Lethal Literature

by Kym Roberts

  Sure enough, I was staring at a screen of pink hearts and white lettering that announced, My man is finally home for good! The post had two Likes, one crying emoji, and one comment that said WTH, Ab? Obviously, not all of Abbey’s friends were on board the welcome-home wagon train.

  My stomach rolled once more as I wiped the sweat off my brow. “I need to find a restroom.”

  “What? We can’t leave now. We’ll miss him leaving.”

  “The only one who’s moved in this parking lot was an elderly couple and a bunch of homies slinging dope.”

  Scarlet’s lips pursed. “We can’t leave.” Then she pushed a button she knew would make me stay. “Kono wouldn’t leave.”

  Except my stomach rolled again and I knew it was only a matter of time. “Kono is on a stakeout for five to ten minutes tops during filming. Not ten hours!”

  Scarlet stuck to her guns. “She wouldn’t leave.”

  “She gets fed real food, while I’ve been eating the worst food known to man.”

  By the look on Scarlet’s face, I’d overstepped a boundary, but my stomach had had enough. “Scarlet, I have to use a restroom.”

  “Fine, but don’t blame me if he leaves in the meantime.” She started the car and I immediately went for the air-conditioning. Thank God someone had convinced her to have it installed in her little Suzy Homemaker Oven that had been baking me all afternoon.

  On our journey to Fort Worth, I’d told Scarlet everything I knew about the case, including the bit about the blood on Ava’s shirt the morning she died. Nothing put a fire in Scarlet’s spirit like the thought of any woman being abused. I felt it too, but Scarlet had an anger burning in her gut that was dying to be released. I had something else lighting a fire in my stomach.

  Scarlet zipped out of the parking spot we’d occupied for most of the day and headed toward the one exit in the entire complex. I wasn’t sure what the place had looked like when it was first built, but currently the apartment complex named Holy Temple was the exact opposite of anything holy, and there wasn’t a temple within a ten-mile radius.

  We headed east out of the neighborhood and stopped at the first store in sight. Scorpion Liquors was the only store within a couple miles of our location. The windows had bars on them, but I could still see a few spiderweb cracks reaching out from two bullet holes in the glass. Nice.

  I hopped out of the car before she came to a complete stop and dashed inside. “Where’s your restroom?” I asked the guy with the long stringy hair standing behind a slab of bulletproof glass. He looked up from the hot rod magazine he was reading and mouthed the word, “What?” before flipping a switch to turn on the round silver mic positioned at eye level.

  I tried to maintain my composure as I asked a second time, “Where’s your restroom?”

  “It’s not for public use.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I wouldn’t make it to the next store—wherever that was.

  “Sorry.” He flipped the mic off and went back to his magazine.

  I tapped on the glass and watched him exhale as his eyes slowly reached my face. He flipped the switch again. “Listen, lady, we don’t allow no tricks in our bathroom.”

  “Tricks? Wait—what? You aren’t suggesting I’m a prostitute, are you?”

  He shrugged as if to say, if the shoes fits . . .

  The only thing that kept me from pulling him through the little silver grate covering his mic was the roll my stomach decided to take. I needed that restroom. “Please. I’m not a prostitute. I’m here with my friend, Scarlet . . .” My best friend had decided to step out of her car and stretch her legs. I grabbed the first lie that popped into my head. “Scarlett Johansson.” I was definitely going to visit the man downstairs when I died. “We got lost while looking for a friend’s house. I just need to use a restroom.” My voice sounded about as pleasant as a feral cat, so I waved toward Scarlet, who was pacing back and forth.

  Her shape had all the right parts. Her alabaster skin glowed, and her red hair fell in glorious waves across her shoulders.

  He tossed a set of keys into the money tray at the counter and slid it to my side of the glass. “Go through the door and turn right.”

  I didn’t hesitate as he stood up and leaned over the counter to get a better look at Scarlett. The hallway was full of boxes of merchandise that should have been out on the shelves for customers to browse through. Then again, by the looks of the security setup, maybe they kept a minimal supply within reach of their customers’ pockets. I opened the door on my right and thought I’d die.

