“Who?”

“You know who.” He’d recently developed a crush on Cookie. Disturbing? Absolutely. On several levels. But he was a good guy. He deserved a nice girl. Unfortunately, he might just have to settle for Cookie.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“I have a missing wife.”

“I didn’t even know you were married.”

“Smart-ass. What do you know about this Dr. Nathan Yost?” I asked as I scanned the signs along Central for a giant hot dog. I could never remember if Super Dog was by the adult toy store or the Doggie Style pet grooming boutique. I just remembered it was something sexual.

“I know his wife is missing,” he offered.

“That’s it?”

“In a nutshell.”

“Well, bummer, because he did it.”

“Holy shit, are you positive?”

“As a pregnancy test a month after prom.”

“This is big. Who are you working with on it?”

“Cookie.”

He blew out a heavy sigh. “Well, I’m about seventeen months behind on my paperwork, but I can look into this for you, see if we have anything on the guy.”

“Thanks, Ubie. Can you get a copy of the statements for me, as well?”

“Sure, why not.”

There it was, next to the law offices of Sexton and Hoare. “You should come eat with me at Super Dog.”

“No.”

“Is it because of my questionable morals?”

“No, it’s because I’d have heartburn all night if I ate a Super Dog this late in the day.”

“So the morals thing doesn’t bother you?”

“Not as much as my heartburn.”

That was good to know. At least the people in my life weren’t completely appalled by me.

I pulled up to Super Dog and walked inside, keeping a weather eye for a name tag with JENNY on it. As luck would have it, she was my cashier. I ordered my food first, knowing that once I gave Jenny the message from Ron, the departed clown I’d found in my living room that morning, I’d be bombarded with questions and my dreams of eating a chili dog would die a sad and lonely death.

In the interest of all things romantic, I decided not to repeat Ron’s message word for word. Jenny was a pretty girl with dark blond hair and supermodel eyebrows and probably deserved better than a quick bite me, the message from Ron.

After she handed over my chili dog and fries, I said, “Jenny, my name is Charlotte Davidson. I have a message for you from a friend.”

She refocused on me. Grief had moved in and set up shop, seeping into every nook and cranny of her being. “For me?” she asked, not the slightest bit interested.

I could hardly blame her. “Yes. This is going to sound really odd, but I just need you to work with me a minute.” She laced her long, thin fingers together and waited. “Ronald said that he loved you very much.”

She swallowed as my words sank in, slowly, methodically. Then her eyes filled with tears that pushed past her lashes and streamed down her cheeks like the floodgates of a damn opening, only her expression didn’t change. “You’re lying,” she said, her voice suddenly edged with bitterness. “He would never say that to me. Never.”

She turned and walked to the back room as I stood there dumbfounded. All in all, the experience rated somewhere between the Bedouin woman who crossed when I was twelve and wanted me to take care of her father’s camels and the wannabe porn star who’d refused to cross until I called him Dr. Love. So not too out there, but not too in there either. I walked around the counter and headed for the back room.

Someone yelled, “You can’t be back here!” just as I spotted the break room. Jenny sat huddled in a plastic chair, staring at a cat poster encouraging its readers to hang in there, her cheeks wet with grief.

“Jenny, I’m so sorry,” I said.

She wiped her face on a sleeve and looked up at me. “He would never have said that.”

Damn, I hated to be caught in a lie. I much preferred my lies to go unnoticed, like a movie star’s career who’d been arrested and sent to rehab. “He didn’t.” I lowered my head in shame and vowed to self-flagellate later.

Her mouth opened as if to ask me something, her expression suddenly filled with hope.

“He said, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, ‘Bite me.’”

Her face transformed just as slowly, just as methodically as before, and she threw her arms around me. “I knew it!” she yelled as a couple of coworkers came into the cramped room to see what was going on. “I knew that’s what he said.” She leaned back and tried to explain past the lump in her throat. “He couldn’t speak well at the end, and I could barely understand him, he was just so weak.” She stopped and leaned back for a better look at me. “Wait, you’re the light,” she said, realization dawning in her eyes.

“The light?” I asked, all innocence and myrrh.

“Of course. When he was … right before he died, he said he saw a light, only it was coming from a woman with brown hair, gold eyes, and—” She cast a quick glance at my feet. “—motorcycle boots.”

“Really?” I asked, stunned. “He saw me? I mean, he should’ve gone into the other light. You know, the main one, the direct route. I’m mostly reserved for those who’ve passed and didn’t go up immediately.” I glanced down at myself, annoyed that I couldn’t see what the departed saw. My brilliant, come-hither beacon. “I totally need to check my wattage.”

“He said bite me?” she asked, already over the fact that I was a light the departed went into. It would hit her later.

“Yes,” I said with a wary grin. “What did he mean?”

A smile that resembled those searchlights on cop cars flashed across her face. “He meant he wanted to marry me. It was kind of our code.” Her long fingers picked at a thread on her Super Dog shirt. “We never liked to argue in front of people, so we made up codes for everything, even the good stuff.”

“Ah,” I said, understanding her earlier outburst, “and ‘I love you very much’ was code for—?”

With a sheepish smile, she said, “I would rather suffer the sting of a thousand fire ants on my eyeballs than look at your face another minute.”