Page 54 of A Midsummer Night's Ghost

“I have a headache.”

“I’ll get the car.”

“You’re not driving!”

He went still. “Okay.” He got the look of a man who is trying to coax a stray dog over to him. “It’s next door in the parking lot of the restaurant that caught on fire.”

“Thank you. Wait here,” I told him and my grandmother.

“Was it the trunk beer?” he asked her as I stomped away.

“Nah. It was the dead people.”

That pretty much summed it up.

Especially considering tracksuit guy appeared beside me.

“You’re going to listen to me.”

If this dude followed me home like heartburn after bottomless margaritas I was going to lose it.

“Go away! I forbid you to follow me.”

It worked. He swore at me. But it worked. He misted out.

That would be a nice trick. Poof. Just exit from awkward situations.

THIRTEEN

“I thinkI’ve been approaching this all wrong,” I said to Alyssa as we walked along the Towpath, a biking and hiking trail through the heart of my old neighborhood, Ohio City, and where Alyssa currently lived.

“You finally realized that you need a keratin treatment?” Alyssa asked, huffing and puffing as she walked beside me.

“That was truly hateful. I was born with this hair. I can’t help it.”

“I’m sorry. I hate working out.”

I wasn’t exactly enjoying our power walk either, but that was no excuse for hating on my hair. “We can slow down, you know. No one is chasing us.” For once.

“I want to tighten my thighs. Can’t do that taking a leisurely stroll and you know I hate the gym.”

“Are you doing this for you or because you want to impress Lawson Hill?”

“What? Ew. No. Of course not! Lawson loves my body exactly the way it is. I feel like he would actually be sad if I lost my curves because he very much enjoys them. No, this is for me because we’re coming up on summer and I am tired of excessive thigh rub. I just want to tighten up some loose ends, so to speak.”

“I would say count on me to do this twice a week, because I could use increased lung capacity, but not if you’re going to be mean.”

Alyssa, who was sweating in her sports bra and zip up hoodie, her forehead dewy, slowed down a fraction. “I said I was sorry. Okay, so what have you been approaching all wrong?”

“Now I don’t want to tell you.” Not because I was being childish, but because she didn’t like it when I brought up Ryan.

“Oh my God, stop. Just tell me. Unless you’d rather tell Sara Murphy.”

It kind of made me happy that Alyssa felt threatened by Sara Murphy after that hair comment. She should want to clearly stake her claim as my best friend, because I was a pretty darn good best friend.

“Okay. So I’ve been fixating on trying to find out about James the janitor and what’s going on with Ryan when the real thing I should be focusing on is what Jake had me do—go down to the station and help the detectives if I can. They caught the ex-boyfriend of the woman who was asphyxiated. They told him they had an eyewitness, meaning me, and he just caved and confessed. His girlfriend at the time also admitted she lied about his alibi.”

“Why would she lie to cover up his crime?”

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