Pretty Crooked (18 page)

Instead of hitting more stores as I’d planned, I decided to head straight for Sierra’s. She lived in the same part of town as Mary, just a few streets over in a small house on a street where identical white boxes were lined up close together like teeth. The air had cooled some, with the sun having gone down. A tiny sliver of moon was just emerging in the sky, though it was less visible amid all the lights in this area. Dogs barked from somewhere nearby, and a car cruised past, bass-heavy music blaring and rattling its windows.

On the bike ride, I tried to push all thoughts of Aidan out of my mind. I’d felt so silly when he handed me the bag, it was mortifying to think of it now. He had thrown me off with his antics, but I had to focus on the matter at hand. This was about Sierra and returning the favors she’d done for so many others.

I set the bag down, tucked my note inside, and rang the doorbell. Then I ran across the street and positioned myself, panting, behind a giant agave plant. I reached into my bag for a pair of bird-watching binoculars I’d swiped from my mom. I felt like a perv but it was the only way I could think of to really take in the scene from afar. Besides, I told myself, people only came to the door in their underwear in late-night cable movies.

As I watched through the double lenses, a heavyset
bearded man walked to the front of the house and opened the door wide so that a shaft of light fell onto the doorstep. I could see a dog, too, a white terrier nipping at his heels. He turned away for a moment, walking out of the round frames of my view. And then Sierra was at the door, too, dressed in a University of Arizona sweatshirt and jeans. I wondered if she had just come home from one of her many volunteer gigs. She scooped up the dog and held it in her arms as she and the man exchanged a few words. I couldn’t read what they were saying, but he handed her the package and then they shut the door.

I waited some more, trying to peer into the windows upstairs, but there were heavy shades blocking my view.

Just as well. No need to get totally creepy
.

I imagined the major cringe factor if Sierra caught me peeping outside her house. I put the binoculars away then.

As I headed back to my bike, I heard a squeal of delight, so loud it was audible outside the house and echoed across the street. I’d never heard Sierra make a sound like that.

Another happy customer. I gave myself a high five. Oh yeah, baby. I was two for two. Not bad for an amateur crook.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I WOKE UP to a rare rainy day on Thursday—rare for Paradise Valley, anyway. At first, the water prattled slowly on my windows and made lazy silvery trails on the glass. In the hour it took me to shower and drink my tea, the sprinkles had escalated to buckets. This would be a serious test for my hair.

As I was brushing my teeth, there was a knock on the door. Tied up with my toothbrush, I called out to my mom to answer it. She must not have heard me because the person kept knocking and then the doorbell rang a couple of times. I spit out a mouthful of minty froth and scurried out to find Cherise on my doorstep in a bright yellow slicker, hood drawn and tied around her chin.

“I’ve been out here for like ten minutes,” she said, looking peeved, and by now, more than a little damp. “I thought you might want a ride today.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I thought my mom would get it. She’s
usually up by now. But yes, totally. Ride. Love it.”

“Good thing I came dressed for it,” she said, shaking her head. “Otherwise I’d leave you in the puddles, lady.”

I led her into the house through the front entrance hall so I could gather up my things for school. I looked down at my jeans and flats and decided to adapt my footwear for the weather. I was going to need something stronger, like my boots and some socks.

Cherise watched me change, looking impatient. Then I slipped on my army-green rain parka and went to knock on my mom’s door to say good-bye. “Mom? I’m leaving now,” I yelled. “Cherise is driving me.”

I heard her feet padding to the door. She opened it a crack. “Okay. Don’t yell. I can hear you.”

I leaned in to see her face, which was partially cast in shadow. “Why are you hiding?”

“I’m not. I’m just in my nightgown. Cherise doesn’t need to see me like this.”

“Hi, Mrs. Fox,” Cherise said from behind me.

“You slept so late.” I peered behind her into the room, which was completely dark. She had the shades down. The sheets on her bed were all twisted up. On closer inspection, my mom’s face looked puffy and red. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just not feeling well,” she gasped. Her voice cracked and I knew then that she’d been crying. As if noticing that I noticed, she brought up her sleeve to wipe her face. Then she forced a smile. “Nothing major.
Sinuses. But I’m gonna go back to bed for a bit.”

