#scenebreak
Three minutes later, Corey and I jumped out of his Challenger at Katy’s house. A crowd had gathered, including two skinny cops who seemed more like boy scouts than officers of the law. We ran to the scene, Corey calling Katy’s name all the way. He threw his arms around her, but she didn’t look like she needed a hug. More like a shotgun.
The car was totaled. Utterly. Anything glass had been shattered. The side mirrors were gone. The tires were slashed. It was really fucking creepy. Someone had taken a metal baseball bat to it and had wailed on it for a long time.
There was only one person I knew evil enough to do something like this. “Monika.”
Katy furrowed her brow. “What?”
“It had to be Monika.”
She pulled away from Corey. “Why in the world would Monika trash my car?”
“She’s a jealous bitch?”
Katy’s expression reminded me that no one knew about our little indiscretion except Monika and that Katy would like to keep it that way, thank you very much. Before I had time for a sterling recovery, the clack of heels on concrete distracted me.
“Why in the world would I be jealous, Foxtrot?” Monika brushed past me carrying a tray and two cups of coffee without so much as glancing my way. “Katy agrees you should go with me to New York.” She handed a coffee to Katy, who accepted it with obvious gratitude.
Corey was pushed to my side while the girls sorted out cream and sugar.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I liked Katy last night. She’s spunky.” Monika gave me her best innocent look. “I knew I’d be bored here while you made up your mind, so I stopped by.” She waved her coffee in the general direction of the car. “I’m the one who noticed the damage.” She glanced at the crowd. “Looks like the whole town’s turned out.” While she sipped coffee, she raised her eyebrows in this amazing way she has that’s horribly judgmental, while not being obvious enough for anyone to call her on it.
“It’s a small town,” Katy muttered. Embarrassed?
Corey nudged me. His face asked me who the girl was.
Monika clacked over to him, hand extended. “Monika Sterling, and yes, that’s my real name. Monika with a ‘K’ or I kill you.” Corey took her hand. “You must be the Boyfriend I’ve heard so much about this morning.” Monika glanced pointedly at Corey’s crotch and smiled. “You get chilly at night?”
What the fuck? Had she always acted like a cartoon villain? How had I missed that?
She acknowledged me as if seeing me for the first time. “Hello, Foxtrot.” She smiled at Corey. “I’m Foxtrot’s dance partner.” She rolled a hand. “Well, hopefully I am.”
So there we were, Monika and Katy facing Corey and me.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?
When, exactly, had my life turned into an episode of Glee?
Reality assaulted me in the form of a scrawny uniformed cop who pushed between us, forcing me away. “Is there any possibility to the accusation, Katy?” His name tag read Warren, but call him “Officer Friendly” for fun. He was anything but. Like the cop I’d met at the cemetery, he couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty.
Katy shook her head. “I already told you, Warren, this started before Monika arrived.”
The cop turned to me, hovering near Katy as if she were his personal responsibility. “And who are you, anyway?”
“Ethan Fox. I just moved in with my Auntie Mac. . . Macarena Davis.”
He looked me up and down like I had a big sign around my neck that said, Guilty as shit. “You the boxer’s son?”
Oh joy. “Yes.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
The other cop joined us, the guy from the cemetery. Palatino, right? They formed bookend scarecrows on either side of me. “Is there a problem here?”
“It’s the boxer’s son,” Officer Friendly said.
“We’ve met.” Palatino looked down his nose at me, his squint in full force. “He causing a problem?”
“He has nothing to do with it,” Katy insisted.
Officer Friendly nodded, made a few notes and kept glancing my way as he wandered off with Palatino. He might as well have done the two fingers to his eyes and then pointing at me thing since that’s what his expression said: You’re the killer’s son, and we all know the apple never falls far from the tree.
Corey elbowed me again. “Chief of Police Olmos is in Houston for a case,” he whispered, then leaned a little closer than was comfortable. “Rumor is he’s actually in rehab.” He used one hand to pretend he was drinking, you know, in case I somehow didn’t understand rehab.
With one finger, I moved him away.
He jabbed a thumb at Officer Friendly. “Warren gets pretty full of himself when the chief’s gone.”
Stellar.
“And the other one?” I asked.
