7. Everett
CHAPTER 7
EVERETT
W e didn’t waste time trying to get in touch with Leon. The second Rosie and little Sara left the diner, Kyle tried to call him. Easier said than done. Leon, it turned out, screened his calls. We each tried once, then twice—nothing got through either time. The most we could do was leave messages letting him know we wanted to talk to him about Ricky and that we totally weren’t cops. I mean, I threw that into my message Kyle didn’t, but Leon probably appreciated knowing it. Then I checked my phone, because I didn’t want to miss a shift at the mortuary, but my sister had it covered. I felt a little bad about that, seeing as how she was only doing it because she wanted to think about things that weren’t her ex-fiancé, but I’d offer to cover some shifts for her later, because…
“Do you have anything else to do right now?”
Kyle looked over at me from where he was lifting his near-empty cup of coffee. “Like what?”
“Like…work, maybe?” I wouldn’t push if he had work, I knew he took his job really seriously.
“I was planning on grocery shopping.” He must have seen my face fall, because he followed it up with, “Why? Did you have something in mind?”
I beamed at him. “Yes! I want to meet Steve!”
Kyle almost choked on the dregs of his drink. I reached out and pounded him on the back, trying not to dwell too much on how firm his muscles were under there. He waved my hand off—“I’m fine *cough* I’m fine”—and drank some water before looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “You want to meet Steve.”
“Yes.” Omigosh so much.
“You get that Steve is a piranha, right?”
“Yes!” That was half the appeal right there!
“But… he’s a fish. It’s not like you’re going to be able to cuddle him or shake his fin or?—”
“Dude.” I cut him off. “I’m being totally honest here when I say that I have never wanted to meet a pet more than I want to meet Steve. That includes the trailer park cat, and you saw how much trouble that gave me.”
He hid his grin behind his hands, but I could see it in his eyes. “I think it’s more the raccoons that gave you issues there.”
“Exactly, and yet I persevered. I want to meet Steve. And Gladys, and Bill. And Patches and Jeff, if they’re into it.”
“Jeff is always into getting petted by some poor sucker,” Kyle informed me. “If you’re not careful you’ll never get rid of him.”
“In what universe would I want to get rid of a cat?” Some hideous hellscape of a universe was all I could think of. I mean, who didn’t love cats? Well, fine, people with allergies, that was fair. Maybe people with small children who didn’t have the fine motor control to respect a cat’s delicate dance of “look but don’t touch…fine you can touch…too much touching!!!” People with dogs that didn’t like cats, I guess. Although that was more of an owner problem than a dog problem as far as I was concerned. People who didn’t bother to train their dogs weren’t responsible human beings. Did they bother to potty train their kids? Do their taxes? “Do you think there’s a correlation between training dogs and social responsibility?”
“Um.” Kyle stared at me for a moment, his big eyes blinking behind plain black frames. “Where did that come from?”
I waved a hand. “It’s fine, it’s not important. I’d still like to meet Steve and your other pets, though. Is that okay?”
He sighed. “Fine. Fine . Just don’t get upset when it’s an underwhelming experience.”
I was going to meet Kyle’s piranhas and see where he lived, all while spending more time with him. There was no aspect of this that was going to be underwhelming. “Thanks. Where’s your place?”
He texted me an address, then paid for his half of the tab and headed for the door. “Don’t rush,” he said over his shoulder. “I need to tidy a few things before you get there, and I don’t want you to get arrested for reckless driving.”
“I’ve never been arrested,” I called after him. I mean, sure, I’d been pulled over for reckless driving once, but that was because of the snow. And the cop had let me go real quick once he realized what—or rather, who —I had in the back of the hearse.
I paid the server, who patted me on the shoulder with her heavily be-ringed hand and said, “Next time you bring a date here, the pie’s on the house, honey.”
“Oh, he wasn’t a date,” I told her.
She arched one painted-on eyebrow at me. “Even with the party crasher and her little one, that eye contact screamed date. Just see if you’re not back here splitting a slice in another day or so.”