“We gotta go, Willz,” Cherise said. “We’re running late.”

I looked at her and then back to my mom. Something was wrong. But there wasn’t time now to get into it. And not with Cherise here, anyway.

“I’m coming,” I said, leaning in to kiss my mother. “Mom, I’ll call you during break and check in on you.”

“I have to go out to the co-op and then to the art center for a four o’clock meeting, so I’ll just see you when you get home, okay? Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Really.”

Then she shut the door, closing herself inside.

Even in the rain, it was still oddly sunny and bright out, and the cloying smell of creosote rose up from the ground. We dashed through the raindrops to get into Cherise’s car.

“What was up with your mom?” Cherise asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, my unease deepening with her observation. If she’d noticed it, too, then it must have been obvious. “It seemed like she’d been crying, right?”

Cherise reversed out of the driveway. “But she said she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe she was hungover?”

“She doesn’t drink, really. I guess she could be sick,” I said, thinking of her appearance lately. “But I also think she was upset about something.”

Cherise raised her eyebrows. “Like man problems?”

“Maybe,” I said, doubtful. My mom hadn’t dated
anyone in years, at least not to my knowledge. And maybe not at all since the man whose DNA I carry left us.

“Has she mentioned anyone?”

“No. She
has
been really busy, though, running out a lot to different meetings and things. On the phone with people. Out at night. Now that I think about it, she’s been acting weird for a while.”

“Maybe it’s a secret boyfriend,” Cherise said, signaling for the turn out of my neighborhood.

“But why would she keep that secret?” I zipped and unzipped my jacket nervously.

“Lots of reasons. I can think of several off the bat.”

“Why are we just assuming this is about a guy, though?”

She adjusted her windshield wipers to catch the intensifying downpour. “Think about it. What would make
you
cry and lie around in a dark room?”

I thought about it. She had a point. “Wouldn’t she want my support, though?” The thought of my mom alone and heartbroken caused my own chest to tighten.

Cherise guided us into the school parking lot. “She probably doesn’t want to upset you.”

“I don’t know.” I frowned as I unclicked my seat belt. “Something is weird about the whole thing.”

“I got it,” Cherise said, turning to me with widened eyes. “Why don’t we find out for ourselves? Do a little investigation?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to turn my mom’s off day into a federal case. Besides, if she didn’t want
me
to know what was going on, then she definitely didn’t want Cherise to know, whatever it was. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

“Don’t you want to figure this out? She’s your mom, and you’re not ten years old. You’re practically an adult, Willa. I think, whatever it is, you should at least get a real explanation and know the truth.”

Cherise’s words hung in the air. My mom and I had always had a fairly laid-back approach to each other’s personal lives. I never wanted to meddle too much—not that there’d been too much to meddle in. I wouldn’t want her nosing around in my life, either—especially not right now. I had my own secrets, after all. So it wasn’t exactly fair for me to expect her to tell me everything.

Still, though, I couldn’t shake the sense of disquiet that had been trailing me all morning.

I flashed back to her half-shadowed face in the doorway. She’d said not to worry, right?

Okay, but what were the chances I would be able to do
that
? She was my mom. I couldn’t stand to see her so upset. If she was crying in a dark room, I wanted to know why.

And then I thought again of how she’d been acting, all the coming and going, the phone calls. The other night when she’d been standing over my bed. I’d thought it
was a dream, but now I really couldn’t be sure.
Something
was definitely going on.

“Okay,” I said finally. “So what do you suggest?”

“I suggest we do it the old-fashioned way. We follow her.”

After school, we called a cab service. We’d thought about just taking Cherise’s car, but she’d been to our house enough times that I felt sure my mom would recognize the Jetta.

It had stopped raining by then, though the air still hung heavy with a sickly sweet smell, the sky was still gray, and the road was pocked with glittery puddles. As we waited by the street entrance, I started to feel apprehensive about the whole thing all over again. Were we really going through with this?

