But shouldering my father’s mistakes might mean giving that up for steadier, higher-paying legal work. I sat staring at my feet as the minutes ticked by, trying to remind myself that it wasn’t good practice to hate someone who was dead.
Abelman, a small man in a suit with terrible hair plugs, emerged as the young woman was taking her sixth or seventh selfie and I was sucking on an over-chewed fingernail.
“Ladies,” he said gravely, gesturing to his inner office.
“Huh?” the girl said. She looked at me.
I shrugged. Abelman had already disappeared back into his office.
“This is my appointment,” she said, giving me another completely uninhibited dressing down with her big Bambi eyes. “You can wait. I was here first.”
“Ladies!” Abelman called. “I haven’t got all day!”
The beauty huffed as she entered Abelman’s office ahead of me. The hot, heavy trepidation that had followed me all the way from Colorado was thumping in my temples now, alarm bells ringing, and they were focused on the self-obsessed young woman. She was almost glowing in my vision, a beacon of danger. I lowered myself cautiously into a chair in front of Abelman’s cluttered desk, next to the one where the pissed-off beauty slumped.
“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do this properly for the past three days,” Abelman said. He raised his hands, held them wide, helpless. “I can’t do it. There’s no gentle way to go about it. So I’ve decided, now that you’re both here, I’m just going to say it straight up.”
I gripped the arms of my chair. When I looked over, I saw the young woman was gripping hers too.
“You two are sisters,” Abelman announced.
Chapter 11
I released my grip on the arms of my chair. A strange, unfamiliar sensation rushed through me, and it wasn’t the boiling horror I’d expected to feel at this moment as I sat there before the lawyer. It was a strange, giddy relief. I found myself looking over at the young woman with an astonishment so heavy I was able to completely ignore the twisted expression she had on her face as she looked back at me.
“Whoa” was all I could say.
“Wait.” The girl swallowed hard, pointed at my face. “You’re my dad’s…My dad…”
“This is Rhonda Bird,” Abelman told her, gesturing to me. “Early’s daughter with his first wife, Liz Savva.”
Abelman gestured to the girl. “This is Baby—uh…”
“Baby?” I scoffed.
The girl glared at me.
“Barbara Ann Bird.” Abelman rolled his eyes. “Everyone calls her Baby. I’ve dealt with the family since she was born, fifteen years ago.”
“You must mean twenty, twenty-five years,” I said.
“No,” Abelman said knowingly, with the gravity of someone who was very tired. “I don’t.”
“She’s…” I felt my mouth was gaping open, but I didn’t seem able to close it. I turned to the girl. “You’re fifteen?”
“Not only is she fifteen, Ms. Bird,” Abelman said, “but she’s also now your legal charge.”
“What?” Baby and I said together.
Abelman picked up a manila file sitting at his elbow, flipped it open, and extracted a single sheet of paper from the top of the pile, holding it up as he read. “‘I instruct my lawyer, Mr. Ira Abelman, to inform my daughter Rhonda Mavis Bird of the existence of my second child, Barbara Ann Bird, on the occasion of my death. Should Barbara be under the age of eighteen, it is my wish that Rhonda assume full custody and legal responsibility for Barbara from that point onward.’” He put the paper down. “Early told me it would be best to inform you of this decision in person, Ms. Bird, which is why I was so reluctant to share this information over the phone. He was concerned that if I explained the entire situation to you from afar, there was a chance you would not come to Los Angeles to assume care of Baby.”
“This is not happening,” Baby said. She was sitting bolt upright in her chair now, as white as lightning, like someone on a plane listening as the captain patches through the Brace for Impact call. “This is not happening.”
“I can’t be someone’s mom,” I said. I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. I got up and grabbed the manila folder from under Abelman’s hands and started shuffling through it. “There should be a letter to me, telling me why—”
“There isn’t one,” Abelman said.
“This is a joke. Dad is…He’s joking. Is he here?”
“I assure you, Ms. Bird, Early is deceased.”
“Where’s your real mom?” I asked Baby, who was staring out the window, mouth hanging open, crashing toward the earth on her imaginary plane.
“She is also deceased,” Abelman answered for the girl. “Ms. Bird, as of now, this young woman is officially in your care. You’re her guardian. There’s no way around it.”
Chapter 12
Baby got up and ran out of the room. I stared after her in disbelief, waiting for a reality show camera crew to leap through the doorway after her and reveal to me that I had been punked. They did not. I felt a strange panicky sense of horror as I heard the outer door slam after her.
My child is running away, I thought.
“She’s not my child,” I said aloud.
“Well, if I know one thing it’s that she’s not my child,” Abelman said. “This is why I don’t do family law. I made an exception for Early. He said everything would be fine. That you’d take care of it.”
“The guy didn’t even know me.” I turned and headed for the door. “He wouldn’t have recognized me if he ran into me on the street.”
“I’m sure he would have. You look just like him.”
“Thanks.”
