Chapter 1
“I’m going kill that damn trash panda.”
The dumb animal chittered away at her from the high branch of the southern pine tree it had run up, still holding her keys.
Zoe Acevedo tromped around the side of the house, kicking at pine cones in her path. “I’m going to skin it and make a nice, fuzzy hat. Maybe Elba has room on her fancy cafe menu for raccoon stew.”
She pulled her thick, curly hair—made even curlier by North Carolina’s late summer humidity—back and twisted it up off her nape. The teeth had broken off the last of her clips and she hadn’t had a chance to get more so she didn’t have anything to keep it up. Letting it fall back down, she leaned into the open driver side window of her Honda CR-V and grabbed her cell phone from the console. Pulling up the contacts, she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply through her nose, exhaled slowly through her mouth, prayed for inner peace, and called her mother.
She answered on the first ring. “Onde tu está?”
“Olá, mamãe. The drive was fine. Thank you for asking.”
“I talked to you an hour ago, why wouldn’t the drive have been fine? Are you at the house?”
Zoe sighed. “Sim, I’m at the house. Where do you keep the hide-a-key?”
She stooped in front of the door and lifted the mat—nothing there. No flower pots or weird rocks around the porch either.
“Why do you need the hide-a-key? What’s wrong with the keys I gave you?”
Zoe hung her head and pressed the palm of her hand against her eye socket. “A raccoon took my keys.”
It sounded even more ridiculous saying it out loud.
“Que?”
“A raccoon. Fuzzy, gray animal. Looks like it’s wearing a mask.”
“I know what a raccoon is. How did it steal your keys?”
This was humiliating. “I unloaded my suitcases by the door and set the keys on top. I went to get a couple of boxes from the back of my car and when I turned around, the damn thing had my keys in his paws. When I shouted, he ran around the back of the house and up a tree.”
Walking around the house while explaining the situation to her mother, she glared up into the tree the raccoon had climbed.
He was gone.
She kicked around the base of the tree, hoping the flea-ridden thief had dropped them. No such luck. Thankfully, it was only the house keys and not her car keys.
Her mother tsk-ed in her ear. “The neighbor has it,querida.”
Zoe blew out a breath. “Which neighbor? Please don’t tell me it’s old lady Wilson.”
“Zoe Mariana Olivera Acevedo, don’t be disrespectful to your elders.”
“Sim, mamãe.” Zoe rolled her eyes. Old lady Wilson had been old and mean when she’d been in high school. There was no telling how much worse she was now.
“Tim has the key,” her mother said.
“Who is Tim?”
“The police officer that moved next door a few years ago. I told you about him. He helped us when we had those horrible renters and your father had to evict them.”
A vague memory surfaced of her mother telling her about that, but her mother was always telling her stories about people she didn’t know, so she didn’t always pay attention.
One of the many complaints her mother voiced. Along with not providing her with any grandchildren while Zoe’d had the chance and then divorcing her cheating ex, thereby ensuring her mother would never get any grandchildren from her. Because the five her brother and sister had supplied weren’t enough.
“I’m so happy you’re going to be living in the house and we won’t have to worry about that anymore. Plus there’s all the money we’ll save by not having to pay a property manager.”
