I look up at the sky. Bright blue with the barest wisp of a fluffy, white cloud made blinding by the brightness of the sun. Epic.
“Why is the parrot here?” I ask, pointing at the cage.
“Hot wench!” Gio barks, following it up with a wolf whistle. “Hot wench!”
Drake holds his fist against his chin and rubs his thumb over his mouth. His smiling mouth.
Definitely no blow jobs for him.
“Nonna. The parrot. Please stop him,” I plead.
“I need-a you to look-a after him-a!”
“Wha—no! I’m not looking after that…that…creature!”
She gasps, flattening a hand against her chest. “That creature is my Gio!” she fires off in indignant Italian, her eyes flaring with offense. “He is my baby!”
“Yeah, well, I hate it,” I tell her, glaring at the bird.
“Hot wench!” he squawks, flapping his bright-green wings.
“Shit bird,” I fire back, pointing at him. “I told you, you little critter, that you’re never getting this ass, didn’t I?”
He stares at me, blinking a beady, black eye. He responds with a high-pitched wolf whistle that makes Drake wince.
“Jesus, Nonna. Do you have any control over him?” He sticks his finger in his ear and wiggles it. His finger. Not his ear. “Or does he come with a volume control? Perhaps a mute button?”
“If we could install mute buttons, my whole family would have one,” I point out. “Especially Nonna.”
Another gasp. Lord, you’d think I just told her she was going to burn in hell.
I might if she doesn’t get that bird away from me.
“Your mamma is-a being-a cruel to-a my Gio,” Nonna sniffs.
“Can’t imagine why,” I drawl.
“It is-a not fair!”
“Neither is it fair for Gio to call her a cazzo wench whenever she walks in the room. Damn, the thing calls me a hot wench and I can’t stand him.”
“Noella,” she pleads.
“No, Nonna. I refuse to look after him. You knew Mom would go crazy and I bet that’s why you got the damn bird. You knew it’d piss her off.”
Nonna doesn’t reply. She pouts the way Silvio and Aria do when Mom puts the cookie tin somewhere they can’t reach.
“No,” I say to her, waggling my finger in her face. “The creature terrorizes me because it has some freaky backwards-bestiality crush on me. Not happening. Take it home or train it.”
Nonna turns her puppy-dog eyes toward Drake.
I spin around and glare at him. “You take that parrot and I swear to God we are breaking up right now.”
He steps back and holds his hands up. “I wasn’t going to. I was going to suggest she guilt-trips Devin into it as punishment for Amelia postponing the wedding, but hey…”
“You’re evil,” I breathe.
I secretly like it.
Nonna gasps yet again. Thankfully, this time, it’s full of happy shock instead of indignant fury.
“Drake! Drake!” She hobbles over, sets the cage on the floor, and reaches up on her tiptoes. She frames his face and smacks her lips against each of his cheeks, leaving traces of ruby-red lipstick blending into his dark stubble. “You-a fabulouso!” She rubs at the lipstick mark and continues in Italian. “You will make a great son-in-law! I can’t wait!”
“Nonna!” I growl.
She picks the cage up, blows me a kiss, then scuttles toward her car.
“Nonna!” I shout again. “Stop being presumptuous!”
Her eyes flash with laughter. Then she turns, and I hear her cackle as she straps Gio’s cage into the front seat. I dig my key from my purse, shove it into the lock, disable the alarm, and kick both of my shoes off. Leaving Drake in the hall, I run upstairs and into my bedroom. I select some cute floral ballet pumps and slip my feet in them before I head back downstairs.
Drake is still standing in the hallway, his hands shoved in his pockets, and he’s staring out the door. Nonna’s car rumbles down the street, and he slowly turns to face me.
“She knows I speak Italian, right?”
I sigh heavily, bending to grab my purse. “I think that’s the problem. She knows but pretends she doesn’t and gets to freak you out that way. Being a pain in the ass is her full-time job.”
I reset the alarm and Drake follows me outside. “She’s really going to take the parrot to Dev, isn’t she?”
“Unfortunately, you’ve given her three things.” I sigh. “One: she has a revenge plot against Amelia because she knows she hates the bird. Two: she has the baby—er, parrot-sitter she wants. And three: she has a blackmail plot for their wedding. They get married or the bird stays there.”
“Ah. I see.”
“You’re a terrible influence on her, Detective Nash. I’m not sure she needs someone like you.”
He winks, clicking the key fob and unlocking his car. “Come on. It was a joke.”
I lift my eyebrows. “No, it wasn’t. It was evil and you know it.”
He pauses. The grin that spreads slowly—and sexily—across his face is infectious, and before I know it, I’m grinning back.
“Don’t take offense at this,” he says, reaching behind me for my door handle, “but I need to be a little evil to deal with your family. For Catholics, you’re all kind of hellish.”
“I…cannot argue with that. Damn,” I mutter.
He laughs, kisses me, and opens the door. “Come on. Let’s go find Alistair Carpenter and listen to him deny sleeping with Dina White and give us bullshit alibis.”
“And then we can get coffee and cupcakes. Because cupcakes.”
He shuts my door then walks around the front of his truck, shaking his head.
We’ll get coffee and cupcakes. That’s his “yeah, whatever” face. I see it a lot.
I like that face. I get my own way.
The fair is kinda eerie when it’s empty. Well, when there aren’t a couple hundred people milling around it, that is. It’s not lunchtime yet, so the only people here are the travelers. It’s a better time to talk to them, without the distraction of customers and money to be made, but it’s also more dangerous.
If our theory is right about the killers being one of them—and between us all, we’re like ninety-nine point five percent sure it is—then we could do something silly like interview someone innocent and tip off someone guilty.
It’s just too damn quiet for this, but I know in my heart that Dina’s murder is connected to the others despite the severe difference in the way she died.
Which means that, in some way, Alistair is connected to all of this simply because of his potential relationship with Dina. One I want to know more about.
We find him helping a woman who looks like she could be his mom at a burger stand. His hair is tied back into a small bun, and he’s wiping the hot plate down.
Apparently, not all man buns are sexy.
“I’m all done with prep,” the woman says to him in that distinctive Louisiana drawl, wiping her hands as we approach. “You finish your cleanin’ and lock up when you’re done.”
“Sure thing, Mom.” He runs the cloth under the tap. “I got it.”
“Thanks, darlin’.” She unties her apron and disappears out of the side door.
We hesitate until she’s out of sight before approaching Alistair in the truck.
“Hey!” he says, his eyes landing on me. “You were here the other night, right?”
“Hey, Alistair.” I smile. “Do you have a couple minutes for a question or two?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. Just give me a sec.”
Drake leans into me. “I don’t understand his hair,” he murmurs. “Why is it in a bun?”
“Guys do that now,” I whisper back.
“Why not just cut it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a manual on men’s hairstyles.” I can barely keep my own damn hairstyle in check. “Shut up and let me handle this. He likes me.”
He laughs quietly then steps forward, his smirk smug. “Mr. Carpenter. I’m Detective Drake Nash from the Holly Woods Police Department. We have a couple of questions for you regarding your relationship with the late Dina White.”