Not gonna happen.
“Yeah, and maybe Sandra Whoever-She-Was rethought her vow to give up on men when she got hooked up with Luke and filled his fridge with healthy food thinking thoughts of a long and happy life together. Now she’s crying her eyes out and eating her way through a three pound bag of M&Ms.”
Sissy remembered what Luke looked like as a teenager. Sissy knew Sandra Whoever-She-Was was definitely crying her eyes out with a three pound bag of M&Ms.
“You have a point,” she conceded. “We’ll see how this goes.”
I didn’t say anything because I knew how this was going to go, this wasn’t going to go anywhere.
I got off the phone with Sissy and dug in my pocket to see what Luke gave me. His remote, a key and a business card with his name on it and his home and cell numbers written in black ink on the back.
I picked up the phone, called his office and shoved the card in my back pocket.
“Nightingale Investigations,” Shirleen answered.
“Hey Shirleen, this is Ava Barlow, from yesterday?”
“Girl, how’re you doin’ today? Heard you spent the night with Luke.”
I sat, stunned speechless, and stared at my computer.
Then I said, “Matt’s got a big mouth.”
“They all got big mouths, girl, learn that quick. These boys talk more than a pack of women. I lost fifty bucks on you.”
I was stunned speechless again, this time it didn’t last as long.
“What?”
“See, Lee nailed Indy the first night they were together. Not nailed her nailed her but she was in his bed. Eddie, with Jet, it took a few days. Hank and Roxie, like, a day. Vance, like three, but Jules was a virgin and he had to interrupt the festivities once to go out and shoot someone.”
I was blinking rapidly and feeling kind of faint at the amount and sensitivity of information Shirleen was imparting, not to mention what it might mean to me.
“So we had a pool. Everyone threw down money on when they thought Luke would nail you. Mace won five hundred dollars.”
Ho-ly crap.
“So,” she went on. “Did he nail you nail you or did you two just sleep?”
For some reason, I answered her unbelievably nosy question. “We just slept.”
“New pool!” she shouted.
Oh my God.
Wyoming all of a sudden looked even better.
“Shirleen,” I cut to the chase because I was beginning to feel sick. “I’m calling to set up an account. Luke and Vance are doing some work for me and I need you to invoice –”
“Oh girl, I don’t think so. Luke already told me you’d try something like this. He says you two got something worked out and we don’t want to step on that do we?”
“Yes, we do,” I told her. At least I wanted to step on it. I wanted to stomp all over it.
She laughed in my ear, loud and happy. “This is gonna be fun. First one of these I been in on, on the ground floor.” I could almost hear her rubbing her hands together.
“That means you’re mine,” she declared I thought bizarrely. “See, Ally got Indy ‘cause no one knew them then. Daisy got Jet. Everyone took care of Roxie ‘cause that was some serious shit that went down. May got Jules because they knew each other beforehand but we all kicked in, seein’ as she was a virgin and all. Though, I wasn’t in on the cherry poppin’ discussion, I’ve seen the tape.”
The tape?