Chapter Eighteen

Aggie stood outside the dumpster and concentrated on the sights and sounds and smells until the panic attacking her like a tsunami eased, allowing her to see and breathe and think. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and strategized.

Her memories of doing this were as fresh as yesterday’s bread. Mom’s strategy had been simple. She’d lower Aggie inside the bin with a toddler strap attached to her back. Once she found a treasure, Mom would hoist her and the item out of the bin. Only to drop Aggie back in to discover more gems.

The smell of those memories still burned Aggie’s nostrils. And the panic of having to hurry so no one caught them and stole their treasures away still tightened her chest. Once, someone else had been in the bin. An old guy with no teeth. He’d spat at her. Yelled at her to get out of his dumpster. And when Mom pulled her out, he’d taken Aggie’s shoes off her feet and laughed like a mad clown.

Aggie slogged back inside the office building and located the janitor, who was mopping the foyer with a big machine. She waved her arms at him to get his attention. When he stopped, she asked, “Would you happen to have a ladder, and a hook, and some coveralls I could borrow?”

“Not in the business of loaning out stuff.” He went back to his mopping.

She waved her arms again. He stopped, his face a ruddy red. Either sunburned or high blood pressure. “Please.” She gave him her award-winning smile. At least Meemaw called it her award-winning smile.

“What do you need with a ladder?”

She glanced around to see if anyone could hear their conversation. “My boss accidentally threw something away. I need to dig it out of the trash bin before the truck comes and hauls it off.”

The guy looked her over from head to toe and laughed, clutching his oversize belly while he did so.

She waited for his hilarity to pass. Who could blame him? Today, she wore her favorite power suit. One that screamed corporate bitch. “Well?”

“Let me get this straight. You’ve got a boss who expects you to dumpster dive, and you said yes?”

“He’s kind of a jerk like that.” Normally, she would have told Max to piss off. But she’d made it a full two weeks as his assistant, and she was determined to ride this contract all the way to the finish line. Besides, if she quit, Richard might decide it would be somehow disloyal to Max if he pursued a date with Meemaw, and Aggie really wanted him to pursue that date.

The janitor turned off his machine and walked away.

She followed. “Where are you going?”

“To get you what you asked for.” He pulled a pair of coveralls out of a supply closet and handed them to her. “Pull the door closed when you leave. It will lock on its own.”

She watched him walk away carrying the ladder under one arm as if it weighed nothing.

Inside the closet, she slipped on the coveralls. They were about ten sizes too big, but they were way better than nothing, so she rolled up the arms and legs. Leaving her purse tucked under an empty mop bucket, she stepped into the hallway and firmly closed the door, then double checked that it was locked. It was.

About to hurry outside, she heard her phone moo. It was in the closet. She forced herself to ignore the siren call. No way would she bother the janitor for the keys to get back into the closet.

Outside the dumpster, the janitor had propped the ladder in place. “I’ll hold it while you shimmy up there and over,” he said to her. “Can’t have you falling off. Boss would fire me for sure if I allowed that to happen. Probably going to fire me for letting you use the ladder.”

She glanced around for a big stick. No trees in sight. “I don’t suppose you have one of those trash picker-upper thingies?”

“Nope. Don’t do outdoor trash duty.”

She sighed. Kicked off her Crocs—no sense ruining them with the smell of garbage—and climbed the ladder. At the top, she glanced down. It was empty of other human beings. According to all of the cop shows she watched, this was not always the case. What it lacked in dead bodies it made up for in its foul odor. She glanced around, her hopes high she would spot Max’s trash bag immediately and not have to rummage. Maybe nab it with an outstretched hand. No such luck.

“I should have kept my job at the Estée Lauder Counter,” Aggie said. Applying makeup to rich old ladies who wanted the appearance of rich young ladies no longer seemed dire. Gah. Hindsight and all that shit.

“Ain’t got all day. Get ’er done,” a disembodied voice said. The janitor’s. Still safely anchored to the ground on the opposite side of the bin’s metal wall.

She sat down on the edge of the dumpster and considered her options—tell Max to go fuck himself or prove to him she didn’t always quit when things got rough. She lowered herself onto a black bag. Her foot immediately went through the thin material. “Eww,” she screamed, as she sunk knee deep into what smelled like a poopy diaper but was probably just rotten food. Right? Right. “I should have left my Crocs on.” It’s not like they were Prada. And she could have probably expensed them out to Max.

“What is it? Dead body?” The question was asked with 100 percent sincerity and zero percent concern her answer might be yes. Like the phrase, been-there-done-that-have-the-dead-body-to-prove-it was his to legit recite. The janitor obviously also watched cop shows. If it was the last thing she did, Aggie would see to it Max Treadwell paid for this humiliation.

“No dead body,” she shouted so he could hear her. “Just immense grossness.”

“I’ll be back in ten,” the janitor said. “It’s my break time. Need to take a piss.”

Panic crawled up her throat. She’d never been left alone while inside a bin. Mom always talked to her. Sometimes sang “You Are My Sunshine” to Aggie to help keep her calm.

Humming the tune in her head, she added new lyrics. “You are a dick prick. A lowly dick prick. You make me angry when the skies are blue. You’ll never know, Max, how much I loathe you. Please someone take my dick prick away.” She bellowed out the words over and over as she poked around for Max’s trash bag.