Chapter 11
Lottie
We’re driving home, the minivan packed tighter than a clown car, when I glance in the rearview mirror.
“So what do you girls want for lunch? We could pick up pizza. Or Chinese food? Or something else entirely? Noah loves Mangias, the local Italian eatery, and Everett is obsessed with Wicked Wok, so we have both almost nightly. The nice thing is, the men bring the dinner and I bring the dessert.” I hold up a finger toward Carlotta. “Don’t you even dare.”
“What?” Carlotta balks. “It’s not my fault those jokes practically write themselves.”
“Pizza? Chinese food?” Ava groans and makes a gagging sound so dramatic I’m half-convinced she’s auditioning for a role in a zombie movie.
Olivia pats her sister’s shoulder. “Ava is a vegan.”
“Oh!” I perk up. “I know just where to go. There’s a cute little supermarket right next to the bakery called the Country Pantry. They have every kind of vegetable you can imagine—”
Carlotta snorts from the passenger seat. “Oh wonderful. A vegetable adventure. Because nothing screams teenage dream like a trip down the produce aisle.”
A spray of hot pink stars erupts in the back seat, and suddenly Peanut materializes, squished into the minivan like a stuffed animal in a claw machine.
“Peanuts!” Lyla Nell shouts with glee, clapping her hands.
Pancake and Waffles give a sharp yowl from Ava and Olivia’s arms.
Olivia leans forward. “Actually, Ava doesn’t like vegetables or peanuts.”
I blink. “Wait. She’s a vegan who doesn’t like vegetables?”
“Correct,” Olivia says.
I’m stumped. “But being vegan means vegetables. I’m pretty sure that’s the whole point.”
I hear Ava and Olivia talking to each other in what sounds like gibberish, some twin language that involves a lot of “ermahgerd” sounds and giggles, and I strain to listen.
But with Lyla Nell giggling, the twins cooing, the cats yowling from their bubble backpacks, Carlotta humming along to the radio, and Peanut asking if anyone has actual peanuts, it’s almost impossible to hear myself think.
Not that thinking has gotten me anywhere lately.
Ava looks at me in the rearview mirror. “I am a vegan, but I’m not that kind of vegan. I only eat food from Merman’s.”
“Merman’s?” I ask, unsure I heard her correctly. “As in a male mermaid?”
“Ooh, I know that place!” Carlotta practically levitates out of her seat with excitement.
“That’s the snazzy grocery store out in Fallbrook where they sell strawberries for twenty bucks each!
I’ve seen it all over Tikety Tok. They also sell gold-flaked water, organic air-chilled beef that costs more per pound than gasoline, and little jars of honey harvested by bees that only pollinate flowers grown under a full moon. ”
“What?” I balk at the thought, but I catch both Ava and Olivia nodding like mad from the back seat.
“Cray Cray knows what’s up,” Olivia says.
Ava nods. “See? She’s fine taking us. Cray Cray doesn’t want us to starve all week.”
“Well, I certainly don’t want you to starve,” I say, pressing my lips tight as we near the main road. “I guess a little side trip to Fallbrook wouldn’t hurt. After all, it’s for a good cause.”
Peanut snorts. “A good cause? I have a feeling you’re about to spend your retirement fund on groceries. You should have eaten at the circus. They always had the best corn dogs. And funnel cakes. And mystery meat on a stick.”
All of which would have come from the Honey Pot Diner, the very diner that I’m a fifty-fifty partner in with my sister Charlie, a silent partner, but a partner no less. But that wouldn’t have worked for Ava.
Fallbrook is only about twenty minutes away, and seeing that there’s no traffic this afternoon, we make it there in record time. Ava shouts directions from the backseat. “Turn left! No, your other left! Okay, now right!” And before I know it, we pull into the Merman’s parking lot.
The only thing is, I don’t see a single grocery store around.
“Are you sure this is it?” I squint out at what can only be described as a marble palace with Roman columns and a huge, luscious waterfall in front of it. There are hordes of teenage girls all around, each of them taking selfies.
Carlotta nods. “This is it. It’s supposed to look like the mansion that eats little mansions for breakfast.”
I stare at the building. “I can see now why they charge so much for their food. They need to pay the rent on this place.”
We all pile out. Ava and Olivia with the cats strapped to their backs, me with the stroller, and Lyla Nell holding Ava and Olivia’s hands as we walk past the fountain.
And then I see it. The fountain.
It’s a bunch of marble women all sitting in a circle, holding something at chest height with both hands. I take a few steps over to get a better look and immediately regret it.
