Page 46 of A Fabulously Unfabulous Summer for Henry Milch

All right, so it sounded vaguely familiar.

“As I was saying, she’s just a waitress while you’re a retail slut.”

She stared me down while chewing on her veggie burger. I took a bite of my scrambled omelet. Meh.

Finally, she swallowed and said, “I have a little money. My dad’s family owned a furniture company. I don’t really need to work. I just do.”

“You’re a trust fund baby?” I said, completely shocked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Maybe I should have figured that out. She drives around in a relatively new VW Bug, and she certainly spends a lot of money getting her hair dyed. But on the other hand, she doesn’t act like any of the rich people I knew in L.A.

“Why are you still here? You could live anywhere. You could live in L.A.”

“It’s nice here.”

“Oh yeah, the people are great. They’re either saying shitty things to you or killing each other.”

“You have a very warped view of Masons Bay.”

“One of us does, that’s for sure.”

We ate for a moment. I continued to wonder why she stayed and then I realized the answer was right smack in front of me. So I said, “Tell me more about Carl.”

“We’ve just always been friends. We’re both losers. I mean, that’s what Megan would call us. I don’t think we’re losers.”

I could tell she was being careful about what she said. She didn’t seem to want to give everything away, which meant there was more.

“We play D&D.”

“D&D?”

“Dungeons & Dragons.”

“Isn’t that, like, ancient?” I swear my mother talks about playing it when she was a teenager.

“It’s a classic. Anyway, Carl would do anything for me.”

“And you’d do anything for him.”

“Except lie. If Carl killed his stepfather, I wouldn’t lie for him. And he wouldn’t ask me to.”

Which is exactly what she would say if shewouldlie for him, right? I wondered for a second how I could verify the things she was saying?

“You were together, where?”

“He came over to my house.”

“Do you live alone?”

“In the summer. I live with my mother, but she spends the summer at our cabin in the UP.”

“So it was just the two of you. Did you get any phone calls?”

“Detective Lehmann asked all these same questions.”

I was impressed with myself. I guess watching cop shows is the same as going to a police academy.