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“Just . . . I don’t know . . . start with something. Anything. It’s Ford, you know? For a cop, he’s, like, the least scary person there is.”

We both laugh at this then fall quiet, drinking our coffee as we watch cars drive by, and the sun paints the burnt orange and yellow slopes of the mountains around us.

June fidgets next to me, opening and closing her mouth several times without saying anything.

“Alright,” I say, knowing damn well she’s dying inside. “Let’s hear it. Which vice are we starting with?”

“Thank God!” The words gush out so fast and loud it’s like they’ve been trapped in her mouth for months. “I’d like to start with the nude maids, please and thank you.”

I laugh, hard, and then we do what we do: We drink our coffee and talk until we run out of words. As confused as I am about Ford, the house, my whole life in general, I’ve forgotten how my best friend always feels like home. How without her friendship, I might not have survived all my hardest days.

“You know,” June says, opening her driver’s door as we pack up to leave. “You move to the desert, we don’t get this.”

I lean a hip against my Bronco. “You’re using me for my connection with the addicts?”

She grins. “It’s your only redeeming quality.”

Outside the two-story house in the cookie-cutter neighborhood, I cut the engine and park along the street. The familiar woman walks to the mailbox and sees me, smiling as she crosses the street to where I’m parked.

She has long dark hair, a curvy build, and the same friendly face she had twenty years ago when I met her. She was young; I was younger.

“Scotty.” She swats me lightly with a stack of mail, smile webbing lines out from around her eyes. “Will you just knock on the door one of these days already? How many times do I have to invite you?”

“Hey, Merritt. I don’t want to intrude.” I look around the neighborhood. “Just creep the neighbors out.”

“Yeah, well.” She chuckles and pushes her bangs out of her eyes. “HOA president lives across the street; it would be good for him to be creeped out.”

“Everyone good?”

She nods. “Everyone’s good. He’s not here right now—basketball or something—but school is going good. Good grades and not partying too much.”

“The gene must have skipped a generation,” I joke.

She grins, looking at the house. “I got supper on, so I have to get back inside, but I mean it, Scotty, anytime. Too many Sundays of you coming by not to say hello. For him not to know you.”

A knot forms in my throat, and I start the engine. “Maybe.”

Merritt taps the door with her mail. “Hopefully.”

Thirty-Five

“WehaveWyattDuncantoday,” Wanda says with a smack of her gum as she wheels him across her workshop. “Already got the music playing too. Hear that?” She pauses with a smile, tilting her head. “Old guy liked Frankie Sinatra.”

Dondi emerges from the body cooler, face lighting up when he sees me. “The Ash Queen is in the house of flames.”

“Dondi,” I say, barely glancing at him from the paperwork I’m flipping through. “How’s it going?”

“Wanda has revealed new colors in the rainbow,” he says wistfully. When I look at him again, he and Wanda are giving each other goo-goo eyes.

“Okay.”

“And Mr. Selleck said he’s noticed you haven’t been in as much lately and wanted to know if it meant you were thinking about selling.”

“Sure,” I say, only half joking. “Tell him to meet me in the retort to iron out the details.”

He laughs. “Funny as ever.” Then he gives Wanda a kiss that makes her giggle and takes a dramatic bow my way. “The Dondinator is off to transport those who can no longer transport themselves.”

When he’s gone, I look at Wanda. “Are you two . . . for real?”