver up from the airport like the nice housemate I am, figuring I needed all the brownie points I could get after burning down the apartment. With a lot of help from Mae, Etta, and Connor, I’d finally finished fixing it up last night, but I was nervous about how Oliver would react to the radical makeover. So for an extra measure of goodwill, I brought Meow with me. She was one of those rare cats that didn’t mind car travel.
I let her out of the carrier, and she launched herself at him as soon as he slipped inside. His answering grin had tears pricking my eyes. A minute after pulling out of the pickup lane, Oliver was stretched back in his seat, with Meow purring on his chest, her one black paw resting on his collarbone the way it did when she wanted further attention.
“It’s good to be home,” Oliver said, contentment oozing from him like slime from a car salesman. He slid a look toward me. “That is, if I have a home to come back to.”
“Well, there’s much more IKEA than there used to be, but I hope it’ll still feel like home.”
Connor and I had spent all of yesterday constructing IKEA furniture. You can learn a lot about a person doing that. I’d learned that, for someone who could afford fully assembled furniture, he was irritatingly competent at putting it together. He’d finished assembling two chairs by the time I’d done one, and after that, he kept finding excuses to get me out of the way like you would a child:
“I’d love a cup of tea.” Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.
“Maybe you should sit on the couch”—that he’d constructed—“and make sure it’s comfortable enough.”
“You must be starving. Did you want to organize lunch?”
Meow had conspired with him by deciding that screws were almost as much fun to play with as cockroaches, and keeping track of her new toys had become a full-time job until I’d shut her in my bedroom.
My irritation at his competence had lessened after I’d snuck some TV cabinet drawers into my bedroom after Meow and painstakingly assembled them. I could do it, but it wasn’t as fun as it looked. And when I’d returned from a quick trip to the grocery store to restock the fridge, and Connor told me to go see what Meow had done to my bed, my irritation faded entirely.
Gone was the horrible rainbow-vomit duvet cover. He’d replaced it with a simple navy one. In all the furniture selection for the rest of the house, I’d completely forgotten about my resolution.
I wandered out to where Connor was sitting on one of the new armchairs, Meow on his lap.
“How did you know I hated that thing?”
“I didn’t. I only knew I hated it,” he said. “But I figured even your fashion sense couldn’t be bad enough to like it.”
I threw myself down beside him, making sure a stray elbow clocked him in the ribs, then leaned my head on his shoulder. “Just remember, you’re the one that fell for me.”
He slipped an arm around me. “And so far, I don’t even regret it.”
I stopped at a traffic light and pulled myself back to the present. Oliver was having his own romantic moment with Meow, so he hadn’t noticed my lapse. “How was your trip?” I asked him.
“Let’s just say it reminded me of all the reasons why I live in LA. The weather was horrid. The Queen was constantly on TV. And my family was, well, my family. Here, I snapped a picture for you.”
It was a photo of Oliver standing among his family. I could tell they were family because they all had the same curly blond hair and similar facial features. But while they were wearing conservative dress shirts and pants, Oliver was sporting a black T-shirt that announced in bold white letters: “I pooped today!”
A stick figure holding a roll of toilet paper high in victory illustrated the concept.
“So you’re kind of the odd one out, huh?” I said.
“I prefer to consider it as being the one independent thinker of the bunch. I’m not a sheep needing to follow after the herd. It’s the same reason I haven’t been brainwashed into worshipping Her Royal Majesty.”
“Considering your choice of T-shirts, Her Royal Majesty might be pleased about that.”
He snorted. “You know I always aim to please. Now tell me what’s been happening around here.”
I told him, much to his amusement. But as I followed him up the stairs to our renovated apartment, I was apprehensive about how he’d react.
He opened the door, took half a dozen steps inside, and fell to his knees. “The beautiful wallpaper. It’s gone! I knew the furniture was a write-off, but you didn’t tell me about the wallpaper. Do you know how many ho
urs it took me to draw eyes on all those pineapples? And how many girls I brought home that were creeped out by those eyes? And the new table is nice enough, but what about my Ninja Turtle stickers? Even that filthy green carpet held so many memories. Like the stain from when you tried to make squid ink pasta and Meow got into it then vomited it back up.”
Meow wriggled out of his arms as if in protest at the memory.
I looked around. It was a vast improvement. The walls and ceiling were freshly painted white, and the musty green carpet had been replaced with a sensible blue-and-gray fleck. Regrettably, the half-a-century-old linoleum had been deemed okay. That stuff was invincible. I’d chosen muted blue couches and a simple white TV cabinet, coffee table, and dining set. Plus I’d lashed out on a thirty-inch flat screen, a few throw cushions, and a houseplant. The effect was far from glamorous, but it was serviceable and had a calming, fuss-free vibe.
Except for the houseplant, which I was almost certain to kill.
I went over to Oliver, who was still kneeling on the new carpet. “I thought you might feel that way, so I got you some housewarming gifts. I know it’s not housewarming in a traditional sense, but maybe it’ll help you warm to the house.” I gave him the two presents I’d wrapped.
He tore them open, and a smile crept across his face. “I love them. Thank you.” He walked over to the table and stuck down the new Ninja Turtle stickers, then looked at the remaining gift.
“I actually took the liberty of putting a hook up for you,” I pointed out.
In the middle of the bright white wall that had once featured the hideous wallpaper was a hook. He hung the frame up on it. It was a piece of the old wallpaper, complete with creepy pineapple eyes. He stepped back and admired it before turning to me. “You’re officially forgiven.”
With Mr. Black cleared of all charges, the apartment fixed, Oliver back, and Mae planning to return to her home in San Bernardino County tomorrow, we decided to hold our own belated New Year’s party.
Connor had kindly offered to host. Probably thanks to some heavy-handed hints on Mae’s part.
Eat, Pray, Die Mystery Box Set Page 62
