Sweet Water(92)

Martin is asking me to give him another chance, and he actually looks like himself again. His beady dark eyes have regained their warm glow. The grim lines that flank both sides of his face have transformed back into the half smile I remember. It’s all trickery, I know, but I wonder if this cover-up madness has possessed him and if the Martin I knew, the good Martin, is really in there somewhere.

I don’t want to go with him, but I have a strong desire to protect Yazmin’s memory.

“Okay, I’ll go to the stupid gala, but I make no promises about the rest.”





CHAPTER 24

The gala is tonight, but the mystery of the laced drugs is still eating at me, as are the missing pieces to the clues in the journal. My gut is telling me the two are connected, although I’m not sure how. I may just be searching for answers where there are none, but my body won’t rest until I figure this out.

I finally gather up the nerve to call Jay.

Shit. What do I say? I give him an order in grams, just like Dad said.

“Meet at the GetGo off Ben Avon Heights Road, fifteen minutes,” he tells me.

“Okay,” I squeak, and the line goes dead.

Jay meets me in a white van parked outside of a little grocery store just north of the city, and this is not what I had in mind for our discreet rendezvous point. It’s hard to have an investigative conversation with a man who wants to drop his shit and run, but I get it; it’s hard to catch a criminal who works out of a mobile office.

Jay rolls down his tinted window and nods at me, and I nod back to signal I’m the woman who called him. He looks over his shoulders both ways, baggie in hand.

I flash a $100 bill in his face. “I was hoping we could talk first.”

He snags the bill, then asks, “You want the stuff or not, lady?”

Jay looks to be a twentysomething guy with a beard about a foot long. It’s tied off in multiple ponytails with different-colored rubber bands.

“I do,” I say and hold out two more twenties for the actual drugs, which he slides out of my palm in exchange for the baggie. It feels dirty, and I don’t like it at all.

“What was it that you needed?” he asks, but he’s already switched the gear in his van from “Park” to “Drive.” Jay looks over his shoulder again.

I cough up the words I practiced on the way there, and they come out pitchy.

“I’m a friend of Cash’s. I want some of the stuff you gave him that had a little extra in it.”

He makes a face like he doesn’t trust me at all, and I do suck at this, so I don’t blame him. “You 5-0? Because that’s a little less than two grams you’ve got, not even worth an overnight in the cell. And I got nothing else in this van.”

“But I paid for two grams,” I say. Not that I care, but if he’s to believe I’m a real customer, I need to sound angry about the deficit in my drug order. People become enraged when the dealer doesn’t deliver as promised. I’ve watched enough Netflix shows to know.

“Well, once I trust you, you don’t get shorted anymore, and right now, I don’t.” Jay waves his arm full of tattoos goodbye.

“Look, I’m not 5-0. Just looking for the same stuff.”

He shakes his head. “No way. You’re no friend of Cash’s. Turn your cop mic up real loud. If Cash had different stuff from what you have in your hand, he put it in himself. It’s not from me.”

Jay pulls away without saying another word, and I realize a few very important details from our exchange.

Yazmin didn’t buy the drugs that eventually led to her death. Nor did she lace them with anything to harm Finn. It was her brother, Cash. An awful avalanche of terror floods my body, and I can’t quite process what this all means, but I know it’s bad.

So Cash escorted Yazmin to the guitar lessons. Cash had conversations with his sister in the presence of Josh, who pretended not to listen to them speak but heard every word.

And Josh covered for Cash.

He must know it was Cash who purchased the drugs, not Yazmin. Josh said Jay didn’t sell to kids, but he’d made an exception for Cash. So it had to be Cash, not Yazmin, who’d bought the weed. He’d had some sort of plan all along where Finn was concerned, but not one he’d shared with his sister. And now she was dead.

What does it mean?

Before I can try to figure it out, I have to suffer through this children’s gala with Martin tonight. I’m curious what Martin is going to tell people when they ask him about Finn. The Ellsworths probably have their trained responses drawn up. Well, I hate to tell him I might go off script tonight if they say anything negative about Yazmin, especially after what I just learned.

Yazmin wasn’t trying to hurt Finn after all.

I stuff the drugs in my glove box and drive back to my father’s house to get ready. Martin told Spencer I’m not staying there, and the only reason I know is because Martin sent me a cryptic text that said, Spencer wants to know when you’re coming home.

I never replied, and Martin wins no points by using our son to push his agenda.

The dress I choose from the limited ones I’ve packed is so black and plain, it screams drab and depressing, but I have no care for appearances right now. The panic that started when Martin read the results of Yazmin’s coroner report has turned into full-blown anxiety after my conversation with Jay.