“You do?” He looked psyched to hear it. “Oh, right. Well, I mean, of course you do. You’re psychic!”
“Not that kind of psychic,” I said. “Actually, I know you through a friend of yours. Hannah Snyder.”
Randy was a smooth one, all right. He didn’t quit pumping my hand. But I felt it grow a little cooler in mine. And he blinked, twice, hard, at the name.
Then he said, “Snyder? I don’t believe I know the name.”
“Oh, sure, you do, Randy,” I said in the same warm voice. “She’s the underage runaway you were stashing in Apartment Two-T over at the Fountain Bleu apartment complex by the hospital. I found her there myself earlier today.”
Randy dropped my hand. Like it was hot.
“I…I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you do, Randy,” I said. And wondered what I was doing. My job was done. Why wasn’t I riding off into the sunset?
But something in me just wouldn’t let go. It was the only part of me, I suspected, that hadn’t come back broken.
“Tell me something, Randy,” I said. “Just between you and me. How many girls have you got living rent-free there, anyway? Two? Three? Or are there more? And how do you keep them all from finding out about each other?”
“I really—” Randy was shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m afraid you do, Randy,” I said. “See, I know all about—”
“Hannah Snyder is a very disturbed girl,” Randy interrupted. “I’ll just say she lied to me about her age, if you try going to the cops. And that she came on to me.”
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Randy,” I said. “If a person eighteen years of age or older engages in sexual intercourse with a person sixteen years of age or younger, it’s a crime punishable in the state of Indiana by a fixed term of ten years with up to ten years added or four subtracted for aggravating and mitigating circumstances.”
Randy blinked at me. “Th-there’s no proof, though,” he stammered. “Th-that it’s me in the videos. You can’t p-prove it’s me.”
Wait. What?
I smiled at him. “Oh,” I said. “I think we can prove it’s you, all right.”
What was hetalking about?
“I—I have to go now,” Randy stammered. He’d gone as white as his dad’s model of Pine Heights Condos. Then he practically fell over himself in his haste to get away from me.
A few minutes later, Douglas and Tasha found me sitting by myself on one of the folding chairs, trying to remember my lines fromThe Lion and the Mouse and failing.
“Ready to go?” Douglas asked me. “Tash and I usually go out for a cup of decaf after meetings. Want to tag along?”
“No,” I said, standing up. “I thought I might go for a ride.”
“Oh,” Douglas said. But he was smiling. “Of course. You must really miss that, back in New York.”
“You have no idea,” I said. I wasn’t talking about the bike.
“Well, thanks for coming along,” Douglas said. “It was probably pretty boring for you, but, you know. I think it might have impressed a few people, seeing Lightning Girl sitting on our side.”
“Yeah,” Tasha said. “Randy Junior looked like he was about to barf after he got done talking to you.”
“Well, you know,” I said. “That’s what I bring to the table.”
“Shut up,” Douglas said.
But he was laughing.
It felt good, I was discovering, to hear Douglas laugh. It was a sound I could get used to.
Not that I intended to, though. I had done, I felt, enough damage for one evening. I headed back to the house…and to my bike.
Eleven
I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I just wasn’t. Thinking, I mean.
My bike just seemed to sort of drive itself to the Fountain Bleu Apartments. There was no conscious decision on my part to go to that part of town. It was as if I looked up, and I was there, pulling back into the same parking lot I’d vacated several hours earlier.
Only this time, there was something there that hadn’t been there before. And I don’t just mean a lot more cars, since most of the residents of the complex appeared to have gotten home from work, and were currently enjoying their evening repast and/or a situation comedy on a major network (some of them, possibly, might even have been enjoying the show purportedly about me. If they had cable, that is).
No, I was talking about one car in particular. And that was a newish black pickup parked well to the back of the lot, where it wouldn’t be noticeable, even though it happened to be in the exact spot I would have chosen, had I decided to perform any sort of recon on the place.
And since that’s exactly how I’d decided to spend my evening, this put something of a crimp in my plans.
Until I saw just who it was behind the pickup’s steering wheel.
That’s when I decided to tap on the driver’s-side window, having stashed my bike in the lot next door in an effort to remain unobtrusive.
Rob, startled, rolled down his window.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in some surprise.
But he couldn’t have been as surprised as I was. Because I could hear what he was listening to inside the pickup’s cab.
And it was Tchaikovsky.
“I thought I’d pay a call on the young lady living in One-S,” I said. Why was he listening to classical music? Did he evenlike classical music? I guess so. All this time, and I never even knew that about him. What else didn’t I know about him? “How about you?”
“I’m waiting for young Master Whitehead to get home,” Rob replied pleasantly. “After which point, I’m going to beat him senseless.”
“Hannah told you his full name?” I was surprised. I hadn’t thought she’d be so forthcoming with her half brother, who she must have suspected did not have Randy’s best intentions at heart.
“No,” he said. “I Googled who owns the Fountain Bleu apartment complex, and found a pic of Randy Junior. I was going to kick his ass tomorrow, after Hannah’s mom got here to pick her up. But Chick volunteered to keep an eye on her while I was gone, so I was able to change my plans.”
“You’re not going to let Hannah stay?” I asked.
Rob made an incredulous noise. “Are you kidding me? I’m clearly the last guy who should be raising a teenage girl. She snowed me as easily—well, as you used to snow your parents.”
I chose to ignore that.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked him. “You’re just going to wait until he pulls up, then have a blanket party?” I was referring to the age-old Hoosier tradition of throwing a blanket over a victim’s head, then beating him with a baseball bat, or bars of soap slipped into the end of a sock.
“No,” Rob said mildly. “I’m skipping the blanket. I was thinking I’d like to see his face as I grind it into the pavement.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, good luck with that. I just saw him at a city council meeting, where I told him I was onto him, so he’s probably either already been here to pick up his other girlfriend and left, or is going to stay far away from this place for the time being.”
Rob looked crushed. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not,” I said. “Sorry. But you can still make yourself useful.”
He lifted a quizzical brow. “Really. How?”
“Honk if the cops show up,” I said with a wink.
Then I turned to head towards the apartment complex.
As I’d expected, behind me, a car door opened, then slammed shut. A second later, Rob’s voice sounded just behind me.
“Mastriani,” he said, sounding suspicious. “What are you doing?”
“Oh,” I said with a shrug. “Randy mentioned something that made me want to come over here and check the place out. That’s all.”
“What do you mean, check the place out?” Rob demanded. It was quiet in the Fountain Bleu apartment complex. Except for the burbling of the fountain and the trill of crickets, that is. Even the swimming pool was empty. The only other sounds were our footsteps, as we headed towards Apartment 1S.