Kicking It(46)

“No matter what,” Layla said. Her hands trembling, she counted out thirty hundred-dollar bills. “I pay up front. You do your best.” She stood, tucking the goat into the crook of her arm and soothing it with an absentminded caress.

“We need to see the house,” Cia said, her tone still hard. “We’ll need to take something your mother was wearing the day she disappeared. To do a working to find her.”

Layla opened her pocketbook and removed an expensive-looking pen and planner. She wrote her mother’s address down and tore off the sheet. Then she tossed down a business card, glossy and dark, with her contact info on it. “Call me.”

She turned on the heel of the Manolo and left the café, the icy spring wind whipping inside.

“She wanted us to sacrifice a goat kid.”

“She’s an idiot. She called us by our full names, as if we’re fae and can be commanded.”

“Not our full names,” Liz said.

“Nope. I’m not sure we ever told anyone our full names. But I’d kill for those boots,” Cia said.

“I’d fight you for them.”

Her twin gave her a hard slash of smile and said, “Good idea on Jane’s prices, huh?”

Liz nodded and opened her mouth to tell Cia that Jane Yellowrock was in town for the hearing about the day their sister died. About the day Jane had killed her to save human lives. But she closed it on the words. Some things needed to die peacefully, things like the memory of their sister being put out of her insane, raving, psychotic, demon-drunk misery on live TV. So far she had been able to keep the news from her twin. Why spoil it?

Cia handed Liz the address and card and said, “Let’s get set up for lunch. I have the kitchen, and while the soups aren’t demanding, the salads and bread are.” Cia sashayed toward the back. “As soon as we’re done here for the afternoon,” she added, “let’s go by the mom’s house and get this over with.”

“Evangelina never had trouble handling the kitchen,” Liz grumbled. “Why can’t we get the knack? We need to hire a chef.”

“On it,” Cia said from behind the kitchen bar. “Résumés in a stack.” She waved a sheaf of papers in the air. “Maybe we should have a cook-off.”

Liz snorted and headed to the back to wash the breakfast dishes. A café didn’t run by itself.

—

The Subaru idled at the curb as the twins studied the house. It was a small home in the Montford Historic District, two-story, traditional, steeply gabled, slate-roofed, painted in shades of charcoal, pale gray, and white. The windows were new, triple-paned replacements, glinting in the cold sunlight. The winter plantings were tasteful, and a batch of early spring jonquils pushed up through the soil on the south side of the house. The white picket fence was newly painted. The bare branches of a small oak tree stretched over the Lexus parked in the short gravel drive.

“Looks okay,” Liz said.

“Looks expensive.”

“Is expensive. Probably goes for nearly seven-fifty in today’s market.” Liz could see her sister adding the necessary zeros to her housing cost figure.

“We could buy a place,” Cia said. “Not this nice, but we could buy a place somewhere else. We have the money from Evie’s estate. If we combined it—”

“No way. When you marry that guitar-playing, long-haired hippie you’re dating and start having all the six kids he wants, what happens to me?”

“You get to babysit, Sis.”

“Babysitting I can handle. It’s life as a live-in nanny I’m not interested in.”

“That long-haired hippie is rich as Midas. If Ray and I get married someday, we’ll get our own place and you can have our house.” Cia sounded part smug, part smitten, part unsure, the way she always did when she talked about Ray, the country singer who had fallen head over heels the first time he saw her and who had made a habit of sending flowers and candy and presents to get her attention.

A red car passed them slowly. “She’s here.” Liz couldn’t hide the bitterness in her words.

The vintage T-bird rolled into the drive and nestled into the small space behind the Lexus. When their archenemy stepped from the car, she was once again holding the baby goat. And it was wearing a diaper. Cia breathed out a giggle, but oddly, Layla didn’t look ridiculous. More like a socialite with a chic, pampered lapdog. Lap goat. Liz resisted a smile.

“Does it look to you like she’s making a pet of the kid?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Cia said. Unspoken but understood was the phrase that’s weird. “Can you house-train them?”