2 Sisters Detective Agency(56)



“You might have wriggled out of a charge for the exploding car, but you can’t wriggle out of this,” he said. “This party is disturbing the peace, plain and simple. There must have been five hundred kids in there.”

“Five hundred?” I asked, reluctantly proud of Baby and her efforts. “You think?”

“I can charge you with disturbing the peace, and also charge you for every single instance of illicit drug use on your property,” he said. “I just had a look through the beachfront windows. There are so many pills scattered around in there you could open up a pharmacy.”

“Well, I hate to break your heart,” I said, “but you’re not going to put the cuffs on me tonight, Summerly. At least not for a crime.”

He rolled his eyes, waiting. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I replied.

“The owner of this domicile is deceased,” I said. “I haven’t yet filed the paperwork to claim the property as my own. I don’t know if I ever will. But until then, no one can authorize a search of the premises, and you can’t do one yourself because you can’t prove anything illegal happened inside.”

“Yes, I can,” he blurted. He gestured to the street. “All these kids came out of this house!”

“Have you got any proof of that? Photographs or video maybe?”

“Probably. It’s probably on the patrol cars’ dash cams. On the officers’ body cams.”

“Are you personally going to verify that footage in a court of law? With paid experts?” I asked. He paused, thinking. I continued. “Because the way I see it, all these kids showed up and caused a ruckus around this house. But you have absolutely no proof at this very moment that any of them were ever inside or that the presence of all these rambunctious youths has anything at all to do with me. I’m only as guilty as those people next door.” I pointed to the Bruh house. At the houses across the street. “Or them. Or them.”

“A party has clearly occurred on these premises.” He waved an arm through the open door, at the beer cups and used condoms and broken glass and pizza boxes everywhere, the fallen earrings and lost shoes and torn T-shirts that rain down during good parties the world over.

“Maybe I just live like this.” I shrugged.

Summerly gaped at me. “You just live like this?” he said. “Every morning you get up and throw handfuls of glitter and pills and condoms everywhere? These…” He bent and picked up an item lying at my feet by the door’s threshold. It was a huge pair of novelty sunglasses with a plastic penis glued where the nose would go. “These are yours?”

I took the sunglasses and put them on. The plastic penis stuck out from my face six inches and wobbled as I smiled up at him. “They sure are,” I said.

Summerly managed to hold it together for a moment before he burst out laughing. “Lady, if you really do live this way, I want to be a part of that life.” He adjusted his belt, stretched his back. “There’s probably enough stuff on the floor in there to cure my backache for the next twelve years.”

We continued to smile at each other. I took the penis sunglasses off and thought about saying something further. But I didn’t. While everything in my world was wildly out of control, I had just enough sense to wrangle back anything that might interrupt the delicious moment Summerly and I were sharing.

He stepped down to the sidewalk. When he turned back, I was sure he caught me checking out his butt again, but it didn’t matter, because what he said blew apart any and all concern that might have existed before he opened his mouth.

“You know,” he said, pointing at me, “I really like you.”

My mouth fell open. I couldn’t find the words to reply. I just stood there with my jaw hanging as he went back out onto the street.





Chapter 74



When Driver arrived, Sean took the keys to the Pullman from him and told him to go away. He did. Good staff were like that. They nodded silently and did exactly as they were told, no questions asked. There were no weird looks about Penny sitting crying on the curb with her leg soaked in blood, the two of them dressed in black and obviously rattled. Over the years, Driver had picked up Sean from highway gas stations between LA and Mexico in the middle of the night, from outside the houses of big-deal politicians in nothing but his underwear after someone’s wife returned home early from a weekend away with the gals. Sean watched the old man walk away with his hands in his pockets and wondered what regular people did when they couldn’t buy silence.

“You can’t drive,” Penny wailed as her brother helped her into the front seat.

“I can drive,” he said as he slid into the driver’s seat and searched for where to put the key. “I drove to a bodega last year when the house lady was sick.”

“Take me somewhere nice,” Penny said. “I can’t go to a regular emergency room. That’s how you catch things. Call ahead and get us a private room.”

“We’re going home, and I’m calling you a vet,” Sean said.

“What?”

“That’s what you do when you get shot,” Sean said. “You call a vet. We can’t go to a hospital. The police will be involved.”

“So call me a deadbeat doctor!” Penny said. “Like Vera’s dad did with that guy.”

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