Page 95 of Road Queens
She stopped short. “Manners, what the hell are you doing?”
Jeff Manners jumped like he’d been goosed and spilled several knotted baggies of what looked like dried basil but probably wasn’t. “What the fuck are you doing here, Amanda?”
“Peeing. Any second now! And don’t steal my line. Why areyouannoyed to findmein a women’s restroom? Are you that desperate to hook up?” She raised her voice. “He’s in here! Hurry up, for God’s sake; I hate being in the same room with him!”
“Who are you t—” He trailed off as Sean shoved the door open and came in, Sidney and Cass right behind him. “What the fuck?”
“Your confusion is understandable. I mean all the time, not just right now.”
Manners’s eyes widened as he spotted Sean. “Oh, shit.”
“Oh,Sean,” Amanda corrected. “Why’d you do it, Jeff?”
Fifteen seconds in, and Jeff was already so rattled that they could almost see the sweat breaking out on his forehead. He was the picture of guilty knowledge.
This is what the thrill of victory feels like,she decided.Or the thrill of finding Jeff Manners in a bathroom.
“How’d you find me?”
“It was easy. We just asked ourselves where a drug-dealing scumbag with delusions of awesome would hang out. And here you are.”
“But if it makes you feel any better,” Cass added, “we checked the dump and all the liquor stores first.”
“Not the library, though,” Amanda added. “Somehow, we knew that would be a waste of time.”
Sean walked over to the row of sinks. “What’s this?” he asked, indicating bags bulging with something that probably wasn’t dried basil.
“None of your fuckin’ business.”
“Disagree. Marijuana’s still illegal in the state of Wisconsin. Possession gets you six months and a fine of a thousand bucks. And that’s just the first time.”
“You can’t prove shit,” he insisted, scooping up the baggies, dropping them, then grabbing them again and stuffing them into his jeans pockets. Except the vain shithead wore jeans a size too small because he thought it accentuated his dick. Which meant he really had to jam those baggies in there. Amanda would never understand the human impulse to hide a flaw by emphasizing it. Comb-overs. Boob jobs. Botox. Did Madonnareallythink she was holding on to her youth by paying someone to jam botulism into her face?
“This is why you should eschew vests and wear flannel lumberjack shirts with big pockets. And chinos.”
“Nuh-uh, Amanda. It’s ‘achoo.’”
“Again with this? ‘Eschew’ is not pronounced like a sneeze, Sidney!”
“The holy fuck itisn’t.”
“It’s ‘es-choo,’ I think.”
In unison: “Shut up, Cass!”
“You can’t do shit,” Jeff was informing Sean. Well, at leasthewas staying focused, the disingenuous shithead. “You’re anex-cop.”
“Oh?” Sean was now leaning casually against the far sink. “Who told you that?”
Good question. Too bad Jeff didn’t feel like accommodating: “Fuck off, all y’all.”
“All y’all”? He’s aware he was born and resides in Wisconsin, right? Hmm. Maybe he isn’t. He was never the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“You gave yourself away,” Amanda said.This is probably how Sherlock Holmes feels when he explains who did it: postcoital levels of satisfaction.“You found Cassandra in the park too fast. We were barely there, and thenyouwere there. This is a small town, and word moves at the speed of gossip. And Cassandra Rivers coming back is big news.”
“Which is pathetic and ridiculous,” Cass put in.
“I’m glad someone said it,” Sidney snickered.
