And then, in front of my grandmother’s Escalade, he kissed me. Deeply. Passionately. Right there on the sidewalk. It was every bit as good as the meth-fueled kiss I’d had with Denny. But I was confident that the rest of the sex would be just as electric.
He stopped the kiss and left me standing there.
Gasping.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sunday was a bore. Well, worse than a bore. When I woke up, I realized it was gay pride in Los Angeles. Instead of spending the day getting sunburned and drunk with few hundred thousand of my closest friends, I was in The Middle of Nowhere, Michigan, taking care of a grumpy, homophobic old lady. I spent the afternoon drifting through dreams of dreamy doctors whisking me away to a better future.
Monday morning, I got up early and let my dog out, made Nana Cole’s breakfast, then went to help her out of bed. That earned me a good shove.
“I can do it,” she spat.
I reminded her that she had a doctor’s appointment that morning. I was hoping I’d be able to leave her alone soon. Honestly, I was getting sick and tired of taking care of her. She was not the world’s easiest patient.
Eventually, I got her seated in the kitchen in front of a bowl of oatmeal and a banana. I had a vague memory of a dietician coming into Nana’s room at the hospital and explaining she shouldn’t have eggs or bacon or sausages. Or maybe nobody explained that. Maybe we just got a pamphlet. Either way, it didn’t leave a whole lot of choices for breakfast.
“I hate oatmeal.”
“I think we’ve covered that.”
Luckily, my cell phone rang so I didn’t have to listen to her complain. I didn’t recognize the number, but it was local so I figured it was safe to pick up. Or at least safe-ish. It was Hanging Chad.
“I have some information. When do you think you can come into the library? Later today?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure. What did you find out?”
Obviously, he wanted to do this in person, but I really wanted the information. After a moment, he cleared his throat and began: “So, my friend found some articles that might be relevant. The database they’re using just tells you that your search terms are present in particular articles. My friend, who works at the library in Evanston—did I tell you that all ready?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Oh, okay. Anyway, shewasable to print the articles out. She faxed them last night.”
“Okay. What do they say?”
“Well, R. Hessel was arrested—”
“Wait, who’s R. Hessel?”
“Richard Christopher Hessel. As soon as I figured that out, we did another search and got an article with the following headline:Church Leader Arrested for Meth Possession.”
“Shit,” I said.
“You watch your mouth, young man,” my grandmother said, obviously preferring to eavesdrop rather than eat her oatmeal. I called Reilly and walked outside. As I watched my dog bound off toward the raised gardens (unplanted this year), I asked Hanging Chad, “Is that article as bad as it sounds?”
“He got stopped for driving erratically. They impounded his car, which meant they had to inventory it—did you know they could do that? It’s sort of a work-around for not having awarrant. Anyway, they found four grams of methamphetamine in a gym bag.”
“Shit,” I said again, this time no one scolded me. “When was this?”
“1999.”
“What else did you find?”
“He went to prison for three years.”
“He would have gotten out last year.”
“It’s unlikely he served the whole time. He was probably on parole until last year.”
