Chapter 33
The moment I wake up the next morning, I check to see if Tond has called.
He has not.
Dang it.
It’s a school day, so the dogs and I head over to my corner, and thankfully, they are a huge hit with their new haircuts.
The kids and parents are delighted and charmed by the glow-ups and it’s just the distraction I need to hide that I myself
am extremely distracted.
Distracted by murder.
There’s still something I’m missing. I mean, yes, obviously—the murderer. But what I really mean is, I can almost see it. I have this very distinct feeling that I know something I don’t know I know.
Isn’t this what therapists are for?
Maybe I need a therapist who can help me solve murders.
Is that a category of therapist? I wonder.
I’m in the middle of this thought, kneeling in a scrum of kids and dogs, when the dogs start barking, and something above me blocks out the sun. I blink up at the tall, rumpled shape backlit against the sky.
Is that . . . Tond?
It’s Tond!
He’s alive!
His face is drawn, his hair is greasy-floppy, and the dark shadows under his eyes look ghoulish, giving him a decidedly unhinged-adult-man-standing-outside-a-grade-school
look.
“Oh thank god!” I say, breaking up the poodle petting zoo situation and ushering the kids along to school. “I was worried
about you.”
“Mo,” Tond whispers urgently, grabbing my elbow. “You promised to keep me alive and then you just vanished, and I haven’t
heard from you in days. I could’ve been murdered so many times already.”
“Well, you didn’t give me your number,” I hiss. “I went to your house—”
“That’s Cran’s house!” he whisper-yells. “I have my own, different house!”
“I called your office—”
“You called the office???”
“Yes, and I left my number there and then you didn’t call me.”
His eyes widen. “You left a message? Are you crazy? Tell me you didn’t say anything—”
“Point is, I’ve been doing things. Detective things,” I say under my breath, and when I can see that he’s about to interrupt me, I beat him to it. “Cran was murdered!”
He freezes.
“Sorry! I meant to say that more sympathetically, but you were really getting on my nerves.”
“That’s impossible.” He shakes his head. “No, he died of botulism.”
“Your brother was botulismed by someone else,” I say emphatically, before pausing to walk a group of kids across the street.
When I get back, I lay out all the evidence I found.
The calendar, the fasting, the general availability of Botox, via Groupon and what have you.
The fact that Tond, despite eating a tremendous amount of Cran’s pickles, did not, himself, die.
“Don’t remind me of pickle night,” he says, looking a little green. “And if that’s true, who killed him? And why? And also . . .
how?”
“Yes, those are good questions. Great questions. In fact, they are exactly the ones I’m trying to answer.”
“It was Merle,” he says, panicked. “Had to be. There’s nobody else that powerful in this neighborhood. He must have been putting
on an act when you saw him. Pretending to be old and helpless, when he’s really a power-hungry government shark!”
“Take a breath,” I say, not unkindly. “It was not Merle. I’ve looked into it already. And I’m not spiraling with you just
because it’s uncomfortable not to know things.”
If I had a murder therapist, I bet she would be so proud of me right now.
Tond apparently is not. “Uncomfortable not to know things? What are you talking about! This is murder! I’m paying you to know! Okay, here’s the deal,” he says, decidedly not taking a breath with me. “You suck at this, so I’m taking my money back.”
“Um, you’re what?”
“I want my money back.”
Shiiiit.
“I want to trust you, but this is my life we’re talking about. I need leverage in case someone comes for me. Maybe I can pay Merle off with our bribe money. And if
I’m miraculously still alive at the end of all this”—he knocks on the brick wall of the school and then winces as it scrapes
his knuckles—“we can talk about whether you did enough to deserve any of it.”
Think, Mo, think fast.
Think like the wind.
“That’s an awful lot of back-and-forth,” I say. “I mean, phew, what a hassle for you.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” he says, “but I don’t mind. I’ll just come with you to get the money after you’re done here.”
“Right. That makes sense.” My brain scrambles to buy me some time. My shift ends in ten minutes. Ten minutes to come up with
an excuse not to take Tond where the money isn’t. “Together, you and I will get your money, just as soon as my shift—”
My feeble excuse is interrupted by Tond screaming with his mouth shut. He slaps his hands on my shoulders and ducks behind
me. I can’t imagine this is working well, since I’m significantly shorter than he is, but he’s giving it a go anyway.
“What?” I ask.
“There!” He sticks his arm out from under my armpit, so it looks like I have a hairy third arm pointing at the unmarked van
that’s pulling up to the curb half a block away.
“It’s a van,” I say.
“Unmarked,” he whispers.
“There’s nothing inherently criminal about an unmarked van,” I say, trying to sound reassuring for both our sakes. I will
not spiral, so help me. “The world is full of totally innocent unmarked vans.”