“From your lips to God’s ear.”
She cackled. “If he’s gonna start listening to me now, after fifty-seven years, I’ve got some words for that bastard! He?—”
“Speak no evil of the Lord, harlot of Satan!”
“Father Kirby!” She turned to shout at the man in all black sitting on a barstool near the counter. “Who said you could come in here and start calling people harlots? Huh? I told you once, I told you a thousand times—leave your damn Bible thumpin’ at the door!”
That was my cue to get out of there. Kyle’s truck was gone, no surprise, but the hearse was nearly blocked in by the cars next to it. Just because I was at a slight forty-five-degree angle…sheesh. It took five minutes to get out of there without scraping a bumper, which would mean my brother killing me. Then it was another fifteen to get to a modest section of town at the edge of the suburbs where, it turned out, Kyle lived in a small ranch-style house.
I parked and stared at it for a second. There was a welcome mat at the front door. There were flower boxes on the tiny deck’s railing. There was a bird feeder, with actual birds fluttering around it doing their thing. It was all so…neat. So tidy. Basically the antithesis of me.
“Don’t fuck this up,” I whispered to myself before shutting off the engine and heading to the door.
I had just enough time to get in one knock on the door before it opened. “Hey.” He sounded slightly breathless—I must have interrupted him in the middle of cleaning something up, not that it seemed like he had anything to clean. This place, from what I could see, was spotless. Kyle had shed his jacket, revealing arms with the kind of lean muscle you got from working a hard physical job. His shoes were off, too. Ah, no problem.
“Hi.” He stepped aside to let me in and I took my shoes off by the door.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” I told him. I just hoped my socks didn’t smell like corn chips—I’d done laundry a few days ago, but I sometimes mixed up my clean and dirty piles of clothes. I waited a second, and—excellent. “So where?—”
A light bump to the front of my shin distracted me, and I looked down to see a fuzzy orange face rubbing against my jeans like it was trying to drill through them. “Wow, someone’s friendly!”
“Jeff isn’t picky when it comes to company,” Kyle said, then made a face. “I’m not saying you’re not worth picking, I’m just saying that he’s more outgoing than Patches.”
“It’s fine.” I bent down and held my hand out for a wuzz and got a pair of paws on my chest in exchange as Jeff stood up to get a good sniff of my face. “Hey buddy.” I ran my hand down his sleek back, which was orange with faint white stripes, and grinned when he began to make biscuits on my shirt. “Gosh, you’re so—ow!” Claw biscuits, claw biscuits! I put a stop to that by picking him up and tucking him into my arm like a baby. My mother’s old cat had loved being held like that. Would Jeff?
If the way he was purring was any indicator, he didn’t mind it at all. “Oh yes, you’re just a baby, aren’t you?” I cooed at him. Shit, his little fuzzy face was so cute, I couldn’t stand it! “A sweet little fluffy baby, yeah. Baby cat.” I waved one of his paws around, then kissed the top of it. Did I dare go for tummy rubs?
I looked over at Kyle to ask if Jeff was homicidal about tummy rubs and found him staring at me with an open mouth, like he couldn’t believe how undignified I was being with his cat. “Um. Is this okay?”
Kyle cleared his throat. “It’s…fine, but you wanted to meet Steve, didn’t you?”
Right! I gently set Jeff down on all fours. “I have to meet Steve. Where’s his… oh.”
Wow. I had never seen a tank that big in a place that wasn’t, like, an aquarium or a fancy restaurant. It spanned an entire wall, and it had actual living plants in it, as well as a three-level castle, a treasure chest, and a tiny pirate’s skeleton. Aw, cute! So appropriate for a tank full of piranhas too. And speaking of…
“That’s Gladys.” Kyle pointed at a fish in the bottom-left corner of the tank.
“She’s so much bigger than I thought she’d be.” This fish had to be almost eight inches long, and it had a bright red belly. One of the teeth in the bottom of its jaw stood out at a wonky angle, but overall she appeared to be in perfect health.
