Good Girl, Dead Girl (Valencia Lamb Book 1), page 16
Sloppily, Leif cuts to one side to try to get a look, but Rock shifts, blocking me from view. Suddenly, I’m so grateful for Rock, despite the fact that he’s helping me under duress. He made it crystal clear he thought this was a stupid idea, but he brought me to the auto shop anyway. Now he’s shielding me from his brother. The lengths this boy will go to to keep me from showing the sheriff that video are surprisingly far.
I should probably help him out, so I volunteer in a high-pitched voice, “Nobody. Just a friend.”
“Just a friend, huh?” Leif moves again, but Rock rotates, hands moving to my waist to keep me protected behind him. I stumble at the surprise, throwing my arms around his waist to avoid falling on my butt.
Rock sucks in his stomach when my grasping palms land on his abs. He’s probably regretting helping me right about now. I cringe but don’t move an inch, because if I do, Leif will see me and this will get a whole lot messier. When I envisioned breaking into the auto shop, I did not imagine myself plastered to Rock’s backside. I bury my face in the worn tee to stave off the flush creeping up my neck. Warmth comes off Rock in waves, doing nothing to help my overheating skin.
Leif’s grin is evident in his slurred voice. “You two look cozy. Janice know you’ve got a new piece?”
I roll my eyes instinctively, even though neither of them can see my face. My mouth opens to argue. Rock’s hands tighten on my sides. “Naw.”
“You’re really not gonna let me see your girl, hey? Gotta keep her a secret?”
“Something like that.”
Leif laughs, too loud.
My skin crawls, my forehead pressing between Rock’s shoulder blades.
“Cool, cool. I’ll go.” Leif mutters something about no glove, no love that makes my hands tighten on Rock to keep from whirling past him and spouting off.
“Leif.” Rock’s single-word admonition is rough and reprimanding, but it doesn’t stop his brother’s drunk butt from cackling all the way down the stairs. The back door opens and shuts, and then the shop falls quiet.
Extricating myself from Rock’s hold, I swing around to face him. “Your brother is gross.”
“Yeah.” Scratching at his stomach, he asks, “You need to look around anymore?”
My focus zeroes in on the cell phone I hid in my pants, its plastic case sticky against my overheated skin. I could tell Rock I found it. He snuck me in here and protected me from Leif, sure. But what will he do if I show him evidence Leif was with Gracia before she was killed? The guy was hiding Gracia’s cell phone, which begs the question: what else is Leif hiding? And I don’t know how far I can push Rock, even holding the video over his head. So I feint. “No, we already looked everywhere. There’s nothing here. Sorry you snuck me in for nothing.”
His body relaxes. “Now we know.”
“I guess so.” Gracia was with Leif the night she was murdered. He had possession of her cell phone, which the department noted as missing. Leif’s name is the first and only one on my suspect list.
I said I was just going to finish Gracia’s research, but what if I could do more? Like solve her murder?
Rock hangs back, letting me lead the way down the stairs, closing the doors and locking up after us. Leif left the chain on the back gate unlocked on his way out, so we slide through. I stop on the sidewalk. Tilting my head back, I take in the night sky, my mind racing. I can’t wait to get home and dig into Gracia’s cell phone. There has to be information on there. More about what she was working on with Dad. Or maybe even more photos of that night, before she died.
Did Leif Agani kill Gracia? Based on the lovely conversation I had with him and the other guys who work in the shop, I could see it. Little bird.
I’m so engrossed in my own thoughts I don’t notice Rock shifting closer until his shoulder bumps mine. Blinking, I turn my gaze on him. “What was that for?”
“Looked like you were somewhere else. Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”
We’re quiet on the walk from the auto shop to my car a couple blocks away. Rock’s thumbs stay tucked in his pockets. The ruined leather jacket is nowhere. He must have discarded it at the shop.
We slow as we approach Dad’s Corvette. Rock runs a hand along the line of the trunk and over its roof. “Thought I told you not to drive this for a while?” He whistles. “This car. I wanted it whenever I saw him driving around town. Love to get my hands on it sometime.”
