Delia giggled maniacally as Cam attempted to lower the hydraulics. The car dipped and bobbed erratically as he fiddled with buttons on the dashboard. The car dropped with one final chassis-shaking bounce, then the stereo fell abruptly silent as the engine cut off.
My ears were still ringing when Cam opened his door and got out. He held Arnold in one arm and splayed the other wide, showcasing the car. “Gorgeous, am I right? Your boyfriend gave me a killer price on the paint job. But the mods cleaned me out. Cost me the last of my reward money, but it was totally worth it. Right, Mrs. H?” He took off his rhinestone sunglasses and placed them gently on her nose, positioning them over her own wire-rimmed spectacles as she came over to inspect the car.
“I like the color,” she said, looking genuinely pleased.
Cam put a hand to his chest and let out a breath. “I wasn’t sure about it at first—you know, if it would attract the ladies—but Javi really sold me on it. He said it projects the message that I’m confident in my masculinity.”
“An eighteen-foot eggplant will do that,” Vero said.
“How about we all take it out for a cruise and get some ice cream?” Cam asked. “The back seat is huge. We can all go! It’ll be like a party on wheels.”
The kids cheered. Cam looked at me expectantly. Delia pulled on my pant leg. “Can we please go for a ride in Cam’s pretty purple car?”
“Ithink that’s a lovely idea.” Mrs. Haggerty’s tone suggested she expected me to say no.
I was probably going to regret this. Cam’s last party involved dead loan sharks and strippers. “Only to the drive-through at the end of the street,” I said with a pointed look at Cam. “And they have to use their car seats.”
Cam held up three fingers in a Scout Promise. The children clambered into the open door of the car. Delia gripped the enormous steering wheel and pretended to drive while Zach poked the disco ball, making the glittery lights swirl around the ceiling.
I pulled Cam aside, out of earshot of Mrs. Haggerty as she buckled herself into the passenger seat.
“What’s up, Mrs. D?”
“I need to borrow Arnold Schwarzenegger for a few hours.”
Cam tucked the dog snugly under his arm. “What for?”
I was afraid he was going to ask me that. “I’m going to visit an old friend. She’s very fond of dogs. I thought she’d like to meet him.” That middle part was true. Patricia Mickler was very fond of dogs. It wasmeshe never wanted to see again. Cam chewed his lip as he stroked Arnold’s head. “We’ll only be gone a few hours,” I assured him. “Vero and I will take very good care of him.”
Cam looked over his shoulder at my children as Vero buckled each of them into their car seats. “I guess that’d be okay,” he said, passing me the dog. “But Arnold needs to be walked every hour or he’ll piss on the floor. And don’t let him ride in the back seat. It makes him carsick. He starts drooling right before he—”
“Got it,” I said, sparing myself the details. I’d endured far worse with Kevin Bacon.
I gave Cam a few twenties to buy everyone some ice cream and reminded him to keep his music at a reasonable volume as he got into the car. “And no explicit lyrics, or the kids will repeat them.”
“Cool,” he said, buckling himself in. I wasn’t sure if he meant hewas cool with the request or he thought it would be cool to test it. It was too late to ask him as I watched them drive off.
Vero disappeared inside the house. She came out a moment later, holding a baseball cap and a pair of dark sunglasses. “You sure about this?”
I handed the dog to Vero and passed her his leash. “Not at all.”
Three hours had passed since we’d parked behind the animal shelter, and Vero and I had almost given up. “That’s her,” I said, ducking lower in the driver’s seat.
We watched from my minivan as Patricia Mickler got out of a familiar brown station wagon and approached the employee door. Her head was down as she dug in her purse for her key card, but she wasn’t hard to recognize. She hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d seen her four months ago. She had the same mousy brown hair, pulled back in a casual ponytail, and wore the same jeans and sweatshirt matted in dog and cat hair. She had a bit more color in her cheeks after her long trip to the Caribbean with her boyfriend, and maybe a little more spring in her step, but she was still the same meek, unassuming woman who had propositioned me to murder her husband by slipping a note under my plate in a crowded Panera dining room last fall.
According to Patricia’s social media, she had only returned to the country a few weeks ago. She probably figured it was safe to come home, now that the Russian mobster who had employed her husband was no longer a threat to her.
“Maybe we should just wait until she gets off work,” Vero suggested, rolling up our empty fast-food bag and tossing it in the seat behind her. “We can follow her back to her place and talk to her there.”
We’d been sitting here for hours waiting for her to show up. My fuel light was on empty, Cam’s dog had eaten most of our french fries, and my bladder was full. Unlike Arnold, I couldn’t take a leak in the narrow strip of grass beside the parking lot. That would definitely turn heads.
“Traffic is too heavy. We’d probably lose her. I’ll go inside and see if she’s willing to talk.” I tucked my hair up into my baseball cap, put on my sunglasses, and put Arnold under my arm. I gave Vero my keys and got out of the van, following the sidewalk around the building to the main entrance at the front.
With my cap pulled low, I approached the check-in desk and signed in using a fake name. They handed me a form on a clipboard, inquiring about the purpose of my visit. “I’m surrendering a pet,” I said, holding Arnold up to the counter. “He pees on the carpet. I can’t keep him anymore.”
I held my breath, hoping I had correctly predicted what might happen next. That they would want one of their volunteers to meet with me first, to talk about support and resources, to persuade me to keep the dog before allowing me to walk out.
The woman behind the counter offered me a polite but unconvincing smile. “Before you go and leave the little guy with us, we’ll just ask you to meet with one of our staff. They’ll have some questions about your dog that will help us rehome him.”