“Some piranha species can get up to twenty inches long.” Kyle leaned down to look with me. “Including these ones, but mine aren’t that big. The one over by the grass is Bill.”
I moved a foot down the tank to see Bill, who was indeed hovering over the sea grass and letting it tickle his belly. “Aw, he’s missing part of his dorsal fin. Was it Steve?”
Kyle shook his head. “No, I got him that way. Piranhas actually nip each other’s fins a lot when they’re small, but they usually grow back fine. I’m not sure why Bill’s didn’t. Whatever happened when he was a little guy, it doesn’t seem to bother him now. Bill is definitely the relaxed one of the group. He mostly just chills there in the grass and waits for me to feed him.”
“What do they eat?”
“Anything fresh will do. I like to give them shrimp and?—”
Bang! A fishy face impacted the glass right in front of me, and I promptly fell backward onto my ass on the floor. “Holy shit!”
“Damn it, Steve,” Kyle muttered. “Swear to God, he’s going to give someone a heart attack someday. Are you?—”
“Oh my God, that was awesome! ” I pressed back up onto my knees and got close to the glass again, but hopefully not so close that Steve felt the need to attack. I didn’t want him to hurt his cute, squashy face. “Dude.” I looked up at Kyle. “Steve is like the Grumpy Cat of piranhas.”
Kyle smiled. I took that as a win. “He does look a little like he’s having a lot of opinions, doesn’t he?”
Honestly, this guy looked like he wanted to murder me. He swam back and forth just a few inches from the glass, always keeping one eye on me while working his jaw up and down, up and down, like he was contemplating how my flesh would taste. If I stuck my hand into that tank, I had no doubt I’d be missing a fingertip by the time I got it out again.
I had never met a fish with so much personality before. “I’m going to make friends with him,” I said confidently.
“You’re going to make friends…with a piranha.”
“Yes.”
“You realize he doesn’t operate on that level, right?”
“He’s friendly to you,” I pointed out.
“He bites me, just not as badly as he could,” Kyle corrected. “That doesn’t exactly make him friendly. Besides, I feed him, so of course he has more tolerance for me than for anyone else, but?—”
“See? Friends.” I looked back at Steve, who I am absolutely sure glared at me as he swam back and forth at the front of the tank. This was an incredible fish. If I could get him on my side, I could get anyone on my side. Maybe Kyle would keep inviting me back if I managed it…or maybe I needed to figure out how to keep getting invited back so I had time to pull off a fishy friendship, because from the cranky glint in Steve’s eye I assumed it was going to take a while. Or maybe?—
Thud! “Meow!”
Smack! Steve’s squashy face hit the glass again, murder in his eyes as he watched Jeff the cat rebound.
“Damn it, Jeff!” Kyle grabbed his orange cat from where he’d landed after launching himself a truly impressive distance to hit the tank. “What did I tell you about staying away from the piranhas? You’re going to time-out.” He carried Jeff into another room, and Steve, who looked completely done with all this shit, went back to skulk in the darkness of the castle. There were other fish in the shadows, too—maybe six in total in the tank? Seven? It was hard to tell. He did say seven, didn’t he?
Another cat, this one tricolor with long fur and a black patch over her right eye, appeared out of nowhere by my feet. She gazed up at me as if to say, “Fair warning, newcomer—it’s always like this here. Carefully evaluate your life choices, friend. Make sure you want to remain in this place of havoc and mayhem.”
“I definitely do,” I told her.”
“You definitely do what?” Kyle asked, and ah, awesome, great timing, way to catch me talking to your completely silent cat.
“Want to pet Patches,” I said, and bent down to scoop her up. She also made an excellent baby cat, and was a mess of purrs in very short order.
“You’re good with cats,” Kyle said. He sounded a little put out. Maybe he didn’t want to share his babies? I could understand that.
“But bad with piranhas,” I reminded him. I was ready to make my case that he should totally let me become better with piranhas by having me over again later when his phone rang. He grabbed it, then made a face I didn’t quite know how to interpret.
