He flopped back onto the bed. “What happened last night?”
“You drank about a gallon of dark black something or other, then had a couple of shots.”
“That’s it? Because I either had some pretty fucked-up dreams last night or I was abroad actually doing the fucked-up things.”
“Uh-huh. Don’t read into this, but have you thought that you might have a problem with alcohol?”
“You’re only saying that because I’m drunk just about every time you see me.”
“I know some people you could talk to.” Carefully, carefully. She was on tricky ground, and given her own problems with substance abuse, it was possible Dennis would assume she was projecting. “I could put you in touch with some people. If you wanted.”
“I know some people I could talk to, too. Don’t sweat on my behalf. I’m not a full-fledged alkie. I’m a binge drinker.”
“You know it’s possible to be both, right?”
“Change of subject, please.”
Got it. Case closed … for now. “Fine. After the tar and the shots, I brought you back here.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. You conked out after I left.”
“Abandoned me, you mean.” He let out a piteous moan, then peeked to see if she was moved. “Anything else?”
“You had the common courtesy to not barf in my rental car, for which I thank you. Well, you did, but it all hit the basin.”
“I could have died! What basin?”
She restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry. A total stranger helped me get you to drink a glass of water—”
“I hate water.”
“How can you hate water? It doesn’t taste like anything—never mind, I’m not having the H2O argument with you again. Then we turned you on your side so you wouldn’t choke and die and left you snoozing.” She’d forgotten that Dennis was a creature of drama even before his twin sister had been murdered. “Now what were you babbling about on the phone?”
“Something happened at the funeral home. My ma’s freaking out and wants both of us over there ASAP.”
“What? Both? She’s not the boss of me.” Right? Right. “And what’s ‘something’?”
“I. Don’t. Know. I basically said yes so she’d stop screeching. We’ve gotta go; my life’s now measured in minutes.”
Ava drove and fumed while Dennis hung his head out the window and gulped fresh air, periodically ducking back inside to drink from one of two bottles of water she’d brought for him. A return to the funeral home was not on the agenda. Nor was dealing with more Monahans. Not to mention she was due in preflight in a couple of hours. Well, nine. But still. What had been on the agenda was to wake up, hate herself for kicking Tom to the curb, eat oatmeal, use all the hotel moisturizer she could get her hands on, then hang out at the airport until preflight. It was an odd life, but it was hers.
Her (mostly) inaudible grumbling turned to real anxiety when she swung into the parking lot and saw the cop cars and ambulance.
“Oh, fuck,” Dennis said, which just about summed it up. They parked, got out, and at least one of the cops seemed to know who they were, because yellow caution tape was pulled aside for them and they were waved right in.
And stopped short once the doors closed behind them. In the twelve hours since she’d last been there, someone had radically redecorated the Crisp and Gross Funeral Home in graffiti, broken glassware, upended chairs, and overturned tables, and there was some kind of dark dust all over the—the—
“Is that…” Ava started to reach out just as Dennis seized her wrist and yanked.
“Don’t,” he said hoarsely, which was good advice. She should have caught on quicker, or at least recognized the upended urn. Someone had come in and made a grand fucking mess, and finished by flinging Danielle’s ashes all over the room.
On the wall, written in her ashes: WRONG.
Eleven
“You!” The word wasn’t shouted so much as shrilled, and Ava jumped like she’d been poked. She realized she’d been so transfixed by the bizarre scene she hadn’t realized the room was full of cops (yikes) and Mrs. Monahan (quadruple yikes). It was amazing how she saw everything when she was in the cockpit, and nothing out of it. “This! Explain yourself!”
“I—what?” Was she looking for a critique? Well, the upended tables clearly represent chaos, but I feel the artist went too far with the ashes. “I can’t explain this. How could I explain this?”
“Exactly.” Mrs. Monahan was still in yesterday’s dress, which was surprising—had the woman been up all night? “How could you?”
“You think I had something to do with this?”
Something happened at the funeral home, Dennis had said, and yeah, something had. My ma’s freaking out and wants both of us over there ASAP, he’d said, and yeah, she was. Ava should have realized they’d be looking for a scapegoat, because it’s what they’d done ten years ago.
“Miss Capp?”
“Yes,” she said, too distracted to correct him. “And this is Dennis Monahan, Danielle’s brother.”
The tall blond with a sunburned forehead—not often something you saw in early Minnesota spring—and tan suit showed them a badge. “I’m Detective Springer. Can you help us figure out what happened here?”
“I have no idea what’s happened here,” Ava replied, and she was pretty sure it was the truest thing she’d ever said.
“Goes double for me.” Dennis looked even worse than when she’d first seen him that morning, which she’d honestly thought was impossible. And he smelled worse, too. Could he still be drunk? Stranger things etcetera. “When did this—I mean, who even called you guys? And Ma? What is this?”
“I told you not to invite her.” This from the always-helpful Monahan matriarch, who when she wasn’t wringing her bird-like hands, was cracking her bird-like knuckles. Wait. Did birds have knuckles? “I said, didn’t I?”
“It’s not like he was doing me any favors,” Ava mumbled, wishing she’d faked appendicitis or amnesia or blindness or a coma or scurvy—anything that would have gotten her out of the Monahan madness. Because here they all were, again. Upset and finger-pointing like they’d been paid. Again.
“Ma!” From Dennis, who was clearly Fed Up. “Not now with that, okay?” Wait, with that? Mama Monahan had said something like this before? Then: “Detective, I don’t get any of this.” Dennis was raking his fingers through his hair and looking not a little deranged. “Can someone please run down the sequence of events for me? Quietly? And super, super gently?”
“Sure. An employee of the funeral home got here at seven thirty A.M., saw the mess, called 911 to report a break-in and vandalism. When we got here we realized it was a little more than random vandalism. We contacted your mother, and she suggested you and Miss Capp might have some insight.”
“No, my ma suggested that Captain Capp might have done it. Or been in on it.” He turned to the older woman, who was lingering just on the outside of their small circle, now clutching her purse so hard the knuckles were dead white. “Ma, Ava and I were together last night. All night. There’s no way she did this.”