After convincing one of my best friends on the planet to give me some time on the Men in Black case, I headed over to the Fosters’ house since I was on that side of town anyway. I was now as curious as Cookie about what they looked like. Were they fair skinned like their son? If so, how was Reyes so dark? So exotic?
One possibility that came to mind was, naturally, did he look like his real father? Did he look like Lucifer? If so, and he’d chosen the Fosters to be his human parents on earth, did he not consider their fair coloring when choosing a potential family?
Of course he did. Reyes was too smart not to.
I pulled up to an empty house that was for sale and pretended to be a potential buyer, looking this way and that before settling in and checking my phone. There was also a yard sale a couple of houses up, yielding a steady flow of traffic, so I blended right in. I knew Mrs. Foster would be home soon, so I sat outside, checking my e-mail and doodling in my memo pad. My doodles turned to words that eventually turned to names. Charley Farrow, I wrote, liking the feel of it, the look of it. Charley Davidson Farrow. Or should I hyphenate it? What were women doing these days? Mrs. Reyes Farrow. Farrow. I could get very used to that name.
I glanced up just in time to see a Prius pull into the Fosters’ garage. The door came down before I could see her, just like before, but I’d see her soon enough. I took out the case file Agent Carson had given me, the one of the kidnapping almost thirty years ago.
I glanced at my sidekick and made a mental note to carve out some time to go see his wife, Mrs. Andrulis. The poor guy needed to be done with whatever it was he’d left unfinished. I couldn’t have him running around naked forever. It just seemed wrong.
“I’m having a hard time not looking at your penis.”
“I get that a lot.”
I jumped in response to the voice coming from my backseat and slammed my memo pad closed. Reyes popped in, very hot and very … corporeal. He seemed more solid now than he used to be. Less incorporeal. The departed were always solid to me, but they didn’t look solid. And while Reyes had always had more color than the actual departed, he was still incorporeal. Not quite flesh but not quite spirit. Something in between. Lately, however, he was leaning toward the flesh.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing. I was going to a yard sale. I’m in need of a new yard and—look! There’s one for sale.”
He looked across the street straight at the Fosters’ house. “Okay,” he said, and I felt a tinge of anger rise in him. “So, what are you waiting for?”
“I’m scoping out the situation,” I said, hoping he’d believe me but knowing deep down inside I’d lost the game before it ever began. With my plans foiled, I decided to go to the yard sale anyway. I’d show him.
I climbed down from Misery and shut her door, leaving my nigh fiancé in there to simmer and stew.
Three women who’d been arguing were still arguing when I walked up. Their disagreements seemed to center around the items in the yard sale. Two were dressed to the nines in mid-twentieth-century apparel. I guessed them to have died in the 1950s or ’60s. The third one, and the smallest, was in a fluffy pink robe with a V embroidered on the chest and tiny house slippers.
“Oh, I remember that music box,” she said, looking on as a young girl picked it up and opened the lid. “Daddy made it. He gave it to you, Maddy, on your sixteenth birthday.”
“No, he didn’t, Vera,” the tallest of the three said. “He gave it to Tilda on her twelfth birthday.” She gestured to the third woman, who nodded in agreement.
The first one, Vera, was having none of that. “Madison Grace, I remember that box, and I remember the day he gave it to you.”
“He gave Maddy a picture frame on her sixteenth birthday,” Tilda said.
“No, he gave me a picture frame on my fifteenth birthday.”
“Was it your fifteenth?” she asked, looking skyward in thought. “I thought that was the year you were sent to your room for sneaking a kiss with Bradford Kingsley in the broom closet.”
“I never kissed Bradford Kingsley,” Maddy said, appalled. “We were just talking. And besides, he liked Sarah Steed.”
All three heads dropped in unison, apparently remembering their friend fondly.
“Poor girl,” Vera said. “She had such bad breath.”
They all nodded sadly before Tilda added, “If only she could’ve outrun that rooster, she and Bradford may have eventually married.”
I watched the three reminisce with no one the wiser. The tiny one, Vera, seemed to be the oldest, with Tilda second and Maddy bringing up the rear. Watching them was kind of like watching a sitcom. And since I rarely had time for TV anymore, I stood back and took complete advantage of the entertainment.