“Here’s Earl’s wallet. Inside is Baby’s credit card,” Abelman said, pushing a fat leather wallet toward me. “I wouldn’t give that to her if I were you.”
I took the wallet and turned again to leave.
“Before you go!” Abelman shouted. He tossed me a key. “You better go secure your father’s office. It’s in Koreatown. Baby knows the address.”
“Secure it?”
“Yeah.” He looked at me meaningfully. “I’d suggest you do that as soon as possible.”
Chapter 13
I heard the girl before I saw her. She was talking in a high, wailing tone, making strange sucking, gulping sounds between strings of frantic words. The street was blazing hot and so bright I had to stop under the awning of the office building and rub my eyes. A group of actors carrying manuscripts, rehearsing while they walked, ebbed and swirled around me for a moment as they walked down the street quoting lines from Pulp Fiction.
Baby was tucked into an alcove, holding her phone aloft and rambling to it. The sucking sound was her dragging deeply on a vape pen at the end of every sentence like she needed the candy-flavored nicotine to fuel her words.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” Baby sucked on the vape so hard her cheeks drew inward. “I don’t know what full custody means. I still don’t have access to my credit card. We’ve got eight hours to go. Stay tuned and I’ll get you all updated as soon as I can.”
“Who the hell are you talking to?” I asked.
“My followers.” She used the phone’s camera to fix her hair. “Oh, God. This is the worst day of my entire life. This is the worst day in the history of humankind.”
“That’s…” I shook my head. “That’s a big statement. Not the least because your dad died three days ago. Our dad.”
“He had it coming.” Baby continued to inhale deeply in between sentences.
I scoffed.
“The guy had a twelve-pack of doughnuts for breakfast every day,” she said. “What did he think was going to happen?”
I’d seen some tough-talking teenagers in my time, but Baby’s performance now was very convincing. I could almost believe she wasn’t hurting at all over the loss of our father. I realized I was looking at a girl who had been raised by a hard, hard man. She spoke and stood a
nd smoked the way I remembered he used to do, two and a half decades earlier, and she was looking at my eyes the same way, begging me to challenge her, just itching for an argument. Baby had her defenses up, her hackles raised. It was the same feeling I got when I stepped into a police holding pen to get my client and the bailiff pointed out the kid in the corner with the mean eyes and the scars and the broken teeth. I knew I had a wild child on my hands here.
“Give me my credit card,” Baby demanded. “I know you have it.”
“Let’s just talk for a second first, okay? What happened to your mom?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Baby said. She put her hands up. “I’m only gonna say this once, lady. You’re not my mom. You’re not my real sister. You’re nothing to me. I don’t care what Ira says about custody or…legal charges…or whatever-whatever. I’m going to Milan.”
“You’re…going to Milan?”
“In eight hours.” She glanced at her expensive-looking smartwatch. “Seven hours fifty-five minutes, actually. I’ve had tickets to the Spellbex Music Festival there for months. My followers are expecting me to go. I’m going. You’re not stopping me.”
“Barbara—”
“It’s Baby. Baby Bird.”
“Baby,” I said carefully. “Your father just died. There’s a woman here you’ve never met who’s supposed to take care of you. Everything is upside down. I understand that you’re scared—”
“I’m not scared.”
“And upset. But let’s just slow down. I’m also kind of freaked, just in case you were wondering. In eight hours, we’re still going to be working this out, and that’s going to be kind of difficult if you’re on a plane to Milan with…Who were you going with?”
“I’m going by myself.”
“Wow,” I said, incredulous.
“There’s nothing wow about it. I go everywhere by myself. I just got back from Puerto Rico and the Fixy Life Festival. This is what I do. This is my job.”
I held my head. “Your job? Baby, I can’t even begin to explain what I think about a fifteen-year-old traveling the world by herself just to tell hundreds of strangers on the internet what she thinks of the live music scene.”
“Hundreds? Excuse me?”
“Let’s get in my car and—”
“Yeah. Okay. Fine. Show me to your car.” She flicked her hand at me. “I’ll explain it all to you while you drive me home so I can pack.”
She stormed off importantly. I had to laugh, to stave off the urge to cry.
Chapter 14
Jacob Kanular sat beside the bed, listening to the soft clicking and bleeping of the machines monitoring his daughter in the cool dimness of the room. Outside the small space, the hospital thrummed with life, nurses chattering as they walked, soft bells calling for assistance to different rooms. Jacob had sat in rooms like this before, looking over strangers in beds, a night shadow slipping in while family members took breaks in the cafeteria or outside the hospital doors. Clients had hired Jacob to speed up the inheritance process, or to finish the job some two-bit amateur hit man had botched. Often all that was required was the simple blockage of a tube, the flipping of a switch, the gentle press of a pillow over a placid face. At least, that’s how it had been back then. But now his ability to do the job again remained in question.
