Four

He just appeared in the middle of the crosswalk. He was bending down but looked up when I broke my no-cursing rule and loudly took the Lord’s name in vain. He was only about fifteen feet away, so I could tell it had been a minute since he’d owned a razor. Wisps of blond hair covered his cheeks. I pegged him for five foot seven, short enough to be an action star. His body type was “to be determined” because he was wearing some weird plastic one-piece outfit. Definitely a fashion don’t.

We stared at each other, me hoping this wouldn’t one day be the basis for some horror movie that spawned a plastic blood-spattered Halloween costume. He was either a serial killer or homeless. Maybe both.

He only stopped staring at me when he heard a car approach. It was moving as fast as you’d expect of a car hitting a stretch of street with no traffic lights or other vehicles. Neither of us moved, which was fine for me. I was on the sidewalk. He, however, was still in the middle of the street.

I was preparing to provide some insight along the lines of “Move, you idiot” when I was distracted by the sudden burst of light. The car’s headlights hit him, lighting him up like Times Square. His fashion no-no was actually a reflector suit. That explained his confidence.

Instead of slowing down, the driver blared on his horn. The homeless serial killer not only refused to budge, but the look on his face was lackadaisical, as if playing chicken with speeding cars was an everyday thing. He stayed. The car honked. I almost peed my pants.

When the car was about two car lengths away, he casually strolled toward the sidewalk. Within seconds, he was next to me and the car was disappearing down the road. He stuck out his hand. “Hello, I’m Aubrey S. Adams-Parker.”

He spoke to my back. I booked it to my car and was half a block away before I remembered to breathe. When I looked in my rear-view mirror, he was still there.

Sienna and I were back at Clothes Encounters bright and early. I was there for my phone. She was there for the red pants. We both must have done something right in the ensuing eight hours because it only took three tries and a quick prayer to the Parking Gods to parallel park.

The bell announced our entrance, but no one greeted us from the clothing-covered abyss. Sienna made a beeline for the pants, leaving me to fend for myself. I was halfway to the counter when the voices drifted over from the other half of the store. “And you saw the car, Ms. Miller?”

The voice was deep. Not Satan-deep. More like “taking love dedications on the radio after the kids are put to bed” deep. It was also slightly familiar. Like maybe he was one of the investigative reporters from a local news station. “Yes,” another voice said. It was Betty. “The Rolls Royce.”

My ears perked up, primed for some good old-fashioned eavesdropping. The male voice continued. “What color was this Rolls Royce, Ms. Miller?”

“I don’t know. It was dark.”

“It was dark out?” the man asked. “Or the car was a dark color?”

“Dark color.”

“Did this alleged Rolls Royce have two or four doors?”

“Four. What are you getting at?”

I was thinking the exact same thing.

“Here is my problem, Ms. Miller,” he said. “I have canvassed this neighborhood the past two days. No one else saw a Rolls Royce anywhere in the vicinity the night of Ms. Joseph’s death.”

I noted the formality in his tone. Barely any contractions. Not Miss, but Ms. He had to be a news reporter. Who else spoke like that?

“It was definitely a Rolls Royce,” Betty said. “I saw it.”

Her voice was not only insistent, it was closer. They were coming to this side of the store. Fudge. You’d think a place like that would have a million places to hide. It did. It just didn’t have a million places to hide for anyone with thunder thighs. The garments were packed tighter than freshly done cornrows.

“I am not saying you did not see a Rolls Royce,” the man said. “What I am saying is no one else saw one.”

I took a page from my inner two-year-old, where your idea of hiding was just covering your eyes. If you couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see you. I pretended to admire a particularly foul polka-dot dress that was not the eighties’ greatest creation.

They were so caught up in their conversation, they walked right by me without a glance. I chanced a look at them. The voice belonged to Aubrey S. Adams-Parker, the homeless serial killing fashionista who loved playing in traffic. He wore the same orange reflector suit as the night before.

Betty was not a happy camper. Her words tumbled out like a gymnast on floor exercise. “Haley saw it too. She said so right before she died. She saw a Rolls Royce. We both did.”

“I believe that you believe you saw a Rolls Royce,” Aubrey said.

I gave up all pretense of pretending to shop and trailed behind them. Neither noticed. “I was there,” she said. “You weren’t.”

He said nothing. They both stopped. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sort of stood there. They were at an impasse, staring each other down. Neither saying a word. The silence stretched. After a minute, even I started to feel uncomfortable. Never one for awkward silences, I spoke. “Betty has a point. She was there.”

What I didn’t say was Aubrey had a point too. Just because you think something was a Rolls Royce doesn’t mean it actually was one. It would explain why Sienna, Emme, and I couldn’t remember seeing the car.

If either was surprised by my random intrusion, they didn’t say anything. I took that as a sign to continue. “There’s a way to settle this.”

