Page 111 of The Body in the Backyard
“May,” Chupacabra said. She glanced down as her phone screen lit up. There was a picture of a guy in a Harrisburg Senators ball cap on the screen below the name Pete.
Riley sensed twin pulls of annoyance and affection from the trainer.
“Excuse me, I have to take this. Nice to see you guys again. If you ever want to train, give me a call. I’m the only Chupacabra in the phone book.” All three of them admired her muscled back as the trainer hustled in the direction of the locker room.
“I hate when you do that to me, Nicky,” Weber complained.
Nick snapped him with Riley’s sweat towel. “But you handle it so well.”
“Yeah? Well, I get dibs on the next introduction. You’ll be a retired gigolo from the south of France.”
“Uh, so where did you two learn Swedish?” Riley asked.
“We didn’t. My asshole cousin’s family hosted a high school exchange student from Sweden when we were in junior high,” Nick explained.
“Astrid.” Weber sighed. “She was seventeen and gorgeous to two scrawny fourteen-year-olds.”
“Yeah. So my cousin the asshole?—”
“Brian or Carlo the plumber?” Riley clarified.
“Different asshole cousin. The then cheerleader, now physical therapist who lives in Baltimore. She told us she’d teach us some Swedish phrases to impress Astrid,” Nick continued.
“Oh boy,” she said, getting a glimpse of teenage Nick and Weber—gawky in braces and pubescent bodies—eagerly memorizing phrases written in a notebook.
“Yeah. Needless to say, we weren’t actually saying, ‘You’re the hottest girl ever,’ and ‘I’m mature for my age,’” Nick said, clapping a hand to her shoulder. It slid right off as if she’d rubbed herself down with bacon grease. He wiped his hand on his shorts. “Now, my beautiful, talented, sweaty girlfriend. It’s time for you to do something that this tiny clockmaker and I can’t.”
Curiosity had her looking up from her towel. “What’s that?”
“Follow the suspect into the women’s locker room and eavesdrop on her phone call.”
Riley jumped to her feet. “On it!” She limped off, grateful for the temporary reprieve from physical fitness.
The locker room was as utilitarian as the gym itself, with concrete floors and rows of mint-green metal lockers that looked as if they’d been repurposed from an old high school.
Chupacabra was sitting on a long wooden bench between two rows of lockers, still talking on the phone as she untied her sneakers.
Riley held her towel over her face and eased into the next row of lockers to eavesdrop over the sound of a shower…and the woman in it singing Mariah Carey. She closed her eyes and did her best to hit the mute button on the Mariah wannabe so she could focus on Chupacabra’s voice.
“Pete, Itoldyou I’m working on it,” Chupacabra said in exasperation. “I know…I know. Justice takes time, but think how sweet it’ll be when that little orange foolfinallypays.”
She was definitely talking about Griffin. But what did she want to make him pay for? A past due invoice? Or was she talking about revenge? The woman in the shower shifted into a really not great version of an a cappella solo from the soundtrack forPitch Perfect.
Come on, spirit guides. Show me something, Riley begged.
There was a flash of something…a car. Someone was behind the wheel. Someone else was reaching for it. She sensed rather than saw the struggle. Heard the crash. Felt the grit of broken glass.
Oopsie.
She fought for more, clinging to her senses, but the shower warbler was distracting, and another woman had just turned the corner to open a locker a few feet from Riley.
“Don’t be like that, Pete. I can’t make the cards fall into place any faster, and we can’t afford for them to get suspicious,” Chupacabra said, yanking Riley out of the vision. “AndItoldyou, this is the best way forward. Damn it. You just made me dump my bag.” She wasn’t bothering to keep her voice low.
There was a beat of silence filled only by the amateur a cappella solo of “Party in the U.S.A.”
“Goddamn it, Pete.” The sentiment was followed by the rattling thud of metal. Riley was just easing her way to the end of the row when Chupacabra shouldered her gym bag and stormed out the door, muttering, “Men are fucking idiots.”
Rather than following the muscular trainer, Riley decided it was safer to snoop around in the locker room. She headed up the row Chupacabra had occupied and stopped in front of the locker with the fist-size dent in the door. Opening it, she found it empty except for a scrap of paper wedged against the metal plates of the shelf and side of the locker.
