“Are you serious?”

That got Peggy’s attention, too. She glanced over at me as she wiped down the next table.

“Can I get a coffee to go?” I asked her.

“Sure can.” She headed to the pot as I took a bite of one of the best burgers I’d ever had. Or I was just really hungry. It was hard to tell.

“And you’re going to find him?” Garrett asked after she strolled off, an annoying mixture of humor and doubt in his voice.

“Thanks for the vote,” I said, swallowing hard and washing the bite down with an iced tea chaser.

He shook his head. “Instilling confidence isn’t really my thing.”

“No!” I said, shocked.

“You ’bout done?”

“Holy cow, are you finished?” Having barely taken two bites, I blinked in surprise.

“Yep. It’s a man thing.”

“That can’t be good for the digestion.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, a grin brightening his features that may have been attractive, had I found nice-looking men with amazing skill appealing. Good thing I didn’t.

Ten minutes later, we paid simultaneously and walked out the same way.

That’s when I saw it. My heart leapt into my throat. My hands covered my mouth in shock. I ran, stumbling forward. “Misery!” I yelled in my best melodramatic tone.

“Holy shit,” Garrett said, walking up to us, Misery and me, as I wrapped my arms around her fender. At least I think that’s what the thing on the side was called. “You get very Shakespearean sometimes.”

Misery’s tires had been slashed. All four of them, and probably the spare on the back as well. Brutally. Heartlessly. And quite annoyingly.

“How much you want to bet,” Garrett said, kneeling to analyze the vandalism, “these slashes were made by a big-ass hunting knife.”

“I’m fairly certain they were. Farley Scanlon is a big fat liar!” I yelled into the dark atmosphere. I opened my phone to call the police.

On the bright side, two hours later, Misery had some brand-spanking-new radials. She looked good. I filed a report with the police, explaining who I was and my encounter with Farley Scanlon. The big fat liar. Maybe he didn’t like being called fat, but since he wasn’t, I really didn’t see the harm.

“Are you good to drive?”

I frowned at Garrett. “Why do people keep asking me that?”

“Because you haven’t slept in two weeks?”

“I guess. I’m fine. Just, I don’t know, stay close.”

“Roger that.” He walked to his truck and started it up, waiting while I paid for Misery’s new rubber. She was so worth it.

16

There comes a moment when you know you just aren’t going to do anything else productive for the rest of the day.

—T-SHIRT

When I finally got home to my slightly-bigger-than-a-bread-box apartment, I realized how untidy I’d been keeping it. Garrett’s replacement had been outside the apartment building, waiting for us when we pulled up, and Garrett took off to catch some Z’s. Wuss.

But I was thankful he’d left when I stepped inside my humble abode. Either Mardi Gras had been celebrated really early and in my apartment, or my apartment had been ransacked. Big time. Apparently, the slashing of the tires was more than just a gut reaction to the big fat liar comment. It was meant to keep me busy while someone hightailed it to Albuquerque to check out my digs. And tear them apart. So uncalled for, in my opinion.

“Mr. Wong, what did I say about letting strangers in?” I glared at his bony shoulders, then glanced at the girl with the knife behind me and shook my head. “That man never listens.”

I scanned my living room. Papers and books cluttered the floor. Drawers sat open in different states of undress. Cabinet doors stood ajar, as though they’d been trying to fly.

Armed and ready with coffee carafe in hand, I crept to each closet—I only had two in the whole place—and peeked in. I would’ve had my gun, but it was in one of the closets, making the point moot. They’d been hit as well, their belongings strewn across the floor to mingle with underwear and shoes and hair scrunchies. People magazine mixed with The New Yorker. A crystal chess set mixed with my SpongeBob SquarePants edition of Monopoly. Utter chaos.

Still, it wasn’t vandalism for the sake of vandalism. It was more deliberate than it looked at first glance. Cabinets and drawers had been scoured for information, while anything inconsequential had been tossed aside, including my emergency stash of chocolate. Clearly my intruder had no taste.

My computer had been turned on as well, so unless Mr. Wong had discovered Internet  p**n , someone was trying to figure out what I’d been researching. And that someone seemed a tad nervous.

In a moment of horror, I realized my mouse was gone. Just … gone. Who would take a poor, defenseless mouse? I looked back at his wireless USB connector—he loved that connector—and let myself grieve the loss of the mouse I’d taken for granted far too often. Then I picked up my phone and called a semi-friend, a cop named Taft, to file a quick report. The cops can do nothing without reports, so I wanted them to have one on file.

“I can stop by if you need me to,” he said.

“No, whoever did this—and I have a good idea who it was—is long gone.” I gave Taft my statement over the phone.

“So, have you seen my sister?” Taft’s sister had died when they were kids and had been following him around his whole life.