“No can do, but if it ever gives me trouble, I’ll let you know.”
Rock’s chin lifts.
Something occurs to me, and I have to ask. “Where’d you get the money when you told your brother you sold my car?”
He shrugs. Clearly not going to divulge his secrets.
Unlocking the car, I settle into the seat. Rock shuts the door, surprising me into meeting his eyes through the rolled down window. Bracing his forearms on the sill, he leans inside. His grin is cocky in the dark. “Try not to let the thought of being pressed up against me keep you up tonight.”
An embarrassed laugh bursts between my lips. “You wish.”
“Just saying.” Straightening, he taps the car’s roof. “Drive safe. And V? You’re not nobody.”
My pulse skitters in my throat. I don’t know what the hell to do with that, so I drive away without saying anything at all.
Burning a Couple Bridges
Gracia’s phone lights up to charge as soon as I plug it in. That’s after ordering the right cord and waiting a couple days for it to arrive at the house.
The phone has been charging for a while and finally has enough juice that I can play with it for a few minutes. Shaking out my hands to rid excess energy, I swipe the device off my nightstand and unlock it. Passcode screen. One time when we were hanging out, Gracia caught me staring when she logged into her phone. I told her I was zoning out and hadn’t seen her passcode.
That was a lie.
I tap the numbers in, giddy at the promise of poking through the phone. There have to be clues in there about what might have gotten Gracia killed. But instead of welcoming me inside the electronic gate, the phone vibrates angrily. Frowning, I type in the code again. More angry buzzing.
I sink down onto the edge of my bed, tossing the phone in the air and catching it in one hand. Sneaky girl. A grudging smile hits my lips. Obviously, this makes my quest for answers more difficult, but it also means Gracia wasn’t as naive as I thought. Which makes me even more curious about what she found that was worth killing over.
I thought it would be easy to access her phone and dig through the digital footprint left behind, but she has bequeathed me a challenge from beyond the grave. Setting the phone down on top of my most recent read, I tap my chin with my fingers.
Destin doesn’t know the code. Humming, I stand. Pace to the window. Outside, the leaves on the big oak tree in our yard are shifting from summer green to fall gold. A few have fallen, littering the ground with bright pops of yellow. I pace back to the desk.
A glance at my cell makes me scurry to the bathroom. I need to hurry or I’ll be late meeting Portia and Destin at the beach.
I obsess over Gracia’s phone as I drive. The beach parking lot is only half full due to the time of year, and I climb out of the car in my sweats and a hoodie. A gale wind makes me pull the strings to tighten the hood.
I almost run smack into Portia in the middle of the parking lot. She drags me to a slot between the cars, haranguing me about how dangerous it is to daydream in the middle of the road. “You in there? Because it seems like you’re completely somewhere else today. All week, actually. What’s going on in that head of yours?”
I hold my beach bag closer like a shield. “Nothing. Tired. Lots of late nights studying for midterms, you know?”
Portia’s hands remain on her hips, her gaze sharp.
A car with a couple surfboards tied to the roof drifts closer. “You guys leaving?” the driver asks out the window.
Portia shakes her head, waving him away, her attention locked on me.
I lift my bag and unzip the small front pouch. “If I show you this, you can’t tell anyone okay? It has to stay between us. Not even Destin.” I’ve noticed how much closer they’ve gotten lately. We were always pals, the three of us, but in the past few weeks it’s like they’ve slowly been inching closer and closer. It’s like they… No, that’s ridiculous. If Portia had romantic feelings for Des, she’d tell me. He would, too.
I would know.
“You have my word,” she swears
Opening my bag wider, I uncover the phone, my eyes flicking up to Portia’s face.
The stunned expression in her wide eyes makes it clear she knows what she’s looking at. “Where--” she pulls me further in between the cars to avoid a pair of boogie boarders. “Where did you get that?”
I stare her down, the coastal wind tearing at my sleeves. “Not a word to Des?”
She crosses her heart and hopes to die.
“Rock helped me break into Agani Auto the other night, so I could search through Leif’s stuff. I think he was the guy in the resort video, which means he was with her that night. I didn’t tell you that part. And I found this in his dresser.”
