Page 21 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
“I know some people I could talk to, too. Don’t sweat on my behalf. I’m not a full-fledged alkie. I’m a binge drinker.”
“You know it’s possible to be both, right?”
“Change of subject, please.”
Got it. Case closed… for now.“Fine. After the tar and the shots, I brought you back here.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. You conked out after I left.”
“Abandoned me, you mean.” He let out a piteous moan, then peeked to see if she was moved. “Anything else?”
“You had the common courtesy tonotbarf in my rental car, for which I thank you. Well, you did, but it all hit the basin.”
“I could have died! What basin?”
She restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry. A total stranger helped me get you to drink a glass of water—”
“I hate water.”
“How can you hate water? It doesn’t taste like anything—never mind, I’m not having the H2O argument with you again. Then we turned you on your side so you wouldn’t choke and die and left you snoozing.” She’d forgotten that Dennis was a creature of drama even before his twin sister had been murdered. “Now what were you babbling about on the phone?”
“Something happened at the funeral home. My ma’s freaking out and wants both of us over there ASAP.”
“What? Both? She’s not the boss of me.” Right? Right. “And what’s ‘something’?”
“I. Don’t. Know. I basically said yes so she’d stop screeching. We’ve gotta go; my life’s now measured in minutes.”
Ava drove and fumed while Dennis hung his head out the window and gulped fresh air, periodically ducking back inside to drink from one of two bottles of water she’d brought for him. A return to the funeral home was not on the agenda. Nor was dealing with more Monahans. Not to mention she was due in preflight in a couple of hours. Well, nine. But still. Whathadbeen on the agenda was to wake up, hate herself for kicking Tom to the curb, eat oatmeal, use all the hotel moisturizer she could get her hands on, then hang out at the airport until preflight. It was an odd life, but it was hers.
Her (mostly) inaudible grumbling turned to real anxiety when she swung into the parking lot and saw the cop cars and ambulance.
“Oh, fuck,” Dennis said, which just about summed it up. They parked, got out, and at least one of the cops seemed to know who they were, because yellow caution tape was pulled aside for them and they were waved right in.
And stopped short once the doors closed behind them. In the twelve hours since she’d last been there, someone had radically redecorated the Crisp and Gross Funeral Home in graffiti, broken glassware, upended chairs, and overturned tables, and there was some kind of dark dust all over the—the—
“Is that…” Ava started to reach out just as Dennis seized her wrist and yanked.
“Don’t,” he said hoarsely, which was good advice. She should have caught on quicker, or at least recognized theupended urn. Someone had come in and made a grand fucking mess, and finished by flinging Danielle’s ashes all over the room.
On the wall, written in her ashes:WRONG.
Eleven
“You!” The word wasn’t shouted so much as shrilled, and Ava jumped like she’d been poked. She realized she’d been so transfixed by the bizarre scene she hadn’t realized the room was full of cops (yikes) and Mrs. Monahan (quadruple yikes). It was amazing how she saw everything when she was in the cockpit, and nothing out of it. “This! Explain yourself!”
“I—what?” Was she looking for a critique?Well, the upended tables clearly represent chaos, but I feel the artist went too far with the ashes.“I can’t explain this. How could I explain this?”
“Exactly.” Mrs. Monahan was still in yesterday’s dress, which was surprising—had the woman been up all night? “How could you?”
“You think I had something to do with this?”
Something happened at the funeral home,Dennis had said, and yeah, something had. My ma’s freaking out and wants both of us over there ASAP, he’d said, and yeah, she was. Ava should have realized they’d be looking for a scapegoat, because it’s what they’d done ten years ago.
“Miss Capp?”
“Yes,” she said, too distracted to correct him. “And this is Dennis Monahan, Danielle’s brother.”
