Nineteen
Phoebe always insisted on having the top bunk, but she now wanted Alice’s bottom bunk so she could be closer to Little Sister.
This caused a normally docile Alice to lose her ever-loving mind. Phoebe retaliated by biting Alice again—and this time I
could see teeth marks! After a half hour of calming Alice down and talking to Phoebe about the importance of respecting other
people’s bodies (by not chomping on them), I had the girls snuggled on the floor in sleeping bags with Little Sister between
them. Suddenly Alice pulled on her Betty White face mask.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Alice said, sniffling audibly.
“I can hear you crying,” I said.
“Don’t tell her,” Phoebe hissed.
“I can hear you, Phoebe,” I said.
“We did something really bad,” Alice confessed, letting out another sad, wet snuffle and pulling off the mask.
The twins talked over each other as the story tumbled out. When Miranda and I were in the kitchen, Little Sister had grabbed
Miranda’s purse strap with his teeth and pulled the whole thing off the couch. Lipstick and hand sanitizer and Kleenex and
keys and an unzipped wallet spilling credit cards had all fallen out onto the rug. Not wanting to get Little Sister in trouble,
the twins had shoved everything back into the purse and set it on the couch. But after Miranda left, Phoebe had noticed Miranda’s
driver’s license under the coffee table. Instead of telling me about it right away, they’d hidden it.
“And the pretty lady—she’s really bad at sex!” Alice reported.
I’d given the twins the-birds-and-the-bees talk, but clearly something had been misconstrued. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“She got an F!” Alice and Phoebe shouted in unison.
“I really thought she’d get an A,” Phoebe said. “Or at least a B.”
“I’m so confused,” I said.
Alice pulled Miranda’s driver’s license from between the pages of her current favorite book, Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible. “See!” she said, pointing.
Under Miranda’s name and address, the license read:
Hgt: 5' 05"
Sex: F
Eyes: Blue
I laughed, relieved. After explaining to the girls that “Sex: F” meant that Miranda was female, not a bad lay, I assured them
I wasn’t mad at them and encouraged them to share discoveries such as Miranda’s lost-and-found license with me as soon as
possible. Then I rubbed their backs until they fell asleep and retreated to my room, carrying the Betty White mask with me.
(I’d told Alice plenty of times it wasn’t safe to sleep with it on, but still I worried.) Wanting to avoid giving Miranda
the impression that my kids were thieving mini-delinquents, I decided to drop her license in her mailbox when she wasn’t home.
For now, I’d slip it into my own wallet for safekeeping. As I reached into the side pocket of my purse, my fingers brushed
against the BuckSnort bottle cap and I wondered again if it was a random bit of trash or a clue to where I’d been Sunday night.
Grateful for the quiet, I plunked down in my mom’s Eames chair dupe and spun Connor’s phone in my fingers, trying to think.
Layna had said there was no way we could get the Valley County Sheriff’s Department all the way out to Burgdorf.
Which was a moot point because Ralphie the Lizard wouldn’t let Baylee go to Burgdorf unless he heard Connor say in his own voice that he’d be there.
Which was impossible, of course.
Feeling frustrated, I decided to do the thing I always did when I needed answers. I opened my laptop and hit up Dr. Google.
My first search was for “Connor Johnson Boise.” It didn’t turn up much at first—just social media pages with a couple hundred
followers each and not many posts. Connor didn’t follow anyone named Ralphie, Errol, or Harlan, either. Next I searched “Connor
Johnson Idaho.” Lo and behold, up popped a YouTube channel called Idaho Connor the Patriot with a headshot that was definitely the dead guy. There were only nine videos. All posted a year ago, in January. Connor
must have made a short-lived New Year’s Resolution to become an influential YouTuber.
I hit play on the first video. Connor stood in front of a Confederate flag, which made no sense because Idaho wasn’t even
a state during the Civil War. Though maybe he should’ve declared war on whoever had given him that haircut.
“Hey, guys. What’s up? It’s Idaho Connor the Patriot here,” he said. He shifted from foot to foot, a clear tell he had on-camera
nerves. “I’m coming to you from the greatest state in America. Where we have majestic mountains, beautiful hot springs, and
some of the most dedicated patriots in this great country.”
Hot springs. He’d said hot springs. My eyes fell on my kids’ tablet. I tapped the screen, and suddenly there was Paddington 2 still on pause, the Brown kids huddled in the iconic London phone booth. A recording of Joanna Lumley’s voice had been enough
for them to fool Hugh Grant. Maybe it could work for me.