The wind-slapped flush siphons from Portia’s face. “You didn’t tell me a lot of things,” she murmurs.
Turquoise waves lap at the shore before retreating into the waiting arms of the ocean. Seagulls float on the wind, looking for a late-evening snack before they return to their nests. A cold draft off the water lifts the hair around my face, tickling my nose. I tuck the loose strands into my hood. I’ve got my beach blanket wrapped around me like a human taquito, but I’m still shivering. “Whose idea was it to come out here again?”
The beach is mostly empty swaths of sand, dotted with huddles of people at each of the fire pits. I scoot closer to our fire, wishing we’d brought more than a couple of logs to burn. After the initial flare of heat, the flames died down. A tiny orange flicker dances between the charred wood. Soon the sun will set and our fire will die. Then it’ll be truly freezing on the sand.
Destin grins at me over his surfboard. “Aww, Val, it’s not that bad, is it? Plus, you haven’t seen me and Bert’s moves in a long ass time. Portia comes out all the time.”
“Portia’s vampire blood makes her impervious to the cold.”
Beside me, Portia laughs, stretching her bare legs into the cold sand until her toes are buried.
“Seriously, how are you not freezing right now?”
My bestie shrugs. “You’re right; vampire blood. The reason I’m obsessed with Shakespeare is because I’m secretly three hundred years old, and his former lover.”
Bert sits near my foot, watching as Destin zips up his wetsuit. I debate grabbing Bert’s little furry body to cuddle, but the dog’s tail is wagging a mile a minute. Little guy is whining to be put on Destin’s surfboard. “Ugh, it’s cold.”
“Put my coat on over yours, you wuss.” Pulling his vivid blue fleece out of the pile of his clothes, Destin tosses it to me
Grumbling about how sandy it is, I pull it over my head.
Portia snickers. “You look like a blue marshmallow.”
“I’ve peaked. Now I can die happy.”
Destin’s mouth curls up as he waxes his surfboard. But he only has eyes for the sea. If I believed in reincarnation, I’d think that boy was for sure a sea turtle in his last life. Or maybe an otter.
My mind turns to Portia’s hot tub confession about the night Gracia died. How she spent that entire night consoling Destin while his heart shattered at his girlfriend’s betrayal. I follow that line of questioning, wondering how long after the video was publicized that he made the connection between Gracia’s death and the fact that she was with another guy that night. Leif was the last one to see her alive.
I have to know. “Hey, Des? Can we talk?”
“Can’t it wait?” Portia interjects. “The waves are looking great.”
Des pulls an elastic headband out of his bag and puts it on to keep his bangs out of his face while he’s in the water. “It’s okay. The waves will wait a few minutes.”
“So, that night. Tell me about it.”
Destin eyes a large waves as it crests over the sand, and retreats.
Portia doesn’t wait for him. “I already told you we were there getting--”
“No offense, Porsh, but I already got your story. I’d like to hear the rest of his.” I don’t mean to be sharp with her, but it comes out that way. I blame the fact that my face is frozen from the icy mineral-laden wind off the water, and my butt is numb in the sand.
Portia’s body tenses, but she doesn’t retort.
Standing up his surfboard in the sand with a practiced jab, Destin plops down across from me, creating a triangle between the three of us. One hand scratches Bert’s neck rolls absently. “Before it happened, Gracia had been acting off. Hiding her phone when it rang, that kind of thing. I told you she would do that when she was working on a story, but this felt different. Once or twice I caught her smiling at it. When I saw that, I think I knew, somewhere deep down.”
Destin rubs at his chest with one hand, eyes trained on the sea. “It got to where I had had enough, so I worked myself up to go to her house and ask her what was going on. Portia, here, saved me.” He squeezes her shoulder, and she gives him a wan smile. “She talked me into going for smoothies instead. So we go to the casino, and that’s when I see her, cuddled up to your dad in his car.” He grimaces. “Haven’t craved a smoothie since.”
Portia leans closer to him, wrapping an arm around his waist in comfort.
