Crazy In Love (Secrets of Suburbia #3) - Ivy Smoak Page 0,14

noses. It was vulgar. For some reason I stopped and stared at the display. Maybe it wasn't vulgar. Everyone looking at the items seemed so happy. That was me once. Hand in hand with my husband. And the reindeer were actually really cute. Maybe putting one of those in the basement would be good. At least it was easier than putting up a tree.

"Back again so soon, Ensley?"

I turned to see a salesman walking over to help me. A very familiar looking salesman with an easy smile and eyes that definitely seemed to recognize me. Had I told him my name last time I was here? There was no way I would have done that. That would have been careless while I had been buying duct tape and rope and...

"Did you get that deadbolt installed okay?"

And that. I'd been buying the deadbolt to put on my basement door. Why the hell had I told him my name? Probably because you never thought you'd actually go through with it. But I had gone through with it. And now it felt like this salesman was a loose end. I needed to think of a way to cover my tracks that didn’t involve hitting him over the head with a Christmas light-up reindeer. I cleared my throat. "I decided not to use it after all," I said. "I threw it out."

He frowned. "You only bought it a week or so ago. Returns are good for 30 days with a receipt."

"Eh." I waved my hand through the air. "Too late for that. The fewer deadbolts in the world the better anyway, right? More trusting neighbors and all that?"

"I guess?"

I laughed awkwardly. I wish I had my taser with me. I could have lured him out to the Christmas trees and taken him down without anyone noticing.

"So you're not here to buy another one?" he asked.

"No. I'm actually just looking for a bucket. Preferably this big." I held out my hands to show him what size I was looking for. "For mopping," I added before he could come to any wild conclusions about my current bucket being covered in urine. "Several sponges would be good too. For those tiny places I can't reach with the mop." Or so I could toss them after they were soaked with urine. This was going to be the grossest morning of my life. "So if you could just tell me what aisle to head down?"

"I'll show you, Ensley," he said and started walking.

I was definitely going to have to kill this guy. I silently laughed at myself. I'm not a murderer. I bit the inside of my lip. I had some hard decisions to make soon. But there was no reason to think about them while I had a puddle of urine to clean up and a waterboarding to perform. Er…interrogation. No torture would be involved. Right?

"Here we are." He turned down aisle 13 and led me straight to the cleaning supplies.

I eyed the rows of options. It really was best to be prepared. If worst came to worst I'd be cleaning up blood instead of urine soon. I needed something to get rid of any DNA. I was no novice to crime scenes. At least the ones on TV. "What's the best to get rid of...germs? Bleach or ammonia?"

"What kind of germs?"

What was the best way to say the germs in blood without sounding like a serial killer? "Like...the AIDS kind of germs?" Oh my God, that was most definitely not the way.

He laughed.

So I laughed.

And then we were both laughing about AIDS in the middle of the hardware store. None of it was funny. Mostly because he knew my name. And he knew I bought a deadbolt, rope, and duct tape. And now he probably thought I had AIDS.

I turned away from him. "So...bleach?"

He was silent for a moment.

I looked over at him. Instead of staring at me like a crazy person, it seemed like he was actually contemplating the correct answer.

"Yeah, I think you're probably right. Bleach would be best. You'll want some gloves though, it's really harsh on your skin." He pointed to some yellow rubber gloves hanging right in front of him.

"Good thinking." I grabbed them more for the lack of fingerprint aspect than skincare, but he didn’t have to know that.

"Let me go get you a basket."

"Not necessary." I threw the gloves, a container of bleach, and a few packs of sponges into a bucket and lifted it up. "Basically a basket," I