“Pal?” Corey chuckled. “He’s harmless. Does what he’s told and lets the pretty girls get by with a warning when it comes to speeding tickets.” He shrugged. “Probably whacks off to the Disney channel, know what I mean?”
I so did not, but Katy distracted me.
“Hot, hot, hot,” she said. She sipped her coffee again. “There was a rose on my car yesterday morning.” She glanced at me. “And then some texts.”
“Texts?” Corey and I chorused.
She pointed at Pal. “Confiscated my phone as evidence as soon as they got here. The texts said things like ‘Did you get the rose?’ and ‘You’re so pretty like a rose.’” She glanced at Corey. “‘A pretty rose deserves better than a big prick.’”
Corey raised a hand. “Hey, it must be someone on the football team.”
Monika made a “bless his heart” face.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
Corey tapped the side of his nose. “Whoever sent the texts knows I have a big prick, right? He must have seen me in the showers.”
Monika clapped her hands in front of her mouth. “Tell me he has a twin brother.”
So much for my theory about the Challenger.
Officer Friendly and his sidekick Pal asked everyone a million questions. Dumass hadn’t seen this much excitement in months. Apparently, in a town this small, vandalism was a major event and Warren was going to milk it for all it was worth since he was top dog for the time being.
In Austin this kind of shit happened all the time. Piss off your baby-mama, she trashed your car. Out here? Out here it was spooky. I mean, how’d they total the car without anyone noticing? In a small town, someone heard a noise, they called the cops.
Officer Friendly twirled his handcuffs, apparently demonstrating the finesse with which he was going to arrest the culprit once apprehended. The cuffs flew off his finger and Warren whirled around to see where they landed. Idiot.
“I ignored the texts at first,” Katy said. “I figured someone was just looking for attention.”
Corey put his arm around her and held her close. I wished it was me, but he was genuinely concerned, not just making time.
Okay, maybe complicated wasn’t so nice.
“When I got home last night, though,” Katy continued, “they got creepier and more insistent.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Her eyes travelled from Corey to me and back again. “‘I know the secrets you don’t want to tell.’” She hugged herself and Corey’s grip tightened. “‘No one knows the depths of your soul the way I do,’ except. . .” Her face vacillated between worried and amused. “At first it came across as, ‘No one knows the death of your soul,’ but he blamed auto-correct.”
Monika covered her mouth with one hand. “Bless his heart.”
Katy studied the car, and I could see her trying to keep a brave face. “So I told him to get lost and leave me alone.”
“Are you sure it’s the same guy?” I asked.
She led the group closer to the
car where Warren was bagging samples of the shredded remains of at least a dozen roses thrown across the interior. The side was spray painted in blood red: every rose has its thron
Holy. Fuck. Creepy as shit and kind of a loser, all at the same time.
“What’s a thron?” Corey asked.
Katy took his hand. “Psycho needs auto-correct for his brain.”
“Oh.” He had no idea what she meant.
Warren slammed the car door. “Maybe he’s dyslexic,” he snapped, heading off to do whatever it is cops do.
“Someone’s touchy,” Monika said.
“I don’t want to be the big city asshole,” I said when the cop was gone, “but can’t we bring in someone. . . else?” I looked around at the expectant faces. “My dad knows a great lawyer up in Austin. Ms. Delacroix has connections. She could get—”
Katy waved it away. “I’m not going to let this asshole freak me out.” She even kicked the tire of the car. “It’s what the sick little twist wants.” She took a deep breath. It was sexy she knew my trick. “No, this is Dumass. Big, scary dramas don’t happen here. Some deviant wants attention? Well, I’m not going to give it to him. I live my life like I always do.”
Monika patted Katy’s arm. What was her deal?
The rest of the dance crew arrived and Corey took them aside so Katy wouldn’t have to go through it again. Monika took advantage of the quiet moment. “So, have you given any thought to my offer?”
I glanced at Katy and shook my head. “Not the time or place.”
Katy stared at her car. “I’m not a wreck or anything, mostly just pissed.” She gave me her full attention. “Why wouldn’t you go, Foxtrot?”
Did she want me to go? Was she happy with Corey? Or was she telling me to go but hoping I’d stay but not wanting me to stay for her unless I really wanted to. . .
Girls are complicated.
“Seriously, Foxtrot,” Monika said, “why is it so difficult?”