“Then what happened?” I prompt him.
Dropping his head, he scrubs at his salt-spray hair. “Went to Portia’s. I think I crashed around 1 and slept all night. Didn’t realize something was wrong until I got home the next morning and plugged in my phone. There were so many missed calls on it, from. . . Gracia’s folks, and mine.”
I nod along, body taut, trying to listen in the same manner my dad does. When someone talks to him, it’s as if they’re the only person in my dad’s world. He has a singular focus that makes him a good dad and a good sheriff. He notices details other people would breeze past. The ache for my father reopens in my belly, making me curl inward on myself, tucking my knees under Destin’s jacket and wrapping my arms around my legs.
Running a hand through the cool sand, I ask, “You talked to McCandles about what you saw?”
Destin gives me a look, as if to say, Not an idiot, remember? ‘Course I did.
“What did he say?”
Our boy blows a long breath out through beeswax-coated lips. “He thanked me for coming forward and assured me he’d do everything in his power to make sure Gracia’s killer saw justice.”
“That’s it? Nothing else?” I ask, quieter. It physically hurts that my friends knew all along that my dad was there that night, with Gracia, and didn’t tell me.
Portia’s hand makes a wide bow in the sand. Her eyes refuse to meet mine. “You know that photo of Gracia and your dad in his Bronco?”
My mouth thins. “Yeah.”
She blows out a breath. “I took it, and I sent it to Janice. I didn’t know how to tell you we’d seen them, and you were so closed off…”
“So you thought it would be better to let Janice crap all over me?”
Portia buries her hands in her beach towel. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Glowing burnished orange by the waning sun, Destin fidgets with his wetsuit sleeve. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, V, but you play it pretty close to the vest. You’re a lot like Sheriff McCandles in that way, actually.”
I roll my eyes, defensive. “Now you’re saying I’m like a middle-aged man? Wow, that’s great. Good thing I wore sunscreen so I don’t get even more wrinkles. I just, I don’t get why you didn’t tell me any of this.” My voice almost breaks. Unfolding one arm, I brush the sand off my legs.
“You were a ghost,” Portia says. “After your dad left, you shut us out completely, which I get because you and your dad were close, but it really sucked.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t shut you out. We hung out. You guys were there, remember that time I braided Destin’s hair?”
Portia shakes her head right back, her nose and cheeks bright red. “No, your body was there. You were someplace else. We had no idea how to reach you, so we stopped trying. You didn’t try either, Val.”
Frustration bubbles up inside. Why is she trying to put a spin on what happened? “That is not true. Don’t make this a big thing.”
“It IS a big thing,” Portia insists, crying now. “You never once asked Destin how he was doing with everything, either. We needed you, but you might as well have been gone, too.”
My throat constricts, choking down any words to explain my behavior during that time. The absence of my dad burned away everything else. Seeing his Corvette abandoned in the driveway was blinding. His chair at the dinner table, empty. His office door closed to me like never before.
“What did you expect me to do?” My eyes tear, but I bite my tongue to hold them back.
Portia wipes her eyes with a sleeve. “We just wanted you to act like you weren’t the only one who lost something that night!”
Destin’s hands reach for her. “Portia, maybe let’s--”
She cuts him off with a finger aimed at me. “No. It’s been long enough, and I’m done sweeping it under the rug. You and me were hurting too, and she was nowhere. Val, you were grieving, but so was Des. So was I. You never even asked if we were okay. Or how we were coping. And you’re surprised we didn’t tell you stuff?”
Anger and pain fill my chest, leaving no room for anything else. “That’s not fair. My dad was missing. He still is. There’s been no trace of where he went. How would you feel if it was your dad?”
Portia stands up, jaw clenched. “How would you feel if the person you loved was murdered, and your best friend said nothing?” Her words hit my chest like bullets piercing an armored vest. I rock back on my tailbone, sand sliding off my feet. My blood runs hot through my veins, raring for a fight. All of my frustration with the interim sheriff, my mom, the nasty rumors, Rock, Janice. Everything boils over, making me shoot up. Needles prickle along the backs of my legs.
