“Lemon!” Justice roared a hundred or so feet behind us, and just as we’d almost made it to the door, too.
Coco and I were trying to sneak out with Fabritzia in tow, but we’d been caught.
My shoulders slumped as I loosened my grip on both of the ladies’ arms and froze in place, fighting a cringe.
“I told you we should run,” Coco complained in a whisper, her voice a shadow of the angry tone she’d used earlier.
“Running just makes us look guilty, Coco. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We go to jail?” Fabritzia asked, her watery voice trembling. “I only want hamburger for dinner. I know I should not have gone in public!”
I winced and patted her arm reassuringly. “No. We’re not going to jail. Not yet anyway, and as long as Coco keeps her yap zipped.”
“Hey!” She poked me in the ribs with her pointy elbow. “I don’t have a big mouth if that’s what you’re implying. I’m just very verbose.”
“Well, can the impulse toward verbosity and let me do the talking this time. Please. The last time you did the talking, we almost got booted out of hot yoga.”
She rolled her big brown eyes at me as Justice stomped across the bar like we owed him money. “Right, because you could sweet talk the icing right off a cupcake, Miss Direct and Unfiltered.”
“Just let me handle this,” I hissed.
Justice approached with fire in his eyes and steam blowing from his nose. “What the devil happened here, Lemon?”
“Why are you asking me?” I feigned innocence with wide eyes I hoped Justice could see behind my glasses and a surprised expression.
His face hardened further if that were at all possible, and the tic just above his right eye pulsed in time with the tic in his clenched jaw. “Because where there’s a snooping Lemon, there’s a disturbance in the force.”
I pretended offense, following Coco’s prior examples. She always said, when you wanted to knock someone off balance, even if you were wrong, act offended.
“Oh, you stop right there with your Star Wars metaphors, Justice Carver. That’s not even true. We were just on our way out.”
“Right. That’s why the guy in the corner over there with the bloody nose and potentially sprained neck is pointing his finger at you?”
I stood up straight. I didn’t want to be proud I’d cracked his nose, but I kind of was. I had warned him to back away, and he had knocked Coco right off her feet. My actions weren’t without provocation.
“Lemon?” Justice gave off the warning tone he used when his patience started to wane.
Rolling my eyes, I sighed with my own impatience. “It was just a little punch in the face. He knocked Coco down, and he wouldn’t back up. I was defending myself. That’s all. What kind of sissy zombie slayer can’t take a little crack in the nose? How does he expect to kill all those zombies he thinks are running around Fig? With his whining?”
“Did he swing first?”
“Well… Not exactly. He loomed first.”
“Loomed, Lemon?”
Now I was on the defensive. “Yes, he loomed, okay? He was in my space, right in my center of gravity, and he wouldn’t move and he was harassing Fabritzia and frightening her. You can loom and be threatening without ever lifting a finger. It’s called intent.”
“So now you’re a lawyer?”
“She’s not, but I am, and I can attest to the fact that the young man was indeed harassing Mrs. Fairbanks. I saw the whole thing,” Barton Winkle confirmed, brushing pretzel crumbs from his suit with lean fingers. “Now, is he pressing assault charges against Miss Layne?”
Justice rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek and rocked back on his heels. “He hasn’t decided yet.”
“Well, if and when he makes up his mind, you just let us know, okay, Justice? Until then, the ladies were in the process of taking a terrified and harassed Mrs. Fairbanks home. If you’d like to question my client, please feel free to call my office. Ladies, shall we?” Barton pushed his way out the door and gallantly held it open for us, leaving Justice fuming.
I looked over my shoulder one last time to find him glaring at me in frustration. I stuck my tongue out at him before I followed Coco and Fabritzia outside to the dock. The tune of Justice’s resigned chuckle—a sign he knew he had no choice but to give it up to the force of Lemon—rang in my ear.
As Fabritzia and Barton walked ahead of us, Coco grabbed my arm. “Looming, Lemon?” she asked with a grin.
I jammed my hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt. “Well, he was. He loomed—big and smelling like the Dumpster behind the store in the middle of July.”
“Touché,” she said with approval.
