I looked down at myself, not sure how I’d been mistaken for a missionary. In addition to my slightly odiferous Armani sandals, I wore a short-sleeved, pink button-down jumpsuit that ended at midthigh, and the closest I’d come to finding Jesus was when I blew a guy by that name at the Puerto Rican festival last month.
“I’m not trying to convert you,” I assured him. “I just need to find Mason Bloom’s house. Dr. Mason Bloom. I’m afraid I forgot the address—”
The man blinked, and his suspicion cleared. “Well, damn! You’re a friend of Doc Mason? All you had to do was say so! I’m Littlejohn Jennings, but folks on the key call me LJ. You babysitting for Mason while he’s gone? Last I heard, one of the Goodman boys was doing it.”
I swallowed. “Gone” did not sound promising. Not at all. Neither did the rest of it. “Babysitting?”
“Babysitting the contractors tearin’ up his house while he and Fenn are in New York this week.” LJ chuckled. “No actual babies. Well, ’cept the baby Doc’s sister delivered last week, of course, which is why they went up north for a visit now. That and his brother got married. So, Fenn and Mase are gonna meet the little one, and celebrate the wedding, and introduce Fenn to the whole family, and whatnot.” He scratched his stomach idly, like we were making polite chitchat. “Say, did you know, New York is a city and a state?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Mason said he and Fenn won’t see the Statue of Liberty at all from where they are. Crazy.”
“Shocking,” I agreed, slightly panicked.
Fact: I had no transportation, other than Umar, who was rightly impatient. I had no credit card. I had no phone. I had very little money. And there was no one I could call to obtain any of those things except Mason, because in my entire life there was no one else I trusted. But Mason was up with Micah and Constantine in O’Leary, and I had no way of getting there.
Also fact: my family—who were not really family anymore—wanted nothing to do with me. My friends back in the city—who were likewise not really friends—would sell me out in a heartbeat. It was almost enough to make a man start channeling Eponine and busting out an a capella “On My Own”… which indicated I was still more than a little hungover, damn it.
Aunt Hagatha would probably say something pithy, like “when you figure out you’re in a hole, stop digging,” but then Aunt Hagatha had never been stranded on a semi-inhabited island with no cell phone or credit card.
Until now.
“So.” I cleared my throat. “Funny thing about me staying at Mason’s house, Mr. Jennings. I don’t, um, have a key to get in. I don’t suppose…”
“Ah, don’t worry about that! Tell your cabbie to scram, bring your bag in, and take a load off. Wheel of Fortune’s about to start, and it’s your lucky day, ’cause I got some SpaghettiOs on the stove and Pizza Bites in the oven. Soon as the rain passes, I’ll getcha sorted.”
“Get me sorted.” That could mean so many things, and none of them good.
As an occasional listener to true crime podcasts, I’d often wondered how the hell some victims wound up in the truly sketchy situations that led to their deaths. Did they have no sense of self-preservation? Surely there was always another option besides taking a shortcut down a dark alley… or being lured into a complete stranger’s home with the promise of a canned pasta dinner, the likes of which I had not eaten since leaving my childhood home in Ohio. Yet, mortifyingly, my stomach growled, and Umar honked the horn behind me.
“SpaghettiOs with meatballs?” I asked hopefully.
“The best kind,” LJ confirmed. “What’d you say your name was again?”
“T—uh, Ray,” I said, supplying my middle name because cloak and dagger was really not my specialty.
“Trey,” LJ repeated, like he was committing this to memory. “Welcome to Whispering Key.”
2
Beale
Czarina’s StarCharts for Today:
Poor Virgo! Your yearning to be understood holds you back from meaningful connection. Don’t be shy—allow people access to the deeper levels of your emotions and accept help when it’s offered!
“You want another lemon water, cutie?”
I looked up from checking my horoscope on my phone and found Blue Smoke’s hot new bartender watching me. Again.
“Oh, uh… Yes, please.” I smiled a little. “Thanks, Silvio.”
“Or maybe I could interest you in something… harder this time?” Silvio peered up at me through his eyelashes, and he blushed a little, just in case I didn’t get his double entendre. “I could drive you home, if you were worried about that. It’d be my pleasure.”
The guy was really cute, with dark hair, sparkling eyes, and a lean, toned body. That, combined with the way he looked at me—like pandas look at bamboo, as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to climb me or consume me—made it impossible not to feel a tiny tug of awareness, a little zing of attraction, but… that was all.
And it wasn’t nearly enough.
“I’m good with water for now,” I said with genuine regret. “But thank you.”
Silvio’s smile faded, but he shrugged like it was all the same to him. “Your loss.”
“Definitely,” I agreed.
Silvio’s smile brightened again, and he rolled his eyes and filled my water glass before moving away.
“God, you’re thick, Beale,” the grumpy guy on the stool beside me leaned over and whispered. “He was totally coming on to you, and you didn’t even notice.”
“Hey! Of course I noticed,” I told my brother as I slid my phone back into my pocket. “Look, contrary to popular opinion on Whispering Key, I am not totally unintelligent, okay? I recognize flirtation.”
“So what’s your problem?” Rafe demanded. “I’m not saying you need to fuck everything that moves, but there’s such a thing as having too high a standard when it comes to hookups, you know?”
“So you’ve said.” I sipped my water. “Many times. But I don’t do hookups.” Which I’d also told him many times.
“Yeah, but Silvio’s seriously hot.”
“I know.”
“As in, out-of-your-league hot.”
“I know that too.” After all, Silvio was gorgeous and interesting, while I was the middle Goodman brother, the guy my cousin, Fenn, had once described as a cross between G.I. Joe and a Teletubby—probably the red Teletubby, or whichever was the gay one—and whose height was generally considered bigger than his IQ.
“And did you see his ass in those pants?”
“I definitely saw his ass.” It was, objectively, an incredibly nice ass. I was not unmoved by it.
“And that doesn’t qualify for an exception to your self-imposed celibacy? God, back in the day, if a guy like that flirted with me, I’d have had him out back so fast I—”
“Lemme stop you right there. Rafael, I love you, but please don’t make me take a stroll down Bisexual Memory Lane,” I pleaded. “I do not wanna get a visual of what you’d’ve done out back.”