shh!” Angelica said. “Be quiet.”
Effie sighed.
“These guys,” Angelica whispered, leaning forward and adjusting her sling, “in the booth behind me. They just mentioned Mitchell Cline.”
Effie discreetly leaned out of her seat, but all she could see were broad shoulders barely contained in expensive fabric. She pointed at her ear, the guys in the booth.
You heard them?
“I was eavesdropping,” Angelica whispered. “I’m terrible, I know. I listen to everyone. It’s in the writer’s tool kit. C. S. Lewis compared eavesdropping to spying on people by magic. See? More elitist mysticism.”
She listened. Effie waited. Both women looked out the windows of the café, and Angelica pointed sharply up the street.
“There,” she said. “Look. An Escalade. Vinny said the car that did the drive-by was an Escalade. And that one’s got a new windshield. You can see the plastic installation tab hasn’t been removed from one side. Nick said something about Bill smashing the windshield of Cline’s Escalade.” Effie raised her eyebrows. Angelica had transformed before her eyes from babbling author to armchair detective.
“What are we going to do?” Angelica asked.
Effie slammed her fist into her palm.
“I have a better idea.” Angelica looked at the car, the reflection of the men in the window beside them, the hillside, and the harbor. “Cause a distraction in exactly ten seconds.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
ANGELICA STOOD. EFFIE scrambled, thinking fast. She watched, counting mentally, as Angelica approached the next booth.
“Excuse me, gentlemen. Could I just borrow this sugar? We’re all out.”
She saw Angelica leaning over. Effie shoved her coffee cup and saucer off the edge of the table. The china shattered on the floor, coffee splashing on the legs of a couple at the next table. Everyone turned to look, including the men in the booth. Effie shrugged, made an embarrassed face, and got up to assist the waitress who came over to clean up the mess.
“You know what?” Angelica turned and smiled at the waitress. “We’ll just take our check, if you don’t mind.”
She flashed Effie a set of keys with a chunky black remote before tucking them into her sling. Effie smiled, and the two women left some money on the counter and walked quickly out into the street.
“We’ll need another distraction for cover,” Angelica said, “in case they look out the window.”
The evening winds were sweeping in across the harbor. The two women seemed to have the same thought. Angelica tossed Effie the keys and stopped a couple walking two dogs right outside the window of the café.
“Oh, dachshunds! Look at them! They’re just gorgeous! You know, Radclyffe Hall had dachshunds.”
“Who?”
Effie unlocked the Escalade parked at the top of the hill, put the keys in the ignition, put the car in neutral, and released the emergency brake. She gave Angelica a nod, and the two edged over to the wall beside the café window as the people with the dogs continued on.
Nothing happened. The car remained in position. At the bottom of the hill, by the harbor, a police cruiser parked, and two officers got out.
“Fuck,” Angelica snapped. “We’ll have to push it. It’s not moving! Fucking, fucking shitballs!” She stomped her foot. Effie’s eyes widened. She almost laughed. Angelica looked like she was about to throw herself at the vehicle and push it down the hill with her one usable but injured hand when the car began to move.
Angelica and Effie watched as the Escalade rolled down the hill, gathering speed, and then slammed into the police cruiser; the crash was so loud and thunderous that everyone in the street stopped and turned.
“Triumph!” Angelica whispered fiercely.
The two women leaned forward and saw the men in the café rise from their booth. People were running to the crash, including the two officers who had only made it to the edge of the park.
Effie tugged at Angelica. She resisted at first, seeming to want to stay and watch her work.
“Take that, you murderous bastards,” Angelica snarled. Effie grabbed the sling and dragged her friend away.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
FAT PEOPLE REPULSED Cline. They always had. Unfortunately, he couldn’t look at someone like Sheriff Clayton Spears without imagining the man naked, seeing the alien creases and folds of his figure beneath the tan uniform, the parts of him that excessively sweat or grew hair in unnatural biological reactions to his bulk. He reclined in his wing chair in the third-floor office and eyed the man perched on the settee before him scribbling notes in the stupid little notebook he held with his sausage fingers.
“And could you provide a list of the