Page 10 of Always Murder (The Last Picks #9)

“Ow, ow, ow,” Ryan said. “I think you broke my leg.”

“You’re lucky Keme didn’t break your head,” I said. “What were you thinking, pulling a gun on me?”

We were sitting in the manager’s office—Ryan had told us, twice, that it was the manager’s office. In case we didn’t understand the honor being bestowed upon us. It was a cramped room, with the usual particleboard furniture and a strong aroma of Hot Pockets. (I don’t have anything against Hot Pockets—at one point in my life, before I had to worry that my boyfriend might start looking for greener pastures, I’d even considered Hot Pockets one of the four main food groups. But they do contain trans fats and, well, despair.)

Massaging the back of his knee, Ryan said, “I’m not going to be able to walk.”

“You walked fine from the laser tag arena to your office.”

“No, I didn’t. It hurt.”

“You shot me,” I reminded him.

But he directed his look at Keme. “I’m going to tell my mom.”

Keme’s face, which was set in a mixture of annoyance and please let me hit him again , didn’t change.

“She is going to be mad ,” Ryan said, drawing the word out with the kind of glee that only elementary schoolers can manage.

“Ryan,” I said, “I need you to focus. What’s going on? Who’s going to kill you?”

“The same people who killed Paul.”

I waited, but nothing more came. “What happened to Paul?”

“Uh, they killed him.”

I drew a deep breath. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

Ryan rubbed his knee some more. Finally he said, “I mean, he’s not answering his phone or anything. And nobody can find him. And you were helping him, and everyone knows that you’re, like, a jinx, and that’s why people always die when you try to investigate a murder.”

My. jaw. dropped.

“A jinx ?”

Keme shrugged.

“In the first place,” I said, “people don’t die because I’m investigating. They die because there’s a murderer trying to cover his tracks. Or her tracks.” I tried to stop there, but more burst out. “And I don’t try . And it’s not always murder!”

Ryan did that thing that drives otherwise sane, reasonable people to homicidal sprees: he shared a look with Keme and rolled his eyes. Then, his expression changing, he said, “That was pretty dope how you snuck up behind me. How’d you do that?”

“Window,” Keme said.

“Nice. I never thought of that.”

“It’s called an arrow slit,” I said.

“Bet you could sit up there and snipe all day,” Ryan said.

“I did that once,” Keme said. “On top of the wall.”

“Holy—” Ryan broke off and looked at me, of all people, and then mumbled, “—uh, shoot. That’s so fire.”

“Behind the crenellations,” I said.

“How’d you get up there?” Ryan said. And in what he probably considered his manager’s voice, he said, “You’re not supposed to go up there.”

“There’s this spot,” Keme said. “You can use one of the lights to brace yourself.”

“That is seriously so dope,” Ryan said.

Keme shrugged.

“Like parkour,” I said.

They both looked at me. Silently. For what felt like a long time.

Let me tell you: it was not flattering.

Finally, Ryan turned to Keme and said, “What’s his deal?”

“Books.”

Ryan made a sound, like this one-word response from Keme had somehow explained everything.

“Okay,” I said, “if we could get back to the topic of, I don’t know, your brother’s murder that you don’t seem all that torn up about.”

“Are you kidding?” Ryan said. “I’m a wreck. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat.”

And yet, I thought, Hot Pockets. “Based on what you told me, it sounds a little premature to decide he’s dead. Unless there’s something else?”

Ryan’s head moved in a slow, uncertain no.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” I said, “and tell us what’s going on?”

“I don’t know , man. Paul disappeared yesterday, and then Anthony said if I didn’t pay up, bad, uh, stuff was going to happen, and then—”

Ryan didn’t actually gulp when he cut off, but it seemed like a close thing.

“And then what?” I asked.

But Ryan closed his mouth and shrank in on himself. He even forgot about soothing his injured knee.

Keme was the one who broke the silence: “Anthony Turnley?”

Ryan nodded miserably.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Uh, the Turnleys ,” Ryan said.

I took another deep breath. Several, actually. I found myself—to my own surprise—feeling a sudden pang of sympathy for Christine. And, even more so, for Millie. Finally, I managed to say, “Who?”

“Big family,” Keme said. “They live by the river.”

“They’re—” Ryan gave me another of those worried looks and settled on “—buttheads.”

“What kind of buttheads?” I asked. “Murdering buttheads?”

Keme didn’t respond except to narrow his eyes in consideration of the question.

Ryan, on the other hand, nodded frantically.

“You think they had something to do with Paul disappearing?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Ryan said. “I don’t know.”

“You said this guy, Anthony, he talked to you?”

More enthusiastic nodding. “At GaGa’s. He was there, and he said we had to talk, but not in public, so I was supposed to meet him back in the U-cut trees.”

The look on Keme’s face was one of wonder—primarily, I suspected, at how Ryan had managed to stay alive this long.

“What was he wearing?” I asked.

“This stupid Santa suit,” Ryan said. “He looked like such a jerk.”

“Okay,” I said. So far, Ryan’s story lined up with what I’d seen, so I asked, “What next?”

“He said he wanted to talk to Paul. He said he’d been looking for him.”

“Did he say why?”

“No, he just said Paul owed him.”

I looked at Keme, but there was nothing there. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. That’s what he said: Paul owed him. And then he kept asking where Paul was. I told him I didn’t know, and he said I’d better find him, or I was going to have to pay up.”

I thought about that for a few seconds. “If they’re looking for Paul, it doesn’t sound like they killed him.”

“Oh dang,” Ryan said. “I didn’t think about that.”

That was probably the truth; I suspected Ryan didn’t think about a lot of things.

“What else?” I said.

“That’s pretty much—”

“No, it’s not, because you started to tell us something and then you clammed up.”

Ryan made himself even smaller. He squirmed. He rocked. He did micro-spins from side to side, and the office chair squeaked under him.

“Fine,” I said. “Keme?”

Keme didn’t even move.

“All right!” Ryan’s voice held a note of genuine panic. “I’ll tell you.”

You should have seen Keme’s face. My general opinion with Keme is that he needs to be taken down a peg or two, especially when he thinks he’s really tough, like that time he pushed my head between the cushions on the chesterfield. But today, I figured he probably needed this, on account of the whole donkey thing.

Ryan wheeled the chair over to a filing cabinet. He unlocked it with his manager keys—he paused to tell us this—and opened a drawer. From inside, he drew out a stack of cash. And then another. And then another.

For several long seconds, I stared.

And then I said, “How much is that?”

“Ten thousand dollars,” Ryan said in what was practically a whisper.

“Where did you get it?”

He hesitated again, but only for an instant. “The trunk of our car. Where we keep the spare tire.”

“Why were you looking in there?” Keme asked.

“That’s where we keep our smokes.” In a rush, he added, “Don’t tell our mom.”

There was something to be said about men in their twenties who hid cigarettes, called them our smokes, and worried about their mom catching them. But I focused on the more pressing issue: “When did you find it?”

“This morning,” Ryan said. “I know what you’re thinking, but there’s no way this is Paul’s.”

“Why not?”

“Because he would have told me!” With an unexpectedly self-aware grin, Ryan added, “And we would have spent it.”

Maybe it said something about the company I’d been keeping, but strangely enough, I believed him.

Of course, that meant there was a much bigger problem.

First, the stolen packages.

Now, the money.

Someone was trying to frame Paul.

But for what?

And where in the world was he?