Chapter 22
“Marlowe?” I yell into the phone and press it hard against my ear, straining to pick up anything.
“No,” I hear her say. “You can’t make me.”
“Sure I can, kiddo,” says a voice on the other side of the phone.
Shit.
She’s actually in trouble. Who is it? Can’t be Tond or Benny; it kinda sounded like a woman’s voice. Please don’t tell me
there’s another player in this that I haven’t thought of yet! Figuring out this murder was exhausting enough!
I spin in place for a second, clocking my options. Back the way I came, the firefighter is pulling Claudia’s back door shut,
so I can’t run through the house. The shortest way to the sidewalk where Marlowe’s standing is down the alley for half a block,
around the construction site, and then right onto Claudia’s street. I sprint down the alley and all I can think is that I am not
in good enough shape to save this poor child in time.
“Marlowe!” I yell into the phone. “Punch her in the tits!”
“Who’s that?” says the voice.
“Hey!” Marlowe says. “You can’t take my phone!”
I’m fully panicking now, imagining this mystery lady wrestling Marlowe into an unmarked van, and this is exactly why you don’t get a kid sidekick!!
“Hello?” says a new voice.
“I know MMR, you monster!” I yell into the phone. Dammit—I’m almost past the construction site, but I know I’m too late. “I
know MMR!!!!!”
“You know . . . measles mumps rubella?” asks the voice.
“I am a martial artist!” I yell, clocking that I may have messed up the acronym.
“Um, hi, this is Shoshanna Golden? Marlowe’s mom?” the woman says into the phone. I stop dead in my tracks. Crap, wasn’t she
a lawyer? “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I was just alerted to the fact that my child deepfaked my voice for a school absence. If you’ve been aiding and abetting her truancy, you’re in huge trouble.”
Oh my god. I slow down and peer around the corner, my heart still pulling some kind of Blue Man Group shit in my chest. Sure
enough, there’s Marlowe sulking on the sidewalk, and the woman in the photo from her “partition”—the middle-aged woman with
the hip glasses and short hair—is pacing back and forth, calmly eviscerating me over the phone.
Marlowe conveniently left out that detail.
I try to catch my breath.
“Certainly not,” I say in my grown-up voice, while hiding out of sight.
I pull out my vest—I’m supposed to be protecting kids.
And yeah, Marlowe will hate me for throwing her under the bus like this, but believing that something bad was happening to her was the scariest thirty seconds of my entire life, and honestly she really should be in school.
“I’m the Walters crossing guard, and I noticed she was playing hooky.
” None of this is technically untrue. “I’m so glad you are there to take her back to school, where she belongs. ”
Shoshanna Golden is silent for a moment, and I can hear her lawyerly brain trying to figure out if I’m telling the truth.
“Why do you have her phone number?” she asks.
“I have all the kids’ contact info,” I say (act confident). “Just in case of emergency.”
“Marlowe,” she says. “You are in big trouble. It’s one thing to deepfake an absence, it’s another to treat this crossing guard
like your own personal truant officer.”
We say an awkward goodbye, and I hang up to hear Marlowe’s yell echo through the neighborhood. “Mo!!!!!!!!!!”
Yeah, I know. But I’m an asshole because I care.
I am also a coward, because I hide around the corner, pressed up against the construction fence until I’m sure they’re inside
the school. From my spot, I can hear as the fire truck drives away, too, and the block is finally quiet.
“Oookay, that is just about enough sleuthing for today,” I mutter, taking into account that I’m sticky with sweat and the
mystery envelope is getting soggy under my armpit. I’m a little nervous to look inside; it’s probably got naked blackmail
photos of Claudia or something. I should definitely weed out the most embarrassing ones before I turn it over to the police,
but I am not looking forward to it.
I push myself off the fence and am finally about to head back home, but stop before I get very far, because—what the hell—now
there’s someone else in front of Claudia’s house, pacing on the sidewalk, raking a hand through his floppy dark hair, and talking feverishly into his phone.
He runs up to the door and rattles the locked doorknob, then tries to peek into the mail slot, then kicks the door, all with the casualness of someone who is currently being electrocuted.
Well well well, if it isn’t the big fish himself: Tond.
Based on how freaked out he seems, he knows something went wrong.
And it’s not hard to figure out what it was: If I had someone killed, I definitely wouldn’t want a clue full of nudies sitting around with my name on it. This murder bro came
back for the envelope I am currently clutching in my armpit.
Totally fine. Totally not scary at all.
He yells something into the phone, shoves it into his pocket, and starts taking huge strides in the opposite direction.
Okay, I know I just clocked out my imaginary detective time card for the day, but this is probably an opportunity, right?
Tailing him is the obvious next step.
Didn’t Rodney O’Malley have a tailing video?
I fumble with my phone and pull up his YouTube Channel, but Tond is already slipping away, so I hustle after him while also
scrubbing through the video titled Tailing Suspects 101: Is That Your Tail or Are You Just Happy To See Me.
I catch a few useful things like “keep your distance” and “don’t panic” and “pretend you’re supposed to be there,” along with
a long rambling story about the time Rodney tailed a perp through the city sewers and ended up in the hospital with E. coli, which is personal nightmare material. The rest of it feels pretty generic, as far as advice goes, so I pocket my phone and
a minute later, I’m tailing a murderer down the block while wearing a neon vest so bright it could be seen in the deep sea.
I keep my distance, partly because I can’t walk as fast as Tond—this man is definitely stress-walking. He turns the corner at the end of the block and so do I, but then he whips around, and oh shit he’s looking at me.
Prentend you’re supposed to be here flashes through my brain, so my lightning-fast reflexes hurl me onto my knees in a random
lawn, where I suddenly become a crossing guard who also happens to be pulling up weeds. My hair hangs like a veil, shielding
my face, and I think I’ve managed to shove the brown envelope under my vest in time. I silently pray to every known deity that no one is watching
me from the front windows as I yank up a hunk of what is probably perfectly good grass.
Tond starts walking toward me, and I double down my lawn duties, holding up and studying what is very clearly just a leaf.
“Unbelievable,” I say loudly and pull out my phone to . . . what?
I decide on a fake phone call.
“Yeah, get me Smitty,” I say. “Yep, it’s exactly what we thought. No, of course they don’t have a permit, what do you think?”
Tond stops dead (ha) in his tracks. He spins on his heels and hustles back down the street.
I’m going to pass out. That was too close. I’m just not built, constitutionally, for this kind of stress.
In my periphery, I see him go up a walkway and let himself into the one weird, modernist box-shaped house that sticks out
like a sore thumb among the old brick bungalows lining this block.
Figures that this would be the Johnston Bros lair.
I need to get into that house.
I stand up, my whole body shaking, and promptly plop back down on the grass. I need to get into the house . . . but maybe
not right now, when there’s a murderer in there, and I’ve got his blackmail shoved in my bra.
I limp back home to safety, take the dogs out (through the front door this time, a luxury I might as well take advantage of while Sheila’s here), and then dig around my kitchen for the scissors I “borrowed” from Chris.
It takes me a minute to find them, especially because Jean thinks I’m going to give him another treat (which of course I do,
just to get him off my back). Then I finally get too impatient and grab a knife instead. I slice open the packing tape and
pull the envelope open.
My guess was wrong. It’s not geriatric nudie photos.
It’s money.
The envelope is absolutely bursting with hundred-dollar bills.
I flip the envelope over again and reread the message scribbled on the paper.
This is just for starters . . .