“Well, okay, then.”

After assuring Cookie everything was copacetic and I was on my way back safe and sound, we hung up and I gave my full attention to the bloody departed teenager with a Rottweiler in his lap. “What’s up, mijo?”

“Hector’s gone,” he said, grunting under Artemis’s weight while fending off a thorough face-washing.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Who’s Hector?”

“Hector Felix? The dead dude you wanted me to investigate?”

“Oh, right.”

“Also, I need a raise.”

“Okay, but only because you asked nicely. Hector’s gone?”

“Yeah, you know, not on this plane, and I don’t think he went to a good place.”

“Yeah, I didn’t figure he would. Did you find out anything that will help Pari?”

“I like her. Does that count?”

“No, but I like her, too.”

“So, I think these football players may have killed Hector, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. I took the Central exit and narrowly missed a woman in a yellow Audi who couldn’t decide which lane she wanted to be in. “Oh, my God. Just pick one.”

“After Hector left Pari’s place, he went to a bar and started shit with these Lobo football players. I don’t think he was the smartest guy.”

“No, he was not.”

“All I got from Domino—”

“Domino?” I asked.

“Yeah, you know? Domino? The dude who’s always at that bar on San Mateo.”

“Oh, that one,” I said, infusing my voice with my second favorite-asm: sarc.

“You met him once. He hit on you, almost blew your cover.”

“If I had a nickel for every time a departed—”

“He was a PI, remember? He wears that Hawaiian shirt?”

“Oh!” I said, pulling into a Java Juice drive-through. “Magnum.”

“No, Domino.”

“No. Yes. I mean, he was going through a Magnum PI stage when he passed. I didn’t know he’d been a real PI.”

“Okay, whatever, he was there that night. Said your guy Hector came in drunk off his ass. The barkeep asked him to leave. He got rowdy. Threatened to kill him and his whole family. So these football players step in, right?”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, half listening. It was go time. I had to make a decision. I was so bad at decisions.

“They tell the guy to go home and sleep it off, so he pulls a gun.”

“Got it. A gun.” My turn was coming fast. It was now or never. I pulled up to the speaker and said with all the confidence I could muster, “Yes, I’d like a mocha grande with … no, without whipped cream. No, with. No. Yes. With. Definitely with.”

The clerk laughed softly, her voice sweet for so early in the freaking morning. “Can I get you any breakfast?”

She did not just ask me that. “No. Yes, okay, I’ll take one of those … no, how about a … no, not that, either. Never mind, that’s okay. Wait, yes. Yes, I would like one of those English muffin things with egg and ham and cheese? Or a chocolate croissant. Whichever is easiest for you.”

She laughed again. “How about both? Then you can decide later.”

Oh, she was good. “Sold.”

I pulled around to the window before she could ask me anything else as Angel gaped at me. “What the fuck, Chuck?”

“What? I’m having a difficult time making decisions lately. It’s called decision fatigue.”

He continued to gape.

“It’s a real thing.”

“You need medication.”

“I read it on the Internet.”

“My mom has anxiety. You need to talk to her.”

I paid the clerk, then turned to him. “Your mom has anxiety?” I asked, suddenly worried. “Why? What’s going on?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just life. That’s why I need a raise.”

I made a mental note to check up on her. I paid Angel by putting money in his mother’s bank account. It used to be anonymous, but she found me out a few months back and refused to take my money. Sadly, cash deposits made at night are almost impossible to trace. Especially when the depositor wears a ski mask and rockin’ pair of thigh-highs.

“Here’s your change,” the clerk said, completely unmoved by the chat I was having with my passenger’s seat.

“Thanks, hon.”

We pulled out and drove toward my humble abode-ment just as I got a text from Amber. Her message sent a shiver of worry down my spine. It read, What does it mean when someone you’re investigating threatens to kick you in the face and sell your teeth on eBay?

I texted her back, using Siri so I could text and drive without killing someone. I’d say it means you may have found your man. “May” being the salient word. Now just figure out his motivation.

Hers, she texted back. She’s an assistant volleyball coach.

“What?” I shouted into Siri. I gave up and called the little stinker.

“Hey, Aunt Charley,” she said, cheery as ever.

“What the hell? Why is an assistant coach threatening you?”

“Not me. Petaluma.”

“Who’s Petaluma?”

“She’s our special investigator in charge of acquisitions.”

I blinked in surprise, then asked, “Expanding already?”

“We have three cases now. How do you keep up?”

“Sweet pea, do you even know what acquisitions means?”

“No, but we heard it on a TV show last night. It sounds cool, right?”

“Totally. I want you to tell your mother everything you just told me. Maybe not the acquisitions part. And tell her to figure out who this assistant coach is.”

“Oh, I know who she is.”

“No, tell your mom you want dirt. Greasy, sticky dirt.”

“Um, dirt. Okay. Is that a technical term I should be aware of?”

“Most definitely. Ask your mother.”

We hung up, and I refocused on Angel. “What happened next?”

“Where were we?”

“Hector. The bar. The football players. The gun.”

“Oh, yeah, so Hector pulls a gun, and one of the guys knocks it out of his hands all stealthy like. Then there is this huge fight, and they knock him out. They freak. The owner of the bar tells them to go home. He’ll take care of it. They are all buddies, I guess. He doesn’t want them to lose their careers over some piece of shit like Hector Felix.”

That guy was seriously disliked.

“They leave, and the barkeep calls this other guy. Some friend of his, but before he even shows up, Hector wakes up. He tells the barkeep he’s coming back to kill him and that he wants the names of the guys so he can kill them, too.”

“Dude’s got issues.”

“But Hector leaves all beat up and covered in blood and shit. Then he ends up dead a few hours later. Interesting, don’t you think?”

“Very,” I said. “Which bar was that?”

“They aren’t open. It’s too early.”

“But they serve food. They’ll have deliveries.”

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. “Trickster’s on San Mateo.”

I made a U-turn first chance I got and headed to Trickster’s.

14

Some days I amaze myself. Other days I put my keys in the fridge.

—MEME

“Where are you?” Cookie asked when she picked up. I was sitting outside the bar, waiting for a delivery truck to show up.

“I’m at Trickster’s. I need to talk to the owner. Can you get me a number?”

“Sure. Amber told me what’s going on. What the hell?”

“Right? Some people, people I like to affectionately refer to as idiots, think they can talk to Deaf kids any way they want without consequences. I don’t know what this chick’s problem is, but I need dirt, Cook. Something with grease that will stick hard enough to get her ass fired.”

“On it. Now, why are you at a bar at seven in the morning?”

I explained about the football players and had her scour the Internet for something, anything, that may have mentioned the fight that night. She promised to get back to me if she got a hit.

In the meantime, Angel left to check on his mother, and Artemis tore out of the car to chase some strange noise she heard in the distance, so it was just me and Misery. Left to our own devices. Would people never learn?

I grabbed my phone, checked messages, then bought a digital copy of the third book, Stardust, since I’d left the paperback copy at the apartment. I’d barely opened the app to read it when a delivery truck pulled up.

If Angel had been there, I could’ve asked him if the guy taking the delivery was the bar owner. Perhaps the departed man in the Hawaiian shirt waving at me from on top of the delivery truck would know.

I motioned him down with a wave of my own, at which point he took Angel’s place in the passenger’s seat.