Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

Why, Amy, couldn’t you have done this
sooner?
Our timing had never been good.
I opened the next clue, read it, tucked it in my pocket, then
headed back home. I knew where to go, but I wasn’t ready
yet. I couldn’t handle another compliment, another kind
word from my wife, another olive branch. My feelings for her
were veering too quickly from bitter to sweet.
I went back to Go’s, spent a few hours alone, drinking
coffee and flipping around the TV, anxious and pissy, killing
time till my eleven p.m. carpool to the mall. My twin got
home just after seven, looking wilted from her solo bar shift.
Her glance at the TV told me I should turn it off. ‘What’d you
do today?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette and flopping
down at our mother’s old card table.
‘Manned the volunteer center … then we go search the
mall at eleven,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell her about Amy’s

---

clue. I felt guilty enough.
Go doled out some solitaire cards, the steady slap of
them on the table a rebuke. I began pacing. She ignored
me.
‘I was just watching TV to distract myself.’
‘I know, I do.’
She flipped over a Jack.
‘There’s got to be something I can 
do
,’ I said, stalking
around her living room.
‘Well, you’re searching the mall in a few hours,’ Go
said, and gave no more encouragement. She flipped over
three cards.
‘You sound like you think it’s a waste of time.’
‘Oh. No. Hey, everything is worth checking out. They
got Son of Sam on a parking ticket, right?’
Go was the third person who’d mentioned this to me; it
must be the mantra for cases going cold. I sat down across
from her.
‘I haven’t been upset enough about Amy,’ I said. ‘I
know that.’
‘Maybe not.’ She finally looked up at me. ‘You’re being
weird.’
‘I think that instead of panicking, I’ve just focused on
being pissed at her. Because we were in such a bad place
lately. It’s like it feels wrong for me to worry too much
because I don’t have the right. I guess.’
‘You’ve been weird, I can’t lie,’ Go said. ‘But it’s a
weird situation.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I don’t care
how you are with me. Just be careful with everyone else,
okay? People judge. Fast.’
She went back to her solitaire, but I wanted her

---

attention. I kept talking.
‘I should probably check in on Dad at some point,’ I
said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll tell him about Amy.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t. He was even weirder about Amy
than you are.’
‘I always felt like she must remind him of an old
girlfriend or something – the one who got away. After he—’I
made the downward swoop of a hand that signified his
Alzheimer’s – ‘he was kind of rude and awful, but …’
‘Yeah, but he kind of wanted to impress her at the
same time,’ she said. ‘Your basic jerky twelve-year-old boy
trapped in a sixty-eight-year-old asshole’s body.’
‘Don’t women think that all men are jerky twelve-year-
olds at heart?’
‘Hey, if the heart fits.’
Eleven-oh-eight p.m., Rand was waiting for us just inside
the automatic sliding doors to the hotel, his face squinting
into the dark to make us out. The Hillsams were driving
their pick-up; Stucks and I both rode in the bed. Rand came
trotting up to us in khaki golf shorts and a crisp Middlebury
T-shirt. He hopped in the back, planted himself on the
wheel cover with surprising ease, and handled the
introductions like he was the host of his own mobile talk
show.
‘I’m really sorry about Amy, Rand,’ Stucks said loudly,
as we hurtled out of the parking lot with unnecessary speed
and hit the highway. ‘She’s such a sweet person. One time
she saw me out painting a house, sweating my ba – my butt
off, and she drove on to 7-Eleven, got me a giant pop, and
brought it back to me, right up on the ladder.’

---

This was a lie. Amy cared so little for Stucks or his
refreshment that she wouldn’t have bothered to piss in a
cup for him.
‘That sounds like her,’ Rand said, and I was flush with
unwelcome, ungentlemanly annoyance. Maybe it was the
journalist in me, but facts were facts, and people didn’t get
to turn Amy into everyone’s beloved best friend just
because it was emotionally expedient.
‘Middlebury, huh?’ Stucks continued, pointing at
Rand’s T-shirt. ‘Got a hell of a rugby team.’
‘That’s 
right
we do,’ Rand said, the big smile again,
and he and Stucks began an improbable discussion of
liberal-arts rugby over the noise of the car, the air, the night,
all the way to the mall.
Joe Hillsam parked his truck outside the giant
cornerstone Mervyns. We all hopped out, stretched our
legs, shook ourselves awake. The night was muggy and
moon-slivered. I noticed Stucks was wearing – maybe
ironically, possibly not – a T-shirt that read