Page 16 of Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

Ah, well now, this she does have an answer for. The perfect answer. “We were at Trader Joe’s,” she says, and the words flow out smoothly, she’s recited this so many times. “We reached for the last carton of milk at the same time, and our hands brushed each other’s. I looked up and there he was.” Normally, people sigh dreamily at this point. Vera narrows her eyes, but Aimes keeps going. “I said, ‘I’ll make you a banging cup of latte with this if you let me have it.’ And the rest is history.” The perfect meet-cute. Unfortunately, it also happens to be a complete fabrication.

“Sound like a movie,” Vera says.

“Yeah, it was kind of a movie-quality moment,” Aimes says.

“No, I mean, I think I see in a movie before.”

Aimes swallows. Despite the amazing food and tea, she really wants Vera to leave now. “Anyway, who are you? I don’t—why are you here? How did you find me?”

“I told you already, I am Vera.”

“Yes, but why are you here?”

“Oh. I forget that part. I am such an old lady, you know. So helpless and frail.”

Vera clearly looks anything but helpless or frail. In fact, next toVera, Aimes feels helpless and frail. But she’s too scared of Vera to challenge her, so she says nothing.

“I am investigating Xander’s death. I am investigator.” Vera slides a business card across the table.

It says:

Vera Wong.

Tea expert. Murder investigator. Entrepreneur.

Owner: Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse. Est. 1974

“Investigator?” Aimes’s voice feels like it’s coming from afar. She’s pretty sure her soul has left her body. Her entire mind has imploded and is screaming,What if she finds out?

“Oh yes. I solve a murder case last year that the police couldn’t. Actually, they think it was accident, but I know—aha—must be murder. I always know, because I am Chinese mother; there is nothing we don’t know.”

Aimes can feel her left eyelid twitch. She forces a smile. “But why are you investigating Xander’s death? The police told me it looked like a suicide.” Does she sound sad? She should. She is. But the fear is kind of overriding the sadness.

“Maybe it is suicide, maybe not. Someone ask me to look into it, so I do, and my instincts are going off. Something not right here.”

Oh god. It was Aimes, wasn’t it? The “something not right.” Vera can probably sniff the guilt coming off Aimes in rank waves. “Who asked you to look into it? His family?”

“No. Actually, I want to get in touch with his family, but I can’t find them. Can you give me their number?”

Noooo, a small, high-pitched voice in the back of Aimes’s mind squeaks. Why does she keep making things worse for herself? “Um, I—he wasn’t close to his family. Never really mentioned them.” Oh no, that was bad. This is bad. This whole thing is catastrophic, and she needs to stop talking before Vera catches her in too many lies.

“Oh? You been together almost a year and you never meet his family?”

“Well, they’re…yeah. I don’t know. We don’t—we didn’t really talk about that stuff.”

Vera narrows her eyes. Anytime now, she’s going to leap across the table and slap handcuffs around Aimes’s wrists and—

“Hmm. I don’t understand young people relationship nowadays,” Vera says. “In my day, first thing you do when you start dating is get to know each other family.”

“Yeah, well, things are different now,” Aimes mumbles. “So anyway, how did you know where to find me?”

Vera still wears a thoughtful expression when Aimes asks that. She snaps back to the present. “Oh yes, the Instagram, of course.” She takes out her phone, squinting down at it, and taps on it with her index finger. “Here. Your profile. You always posting drinks from same place every morning. I just look at the label on the cup and I visit the café. You should stop drinking coffee, is not good for you, will give you wrinkles. Look at me, I am so old, sixty-one already, but my face look so young because I don’t drink coffee.”

Aimes’s eyes are glued to the phone screen, where there are, indeed, a ton of photos of herself carrying a coffee cup clearly labeledSalthouse Coffee. From a very far distance, she hears herself mumbling: “My grandma is seventy and she runs marathons. I don’t think sixty is that old…” But inside, her mind issquawking,You stupid, dumb girl. Why would you post these photos every morning? Of course any random stranger online could find you. Where are your survival instincts, you moron?But Aimes has been living her life according to fulfilling anything and everything Instagram desires, and posting her morning coffee has been something that garnered a ton of likes, so she never really thought about things as pesky as personal safety. And now here she is, confronted by an actual, real-life investigator. “I know I asked this before, but who hired you?” she blurts out after a while. Possibilities whiz through Aimes’s head, so many of them. So many people hate her, want nothing more than to see her fall.

“Someone who is close to Xander. But you don’t worry about that, is not your problem, okay? Now, you sit here and finish your soup and your tea, and when you are done, you return the containers to me, okay? These things cost money, you know.”

“Wha…where should I take them to?”

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