I got out my tablet and googled cars. Once I found what I was looking for, I extended the tablet to Betty like a peace offering. “This was the car, right?” I asked.

Betty glanced at it and quickly nodded. “Yes! That’s the car. Like I said, a Rolls Royce.”

Her telephone rang. She handed the tablet back to me, glared at Aubrey, and practically stomped off to answer it. “I’m glad that’s settled,” she said.

But it wasn’t. The photo I showed her wasn’t a Rolls Royce.

It was an Infiniti. Not mine, but a new-and-improved version. I turned to Aubrey. “You were right. She only thinks it’s a Rolls.”

“Of course I am right.”

His tone wasn’t cocky, just matter-of-fact. I wasn’t expecting him to catch the Holy Ghost, scream Hallelujah, and give me a high five, but dang. He walked out the door. I followed, walking beside him in silence past two storefronts. “I showed her a picture of an Infiniti,” I finally said, as if we were actually having a conversation. “Of course, I doubt the car was actually an Infiniti. I just wanted to make sure that she doesn’t know what a Rolls Royce looks like and it was the first thing that crossed my mind.”

I thought it was brilliant on my part. I was the only one, because Aubrey didn’t even give as much as a grunt. As was becoming his trademark, he said nothing. “She’s an unreliable witness,” I added. I’d heard the term once on The First 48. “I’m Dayna Anderson, by the way. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself last night, but it was late.” And you were creepy as heck.

“I am pleased to meet you, Ms. Anderson.”

He stopped long enough to shake my hand before continuing on. I struggled to keep up with him. He had to be a private investigator. He definitely wasn’t a cop in that getup. “You’re investigating Haley’s murder?”

“Yes.” Thought so.

“Haley’s family hired you?”

“No.”

“The boyfriend then.”

“No.” He smiled. “It is a bit more complicated than that.”

Did that mean no one hired him? “You’re doing it for the reward?”

“No, Ms. Anderson.”

If he wasn’t investigating because he was hired or for the reward, that didn’t leave many options. “Because it’s 9:00 a.m.?”

That one made him pause. I thought maybe he’d laugh. Instead, he checked his watch. “It is actually 10:03 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.”

We’d gotten to our destination: a bike rack. He went to the ugliest one—a lime-green number—and unlocked it as he spoke. “I would never dream of getting paid to solve a murder.”

Me neither, but then David from NorthWest had entered my life. Aubrey continued on. “I want to know who thoughtlessly killed a young woman without even stopping to see if she was okay.”

“Well, I do too!” I knew I sounded more than a touch defensive. He picked up on it, too, because he took me in for a moment before speaking.

“How long have you had your license?”

Huh? “Driver’s?”

“Your private investigator’s license.”

“Oh, I’m not an investigator. I don’t even play one on TV.” I smiled and got no response.

“You are an amateur detective, Ms. Anderson?” He made it sound like the equivalent of a serial arsonist.

“No, but I was there the night Haley died.”

“Did you see the car that hit Ms. Joseph?”

“Yes. No. Maybe.”

I probably had seen the car. I just didn’t remember.

He put on his helmet. “Ms. Anderson, I am not sure if you just want money, but I can assure you this is not fun and games. You should leave the investigating to the professionals.”

Of course, he didn’t bother to explain how he was any more of a professional than I was. Instead, he rode off, leaving me and my guilt to battle it out. I won and my guilt was banished. It was quickly replaced by anger. Didn’t he know that vigilante crap was only in comic books and movies based off comic books? In real life, people did things for money. People like detectives, who also happened to investigate crimes—for money. And they did it every single day. At least I was doing it just this once.

I trekked back to Clothes Encounters, managing to push evil thoughts of Aubrey S. Adams-Parker out my head and replace them with thoughts about the car. The sooner I figured it out, the sooner I’d be done with all of this. Then I could go back to looking for jobs and probably being turned down.

“You come back for your friend?”

I was too busy thinking about Betty to actually see her standing there. She was placing merchandise on a display case right outside the door. I’ve never understood that. Aren’t they afraid someone is going to just run away with their stuff? “I left my phone here yesterday,” I said.

“The old iPhone?”

“I prefer the term ‘classic.’”

“I like ‘retro’ myself. It’s inside.”

I followed her into the shop. “Nat,” she called out as soon as we entered. “Can you bring out that old iPhone?”

As we waited for Nat, Sienna walked by us, zeroing in on a rack a few feet away. It looked like she’d been reunited with the pants and apparently saw some dresses she liked just as much, if not more. While she shopped, Betty and I had yet another in a growing series of uncomfortable silences. I spent most of it thinking about the car. Why would Betty mistake the car for a Rolls Royce if she had no clue what one looked like? Finally, I had to blurt something out. “What if the car wasn’t a Rolls?”