After downloading an MP3 recorder app, I started the YouTube video over from the beginning, listening for any phrase I might need now, or for future phone communications.
“Hey, guys,” Idaho Connor said, by way of salutation.
I skipped back a few seconds and recorded the phrase on my phone, labeling the MP3 file “Hey, guys.” The second file was called: “What’s up? ”
Much of Idaho Connor’s rambling was useless. But I listened for the short little phrases. “When you hear about rallies at
the capitol of your state, rallies to protect our freedom to control women’s bodies,” he said about a quarter of the way through
the first video, “I want you to say: ‘Yes! I’ll be there.’ I don’t want to hear: ‘I can’t make it.’” I rewound and hit record
right before he said: “Yes! I’ll be there.” I recorded him saying “I can’t make it” as another file.
For tonight at least, I had what I needed.
No solo mom has the bandwidth to crawl around with a corpse every time she has to check messages. So I hit up YouTube to find
tricks for overriding iPhone setting glitches. Armed with techy wisdom straight from some generous nerd’s basement—“Try restarting
the phone”—I tiptoed down to the kitchen, grabbed a flashlight from the cupboard, and headed out toward the playhouse. When
the twins were babies and I was dealing with blocked nipple ducts and double diaper blowouts on the regular, I marveled at
the sort of horrors a person could get used to. But this was taking things to a whole new level.
Back at my mom’s desk, I was able to set the lock setting on Idaho Connor’s freshly restarted phone to “Never.” What did it
say about my life that this felt like a major accomplishment? No calls had come in to Connor’s phone, but Natty Lite had responded
to the text I’d sent.
Natty Lite: This is not cool, man. When will you be back in town? We have work to do.
I typed quickly, not letting myself think too much about who this Natty Lite might be or why he wanted to meet with the dead
guy.
Connor: i’m still out of town. and im sick. it’s gonna be a few
I added a green-faced emoji and hit send.
Baylee had texted too.
Baylee: i’m still safe at Ralphie’s. can’t wait to c u saturday. I miss lil connor. can’t wait to give him a kiss.
“Ew!” I said out loud. What I typed was: any way u can meet me in boise?
Baylee: no way. u know how controlling ralphie is.
I shuddered. Thank goodness Baylee didn’t want to talk to Connor on the phone. Probably she didn’t want Ralphie the Lizard
to know about her burner.
Connor: Okay. see u at Burgdorf. bring yr old phone please, sweetums
Baylee: u bet. cabin 9. I’ll hang my red swimsuit on the line
Connor: right on
I added a heart emoji for good measure and hit send. Now it was time to deal with Ralphie.
Carefully, so carefully, I held down the voice memo record button on Connor’s phone as I played the MP3 from mine. “Yes!”
Connor’s voice said. “I’ll be there.” If Errol had murdered Idaho Connor, and he happened to be around when Ralphie the Lizard listened to this voice memo, it would give him
quite a shock.
A moment later, Connor’s phone dinged. “Watch out Idaho State Capitol building,” Ralphie growled. “Here we come.”
As a responsible citizen (and an employee of the capitol) I needed to report this impending attack to law enforcement.
Day of the Rope was in less than three weeks!
I promised myself I’d tell the police—as soon as I had evidence pointing to Errol as a murder suspect.
I didn’t trust the cops not to pin Connor’s murder on me.
I needed to be absolutely sure there was someone else to take the rap.
After plugging in Connor’s phone, I crawled into bed, hoping my dreams would not be haunted by his slightly blue, slightly
contorted, very dead face. But before I even closed my eyes, the phone sounded. I lunged to grab it, knocking a slice of plastic
opera cake to the floor. This new voice memo was from a contact called “the Receiver.” Even distorted by a filter, the voice
sounded very authoritative.
“Confirm once you’ve picked up the potato mashers,” the voice said, “and we can set a meeting time to trade mashed potato
recipes.”
Idaho Connor must be the middleman, slated to pick up the hand grenades and plans for Day of the Rope and deliver them to
this mystery person called the Receiver. Obviously Connor wasn’t going to be able to fulfill either of those obligations.
But I needed the Receiver—and everyone else—to believe Connor was going about his business as usual. At least for as long
as possible.
After a few minutes of pondering my next move, I sent back a voice memo of Connor saying, “Will do, my red, white, and blue.”
Deciding whether Connor should cancel the meeting at the last minute or stand up the Receiver altogether would be a problem
for another day.