As the door slides open, I feel Tond clench himself even smaller behind me so that his head is getting a little uncomfortably
close to my anus. I’m clenching a bit, too, also in the anus department.
But then, a couple of awkward guys around my age in work khakis and neon vests hop out of the van. They unload some equipment,
and within a few minutes they’ve got one of those surveyor tripods up and they’re scoping out my intersection. I let out a
sigh of relief.
Behind me, Tond squeaks, “They have a telescope. Probably with a laser. Possibly snipers.”
“OR,” I say, “they’re fixing the sinkhole.”
“What sinkhole?” Tond asks.
I point to the incredibly huge and obvious sinkhole several feet away from us yawning out from under the metal plate. “The
one your brother died in?”
“They didn’t have time to botulism me, so they’re just going to push me in the hole,” he says, pulling me closer to him, which is not physically possible.
I wave at the small crew and they wave back. I shake myself free of koala-Tond’s grip. “Actually, they’re city workers who
are going to fix the sinkhole.”
“But—”
“Watch. I’ll confirm it.” I pull out my phone to message Tasha, brushing off the pangs of regret that suddenly swamp me. “Just
real quick, sending a text to my . . . road fixing connection.”
Me: I’m really sorry, again, about what I said. I understand if you don’t want to talk, just . . . thanks for sending surveyors
to fix the sinkhole
Me: You make this city a better place
There’s no answer for a few minutes.
“What did they say?” whisper-shrieks Tond, still squatting behind me.
Finally, Tasha gives the second message a thumbs-up.
It’s not exactly romance-level forgiveness, but at least she isn’t ghosting me as a human being.
“Yep,” I say to Tond, ignoring the pinch in my chest. “It’s for the sinkhole.”
He visibly relaxes. “This is what I want more of from you, you know? Asking questions, sleuthing stuff.”
“I can’t be around you all the time, Tond. Go about your business like normal, but you know, stay aware of stranger danger.
Be alert. If you see something, say something.”
I sound so confident! If only I felt confident. Maybe I need a hat.
“Okay,” he says reluctantly, and then he wiggles a finger between me and the surveyors. “But even if you can’t be glued to
me, I want to see more of this. You detecting.”
Perfect—an opportunity to save my own ass for a little longer. I glance at my phone with a frown. “My shift is almost over,
and we could go get that money right now. But . . . that’s just more time away from my important detective work.” I shrug. “Your call.”
He squints at me, and I try to seem both confident and annoyed that he’s bothering me with things like the measly eleven-and-a-half
grand that I have lost.
“Fine,” he says. He makes sure we’ve got each other’s phone numbers, and then he tries to look stern. “Get it to me by the
end of the week.”
“Consider it done.”
After the shift ends, I run all the way home, which the dogs think is a blast. It’s not for them, though—I don’t want to be
anywhere near the corner if Tond changes his mind. As usual, running does not agree with me, so I’m sweaty and out of breath
when I let us all into the mailroom. I unlock my mailbox and pull out an envelope (a new bill already?), a package from my parents because they’ve never gotten over sending me care packages even though we live in the same city,
and a crumpled-up note.
A murderer might leave something like a crumpled-up note, wouldn’t they? My hands tremble as I uncrumple it.
Sent you a Venmo request, please pay promptly. Love, Sheila
God.
Read the room, Sheila.
Though to be fair, this does officially strike her from the suspect list. She wouldn’t ask for my Venmo if she had Tond’s
money. Once we’re inside my apartment, I turn the dogs loose, remembering how it felt to have all those hundred-dollar bills
spread out across the floor. I miss them so much.
Seriously, what is with this neighborhood and its high-profile criming??
I should have moved to the neighborhood that smells like chocolate.
That thought sends me into the kitchen where I help myself to a spoonful of peanut butter and chocolate chips. It helps a little.
Because no matter what, this is not an imaginary world populated by chaos and monsters. Underneath it all, flawed humans are
involved, and there’s a logic, and I’m going to figure out what it is.
Chocolate peanut butter spoon still in my mouth, I crack open the package from my parents, hoping it’s more chocolate.
It is not. It is a tiny canister of pepper spray and a whistle, both of them SpongeBob SquarePants themed. Plus a note:
Stay safe out there!!!!!! Xoxo Mom
Hey kiddo. Just got these from a warehouse liquidation sale. Hoping you’ll be my first product tester. Your corner is perfect
for a test run. Dad
I refuse to puzzle over whether he’s expecting me to pepper spray children.
I push the “gift” aside, and that’s when I take a closer look at the other piece of mail. Maybe it’s not a bill after all? There’s no return address. My name and address are typed on a sticker. I open
it.
Inside is a single folded piece of paper with four typed words:
Stop or you’re next