Oh no. They’re holding their boobs! And water is shooting out of their nipples.
GAH!
“Mommy milk!” Lyla Nell screams with delight, running toward it as if she’s found the Holy Grail. “Mommy milk! Look, Lottie! A mommy milk fountain!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I mutter, lunging after her and trying to wrangle her back. As a woman who has personally been a twenty-four-hour dairy bar for two boys, and, on occasion, one toddler going on months now, I refuse to be impressed by amateurs. At least the marble women get to sit down.
Meanwhile, the girls are taking selfies, posing with the fountain as if it were the Eiffel Tower.
Carlotta leans in. “You know, not only does Little Yippy want to take a sip, but I guarantee if Foxy and Sexy were here, they’d be feeling mighty thirsty themselves.”
I shoot her a look. “Can we please just get the groceries and leave?”
“Get the groceries and leave? Lot Lot, that’s not a plan, that’s a hostage situation. We browse, we flirt, we leave with somebody’s husband’s phone number. Now that’s a trip.”
She would think so.
We finally make our way inside, and I have to admit, it’s impressive.
The floors are a creamy marble. The ceilings soar three stories high with chandeliers that look like they belong in Versailles.
There’s an ice cream parlor to the left with hordes of young girls and socialites posing with their gelato creations, and a coffee bar to the right that smells like heaven itself, surrounded by throngs of people clutching lattes and taking selfies.
But when I glance toward the actual grocery section? It’s practically empty. A few sad rows of overpriced produce and some shelves that look more like decoration than anything for actual grocery shopping.
I’ll admit, I’m intrigued by the spectacle.
Until I see the prices. Then I’m incensed.
A single rotisserie chicken: $47. A pint of organic blueberries: $22. A loaf of sourdough bread: $18.
“This is highway robbery,” I hiss. And I would know. I’ve met actual criminals. Most of them had better ethics.
Peanut floats along beside me, using her snout to sample just about everything from the hot food bar.
For reasons unknown to me, the dead that come to visit can always eat.
I don’t know where it goes and don’t want to.
As long as Peanut is happy and we don’t get kicked out on our rears, I’m more than fine with this culinary arrangement.
“Oh, this mac and cheese is divine,” Peanut says, her trunk hovering over a tray of truffle mac and cheese labeled at $16 per half-pound.
Meanwhile, Ava and Olivia are treating the store like a game of Supermarket Sweep, tossing things into the cart with reckless abandon.
A jar of almond butter made from almonds grown in the Italian Alps, $34.
A bag of gluten-free, grain-free, joy-free crackers, $19.
A bottle of cold-pressed celery juice, $28.
A container of vegan cheese that I’m pretty sure is just cashews and hope, $41.
A single avocado labeled hand-selected by artisans, $12.
A box of organic, fair-trade, sustainably sourced breakfast cereal that looks identical to the kind I buy at the Country Pantry for $4, and here it’s $23!
Before I know it, the cart is full, and I’m being shuttled toward the register like a lamb to slaughter.
The cashier scans item after item, and I watch the total climb. $300. $600. $900. $1,200.
My entire body goes beet red. I look over at Ava and Olivia, both of whom bat their lashes at me innocently.
Ava clutches her stomach. “Oh, Lottie, I’m so hungry my stomach hurts.”
I pay quickly, my hand shaking as I swipe my card. Somewhere in the great beyond, my Grandma Nell just fainted. The woman reused aluminum foil until it disintegrated.
And on the way out, I buy us all ice cream from the artisanal gelato bar because I’m not a monster.
Five cups of gelato? $100.
Because apparently, ice cream in Fallbrook is made from the milk of unicorns. Knowing this place, the unicorns probably have their own marble fountain out back.
We pile back into the minivan, the trunk now stuffed with groceries that could have funded a nice vacation. And something tells me I’m going to need a nice vacation once this week is through.
Peanut floats beside me, licking the last of her gelato. “That was delicious. You should shop here more often.”
“Absolutely not,” I mutter.
Carlotta grins. “Oh, come on, Lot. It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was twelve hundred dollars, Carlotta.”
“Ooh, nice,” she says. “Did you spring for the diamond-encrusted spatula?”
“For groceries.”
She whistles. “Well, look on the bright side. At least the little yippers won’t starve.”
I pull onto the main road and head back toward Honey Hollow.
If I don’t lose my sanity this week, I might just go bankrupt. And honestly, at this point, it’s a coin toss which happens first. Losing my sanity just might be cheaper.
Same with catching a killer.