He burst out laughing. “I’m relieved you’re pleased. In fact, I don’t think anyone has ever been so pleased about my condition.”
“Ew, never call it that again. You don’t have the mumps, for God’s sake. So now that that’s out of the way, what’s next?”
“In what way?”
“In the nonsexual way, you virginal perv.”
“Already I regret confiding in you. But yes. Absolutely. Except.” He gave her another long, sweet kiss, and they were both just a bit out of breath when it was done. “There.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been depriving the world of you.”
He snorted. “As you would say, ‘aw, that’s sweet.’ Meanwhile, I’m having trouble believing you’re real. You really—ouch.”
“See?” She pinched him again. “Real. Need more proof?”
“No. I’m relieved—ouch!”
“Yeah, this whole Ava-and-Tom team-up is definitely going to be a mixed blessing for you.”
“Intriguing and frightening. Perfect.”
She was about to retort when her phone vibrated; she reached for her phone and nearly dropped it when she saw who was calling.
“Dennis! Fucking finally.”
“Excellent.”
Forty-Three
Except it wasn’t Dennis, and it wasn’t excellent.
“What did you do?” Xenia shrilled in her ear at such a pitch, Ava abandoned the idea of putting her phone on speaker.
“Xenia? What are you talking about? Are you okay? Where’s Dennis?”
“I’m asking you, bitch!”
“Rude. I have no idea where he is. I’ve been calling his cell for the last couple of days.”
“I know!”
“You—well, that would explain why he hasn’t called me back. Xenia, I haven’t seen him since I drove him to the funeral home to scope the vandal damage. God’s truth, not a peep—no texts or calls or messages.”
“Liar,” she hissed.
“I was starting to get worried.”
“Liar.”
With an effort, she ignored the redundancy. Come on. Dennis’s cell doesn’t just make calls; it has a thesaurus. Just like yours. Dissembler. Falsifier. Deceiver. Mix it up a little! “But if you haven’t seen him and he didn’t take his phone—wait, how did you get it?”
“The funeral home called. He left it there.”
“Wait, just now? Or it’s been there for a couple of days?”
“How should I know?” she shrilled.
“Xenia, I think it’s time to call the cops.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, actually.” Beat. “Wouldn’t you?”
“So you can play the victim again.”
“I have never—”
“All anyone at Dani’s funeral could talk about was how hard this was on you.”
“Xenia, you weren’t even at Danielle’s funeral.” Wait, was Xenia mad because Dennis was missing, because Ava had been calling Dennis, because Dennis might have been murdered, because Danielle was murdered, or because people felt sorry for Ava and the Monahans? “And trust me, I wasn’t the focus.”
Sure, the mourners and the kids at school had thrown a lot of sympathy her way. Which was hardly out of line—she and Danielle had been best friends. They did everything together, shared everything, even the same job. Everyone knew that, from Dennis all the way down to people who barely knew them, like what’s-his-name, the funeral home scion.
“Xenia, check with his family to make sure they haven’t heard from him—”
“They haven’t! They’re beside themselves!”
“Then call the police. And don’t go through Missing Persons, call—” She blinked. Tom was holding up his phone so she could read from the screen. “Detective Gary Springer in Major Crimes, 651-266-5500, and tell him Dennis has been missing for four days. Then we—hello?” She stared at the phone, then looked up at Tom. “Silly bitch hung up on me. It’s like an epidemic. An epidemic of poor phone etiquette. Started by me,” she admitted.
“So then: Dennis is apparently a missing person or a person of interest. Or both.”
“She said the funeral home called. And I’ll tell you what, if she doesn’t call the cops within the hour, I’m going to.” Ava stood there and thought, but nothing clarified. “Y’know, I haven’t been to a funeral home in almost five days. I might be going into funeral home withdrawal.”
“We can fix that.”
Forty-Four
Tom pulled up to the funeral home and shut off the engine. When Ava didn’t immediately look up, he tapped her knee. “Ava.”
She started, then immediately dropped her phone back in her purse. “What? I wasn’t googling ‘demisexual.’”
“You are the worst liar. God forbid you have another engine fail and have to inform your passengers. ‘Nobody fret and both engines are definitely functioning, just don’t look out any of the port windows.’”
“Ha! You know that’s happened to me, and it all worked out fine. Besides, most planes fly just fine with one engine. It’s just that engineers are big fans of redundancy, and thank goodness. I’ve never said ‘one of our engines is dead, completely dead, so buckle up, l’il hombres, you’re now one of the flying dead!’”
“Good God.”
“There are things even I wouldn’t say. But I’ve said ‘one of the engines is indicating improperly.’ And we landed just fine. Honestly, it was just another day. Besides all the paperwork. There’s so much paperwork if even the tiniest detail—”
“No one in their right mind would consider engine failure a tiny detail. What other emergencies have you dealt with?”
“You really want to hear?”
“Of course I do. How often have you listened to one of my macabre murder stories?”
“Yeah, but those are fun. Horrible, but fun.”
“Exactly.”
“Remember when I told you I’d seen people have heart attacks on planes twice, once when I was captain? Well, the other time was a year before I made captain. We had an engine fail and a heart attack on board. Unrelated, but I was wondering if we were gonna be in the middle of a Michael Crichton–style cascade of events. Jurassic Park on a Plane or something just as nightmarish.”
“So a millions-to-one event has happened to you in the air … twice.”
“It’s not the mechanical malfunctions that are rare, just the medical emergencies. Ugh, I said ‘just,’ like medical emergencies are no biggie. Anyway, Captain Vang did the ‘engine indicating improperly’ speech and we were cleared for an emergency landing. In Daytona, ugh.”
“Clearly the worst part of the ordeal.”
“Tell me. So Captain Vang’s got it all under control, which is exactly what I would have expected because he was awesome—he’s retired now, and if anyone earned a peaceful retirement, it’s him. He got in touch with ground medical services, and we knew there’d be an ambulance waiting when we touched down. So he asked me to go back in case the flight attendants needed another pair of hands—this was before we flew with defib machines, so CPR was manual. And as you probably know, that’s quite a workout.