Page 27 of Rest In Pink

“I didn’t even know you could get fries here,” she said, biting into one of mine. “Or tenderloins. I want it all.”

Vince nodded. “I figured. That’s why I bought enough for you guys.”

“Thank you,” Molly said. “In exchange, I will allow you to do whatever godless thing you have planned for my sister tonight.”

“Good to know,” Vince said and bit into his sandwich.

I asked, “Did you see O’Toole and Honey at the counter?”

“I tried not to look,” Molly said.

“Anemone stole their cook.”

“Marianne Phelps?” Molly smiled. “I love Anemone.”

Mac slid into the booth beside me and put a plate with fries and a tenderloin in front of Molly and one in front of himself.

“Why you aren’t sucking this man’s toes is beyond me,” I told her as she oohed over the plate, and Dani brought Mac a beer, pausing long enough to smile at Vince.

“Did you talk to Will today?” Mac said to Vince after he’d thanked Dani, looking uncharacteristically serious.

“Yeah,” Vince said, and bit into his sandwich again.

I love a man with a hearty appetite.

“He tell you somebody’s trying to buy the garage?” Mac asked.

“Yep,” Vince said as he chewed. “Cash. Fronting for Vermillion Inc. Whatever that is."

“What the fuck is going on?” Mac said.

Molly finally looked up from her food to stare at him in surprise since Mac never swore. “Are you upset?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Mac said. “Something is wrong here.”

“Just because somebody’s trying to buy a garage?” Molly asked.

“There are layers,” I told Molly. “There’s a murky undercurrent here we do not yet understand but that we are sure is looming with bad intent.”

Molly looked confused, but I think that was mostly because Mac was serious. Mac is not a serious person unless there’s a fire or a medical emergency since he was, by all accounts, one terrific EMT. Or maybe it was because an undercurrent couldn’t loom. That’s the hell of conversation. No revision.

Before she could say anything else, the door opened again and my mother and my uncle, that is, my parents, came in, as my mother had threatened earlier.

Look, I know I’m going to have to get over my snit about their affair. Actually, I’m not in a snit about the affair, I don’t care about that. I care that nobody told me for thirty-three years thatI had a fucking father.Okay, so maybe it’s more than caring. Maybe I’m justangry.Maybe I grew up wanting a father and my mother didn’t tell me I had one and he lived three houses down. Maybe I was really grateful to my uncle for filling in for a father even though he was just my uncle, only to find out that the son-of-a-bitch wasn’t filling in, he really was my father. Maybe—

“Thereyou are,” my mother said as she came to stand next to the booth. My uncle/dad hesitated beside her.

“Hi, Aunt Marybeth. Hi, Dad,” Molly said.

“Mom. Uncle Dad,” I said.

The door opened behind us again, and I didn’t care, but I was trying to keep from snarling at my parents, so I turned around.

George Pens—that would be Honey O’Toole’s ex-husband and Vince’s boss—stood in the doorway with my boss, Anemone Patterson. The whole place went dead quiet—Anemone has that effect, plus the police chief was dating again, so that was news—and then she saw us and came over to the booth, pulling George with her.

“Hello, darlings,” she said, her hand on George’s arm, proprietary. “We just thought we’d come down to town for a while.” She made it sound like the gods descending from Olympus, or at least a goddess, since George was George.

Although come to think of it, he was starting to look kind of Zeus-like. Anemone must be sprucing him up.

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