“It doesn’t really have a name. It’s just this place.”
Girls who decorated wedding cakes for a living rarely went to places on the outskirts of town that weren’t legitimate enough to bother with names. “This is probably dangerous, right? This is a bad idea and we’re both going to regret it?”
Skyla stared at Resurrection Bay through her window as we rolled past its shoreline. “Don’t whine, Mundy. Val might go for it, but that kind of thing doesn’t turn me on.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. She must have seen me in the window reflection because, without turning to face me, she flipped me the bird. Skyla’s fingernails were painted a disturbing shade of purple, the color of a bruise.
After a few miles of road noise and awkward silence, I gave in and turned on the stereo.
Skyla groaned. “Stevie Ray? For real? You really are his sister.”
“You’re co-pilot,” I said. “Change it if you want to.”
Skyla perked up and rifled through the 4-Runner’s console and glove compartment. “Mani’s music tastes are for shit.”
“Hey,” I objected. “My brother schooled me on good music.”
“Let me guess. The Beatles were gods, Sid Vicious a minor deity, and Jethro Tull played a bitchin’ mean flute.”
I burst out laughing, and tears filled my eyes—the happy kind for a change.
“I’m right,” Skyla insisted. “Say it.”
“It was his only shame,” I said, still snorting with laughter.
“Oh, no, he had others.”
“Like what?”
Skyla lowered her voice and cupped her hands around her mouth as though she was about to reveal a horrible secret. “Manilow. He loved that stupid ‘Copacabana’ song.”
“Oh my God!” I shrieked and fell into another fit of giggles. “And all this time I thought he was so cool.”
Skyla laughed too. “Don’t worry. I took his iPod from him and deleted the file. He was too ashamed to stop me.”
I snickered a while longer, but when I regained control of myself, I asked Skyla a serious question. “You really cared about him, didn’t you?”
Skyla put her hand over mine where it rested on the center console. “I loved him, Solina. Loved him scary.”
“Scary?” I asked. Maybe her confession should have surprised me, but I had already formed a few suspicions. No one would seduce crime scene photographers and go on this crazy mission with me unless she was as devoted to Mani as I was.
“I loved him so much I was scared of it. Scared of how big and powerful it was, and I was even more scared of losing it.”
“Did he know?” I had searched that journal high and low, but Mani had never expressed whether anything had happened between him and Skyla. He hadn’t written much of anything after the entry in which he admitted how he felt about her.
Skyla inhaled and held her breath. Then she let it out in a rush. “Yeah. Just before he died, I got drunk at The Pits and told him how I felt.”
My mouth fell open. “But you’re such a hard case.”
“Not when it came to Mani.”
“What did he do?”
The corners of Skyla’s mouth curled, and she chuckled, low and suggestive. “He took me home with him.”
“Really?”
The pale evening light gave out and night enveloped us, but the dashboard lights illuminated Skyla’s sad smile. “Yeah. It was good for about two weeks. I was off with clients on an overnight trip when it happened.” She exhaled a brief laugh. “I never saw him alive again.”
“Damn,” I whispered.
Skyla sniffed. “You can say that again.”
“You think they know how to make a good Cosmo?” I asked, staring at the rusted metal building leaning on its foundation. A neon Miller Light sign in the window flashed OPEN… OPEN… OPEN. If The Pits was the pits, then the owners should have named this place The Dumps. “I like an extra dash of cranberry in mine.”
Skyla snorted, and though I couldn’t see her face, I suspected she rolled her eyes. I stopped the 4-Runner in the corner of a parking lot occupied by a couple of motorcycles—the American-made kind—rusted pickups, and a primer-gray Olds Cutlass.
Skyla turned in her seat, drawing a knee under her chin. “It’s been nearly four months since Mani died. What took you so long to decide you wanted to start looking for answers?”
“After he died, I felt like I was living in an underground tunnel. Everything was dark and muffled and I did most things on autopilot, like getting up every morning and going to work. I threw myself into the bakery, worked every possible hour, anything so I wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to remember. Wouldn’t have to feel.”
“We trusted the police to do their jobs. We had no reason to think they would fail. But after a while, the fog started to lift. I realized the police had no answers and they were nowhere close to finding any. No one was going to fight for justice for my brother unless I did it myself.”
I rubbed away a tear and sniffed. “But to tell the truth, I think I’m still trying to run away. This trip to Alaska is just another distraction. Another way to stay occupied. I don’t think I’ll have any more luck than the police.”
Skyla snorted. “The police stuck their heads in the ground the moment they realized Mani’s murder wasn’t going to fit onto their pre-printed list of check boxes.”