He’d been ready to kill Ashton Willisee. He’d told himself that, as he’d loaded the unconscious boy into his van, as he’d dragged him out of it, moaning and crying. But his first attempt at justice for Beaty had been a failure, which wasn’t something Jacob had ever experienced on the job. He just didn’t do failure. He didn’t choose stupid locations. He wasn’t caught out, as he had been the night before, by the strange coincidence of a police squad car pulling over a vehicle within distant eyesight of where he had planned to torture and kill his mark. Jacob was never interrupted. He was never seen. He never left evidence. And yet there he’d been, watching his mark run off into the ravine, the rabbit bolting from the wolf’s jaws.
Had he wanted to fail? Could he really kill again? Or had time, love, and family done away with the monster inside him, the man who had been capable of taking the lives of others with such ease?
Even as he wondered these things, holding his daughter’s cold, limp hand, his other hand held Ashton Willisee’s phone, flipping through folders of videos. He found one entitled “Midnight Crew” and opened it.
Ten videos. He clicked the one at the top of the screen, the newest, dated a few days earlier. He recognized the range hood in his own kitchen. The camera swept to the dining room, where the big kid with the golf club was lining up Neina’s sculptures on the table. He saw his own figure slumped in a chair, unconscious, Neina bound beside him. He watched as the girl in the black catsuit with the single blond curl hanging from her hood forced a screaming and crying Beaty into another chair, winding tape around her chest.
“Please, please don’t,” Beaty cried on the video. “Mom! Mom! Mom!”
Jacob felt his lip twitch. It was the only outward sign of the boiling, searing rise of fury inside him, the stirring of old reserves of killer rage. He rolled the video back. Ashton’s main focus had been on his own activities in the kitchen. He’d only filmed a snippet of the girl tying his daughter to the chair. Jacob isolated the clip and played it again.
Please, please don’t. Please don’t. Please.
The phone screen went blank. An error message told him the phone had been remotely disabled.
Jacob let the phone fall from his fingers into a nearby trash can.
He had what he needed.
Chapter 15
I had to get the address for my father’s office on South Alexandria Avenue in Koreatown from Abelman because Baby wanted to go home and would only give me her own address. The girl hunkered down in the passenger seat of my Buick, her long insectile legs crammed against her chest, eyes behind huge round sunglasses level with the door of the car, and a scarf she’d extracted from her tiny handbag pulled over her head.
“This is so embarrassing. This is. Urgh. Urgh. This car. This paint job. Worst day of anyone’s life. Ever,” she muttered to herself.
“This paint job was done by a very talented kid about your age,” I said, “as payment for me fronting his bail money on a public exposure charge. I’m pretty fond of it.”
“Why would you front some kid’s bail money?”
“I’m a youth public defender back in Colorado.”
“Oh, great. You’re the law? That’s just great.”
I got the impression that Baby’s reaction would have been the same even if I’d told her I was chief selfie appreciator at Instagram headquarters. She had recovered quickly from the horror of our meeting in Abelman’s office and was now settling comfortably into angry denial, huffing and sighing, shaking her head disgustedly at the situation. We stopped at a set of traffic lights beside a huge homeless encampment. Tarps had been strung between haphazard structures made from wood and rusted metal. Panhandlers flooded the cars around us. I waved off an old man wearing a huge pink sun hat. Above us, a billboard towered: Jennifer Lopez looking strangely miffed about her diamond bracelet.
“Help me out here,” I said. “Where did my—our—father die?”
“In his office,” Baby said. “He was probably taking a phone call. He was always screaming down the phone.”
“Who informed you of his death?”
“Ira.”
“And who’s been staying with you for the past three days?”
“Some kids from the beach.”
“Which kids?”
“Oh, my God. It’s started already. Who were you with? Which kids? Give me their names! Where were you?” Baby rummaged in her purse for her Juul. “Listen, lady, all this interrogation stuff is not gonna fly with me.”
“Interrogation!” I laughed. “Baby, if I was interrogating you, you’d know it, because you’d be sweating like an orchid in a greenhouse. Are you telling me that after you were informed of your father’s deat
h you were allowed to go home alone to hang out with a bunch of other fifteen-year-olds? That can’t be right. Who’s been taking care of you? Who’s had custody of you until now?”
“No one.”
“This is insane! You’re a minor! Why didn’t Abelman take charge of you himself?”
“Ira knows not to mess with me.” She gave a mean smile as she put the vape pen to her lips.
I reached over and flicked it out of her mouth. It sailed out the window into the wind. I had been flicking cigarettes, joints, and vapes out of kids’ mouths for years and was right on target.
“Goddamnit!” she screeched.
“No vaping in the car,” I said. “No vaping ever, in fact. You’re fifteen. By the time you’re twenty-five you’ll sound like Marlon Brando.”
“Who?”
“Oh, God,” I said.
“Look.” She turned toward me. “Dad brought a hundred girlfriends around, and all of them tried to take a swing at being my new mommy. So I’m gonna tell you what I always told them.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I haven’t had a mother since I was two, because that’s the last time I needed one. I don’t need anyone to care for me. I take care of myself. I’m fully autominous.”
“Autonomous?”
“That’s what I said.”
2 Sisters Detective Agency Page 4
