One thing people didn’t understand about gambling was you might have a winning day here and there, but the house always won. And if you broke the rules, you’d pay. I broke the rules. But it wasn’t about that right now. This was about Pelican Bay.
Strange and I went together like two peas in a pod, but something was extra strange about Pelican Bay. It was so normal-looking from the outside, but once you peeled back a layer by stepping inside the town bakery, the Norman Rockwell façade they tried to paint slipped away. My life may have been strange, but a whole town of people were off their rockers in Pelican Bay.
It turned out that the group of wannabe football players were the norm in town. Heck, from the way the townspeople talked about them, they were heroes. No one even looked at them askew as they stormed through the bakery like they owned the place. They just let a bunch of beefy FBI agents raid their kitchen.
Frankie crinkled a Post-it note and tossed it in the trash.
The detective who trailed the group never asked me a single question. If I even looked funny on the streets of Chicago, a cop hauled me in or pulled me over. They loved to force me to have a chat on the side of the road, therefore making me look suspicious. But here, I was involved in a full shoot-out in the middle of the street and no one blinked. Frankie’s men used a rocket launcher to destroy a van. No way had the men walked away from that without an incident, yet nobody even glanced in my direction.
I tapped my fingers against the desktop. Why did everything look so normal when it wasn’t?
They let me sit in the bakery and eat sweets.
More than once, I pinched my arm underneath the table to make sure I was still alive and not a ghost. It was the only explanation I had come up with for the fact the cops in this town ignored me.
It was weird.
Definitely Twilight Zone weird, but on the other hand, the pumpkin spice cupcakes were to die for.
Three hours after leaving the bakery, tucked back in Frankie’s office, I still had more questions than answers.
But as long as I wasn’t actually dead… I thumbed my nails on the inside of my elbow. When I first considered I died and Pelican Bay was hell—or heaven—it had been a joke, but the longer the situation continued, the more I wondered.
I shook my head, waving the thoughts from my mind. No, ghosts didn’t enjoy the flavor of a pumpkin spice cupcake.
“You are handling this exceptionally well,” Frankie said as he placed a large brown paper sack with the red dragon logo on the side at the edge of his desk.
I peered up from the computer screen, pretending to work as he unloaded container after container of white Chinese takeout boxes. “Am I?”
Did I look calm and collected? Inside, I was freaking out while simultaneously trying to talk myself out of the belief I was a ghost. I didn’t think that spelled good things for my mental health or therapy bills.
Frankie opened each of the containers and peeked inside, placing some on his side of the desk and others on mine. His lips pursed, and I figured he’d reconsidered his statement, but my hands were no longer shaking as I did my best to smile.
I grew up knowing what Westley did for a living, but in many ways he kept me sheltered. Yes, I’d helped sort drugs and handle money. I was even his favorite bookie, but I’d never been in a shoot-out while living in Chicago. I may have a family of criminals, but Westley did a good job keeping me, my mother, and his away from any real danger.
Frankie handed me a container of Chinese noodles. The smell of delicious MSG wafted from the white container of light golden noodles and pieces of chicken floating beside an array of vegetables.
I didn’t believe him when he said his silly small town had the best Chinese in the world. No one beat the Chinese restaurants of Chicago, but just from the smell alone, I wondered if he was right.
I sighed as Frankie handed me a pair of chopsticks and a plastic fork, choosing to take the fork. I had way too much stress in my life to use chopsticks the proper way. Hell, I could barely handle them when they had my full concentration. And I didn’t want to look stupid in front of Frankie even though I had a feeling he wouldn’t laugh.
I had a bottleneck of stress waiting to release. I may have looked like I was handling things well, but inside, I was more like a simmering volcano waiting for an eruption.
Frankie collected two containers—his choice smelled spicy—and took a seat behind his desk. The big wooden beast loomed between us, but his presence alone felt as if he was sitting right next to me. Frankie had that way about him. He filled the room, just by being in it.
He unwrapped his chopsticks—show off—and stirred half his white rice into the other container. “Someone led me to believe you’d be freaking out by now.”
I laughed, going for unaffected, but it sounded much more like a small child who’d heard they couldn’t have ice cream for dinner.
“Me? Freaking out? About what? The kidnapping, your house being shot up, or that it’s been six hours and you’ve somehow fixed all the damage to your house already?” My voice quivered at the end, and I slammed a piece of chicken in my mouth, chewing quickly to cover it.
I said the place was weird.
I had so many questions—ones I’d never ask, but that didn’t stop me from thinking them. We’d been at the bakery for a few hours, but as we drove back into Frankie’s garage, I didn’t see a single piece of evidence of the mayhem from the afternoon. All the van parts had been picked up, and even though I stared at his home, not even a piece of siding had a bullet hole in it.
How?
Did these things happen so often that Frankie had a crew available to repair the damage? I refused to ask him. Not only because I didn’t think he’d give me a straight answer, but I didn’t want him to know I found it strange. If he ever asked, I planned to tell him we fixed problems in Chicago within thirty minutes. “Get a pizza delivered and your house fixed in under an hour” was practically a slogan of the Chicago mob.
