“We don’t have all the puzzle pieces.” Josie rubs her stomach. “All of this investigating is actually making me hungry. Let’s get a snack before we go back home.”
She leads me to a café that serves smoothies, acai bowls, and avocado toast. I must’ve made a face because she laughs. “Avocados are very good for diabetes. High fiber, low carbs.”
“If you say so.” I follow her inside, skepticism in my voice.
“Have you ever had one?”
When I don’t answer, she just laughs. The café is clearly geared to our age. There are only a couple of tables, and the rest of the seating is low benches and bean bags. There’s a pool table and pinball machine in the back where a bunch of students are clustered around.
“Avocado toast isn’t the main attraction here, is it?”
“Nope.” She grins. “But I wasn’t lying when I said it was good for me. I’ll order you one too so next time when you complain, it’ll be based on experience.”
If me eating avocado toast makes Josie smile like this, I’ll eat a bushel a day. We get our order and plop down in an oversized bean bag. The way it’s made forces Josie to be practically in my lap. I’m getting one of these for every room of her house and my apartment.
The avocado toast isn’t bad, but it’s not filling either. I gulp mine down in three bites while Josie nibbles on hers. She doesn’t talk, so I keep my mouth shut, too. Soon enough I start to hear the conversations around us.
“Did you hear that some kid from Central Academy is missing?”
“Dead for sure. No one is gone for an entire week unless they’ve run away or they’re dead.”
“He was on the basketball team.”
“Everyone says they were fixing games.”
“For who, though? Like who is betting on high school games?”
“People bet on everything. I saw someone made twenty grand on Reading’s backup quarterback to score a touchdown. The odds were like two thousand to one.”
“Twenty grand? It would have been twenty thousand to one.”
“Whatever. Do I look like I bet?” This comes from a redhead who scowls at her male friend.
The guy, who is clearly into her, shrinks back. “You were talking like you did,” he mumbles into his smoothie straw.
“Well, I don’t. Anyway, if you don’t pay, the Pipefitters send someone to beat you up.”
“What kind of fan fiction are you reading?” This guy is not getting laid anytime soon.
“It’s not fan fiction, asshole. I saw that kid take money from a gangbanger with the pipe tattoo on his arm right outside the Crocker courts. Everyone knows what that tattoo symbolizes. Or everyone with a brain.” The redhead jumps off her stool and grabs her drink cup. “See you never.”
“Wait.” The guy scrambles to his feet. “I was just kidding.”
But the girl has no interest in that.
“We’re not following her?”
“No. Didn’t you hear what she said? The Crocker courts. Do you think all those people lied to us?”
“All of them, no. But maybe the little weasel.” I rub my knuckles. I know exactly how to wring out some truths from that prick, though.
“None of that.” Josie covers my hand with her own. “We’re going back to Crocker courts and stake it out until we watch a money exchange. Then we follow the Pipefitter?—”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll support a lot of things for you, Josie, including going to the pool hall or Crocker courts, but I can’t let you follow a Pipefitter around. You might as well ask me to cut off my balls and hang them like a wind chime in front of the school. No self-respecting man puts his woman in that kind of danger.”