  It was beyond filthy. The white pedestal sink hadn’t been white in twenty years and the toilet was no different. The tile around the toilet was a color I didn’t even want to think about, and there was no toilet paper on the roll, just an empty cardboard spool sitting on the back of the toilet tank.

  I could not use this bathroom.

  My stomach rolled. I looked around for cleaning supplies and found none. I looked in the hallway. Nothing. I went back out to the bulletproof glass, tapped on the glass, and interrupted the peep show Scarlet was unwittingly providing for the cashier.

  “Do you have some cleaning supplies?”

  The guy pointed to the second aisle.

  “You want me to take something off the shelf?”

  “No. You can buy some off the shelf.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not the one who feels the need to clean the john.”

  I turned away before I growled and stalked to the cleaning supplies. The first thing I grabbed was a pair of rubber gloves—$5.99. The spray cleaner only came in a value pack for $6.99. I grabbed it and shoved it under my arm. The paper towels were $9.99 for a six-pack of a generic brand. I didn’t need six. I needed one. Then again, by the weight of them, I’d probably use the entire half dozen on the toilet alone.

  “Do you have toilet paper stored in back?” I yelled toward the front of the store.

  The guy pointed one aisle over without taking his eyes from the camera on his phone that was directed at Scarlet.

  “Unbelievable,” I muttered as I made my way to the next aisle.

  Luckily the toilet paper came in packs of four, not twelve or twenty, and was the cheapest necessity of the day at $4.99.

  I reached the register about the time Scarlet decided to come into the store to see what was taking me so long. She wiggled her fingertips at the cashier, who grinned back at her. It caused a shiver to shimmy up my spine. I put the items on the counter, grabbed a couple candy bars, and pulled my credit card out of my wallet.

  “We don’t have room for all that,” Scarlet said.

  “We’ll make room.”

  “Couldn’t you wait until we got home to do your shopping?”

  I barely got the words passed my clenched teeth. “The bathroom needs cleaned. They don’t have any supplies, so I have to buy them. If there’s anything left over after I fumigate that hole back there, we’re taking them with us.”

  “But—”

  The look I shot Scarlet made her shut her mouth, although I was pretty sure part of her was laughing at my predicament. Wait until she noticed the drool falling on the counter by Mr. Smooth.

  He rang me up and I swiped my card through the machine.

  “It was declined,” he informed me, all the while smiling at Scarlet.

  “Run it again.” The gruffness of my tone got his attention and he looked to see if I was being disrespectful to his fine self. I formed a grin and struggled to spit out, “Please.”

  “Hell’s fire, woman. You got the temper of that mean drunk that came in last night.”

  “I’m not drunk and I don’t have a temper.” My expression said otherwise.

  “That’s what he said. Said if the glass wasn’t between us . . .” He held his hand up to his mouth like he was passing along a secr
et to the movie star on my left—through the intercom—for the entire empty store to hear. “He actually used the F word, if you know what I mean. Said he’d put me in my place faster than I could spit on the sidewalk.” He shoved a couple bags through the little money slot. I snatched them, but he was too caught up in trying to impress Scarlet to notice my anger.

  “Well, duh.” His mouth hung open and his eyes drooped like a Saint Bernard’s. “The sidewalk is outside. I’m in here. Ab told him to behave, and then she paid for his beer. I wouldn’t have paid for his beer.”

  I stopped bagging and exchanged a look with Scarlet. “Was this last night that Ab came in here with her boyfriend?”

  He nodded. “I ain’t never seen him before. But from the way they were acting, I’d say they were good for a night or two.”

  Yuk. His implication made me want to use the bleach spray on my ears. “What time were they in?”

  “Right after I started at eight o’clock.”

  That meant John Luke couldn’t have been the one who attacked Daddy. There was no way he could get from Hazel Rock to Fort Worth before one in the morning. If, of course, that was him with Ab last night.