“But the real hero is Barton,” I whispered. “We’d still be in there with Justice breathing down our necks if not for him.”
“Yeeeah. He was pretty fierce, huh?” she murmured into the dark with a hint of dreamy to her tone.
I couldn’t help but giggle at this sudden turn of events. “Why, Coco Belinski, is that a tingle I hear?”
“It just might be, Lemon Layne. It just might be.”
* * * *
We’d offered to drop Fabritzia at home in light of the fact that some of the zombie hunters lurked along the dock and seeped into the parking lot.
They’d built makeshift fires, the glow of the flames highlighting their fake crossbows and zombie makeup.
More fake limbs and entrails littered the parking lot beyond the docks, likely left behind after their many practice zombie-killing sessions. The arms and legs sat comically amongst coolers and backpacks and camping gear alongside small groups of people dressed like what else? Zombies.
According to the comments I’d read on Cappie’s YouTube page just this morning, dressing like a zombie was all part of the symbolism of the hunt. One I didn’t understand at all, but there you have it. I suppose it’s a lot like dressing up in camouflage to hide in the woods to blend in when hunting.
One small group had a guy who was teaching the other zombie groupies how to defend themselves should a zombie attack, his face intense, almost spookily so, in the blue and orange flames flickering inside a metal barrel.
Though they’d certainly simmered down, they seemed far from over the belief Myron hadn’t actually been killed in a zombie attack. However, as we walked to Lou-Lou, I had to wonder how many of these people were in this for the thrill of the possibility, rather than any serious belief the government had produced a real live zombie—or was that a real dead zombie?
I thought about all of that as we pulled up to Myron’s house and into his steep driveway, I remembered the description my mother had given me and it matched it to a T. A big, sprawling blue and white two-story with a stone front and a wide front porch, sitting on the bluff with probably one of the most amazing views of both the ocean and the mountains here in Fig.
The wind had picked up since leaving the docks, tearing at our clothes as we fought our way up the slick stairs of the front porch, the rain battering our faces in cold splotches of water.
Fabritzia, who’d been eerily silent the entire drive, turned her key in the lock and pushed the red door open, to reveal a breathtaking entryway with wide-planked wood floors and a gorgeous shaker table to the right, filled with hand-turned wooden candleholders of varying heights.
“Please. Come in. I make tea for you? To say thank you for saving me from crazy people.” She cocked her head in question, waiting for us to answer.
Now, I know Mom probably wouldn’t love the idea I was considering consorting with the enemy, but getting inside Myron’s house could be useful to her case. At least that’s how I justified it, anyway. But it was twofold. I also felt sorry for Fabritzia, left alone in a foreign country with no money, hardly any friends and a dead husband.
She had to be scared, and while I certainly wanted to peek inside Myron’s life, I also didn’t want to leave her to her own devices after what had happened at the bar.
“Sure. That’d be nice,” I replied, following her inside, where I think both Coco and I were astounded at just how lovely Myron’s house was—if the sounds of our barely concealed gasps were any indication.
I guess I’d expected old World War II memorabilia and fighter pilot pictures to grace his walls, after all the stories he’d told us about his time in the Army. Instead, I found beautiful furniture that looked like no one ever sat on it. Windows galore, surrounding a wide living room that fairly sparkled, dressed in creamy curtains falling to the floor in pools of rich fabric. Big planters in whitewashed blue dotted the room, with some variety of leafy plant, their leaves healthy and green.
As Fabritzia headed to the enormous kitchen off to the left with antique white cabinets and miles of black marbled granite, I looked to Coco, whose eyes were round and surprised.
“Wow, right?”
“Yeah. Mom said Myron had a nice place, but she didn’t say it was a showplace.”
“I don’t know about you, but this would be motive enough for me to take Myron out just so I could keep his house.”
Glancing around the living room with its overstuffed creamy beige furniture and beautifully placed throw pillows in various shades of blue, I pursed my lips and shook my head. “I already told you, no house, no nothin’. Prenup, remember?”
Coco loosened her scarf and removed her jacket, hanging it up on the antique coat rack by the door. “There are always loopholes to find in those things. I’d find one if it was the last thing I did—believe that.”