“Give me a minute,” he said, then walked away toward the front door. I sat on his couch with Patches in hand and tried not to listen to his conversation. I did a really bad job of it, but that was more Facetime’s fault than mine. “Colin? Why are you—yeah. Yes.” He heaved a sigh. “ Yes , I know about the party. I told Mom I’d be there already, I—no.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ll help with a gift, but I’m not paying for that shit.”
Whoever he was on the phone with went up in volume, enough that I caught some of what he had to say. “—a gift from the whole family, that includes you! You need to contribute!”
“Then I’ll buy a frame for his badge, but I am not paying to cover his handcuffs with a layer of gold leaf. That’s ridiculous.”
“Thirty years on the force, and you’re gonna call memorializing that ridiculous?”
“I am if it means giving Dad a pair of stripper cuffs! Did you even ask if he wants them, or am I being looped into a practical joke that’s going to get blamed on me the second he opens it?” There was a long pause. “That’s what I thought, you fucking—damn it, Colin.”
“It’ll be funny! He won’t be mad at you!”
“He’s always mad at me,” Kyle snapped. “I’m not doing it.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re always such a?—”
Kyle ended the call and glared at his phone so hard I thought for a second he was channeling Steve. “Sorry about that,” he said a bit roughly. “My dad is retiring soon, and my brothers think it would be hilarious to prank him at his party.”
“Mm?” Hard to go wrong with a single-syllable response, right?
“But you don’t want to hear about that shit.”
No, I do! But it seemed like he didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, it seemed like Kyle was getting ready to reclaim his space, and I wasn’t ready to go. How could I stay a little longer? What might he find interesting and relevant and?—
“We could make it look like your brother is getting calls from a strip joint.”
Kyle’s jaw legit dropped for a second. “I’m sorry?”
“If you wanted to prank him,” I said, warming to the subject. “We could spoof the number of the local strip club and send it right to voicemail. You can even mask your voice right on the call, too—you could sound like a woman calling him about some secret meeting they were supposed to have and how he stood her up and now owes her two hundred dollars.” He stared at me. “Or something. Or not.”
“Is that legal?” Kyle asked.
“Um…it varies from state to state, but I think so?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you think we could spoof Leon’s phone with Rosie’s number, so he’s more likely to pick up?”
I didn’t see why not. “Sure. It’s not hard to do. There are a bunch of websites you can work off of. You don’t think he’ll pick up for us?”
Kyle shook his head. “He hasn’t yet. And who answers strange numbers these days, anyway? But if we can get a foot in the door as Rosie, then tell him we just want to talk…that might be the way to go.”
I liked it. Plus, it gave me a reason to hang out with Kyle for longer. “Let’s try it.”
He shook his head. “Tomorrow. There’s another scene that needs cleaning, and the department is going to release it any minute.”
“Another murder? Err…” I made air quotes. “Suicide?”
“Doesn’t sound like it. It’s one of those scenes where someone was found dead, most likely of natural causes, and they’re just ruling out foul play.” He held up his phone. “I should be getting a text about it soon, and they want me on it ASAP.”
Dang. “Okay.” I set Patches on the couch and got to my feet. “Thanks for introducing me to your pets. They’re amazing.”
Kyle smirked. “Even Steve?”
“ Especially Steve.” I was going to win Steve over if it killed me. Which, if I got careless and stuck a body part into the tank, it might, so I’d have to start my campaign cautiously.
Lots of face time. Lots of treats. What relaxed a fish? I’d have to look it up. I had the burning desire to pull out my phone and start Googling, but that would be rude when I was still having a conversation. “I’ll…talk to you later?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed. I had a shift of my own tomorrow, but I could work around it. “Sounds good.” I put my shoes on, waved goodbye to the piranhas, and looked around for Patches so I could give her a good-bye petting, but she’d vanished into thin air, just like she’d appeared.
Ninja cat. Awesome. “Bye, Kyle.”
“Bye.” He closed his door, but given that he was smiling while he did it, it didn’t feel like an ending.
It felt a lot more like a beginning.