  “Was he about my height, skinny, receding hairline with a goatee and big blue eyes?” I asked.

  “Yeah, brah. He’s got these freaky eyes that look like one of those dolls you squeeze and the eyes pop out. I told Ab she could do better at Billy Bob’s.”

  “Billy Bob’s? Do you mean the bar?” Scarlet asked.

  “Yeah, she works there on weekends. She’s a bartender.”

  A bartender. The perfect girlfriend for an alcoholic. My stomach signaled I was done; I needed to clean the bathroom so I could use the facilities. “Excuse me.” I pulled Scarlet off to the side. “He thinks you’re Scarlett Johansson. See if he can identify John Luke from his picture on Instagram. I’ve gotta use the restroom. Now.”

  I heard Scarlet talking to the clerk as I made my way into the stockroom. I tore open the pack of paper towels and made a path to the toilet and then to the sink. I wasn’t going to clean the floors, but I also wasn’t going to walk on them. My next priority was the toilet. I sprayed it with a perfunctory layer of bleach and I worked on the sink while the cleaner worked on the toilet bowl. Ten minutes later, the trash can was full and the bathroom was the cleanest it’d been in twenty years. Not that it was clean, but it was slightly inhabitable. I disposed of my rubber gloves, never wanting to see them again, and took my remaining supplies with me.

  The clerk was talking to another customer when I came out. I caught the tail end of his story about his prowess with “Scarlett” and smirked. In his dreams. His shirt was signed Scarlet across the front in red ink.

  Scarlet was already in the car, raring to go by the time I made it outside. “You got a hot date later tonight?” I asked as I crammed my new cleaning supplies into the back of the car. They took up half of the rear window.

  “A hot date with you—trying to catch a killer,” she said. “Why?”

  “Nothing. Did he come out of his little box for you to sign his shirt, or did you go into his inner sanctuary?”

  “Neither. He took it off and shoved it through the little hole. I may need to use that bathroom cleaner on my eyeballs.”

  “If you’re going to let someone think you’re Scarlett Johansson, you might want to sign your name with two t’s.”

  “That could count as forgery.”

  She had a point. Scarlet headed back to the apartment complex so we could continue our stakeout that wasn’t half as fun as it had sounded earlier that day. A least I had real food to snack on if I got hungry. She drove through the entrance of Holy Temple, and I was pretty sure a drug deal was going down between a kid on a bicycle with his pants down to his knees and a guy sitting so low in his car I couldn’t see his chin. Scarlet was observing the two of them as if they were a mathematical equation she was having difficulty figuring out.

  “Don’t stare,” I warned.

  “Why?”

  “Staring at dope dealers will get us shot.”

  “He’s fifteen,” she argued.

  “Have you ever watched the news?” As beautiful and intelligent as Scarlet was, she lacked the needed skills to stay alive in the city.

  “How do you know that’s a dope deal?”

  “You forget, I traveled from Hazel Rock to Denver on my own. I saw a lot in a few short days. You learn to leave everyone alone when you’re on your own.”

  We drove to the back of the complex, and I got the distinct impression Scarlet’s opinion of me had just been twisted ever so slightly. Whether it was for the better or not, I wasn’t sure. She rounded the corner, and our biggest fear was staring us right in the face.

  “He’s gone,” Scarlet said.

  “I guess we’re going to need those Black Widow skills you’re famous for after all.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The expletive that came out of Scarlet’s mouth was so out of character, I wasn’t sure what to think as the palms of her hands hit the steering wheel.

  “We’ve been sitting in this car all day, and all we have to show for it is a bunch of cleaning supplies and a clerk who says John Luke was in his store last night. All because you had to use the restroom.” Scarlet closed her eyes; otherwise, they would have been shooting fifty-caliber bullets in my direction. “I’ve had listened to you complain about the food I brought for us all day long, my dress is a wrinkled mess, and my hair looks terrible.” She leaned her forehead against the backs of her hands resting on the steering wheel.