The house was quiet, eerily so, but I knew it was my chance to truly peek into their lives, and I didn’t want to leave Fabritzia alone until I was sure she felt safe.
Which made me wonder where Valdis had gotten off to. He’d been glued to her side at Lester’s. Maybe he wasn’t staying here at the house? Definitely something worth checking into tomorrow, though I was still convinced they had nothing to do with Myron’s death.
As Fabritzia moved about the kitchen, clanking pots and running water, I poked my head around the corner. “May I use the bathroom, Fabritzia?”
Wiping her hands on a pale blue striped towel, she nodded with sad eyes. “Of course. Down the hall and this way?” She gestured to the right with her hand and the cock of her head in question.
I smiled in understanding. “To the right?”
Her return smile was vague. “Yes. I still learn your language.”
“No worries. Got it. Be right back.”
“Let me help you, Fabritzia,” Coco offered as I scooted past her and around the corner, following the long hallway toward the bathroom.
I passed several closed doors, all brilliantly white and clean, before I realized I didn’t know which one belonged to the bathroom. I didn’t want to appear a snoop. I mean, of course, I wanted to see what was behind the doors—all of them, in fact—but my curiosity wasn’t outweighed by my need to use the facilities.
I took a chance it was at the end of the hall—seemed like a good enough place for a bathroom, if the rest of the rooms were bedrooms. Popping the door open, I stopped dead in my tracks.
Um, not the bathroom. Not even close.
As my eyes began to take in what I was seeing, I inhaled sharply. What the…?
The whole room was filled with newspaper clippings plastered to the walls. Every square inch was covered in articles from various papers and pictures of people and a building—a building I couldn’t quite make out. There was also a Post-it board with sticky notes in coordinated colors with a bunch of scribbled notations on each one.
Peeking nervously over my shoulder, I looked to see if I was on the brink of getting caught. I was compelled to look closer—which I knew I shouldn’t do. But c’mon! If you were to leave a starving man a hamburger in the middle of the room and no one was looking, he’d eat it, right?
This is what I do, for pity’s sake. I live for things like this. I’d found something I knew I shouldn’t be looking at, but purely by mistake. I couldn’t just walk away. This room meant something—something significant to Myron. There was some serious time and effort put into this kind of research.
But for what? What did all this mean? I didn’t have time to figure it out if I didn’t want to be caught. So I pulled out my mother’s phone and began taking pictures as fast as I could, snapping one after the other before backing out of the room and closing the door with careful fingers.
I didn’t even care where the bathroom was anymore. I had to get home and blow these pictures up on my computer. Making my way back down the hall, I found Coco in the living room, sitting on the overstuffed beige loveseat, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
She narrowed her eyes at me and pointed to the seat next to her. “I know that look, Lemon. You’re on to something,” she hissed.
“Shhh. I’m not. I just went to the bathroom.”
“Give me your hand.”
I did so willingly—or maybe I should say stupidly, because she sniffed my fingers and threw them back in my lap in disgust. “You did not go to the bathroom. Your fingers still smell like the peanuts from Shrimpies—not soap. You would have washed your hands if you’d used the facilities because you always do, ever since Mrs. Fulbright from eighth grade science told us in order to avoid hand-to-mouth contact diseases and various germs after using the bathroom, you have to wash your hands with soap for a full two minutes. Now, tell me what’s going on.”
“Sometimes, knowing each other as well as we do is a curse, Coco-Puff.”
“Tell me about it. Now, what did you happen upon that you shouldn’t have because whatever it is, you wouldn’t find it in a bathroom.”
We both froze when we heard a door slam somewhere toward the back of the house, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps. Without thinking, I jumped up from the loveseat with Coco hanging onto my arm as we snuck our way across the hardwood of the living room floor.
“My love. I missed you today,” a male voice said before following up with something else in a foreign language—probably Latvian.
Then we heard Fabritzia shush him, followed by some kissing noises and weak protests.
As Coco and I peered around the corner, I was unable to hide my gasp.
Because guess who we caught kissing Fabritzia?