Page 88 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
“Yeah, actually.” Beat. “Wouldn’t you?”
“So you can play the victim again.”
“I havenever—”
“All anyone at Dani’s funeral could talk about was how hard this was onyou.”
“Xenia, you weren’t evenatDanielle’s funeral.” Wait, was Xenia mad because Dennis was missing, because Ava had been calling Dennis, because Dennis might have been murdered, because Daniellewasmurdered, or because people felt sorry for Avaandthe 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!”
“Thencallthepolice.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 thephone, 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 theworstliar. 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, completelydead, so buckle up, l’ilhombres,you’re now one of the flying dead!’”
“GoodGod.”
“Therearethings 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’sso muchpaperwork 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 failanda 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 Planeor 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. InDaytona,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.
“So I go back and I relieve one of the flight attendants fora couple of minutes, and this poor little kid is crying because her dad’s going into cardiac arrest right in front of her, and nobody can calm her down, so I did what I always do—”