Betty looked like the question came out of nowhere. Since she wasn’t a mind reader, it probably did. “Not that I don’t think it was a Rolls, but what if it wasn’t?” I asked.

She stared at me like I was crazy. “What’s your interest again?”

Sienna walked over to us. “Day, are you still talking about that car?” I shook my head at her, but she’d already turned to Betty. “She’s been driving me crazy about that freaking car since yesterday. Ever since she saw that billboard.”

Betty looked me dead in the eye and spoke. “The one offering the reward?”

I didn’t know what to say. I did know that whatever I said, it wouldn’t be the truth.

“This your phone?” a female voice said from somewhere to my left. I was happy for the interruption. “Aren’t you the Chubby’s girl?” she continued. Make that unhappy for the interruption.

She was holding my phone in her hand, so she had to be Nat. Even in heels, she was just average height and weight, which in LA meant five foot eight and barely 110 pounds. Her blonde hair wasn’t happy to be that color. In protest, it had staged a walkout. Jagged, broken-off parts jutted out of the crown of her scalp. If she were black, we’d call it baby hair. Nat and Betty were both staring me down. Nat had a bit of wonder in her eyes. Betty’s eyes, however, were saying something else.

“Did you just call me chubby?” I asked, then smiled.

“Chubby’s. You did the Chubby’s Chicken commercials.” Nat rolled her neck, stuck up her finger, and said the phrase that had become the bane of my existence. “Don’t think so, boo.”

Her inflection was pretty good for a white girl. I blamed hip-hop.

“Wrong person,” Betty said. “She’s in business school.”

“No, she’s not,” Nat said. “Her name is like something with a D.”

“Dayna,” Betty said. Even her bright pink hair seemed to be glaring at me.

“Yes! Dayna Anderson. She was on the Super Bowl.”

“Dang right she was!” Sienna’s voice dripped with pride. “And it was the second-most popular commercial that year. Not to mention the two million-plus YouTube views!”

She raised her hand to me for a high five. Needless to say, she was left hanging.

“You lied to me?” Betty asked as a cell phone began to ring. “You’re not a grad student. You’re an actress. And you were asking all those questions about Haley because you saw the billboard offering a reward. You really don’t care. You’re just looking for money.”

That wasn’t true. I did care. I just happened to also be looking for money. Of course, that wasn’t something I could easily explain, so I focused on the part I could easily answer. “I did act. But I’m retired.”

The phone rang again and I realized it was my cell phone, which was still in Nat’s hand. She made no effort to give it to me. Instead, she asked, “Why would you give up being famous?”

My phone rang yet again. “I should probably answer that,” I said.

Nat looked at the phone like she’d forgotten she had it. A picture of Emme had popped up to let me know she was calling. It was the one photo I had where Emme was actually looking at the camera. Nat’s attitude did a complete 180. “You know Toni Abrams?”

Toni was Emme’s twin sister. She was also People’s Most Beautiful Woman Alive last year and a double Oscar nominee. It was good to be Toni Abrams. What it wasn’t good to be was someone who looked exactly like Toni Abrams. At least that’s what Emme said, and I had to take her word for it. She’d know.

“Is she doing a movie about Haley?” Nat asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No.” I practically snatched the phone out her hands and put Emme on ignore. “That’s not who you think it is.”

“Oh, I get it. You can’t talk about it until the deal is signed.”

“I can’t talk about it because it doesn’t exist.”

“Right.” Nat actually winked at me. Twice. “Will we be in it? Can I play myself?”

I turned to Betty, hoping to talk to someone with an iota of sense, but even she looked impressed. She opened her mouth. I expected her to ask about my teeny, tiny, completely inconsequential, no-big-deal white lies. “I saw the car” is what she said. It was amazing how even the hint of being famous made people much more cooperative, not that you’d find me complaining. “Well, I saw the back headlights.”

“What’s a back headlight?” Sienna asked. “Oh, you mean tail lights. Yeah, you really know nothing about cars.”

I shook my head at Sienna again. She really wasn’t helping matters. At all. I attempted to turn the convo back to the subject at hand. “The photo I showed you wasn’t a Rolls. It was an Infiniti. Was the car an Infiniti?”

Betty seemed genuinely surprised. “But that’s what Haley said it was.”

I’d already forgotten that she’d mentioned that. It meant Haley had seen the car coming. I couldn’t imagine what must have gone through her head when she realized it wasn’t going to stop. Geez. I shook those feelings off and continued my Law & Order impression. “Those were her direct words? A Rolls Royce hit me.”

“She just said, ‘Rolls.’ Kept repeating it. Rolls. Rolls. Rolls. She was pretty banged up at that point, so it was all she seemed able to say.”

Like I said, I couldn’t even imagine. “Was she a big car person?” I asked.

“She lived in LA. She knew a Rolls,” Nat said, more to not be forgotten than to actually help. “Why say it was a Rolls Royce if it was something else?”

Good question.