Page 71 of All That Glitters
Jeff rushed over to his own car, popped open the trunk, and pulled out a tire iron and jack. He closed the trunk, then hurried over to Matt’s car and went to work on it.
Inside the diner, Matt meticulously traced his finger down the bill. A small pocket calculator — yes, an actual calculator and not a phone app — was on the table next to the bill.
“Let’s see,” Matt muttered, oblivious to Debbie’s soul having left her body ten minutes earlier. “You had the salad, I had the burger. Then two drinks.” His finger moved down the items one by one, checking each price and comparing them to the menu’s prices. “Looks like everything checks out.”
He carefully punched the numbers into his calculator, double and triple checking them. “So, twelve eighty-five, plus a twenty-five-cent coffee refill after your ninth one, times point-one-five, equals a dollar ninety-six and a half cents tip. We’ll round it up to a dollar ninety-seven.”
He pulled some change from his pocket and counted it out on the table. He looked up at Debbie.
“Do you have two cents?”
A few minutes later, Debbie and Matt strolled out of the restaurant and across the dimly lit parking lot.
“So where was I?” Matt asked.
“You were saying how people think accountants are cheap,” Debbie replied, her voice flat. She was already doing the mental calculations for how long it would take her to get home, change into pajamas, down a glass of wine, and forget this night ever happened.
“Can you believe that?” he huffed. “I mean, you saw how I made sure our waitress got paid a full fifteen percent-plus tip, rounded up.”
She rolled her eyes so hard she almost sprained something. The guy was completely clueless about how cheap he was. “It was fifteen percent.”
They reached his car. Or, what was left of it. All four tires were gone, and the car’s frame sat on a set of cinder blocks. It looked ridiculous, like a turtle shell without the turtle.
Jeff had definitely been busy while they were inside. If it didn’t work out for him as an attorney, he had a promising future as a criminal.
Matt just stared, his mouth hanging open in shock.
“Oh,” he said, his voice shaking with a quiet, calculating rage. “He is so dead.”
Debbie sighed, looking from the crippled car to the long, dark street. The night, somehow, had gotten even longer. “Does this mean I’m paying for the taxi home?”
Chapter twenty-seven
Skeletons and Equipment Trucks
The first sign of trouble was the two cop cars parked just outside the cemetery gate. As Tony’s truck pulled up, he saw a crew of timid-looking workers from the rental company lugging lights, camera rigs, and sound equipment over to a large truck and loading it in the back. Three uniformed police officers stood nearby to supervise.
Craig and the other inmates could only stand to the side and watch helplessly as their dream was packed up and carted away. With the cops there, there wasn’t anything they could do to stop it. Tony hopped out of his truck and joined the funeral gathering.
“What’s going on?” he asked, though the answer seemed painfully obvious.
“These fellas here is takin’ back our equipment,” Craig grumbled, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He looked like a volcano that was moments away from erupting. “Said some guy named Preston Jordan — you know, the fella you was tellin’us about with the wife and shotgun — weren’t gonna work with ‘em no more if they continued to work with us.”
“Oh, crap,” Tony said, the pieces clicking into place. This was Preston’s revenge. He should have seen it coming.
“Them’s my words too,” Craig nodded grimly. “Only with a few more adjectives.”
“So why are the cops here?” Tony asked, glancing at the officers, who were maintaining a professional distance as if they were dealing with a biohazard spill.
“Apparently, them rental guys thinks we’s scary lookin’,” Craig said with a sneer. “Called for an escort. Can you believe that? Us?”
Tony looked at the assembled executives of Rif Raf Produkshuns. With their dumb, bewildered expressions, they looked less like a menacing biker gang and more like a casting call for a Three Stooges reboot. As if to prove the point, Todd nonchalantly picked his nose and then, finding no other available surface, wiped his finger on the sleeve of Roy’s leather vest. Roy responded by shoving him clean off the tailgate of a nearby truck. Todd landed on the grass with a soft oof.
“Oh, come on!” Todd whined from the ground. “That’s the third time today!”
“Then stop wipin’ your boogers on me, ya nasty little ferret,” Roy growled, wiping at his sleeve like it was contaminated.
In the background, Steve idly watched as Elvis the Labrador, blissfully unaware of the production’s collapse, enthusiastically dug a hole next to an ancient, leaning tombstone.
