maven lifestyle! What a gangster he is.
There’s no other car to be seen when I park in the covered driveway, but there could be one in the windowless garage. Or he re-kidnapped Kayla, and the pair are even now racing toward Mexico so he can sell her into the sex slave trade before I get my hands on her. Ugh.
I’m ready to get back to Minneapolis and see my cat before I settle in to enjoy the new pecking order at the office. Still, I’m so close to parlaying this into a moral triumph. If I can find my missing niece and return her to safety, this whole trip will pay off in spades at work even if the girl herself is a disappointment.
I knock on the oversize black-painted door and wait. Crickets chirrup desperately for mates around me, and that’s the only sound I hear. I’m not the least bit surprised that no one answers the door.
Damn it. Now I’m gonna have to make Little Dog pay.
Sighing, I knock again, just in case, then ring the doorbell. Amazingly, I hear a ding-dong version of “The Saints Go Marching In” echo around somewhere inside. This family is a true wonder of throwback kitsch. Maybe I actually am on the set of a 1980s evening melodrama.
I’m bored with this stupid chase, so I get out my phone and start to text Little Dog’s number, but then I hear the soft pat-pat of feet approaching. I tip my head to the side and catch movement through the frosted sidelight. Well, hello. There’s someone home after all.
“Who is it?” a tiny voice squeaks gently through the door, sounding for all the world like a timid cartoon mouse.
“It’s Jane,” I say. “Open up.”
There’s a long moment of quiet, and then a lock slides. The brass doorknob turns and the door opens one inch. One muddy-green eye stares out.
Finally! It’s the lost little lamb from the picture! I did it!
“Who?” she asks through the gap. Does she think opening the door only an inch protects her in some way? Does she think I can’t kick the wood straight into her head and knock her out? This girl has no common sense at all. She’s already a letdown. I sigh and shake my head. “Are you Kayla?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m your aunt Jane. Your daddy’s sister.”
“I ain’t never met you,” she says in a slow Oklahoma drawl, chewing on the word you like it’s taffy.
“Be that as it may, your family got in touch with me and here I am. You ready to get out of here or what?”
“I can’t. Little Dog said to wait here.”
I raise an eyebrow. “He’s gone?”
“He left this morning. I don’t know where.”
“Great. Can I come in, or are you going to stay rude and keep me out on this street all day?”
I see one bony shoulder shrug, and then she swings the door wide and waves me in with a lazy hand. She looks even younger in person. Delicate, her wrists thin, her elbows big lumps of bone in her arms. She’s got no meat on her thighs at all under the sweatpants hanging off her narrow hips, and her pointy chin gives her a pixieish quality.
She’s not pretty, though. She just looks like a frail dullard. No light to her at all.
My hard little heart sinks. This girl isn’t anything like me. She’s a limp washrag passively waiting for someone to tell her what to do. That’s it. Gross. My psychotic boredom has struck again. I chased after something that has nothing to do with me, just to distract myself from the slog of everyday life.
To be fair to my ego, though, my restlessness often pays off with spectacular fun. I don’t want to be too hard on myself. And I did find her, so I’m still a hero.
I turn in a slow circle under a brass chandelier. Every light is ablaze in it, and the interior of the house is a bit more updated than Little Dog’s rural estate. I may as well appease my curiosity now that I’m here, because this house might be more interesting than this girl. “What is this place?”
Another bony shrug. “Little Dog said his aunt and uncle are down in Arizona, so we should stay here.”
“Just a quick vacation for young lovers?”
“Whatever.”
“Everyone’s looking for you, you know. Did you run away?”
“I guess. He said we should get out of town for a while; that was all.”
“Why?”
“Cops or something. I’m not sure.”
Good Lord, this girl is