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5.
“Part Six,” Margo said once we were driving again. She was waving her
fingernails through the air, almost like she was playing piano. “Leave flowers on
Karin’s doorstep with apologetic note.”
“What’d you do to her?”
“Well, when she told me about Jase, I sort of shot the messenger.”
“How so?” I asked. We were pulled up to a stoplight, and some kids in a
sports car next to us were revving their engine—as if I was going to race the
Chrysler. When you floored it, it whimpered.
“Well, I don’t remember exactly what I called her, but it was something
along the lines of ‘sniveling, repulsive, idiotic, backne-ridden, snaggletoothed,
fat-assed bitch with the worst hair in Central Florida—and that’s saying
something.’”
“Her hair is ridiculous,” I said.
I know. That was the only thing I said about her that was “true. When you
say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you
can’t really fully and honestly take those back, you know? I mean, there are
highlights. And there are streaks. And then there are skunk stripes.”
As I drove up to Karin’s house, Margo disappeared into the way-back and
returned with the bouquet of tulips. Taped to one of the flowers’ stems was a
note Margo’d folded to look like an envelope. She handed me the bouquet once I
stopped, and I sprinted down a sidewalk, placed the flowers on Karin’s doorstep,
and sprinted back.
“Part Seven,” she said as soon as I was back in the minivan. “Leave a fish for
the lovely Mr. Worthington.”
“I suspect he won’t be home yet,” I said, just the slightest hint of pity in my
voice.
“I hope the cops find him barefoot, frenzied, and naked in some roadside
ditch a week from now,” Margo answered dispassionately.
“Remind me never to cross Margo Roth Spiegelman,” I mumbled, and

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Margo laughed.
“Seriously,” she said. “We bring the fucking rain down on our enemies.”
“Your enemies,” I corrected.
“We’ll see,” she answered quickly, and then perked up and said, “Oh, hey,
I’ll handle this one. The thing about Jason’s house is they have this crazy good
security system. And we can’t have another panic attack.”
“Um,” I said.
Jason lived just down the road from Karin, in this uber-rich subdivision called
Casavilla. All the houses in Casavilla are Spanish-style with the red-tile roofs
and everything, only they weren’t built by the Spanish. They were built by
Jason’s dad, who is one of the richest land developers in Florida. “Big, ugly
homes for big, ugly people,” I told Margo as we pulled into Casavilla.
“No shit. If I ever end up being the kind of person who has one kid and seven
bedrooms, do me a favor and shoot me.”
We pulled up in front of Jase’s house, an architectural monstrosity that
looked generally like an oversize Spanish hacienda except for three thick Doric
columns going up to the roof. Margo grabbed the second catfish from the
backseat, uncapped a pen with her teeth, and scrawled in handwriting that didn’t
look much like hers:
MS’s love For you: it Sleeps With the Fishes “Listen, keep the car on,” she
said. She put Jase’s WPHS baseball hat on backward.
“Okay,” I said.
“Keep it in drive,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, and felt my pulse rising. In through the nose, out through the
mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Catfish and spray paint in
hand, Margo threw the door open, jogged across the Worthingtons’ expansive
front lawn, and then hid behind an oak tree. She waved at me through the
darkness, and I waved back, and then she took a dramatically deep breath, puffed
her cheeks out, turned, and ran.
She’d only taken one stride when the house lit up like a municipal Christmas
tree, and a siren started blaring. I briefly contemplated abandoning Margo to her
fate, but just kept breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth as she
ran toward the house. She heaved the fish through a window, but the sirens were
so loud I could barely even hear the glass breaking. And then, just because she’s
Margo Roth Spiegelman, she took a moment to carefully spray-paint a lovely M

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on the part of the window that wasn’t shattered. Then she was running all out
toward the car, and I had a foot on the accelerator and a foot on the brake, and
the Chrysler felt at that moment like a Thoroughbred racehorse. Margo ran so
fast her hat blew off behind her, and then she jumped into the car, and we were
gone before she even got the door closed.
I stopped at the stop sign at the end of the street, and Margo said, “What the
hell? Go go go go go,” and I said, “Oh, right,” because I had forgotten that I was
throwing caution to the wind and everything. I rolled through the three other stop
signs in Casavilla, and we were a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue before we
saw a cop car roar past us with its lights on.
“That was pretty hardcore,” Margo said. “I mean, even for me. To put it Q-
style, my pulse is a little elevated.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I mean, you couldn’t have just left it in his car? Or at least at
the doorstep?”
“We bring the fucking rain, Q. Not the scattered showers.”
“Tell me Part Eight is less terrifying.”
“Don’t worry. Part Eight is child’s play. We’re going back to Jefferson Park.
Lacey’s house. You know where she lives, right?” I did, although God knows
Lacey Pemberton would never deign to have me over. She lived on the opposite
side of Jefferson Park, a mile away from me, in a nice condo on top of a
stationery store— the same block the dead guy had lived on, actually. I’d been to
the building before, because friends of my parents lived on the third floor. There
were two locked doors before you even got to the condos. I figured even Margo
Roth Spiegelman couldn’t break into that place.
“So has Lacey been naughty or nice?” I asked.
“Lacey has been distinctly naughty,” Margo answered. She was looking out
the passenger window again, talking away from me, so I could barely hear her.
“I mean, we have been friends since kindergarten.”
“And?”
“And she didn’t tell me about Jase. But not just that. When I look back on it,
she’s just a terrible friend. I mean, for instance, do you think I’m fat?”
“Jesus, no,” I said. “You’re—” And I stopped myself from saying not skinny,