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Die Job(25)

By:Lila Dare


She didn’t argue like I hoped she would. Giving me an incredulous look, she liberated a shopping cart from the train of them near the store’s entrance. “You chaperoned a ghost hunt? And Rachel’s boyfriend fell down the stairs?”

I walked fast to keep up with her as she charged toward the candy aisle, not distracted by the lopsided pyramid of pumpkins at fifty percent off. Several shoppers, their carts piled high with bottled water and canned goods, strolled the aisles. One man gave Vonda, sexy in her clinging black vampire dress with the plunging neckline, the once-over. She bared her fangs at him and he jumped back into a cereal display, knocking boxes to the floor.

“Or was pushed. Either way, it shouldn’t have happened,” I said, flinging a bag of Snickers into the cart.

Vonda pulled them out and restored them to the shelf. “No chocolate. Only icky stuff. Otherwise, I’ll eat all the leftovers for breakfast and blow up like a blimp.”

Vonda was a petite slip of a thing, no wider than an angelfish, who’d never been two ounces overweight, and right now her focus on the candy was beginning to irritate me. I flung a couple of bags of caramels into the cart. Vonda added some gum and candies the size of ping-pong balls that advertised themselves as “so hot they’ll burn through the roof of your mouth into your brain.” Irresistible.

“So, do you think it was?” I prodded.

“Was what?” Vonda wheeled the cart toward a cashier.

“My fault.”

“No, especially not if he was pushed. Do you think he was?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Rachel said he was depressed.”

“Suicide attempt?” Thunk, thunk. Bags of candy landed on the conveyor belt. The bored-looking cashier scanned them without comment.

I shrugged. “I don’t know how anyone with an IQ over forty could think that a fall down a couple flights of stairs would be guaranteed fatal.”

“A gesture? A call for help?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “Possible.” I looped my fingers through the bag’s handles and walked with Vonda back to the parking lot. A man and a woman stood arguing by the open tailgate of a Chevy Tahoe. The man looked vaguely familiar . . . It took me a moment to realize he was the man who’d shown up at Rothmere looking for Mark Crenshaw. His dad? The couple wasn’t shouting, but their faces were mere inches apartment and I could tell from the rigid way they held themselves that they were quarreling.

“. . . last time,” the woman, dark-haired and petite, said in a louder voice.

As I watched, Crenshaw flung up a hand and stalked toward the grocery store. The woman hesitated only a second before jumping into the driver’s seat, gunning the engine, and pulling out recklessly, clipping a shopping cart with the rear bumper as she peeled out of the lot. Tottering over the asphalt, the cart crunched into a motorcycle. Crenshaw spun when he heard the SUV take off, chased it for a couple of futile steps, then kicked at a discarded soda can, using his whole leg like a World Cup midfielder aiming for a goal half a field away. It sprayed caramel-colored liquid onto his slacks before rolling off the curb and under a sedan parked in a handicapped slot. I watched to see if Crenshaw would retrieve the can, but he headed back toward the store, pulling a cell phone from his pocket as he walked. Glancing at Vonda, I saw she’d missed the whole byplay, busy putting the groceries into the backseat of the station wagon.

It didn’t seem worth mentioning, so we chatted about hurricane preparations as she drove back to my apartment. We arrived safely, not even clipping any of the trick-or-treaters dashing heedlessly across the road in search of enough candy to keep them on a sugar high until February.

“Sorry this had to be drive-by catch-up,” Vonda said as I opened the door. “Let’s do lunch later in the week. Keep me posted about Braden.”

“You bet.” I slammed the door shut and patted it twice. “Thanks for dropping by.”

She grinned her silly vampire grin and pulled away.

I went in and watched a bit of the Julia Roberts DVD but couldn’t get into it. Noise from the Halloweeners had tapered off, and when I peeked through the blinds, I didn’t see any costumed figures making the rounds. A dim glow to my left told me Mrs. Jones’s jack-o’-lantern was still on duty. I went to bed feeling unsettled and a bit weepy, and I knew the morning’s conversation with Marty was driving my mood. It wasn’t like Marty and I had been dating for eons; we’d known each other only since May, and our relationship had always been a long-distance one, with him in Atlanta and me here. And I’d known from the start that his work was paramount to him. Still, I’d gotten used to thinking of him as my boyfriend, and he was the first man I’d slept with since Hank and I divorced and . . . Oh, hell! I punched my pillow.