Following your mom was pretty weird, as far as after-school activities went. Though technically it was no weirder than some of the other stuff I’d been doing. And Cherise assured me that she’d read enough airport paperbacks that she knew what to do.

The car pulled up in front of us, white with turquoise bands down the middle—not exactly the most discreet vehicle to tail someone in, but it was going to have to suffice. We told the driver to go to my neighborhood first, and had him pull into a driveway at the end of the street.

“Um. Excuse me. Are you ladies going anywhere? This house is for sale,” the driver said, turning around.
He was skinny, with a graying beard and a voice like tires skidding on the pavement.

“We need you to follow someone,” Cherise said.

He shook his head. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”

Cherise pulled a fifty out of her lime-green Comme des Garçons zip-around wallet. “Not even for a big tip?”

He cocked his head and blinked slowly. “Okay, girls, if you put it that way. But only for an hour, and that’s it. I don’t have all day to dillydally.”

“We don’t want to dillydally, either,” I promised him. My mom would be leaving any moment to go to the “art center,” or wherever she was really going. “We just need to wait for a Subaru to drive by. Follow it at a distance.”

“All right, whatever. Just don’t get me in trouble with any sort of illegal activity.”

“Us?”
Cherise asked, putting her hand on her heart. “Do we look like criminals?”

I had to smile to myself.
Well, one of us does, maybe
.

He harrumphed. “It takes all kinds.”

From the corner of my eye, I spotted my mom’s car coming down the street. “That’s it,” I said.

The driver watched her roll to a stop at the end of the street and signal her turn before he reversed out of the driveway. The car hissed against the wet road and puddles splashed against the windshield. He let another car go ahead and then turned out himself.

We rode along past the ginormous houses, some ranches, and a country club, the denim-blue zigzag of
mountains ever-present behind them. A few smoky clouds left over from the rain hung around, like they hadn’t gotten the memo that the storm was over. As the road opened up into the brown reaches of desert, I gnawed at my thumbnail.

“It’s cool,” Cherise said, instinctively sensing my anxiety. She was good like that.

But what if it wasn’t? The back of my mom’s head seemed so small from this distance. I had a fleeting thought that we were going down a bad path. What if we saw something we weren’t supposed to see? Did I really want to see her with some guy?

“She’s turning left,” Cherise announced.

The cab turned left onto one of the main thoroughfares, the area of town where the houses started getting closer together. Palm trees swayed over the street, heavier now from the rain. The road was metallic and slick, and the driver’s wipers creaked in an irregular rhythm. We passed the community college, an office park, and some hotels, all in matching pink adobe.

“What if she’s going to some kind of hotel?” Cherise asked, pinching me.

“That would be very creepy,” I said, making a face. “If she’s having an affair I’d at least hope that the person had their own place they could go to. Plus, I feel like they only do that in the movies.”

“No,” the cabdriver piped up. “It happens in real life, too.”

I cringed. “Thanks for the input.”

The Subaru turned onto an entrance ramp to the highway.

“She must be leaving town,” Cherise said.

“That’s weird.” I frowned.

“One hour,” the driver said, following. “I’m not going to California.”

“It looks like we’re headed south.” I rolled up my window as we picked up speed. The heat was stifling, and my anxiety was deepening. Where was she going? “Can you put the air on back here?”

A few minutes later, she signaled again. She was exiting at Scottsdale. What was she doing in Scottsdale? We’d never been to Scottsdale together.

“My aunt lives around here,” Cherise said.

We drove through an intersection with shopping plazas on either side, stacked signs listing dozens of stores. When she turned left, a huge expanse of parking lot and a familiar red-and-white bull’s-eye came into view.

“I don’t know what kind of game you girls are playing, but it just looks like this lady is running errands,” the driver said.

“I don’t get it.” Cherise tapped on the window with her finger. “There’s a much closer Target in Paradise Valley. Why would she come to this one?”

“Maybe they’re having a special sale here or something?” I suggested.