Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

After a long moment of contemplation, she took a deep breath and tilted her face toward the heavens. “No,” she said, steeling herself. “No. Earl Walker used Amber to get you to do what he wanted. And it worked, Charley. He knew it would. This is not your fault.”

I gaped at her. “It’s entirely my fault. All of it.”

“Charley,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder, “I told you this before. You do incredible things, and I get to be a part of it. That incident was one in a million. And it’s over. We have to move past it. The odds of anything like that happening again are astronomical.”

“Do you even pay attention?”

“That captain said it himself. You solved four cases in one day. Four, Charley. That’s—that’s unheard of. And you captured an escaped serial killer. You saved who knows how many lives. And I got to help. We’ll just have to be more careful in the future. We need better locks, right? We’ve already talked about that. And a security system.”

It would hit her later. Anger. Regret. Despair. And she might even hate me a little. Better to hate me for almost getting her daughter killed than for actually accomplishing the feat.

In the meantime, I’d just turned Cookie into a slightly older version of myself. She’d probably be up nights, checking and rechecking the doors and windows, turning the tiniest of sounds into a full-blown home invasion. I could totally see why she liked being my friend. Working for me.

“Is everything okay, pumpkin toes?”

I turned toward Aunt Lillian as she melted through the door. I was just about to answer her when the landlord walked by. “Ladies,” he said, a lecherous grin on his face.

“Traitor.”

He chuckled and knocked on the door to the end apartment.

Cook and I perked up, our interest aroused. I wiped my cheeks, and we leaned together, hoping to get a look at the new tenants.

“I got that other key for you,” he said. Then he ogled us from over his shoulder, wiggled his brows.

I rolled my eyes until they were staring into the face of Barbara.

The door opened, slowly at first, and I fought back a bizarre kind of excitement. It was like opening a present, trying to discern the contents inside, guarding your expression not to show disappointment if it came to that. And perhaps it was the concussed state of Fred and Barbara, or the delicate state of Betty White, her fragile chambers beating between pangs of pain and desperation, but when I saw Reyes Farrow open that door, I was pretty sure I seized.

Cookie inhaled so sharply, Reyes looked past the landlord and directly at us. His eyes glistened in the low light as he looked me over. I did the same to him. He had a bullet wound in his chest from a fifty-caliber that would have ripped another man apart, and yet I felt no evidence of pain or signs of physical weakness from the blood loss. No doubt he was covered in duct tape underneath his dark red T-shirt. The one where the sleeve openings weren’t quite large enough to hang loosely over his arms, so they formed to his biceps instead, caressing them, embracing them.

After he finished examining me, he spoke, his voice like warm brandy on a cold night. “You can just give it to her,” he told Mr. Zamora.

“Oh.” Mr. Z stammered a bit in surprise, then handed me the extra key to Reyes Farrow’s apartment with a delighted leer on his face.

Reyes nodded toward Cookie congenially. “Cookie,” he said, addressing her with reverence. He moved to Aunt Lil. “Lillian,” he said, and if Aunt Lil had died with her dentures in, I was pretty certain they’d have fallen out at that point. Then he leveled his smoldering gaze on me, tilted his head in interest. “Dutch.” He offered me one last look—a look full of promise and desire—before stepping back and closing his door.

We stood there, the three of us, our jaws firmly planted on the floor. Aunt Lil recovered first. She nudged me with her elbow and said with a cackle of delight, “I think you guys should make some more of those brownies, ’cause that boy looks hungry.”