2 Sisters Detective Agency(47)

“So two days ago, right after the murder, they scrubbed their social media of any ties to Derek,” she said. “They weren’t just friends, they’re now hiding the fact that they were friends. There’s a tribute page to Derek Benstein on Popple, and they’re nowhere near it. Ashton didn’t want us to know he was friends with Derek. Now the Hanleys don’t either.”

“How did you get all these pictures of them together, then?”

“Because I’ve screenshotted and saved, like, everything Penny has ever done online. I went back and checked my archive.”

“Why were you saving all the stuff related to that pathetic little brat?”

“Because she’s my hero. I want to be just like her.”

“Oh, wow,” I said. I resisted another tirade only by reminding myself that Baby was less than half my age. She clearly had a lot to learn about the world and who should be considered a hero.

“It gets better. The Hanleys have also gone dark,” she said. “They haven’t posted on any of their accounts for the last forty-eight hours. That’s a record. Armani just announced a show in Melbourne, Australia, and they haven’t commented to say whether they’re going. That’s weird. Something is happening here. Sean and Penny are involved with whatever’s going on.”

“I’m not entirely convinced,” I said. “All this social media stuff—I don’t understand it. It’s useful, but it’s not concrete enough for me.”

“That’s because you’re old and weird.” She shrugged. The coldness was coming over her again. “I don’t care. It’s your stupid case.”

“You’re right. This is good work, Baby,” I said. “Let’s follow them. See what they do when they get off work. If you could possibly call it that.”





Chapter 59



Jacob walked into Yellow Bar ten minutes after Vera and requested a seat at the counter, where he could watch the violent little princess in the mirror behind the rows of bottles along the bar. He ordered a vodka neat and perused the flavored oxygen canisters wasting space beside a shelf of expensive bourbons. At first he had smirked at the idea of purchasing air, but then he remembered a yacht broker in Rome he’d strangled who would probably have paid everything he had for a tiny sip of oxygen right at the end.

Vera Petrov was a girl after his own heart, he had decided. The only real predator among the children calling themselves the Midnight Crew. Though his background check on her hadn’t revealed any suspicious deaths around her, Jacob could tell it was only a matter of time before she killed for the first time. She had the instinct. It was a biological thing. Vera’s was a brain that was always assessing others, measuring threats, looking for opportunities for herself. She’d probably inherited it from her gangster father but trimmed off the kind of cowardice that had made him run when his criminal life got too complicated.

Vera had spied an opportunity, Jacob could tell. She had bullied and intimidated all the waitresses in her section of the establishment into fawning over and circling around her anxiously, but now she was waving them away, growling when they came close, her chin resting thoughtfully on her palm.

Jacob could see the object of her fancy. At an adjacent table, a party of middle-aged men were huddled together over a battered notebook, running through scribbled lines. Probably rappers, from the bling and the custom Nikes. On the corner of the table, a pair of leopard-print sunglasses rested unattended. Vera wanted them. He witnessed her desire in a single glance, the half second that her eyes lingered on the glasses, her refusal to look again.

Jacob guessed Vera had been stealing all her life, her first little childhood thrill. He knew she liked trophies. One of his watches had gone missing the night his family was attacked. She probably had a stash of little items at her home, tucked away safely in a box. Personal things—photographs, jewelry, handmade gifts. When Jacob had first started killing, he’d been a trophy taker. He’d liked to take driver’s licenses. Eventually the collection had become too dangerous to tote around the world with him. He could’ve explained a couple of stray ID cards in his possession, but not fifty.

Jacob watched as Vera paid her tab in cash, dropped her handbag by the edge of the rappers’ table, then scooped the sunglasses into the pocket of her jacket on her way back up from bending to retrieve it. It was an artful move. She would probably wear the sunglasses for a while and then dump them, Jacob guessed. This kind of petty theft was not where her heart lay. It was just sport.

He was in the parking lot only seconds behind her, observing the valet bringing her Porsche up from the garage as he slid into his own car. At the traffic lights they were side by side, Vera completely unaware of him as she disinfected her stolen glasses with an alcohol wipe and tried them on. She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror, smiled icily. Jacob looked at the pistol lying on the passenger seat beside him, a .45 ACP he habitually took out of the glove box and lay beside him every time he drove nowadays. He imagined himself opening his car door, leaning over, and popping Vera a few times through her window, bullets ripping through her petite frame and into the hand-stitched leather in the Porsche’s driver’s seat. She’d be dead before he closed the car door again. In the noise and bustle of Little Tokyo, no one would notice until she failed to drive off when the light turned green.