“If you love it…” she said.
“It’s… hard, okay? Not like ditch-digging or coal-mining or whatever but… writing my own songs costs me something I don’t always have. I want them to begood, not just okay. Good. The best. I want someone to hear one of my songs and say that’s my favorite. You know? Like, that song saved my life—and mean it. That song reminded me of the best time of my life or that song got me through the toughest time—” I swallowed hard. “There are so many good songs, and I don’t know if mine are,” I said. “If they’re good. Or if they’re the right kind of songs, or if I’m the right kind of singer.”
Sicily lifted her head, as though she’d heard a note she recognized.
There was pounding at the back door. I handed her the broom and went to get it.
Yeah, don’t worry. I used the peephole.
It was Kyler, the delivery guy from the beer distributor. I opened the door.
“Oh, good, you’re already in,” Kyler said, turning to his cart and wheeling it backward with athunkover the raised threshold. Bottles rattled dangerously in their cases. “We just got in some things Alex said he wanted for the holidays so I thought I’d drop them by while I was in your radius. Took a chance.”
I held the door for him, then went ahead and opened the fire door to the pub, but something was niggling deep in my brain and I wasn’t sure what it was.
Sicily was standing down at the end of the hallway. Kyler pulled up when he saw her. “Hey, there,” he said.
“Um,” she said. “Hi. There.”
“Kyler, this is my, uh, sister,” I said. “Apparently.”
“Sisters are the best,” he said, grinning big. “I’ve got two. What’s your name?”
“Sicily,” she said in a strangled voice, her peaches-and-cream complexion going full tomato. I was staring at her, wondering what it was I couldn’t quite remember.
“My favorite island,” Kyler said. “You ever seenThe Godfather?Part Two?”
Then I had it. Sicily had already been eyeballing Kyler, in the security video from the day Marisa was here and then, poof, gone.
“Ky,” I said. “Why didn’t you use the front door?”
“What do you mean?” he said. He rolled his cart to the door of the storeroom and paused. “I always use the alley. That’s what she’s for.”
Sicily and I looked at each other. Right.
“But the other day—” Sicily started.
“Oh,thisweek? That’s the thing,” he said. “Wednesday, there was a truck hotboxing the alley. Couldn’t get in or out, so I had to improvise. Alex’s not pissed at me, is he?”
The truck in the alley.
I reassured him no one was upset with him. “Do you remember what kind of truck it was? Anything at all?”
He screwed up his face. “Standard city driver type of ride. P and D, white.” He looked at Sicily. “Pickup and delivery,” he said, a bit importantly, then turned back to me. “No company logo that I saw. Probably a twenty-footer. Oh, and they had a janky spare slapped on the front driver side. They’re definitely gonna throw off their suspension.”
Sicily looked at me. “Is it important? Do you think they know where Mom is?”
“No,” I said.
But the timing was interesting. If I was right about the comings and goings of the alley that night, the drivers of that truck might know something about how Joey had ended up dead.
21
I left Kyler to store away the beer he’d brought and marched back to the alley door, Sicily trailing along behind.
“What’s going on?” Sicily said. “Dahlia? Do you think—”
My pounding on the door to the space next door shut her up. For a second.