  If her hair looked terrible, my hair looked like a tornado had set down in the middle of it and stayed for five hours. But that wasn’t the important part. I’d been a lousy friend to Scarlet and had literally driven her to cuss, which I’d never heard her do. Scarlet had given up her weekend to help me out, and all I’d done was complain and cause us more trouble.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I looked at the time on my phone—eight-forty-five. About the same time John Luke and Abbey were buying liquor the night before. How had we missed them going through the neighborhood tonight? “Were you watching the street in front of the liquor store the entire time we were inside?”

  Scarlet sighed and sat up. “No. It’s not entirely your fault. While you were in the restroom, I went over to the wine display and chose a bottle of wine for later at the hotel tonight.” She pulled a bottle of wine out from behind my seat.

  Fuzz buckets.

  “Do you know you are the best friend a woman could have?” I asked.

  “If I was the best, I could tell you where John Luke was at this very moment.”

  “I think we know the answer to that.”

  Scarlet’s brow wrinkled and then her eyes widened as it dawned on her. We said “Billy Bob’s” in unison and smiled. I’d never been to Billy Bob’s. I was too young before I left Hazel Rock and too busy since I’d returned. It only seemed fitting if I was going to miss Tony Bennett crooning with Mateo sitting next to me that I got to enjoy Billy Bob’s with my best friend.

  “Let’s see if any of the neighbors have seen John Luke and know when he got into town before we head for the bar.”

  “Deal,” agreed Scarlet.

  “But let me do the talking.”

  That was going to be difficult for Scarlet. She loved to talk.

  We started with the eight apartments the car had been parked in front of. The building was all beige brick from the 1960s and had two exterior hallways with four sets of stairs leading to the second level. All of the mailboxes were located at the entrance of the complex, so there was no way to check who lived in what apartment. We started with apartment 621. We could hear a television on the inside, but no one came to the door. Apartment 622 directly across the hall wasn’t much better. The old woman who came to the door wouldn’t open it and yelled through the wooden barrier,
“Go away. I’m not buying nothing.”

  The door to apartment 623, at the back end of the hall behind 621, was answered by a teenager. He took one look at Scarlet and said, “Yo, I heard you was in the hood. You punkin’ me?”

  I don’t think Scarlet understood a word out of his mouth, so of course she couldn’t leave it up to me. “Excuse me?”

  I stepped in front of her. “Actually, we’re here to punk Abbey Parson. Do you know her?”

  “I ain’t talkin’ to nobody but the Black Widow.” He grinned and rubbed his chest.

  Scarlet poked her head around me. “Want me to sign your shirt?”

  “Baby girl, I got somethin’ better.” His shirt was over his head before I could say “Ms. Johansson doesn’t do that,” and he had a Sharpie in his hand as he pushed out a tattooed chest that was more defined than I would have expected. Still, he couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and it creeped me out.

  Scarlet hesitated but then grabbed the marker and began signing his chest. The kid began to pull out his cell phone, but I immediately put a halt to that. “No pictures. Ms. Johansson doesn’t allow any photos to be taken.”

  Scarlet distracted him with questions about Abbey. “Do you know Abbey Parson?”

  “I know some babe upstairs named Ab. She’s a bartender.”

  “Does she live alone?” Scarlet asked.

  “She’s got a man who comes and goes. You need a man?”

  I didn’t think he qualified for manhood yet but didn’t comment. Scarlet was tongue tied for the first time in her life. I held up my phone with the photo from John Luke’s Instagram page. “Is this him?”

  “Yah.”

  “Which apartment does she live in?” I asked before Scarlet could. I was getting the distinct impression my lie about Scarlett Johansson was going to come back and bite us on the backside.

  “Directly above me in 627. Can I get a kiss?” He leaned toward Scarlet.

  She smiled and blew him a kiss as I pulled her away and pushed her up the exterior set of stairs, completely ignoring apartment 624.