Page 6 of On the Run
Like… my payment app. And my email. And all my stored passwords for everything in my life.
I gasped. And Mason’s phone number. And his address in my address book.
“I’m going to pinch myself,” I whispered calmly. “And when I wake up, I will be on a plane over the Atlantic. I will ask the attendant for some electrolyte water, for clearly the martinis have caused me dehydration, which in turn caused this terrible fever dream in which the paparazzi have hunted me to Florida, and I am stranded here with no phone, no credit card, and a vomit-stained Armani sandal. I will repent henceforth and live a blameless life.” I opened one eye and saw linoleum. I quickly closed it and added, “And I will give to charity. And… and not have sex for a week.” Another quick peek and I offered desperately, “A month?”
But of course, no divine intervention happened. And by the time I’d counted out the cash in my wallet—a hundred twenty-seven dollars in small bills—I realized I probably had just enough cash to pay for a cab to Whispering Key, and literally no other options. I would throw myself on Mason’s mercy, whether he liked it or not, because that’s what friends were for.
* * *
I wasproud that I remembered Mason lived on Bougainvillea Boulevard and I sort of remembered the address began with a 1. Or possibly a 3. But the place was tiny, right? Mason made it sound like a ghost town from the 1950s, so how hard would it be to find him?
As it turned out, it was much harder than expected, which was really the tagline for my life these days, and when I got a moment of free time, I was going to trademark it and put it on a T-shirt.
Bougainvillea Boulevard was long and winding enough to feature house numbers that started with both 1s and 3s, and Umar, my cab driver, was unamused when I asked him to drive me up and down the street—just to see if Mason was conveniently standing outside any of them, in the dark, as one does—even before the ridiculous fat raindrops started smacking the windshield, because fuck my life.
“It’s gonna be coming down buckets any minute,” Umar predicted. “You could call your friend and ask—” He winced, possibly remembering that my grief for my lost phone was very fresh, since he’d had to lend me his own phone a minute ago so I could figure out how to cancel my credit card. “Or maybe we could stop at one of these houses and a neighbor could direct you to your friend’s house?”
I sighed. OnlyIwould try recreating Hugh Grant’s iconic scene inLove, Actuallyon a ghost-town tropical island in a fucking monsoon, but the meter was literally ticking me to the end of my cash reserves, and I couldn’t think of anything better, so when Umar pulled over at the smallest house on the block, which coincidentally had the brightest porch light, I got out and ran up the path in the drenching rain to bang on the door.
It was thrown open almost immediately by a fiftyish man wearing a Pabst Blue Ribbon hat, a bathrobe, plaid boxer shorts, white athletic socks, and plastic sandals. It was, as they say, a lewk.
“Dang it, Lorenna, I said I’m not joinin’ your fool— Oh. You’re not Lorenna.”
I smiled winningly. “No, sir, I’m not. I’m actually here to—”
“I didn’t order any pizza.” He narrowed his eyes. “Besides, you don’t have a pizza.”
“Good detective work there,” I agreed. “I wanted to ask—”
“I’m not lookin’ to find Jesus,” he warned. “I’m real spiritual, but not religious.”
I looked down at myself, not sure how I’d been mistaken for a missionary. In addition to my slightly odiferous Armani sandals, I wore a short-sleeved, pink button-down jumpsuit that ended at midthigh, and the closest I’d come to finding Jesus was when I blew a guy by that name at the Puerto Rican festival last month.
“I’m not trying to convert you,” I assured him. “I just need to find Mason Bloom’s house. Dr. Mason Bloom. I’m afraid I forgot the address—”
The man blinked, and his suspicion cleared. “Well, damn! You’re a friend of Doc Mason? All you had to do was say so! I’m Littlejohn Jennings, but folks on the key call me LJ. You babysitting for Mason while he’s gone? Last I heard, one of the Goodman boys was doing it.”
I swallowed. “Gone” did not sound promising. Not at all. Neither did the rest of it. “Babysitting?”
“Babysitting the contractors tearin’ up his house while he and Fenn are in New York this week.” LJ chuckled. “No actual babies. Well, ’cept the baby Doc’s sister delivered last week, of course, which is why they went up north for a visit now. That and his brother got married. So, Fenn and Mase are gonna meet the little one, and celebrate the wedding, and introduce Fenn to the whole family, and whatnot.” He scratched his stomach idly, like we were making polite chitchat. “Say, did you know, New York is a cityanda state?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Mason said he and Fenn won’t see the Statue of Liberty at all from where they are. Crazy.”
“Shocking,” I agreed, slightly panicked.
Fact: I had no transportation, other than Umar, who was rightly impatient. I had no credit card. I had no phone. I had very little money. And there was no one I could call to obtain any of those things except Mason, because in my entire life there was no one else I trusted. But Mason was up with Micah and Constantine in O’Leary, and I had no way of getting there.
Also fact: my family—who were not really family anymore—wanted nothing to do with me. My friends back in the city—who were likewise not really friends—would sell me out in a heartbeat. It was almost enough to make a man start channeling Eponine and busting out an a capella “On My Own”… which indicated I was still more than a little hungover, damn it.
Aunt Hagatha would probably say something pithy, like “when you figure out you’re in a hole, stop digging,” but then Aunt Hagatha had never been stranded on a semi-inhabited island with no cell phone or credit card.
Until now.
“So.” I cleared my throat. “Funny thing about me staying at Mason’s house, Mr. Jennings. I don’t, um, have a key to get in. I don’t suppose…”
“Ah, don’t worry about that! Tell your cabbie to scram, bring your bag in, and take a load off.Wheel of Fortune’s about to start, and it’s your lucky day, ’cause I got some SpaghettiOs on the stoveandPizza Bites in the oven. Soon as the rain passes, I’ll getcha sorted.”
“Get me sorted.” That could mean so many things, and none of them good.
As an occasional listener to true crime podcasts, I’d often wondered how the hell some victims wound up in the truly sketchy situations that led to their deaths. Did they have no sense of self-preservation? Surely there wasalwaysanother option besides taking a shortcut down a dark alley… or being lured into a complete stranger’s home with the promise of a canned pasta dinner, the likes of which I had not eaten since leaving my childhood home in Ohio. Yet, mortifyingly, my stomach growled, and Umar honked the horn behind me.
