Tommie laughed. “Touché.”
They continued to tease until it was time to go. An early day for everyone, for once, with the sun still out at four o’clock. Stella walked out first and came right back inside. She didn’t look pleased. “Guys, something you need to see.”
They followed her outside to the back and saw someone had spray-painted a lot of nasty names over the block cement wall,Bitchand the C-word being the nicer ones used. But not to leave anyone out who worked in the place, the artist had managed to throw in racial slurs on African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Italians, though Rena wasn’t sure who that had been aimed at since their token white girl, Nicky, was Scottish.
“Motherfuckers,” Stella spat. She went off in Spanish and dialed her brother before Rena could tell her not to.
Knowing Lou would tell Axel, she grabbed her phone, took a picture of the graffiti, which covered half the brick wall, and dialed her man.
“Rena,Liebling. How are you?”
“I have a small problem.”
“What’s wrong?” He sounded serious, probably having heard the waver in her voice.
As she told him, she grew more angry than afraid. “I bet it’s Fletcher’s guys. Who else would it be?”
“I’ll be right there,” he said and hung up.
“Axel’s coming over.”
“So is Lou,” Stella said. “But then, he’s working with Heller, so that’s kind of a no-brainer.”
Tommie and Nicky stared at the wall in shock until Tommie recovered enough to say, “They spelledpussie-bitchwrong. It’s notpussywithie, it’s with ay.”
“And it’s not really a word, even though they used a hyphen,” Nicky added. “Pussyandbitchshould not be used together. Nowdumb bitchorpussy-whippedwould make more sense. But then that could imply we were whipping people with our vaginas, so maybe not.”
“Good point.” It was either laugh or cry, and Rena chose to see the humor in the situation. She was laughing by the time Axel showed up.
He pulled into the back, looked at the wall, and shook his head. “They spelledpussywrong.”
The girls burst into laughter. His eyes crinkled, but he didn’t smile. Instead he walked up to the wall and touched the paint. When some of the paint came off, he took heavy equipment out of the back of his truck along with a hose and a bottle of something.
“Can you hook this up for me?” He handed a hose and cord to Rena.
“What is it?”
“Pressure washer. I have graffiti remover too. When I’m done using the pressure washer to clean this, I’m going to find Fletcher and use it on him.”
Lou pulled up with Smitty in his car. “We left Mateo and Rylan to finish the Honda,” he told Axel as the pair got out. He stared at the wall, and his scowl grew. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
Smitty shook his head. “Gotta be Fletcher’s guys.”
“Get in line,” Stella told Lou with a mean smile. “Heller’s first.”
“Hey,” Rena barked. “This is my place. Maybe I want to be the one to kick his butt.” If it was even him. They’d all just assumed. But who else would it be?
Axel kissed her on the head—the stupid, patronizing man—and got to work.
“Axel, I can handle this.”
“You can. I am going to.”
She glared at him. He ignored her and started cleaning the wall.
Rena and the girls went back inside. “He’s humoring me.”
“He can humor me any day of the week,” Nicky muttered.