So I let her have it. “Why? Because the people you got to sponsor us are the same assholes who sued my dad, stole his business, took our home and ruined his entire career because of an accident that was not his fault. It was horrible, but it wasn’t Dad’s fault.”
Okay, when I got a head of steam up, sometimes it was hard to slow down.
“I’m all he has left, Monika, and you managed to find the one way they might also be able to take me away from him.” I applauded. “Congratulations, Monika with a ‘K,’ you win bitch of the year award.”
Was the shock on her face genuine? “Do you. . . do you really think I’d do something like that?” She made my acting skills look fifth grade class play.
Katy seemed shocked too.
“Yes.” It was a statement, but now that I saw her face, I wasn’t so sure.
Monika blinked and set her coffee down on the dented hood. “It never occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, I went to them specifically as a way to get a little revenge on them? To get a chunk of the money they took?” She deserved an Oscar. “They think they’re sticking it to your dad one last time, and you go to Blackpool, laughing all the way to the bank.”
She laid a hand on Katy’s arm wearing her sad victim face. “I’m so sorry about your car, Katy, but I think I need to leave.” She turned to me. “If you really believe I’m such a horrible person, I understand why you wouldn’t want to dance with me.”
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
I waited for the explosion from Katy. The how-could-you-be-so-heartless speech. Or the way-to-make-her-cry speech. What she actually said surprised me. “She doesn’t even know why she really did it, does she?”
I looked at Katy out of the corner of my eye to see if I’d heard her correctly.
“What? You think I’m going to take her side just because we’re both chicks and she bought me a delicious mocha coffee thing?” She scoffed and turned toward her decimated vehicle. “I figured you knew me better than that.”
I took Monika’s coffee from the hood. Why waste it? “I’ve known you a day and a half. I try not to make assumptions.”
She laughed. “Yes, you do. You make them all the time.”
Damn it, she was right.
“Sorry about the car,” I said. “Insurance?”
“Not for this.”
“Ouch.”
We stood in a companionable silence while the dance crew horsed around and Officer Friendly took more statements.
Ephraim somehow miracled a baseball bat from thin air and held it over the hood singing, “I bust the windows out your car,” while Woody took photos. Jesus Christ, really?
“Put your foot up on the wheel,” Woody encouraged, crouching down as if he were a fashion photographer.
The moment Ephraim’s foot touched the car, Pal appeared and pushed him away. “Have a little respect.”
Ephraim instantly morphed into an expressionless statue, the baseball bat held to the ground as if it were an Englishman’s cane. “Touch me again and your pathetic career is over,” he said. “I’m Jewish and my father is the only lawyer in this town.”
Without a word, Pal edged away.
When the cop’s back was turned, Woody nudged Ephraim playfully.
The little guy didn’t so much as crack a smile. “Same goes for you, Neanderthal.”
Woody chuckled. “I will whip it out and pee on you right here, bubala.”
Ephraim finally smiled, until he looked up and saw me watching, then his face turned to stone. I waited for the joke.
No joke. He just stared into my eyes like a pissed-off cat.
Until I looked away. Wow, creepy. They were acting like it was a carnival. Did people in tiny little towns think really bad things couldn’t happen?
I returned my full attention to Tango. “You’re really not freaked out about this?”
“A little,” she said so quietly only I could hear her. She waved the coffee cup. “Shit like this doesn’t happen here, Foxtrot. They have no frame of reference.”
Wow. She was smarter than me. She settled into one hip and her smile told me she was deliberately changing the subject. “Why were you with Boyfriend at eight o’clock in the morning?”
I almost snorted. “It’s a secret.”
Her raised eyebrows told me she hoped I would elaborate.
“Birthday surprise.”
More raised eyebrows. “You’re helping my boyfriend shop for my birthday present?”
“Something like that,” I said with a pronounced eyebrow waggle.
She chuckled, which made the whole morning worthwhile.
I nudged her. “And you’re having coffee with my ex, plotting ways to convince me to move to New York?”
The tow truck arrived to drag her car away and the seriousness of the moment returned. I nudged her again. “No dramatic bullshit this time, but I know a couple of boxers who can play bodyguard should the need arise.”
Staring at her car, she finished the last of her mocha. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Her eyes met mine and for a moment she just stared. “Seriously.”