“The only one among us eating anything is you—” she took the ginger root from his hand and popped it into his mouth, “before getting on the ride.”
By now they were standing on the narrow roller coaster platform, bodies bumping, kids careening, ride operators barking orders. Sam stepped into the metal cart, waiting for Raul to join her.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
He stood, feet frozen to the wooden platform in fear.
“You trusted me enough to follow me across two states, Raul. Trust me enough to follow me now.”
Raul felt her point prick his heart, and that was all it took. Anything Sam wanted Raul would have given her.
Ten minutes later they exited the ride with Sam wearing Raul’s lunch and Raul wearing an I-told-you-so green-faced grimace. And he would suffer through it all over again if it meant hearing Sam laugh so freely, his damp hand clenching hers.
Chapter 12
There are many ways for a writer to get into trouble, but only one that could get them killed. And Sam had found that exact one:
Picking the wrong thread to pull.
“Are you sure you need to do this?” Raul confirmed one last time, standing across from Sam on an empty sidewalk beneath a frowning moon and starless sky. “You can’t undo what you find out.”
“Stop worrying so much,” Sam replied.
“I’ll never stop worrying about you.”
The flimsy yellow folder Raul handed Sam when she dropped him off at his apartment was less impressive than she had expected of a renowned investigative journalist. Only bare bone facts were tucked into the file that Nancy Drew in her sleuthing infancy could have dug up. But at least Sam now had the one thing she needed—Thomas Cook’s home address—which was enough to get the ball rolling. And rolling quickly, she reminded herself as she parked in her driveway.
She was down to mere days before Mr. Getty’s deadline to prove that Cook Pharmaceuticals was selling dangerous drugs… and that Thomas Cook himself knew it. It was a daunting challenge, but one that Sam had been anticipating for the past five years since her father’s death.
Evening fell like a dark curtain as she headed up her front walkway, eager to change out of the blouse stained and stinking with Raul’s amusement park lunch. She paused halfway across the yard. The suburban streetlight illuminated something peculiar next door.
A stout metal For Sale sign hung crookedly in the neighbor’s front yard, listing a phone number with the wording: To any purchaser regardless of race, color, or creed. A pity it wasn’t Miss Posey and Archibald Maverick Emerson Posey the Sixth who were relocating, whose hatred for Fido knew no end.
Sam had met her other next-door neighbor only once, a vampiric recluse of a man who avoided sunlight like it was deadly, and detested vegetables unless they were deep-fried. The day he had beckoned Sam from his open window, she hadn’t made it past his living room before she spotted fast-food bags of every chain and variety, from Roy Rogers roast beef to Winky’s hamburgers and French fries. After offering him a mild nutritional scolding, along with fennel seeds to cure his indigestion complaints, she had never been invited back and occasionally wondered why.
“Dead,” a voice spooked Sam from behind in the dark.
Sam turned to find Miss Posey had meandered into her yard, with Archibald making an oopsie-poopsie in Sam’s herb garden.
“What happened?” Sam asked.
“His estranged daughter found what was left of him decaying in his living room. Apparently he’d been dead for weeks before she showed up.”
That explained the lack of invite, along with what he had done with Sam’s fennel seeds and nutritional advice. Considering the vitamin D in sunshine was integral to calcium absorption in the bones to prevent osteoporosis, it was no surprise his body eventually crumbled to dust in his grease-stained plaid club chair.
“Can you believe his house sold within a day?” Miss Posey continued, rambling over any thoughts Sam might have had about his death that barely merited a footnote in the obituary. “Who would buy a house a man just died in?”
“Most people, I assume,” Sam concluded, assuming most homes had someone die in them at some point. With the exception of hospitals and the occasional fatal car crash, where else were people dying, if not in their own beds?
Miss Posey shook her head. “Someone with something to hide, I bet.”
“Or someone looking for a good deal?” Sam suggested.
“I’d give my left kidney to find out how much they paid for it. Probably got it for a steal… I just hope they’re not dirt-poor hippies, bringing drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and all that New Age nonsense onto our quiet street.”
It was no wonder Miss Posey was head of the neighborhood gossip chain. She was naturally talented at it.
“I’m sure whoever it is will be a welcome addition to the community.” Sam generally liked hippies. They seemed to be the only ones who appreciated nature, unlike Miss Posey and her dog, who just dug up Sam’s rosemary and was pawing at her ginseng with reckless abandon.
“We’ll see…” Miss Posey sounded doubtful. “I saw a U-Haul rental van earlier this morning loading all the old furniture out of there. No sign of the buyers yet. All we can do is pray we get a better neighbor this time around. One who actually tends to his yard…”
She gestured to the barely ankle-skimming grass that looked pretty well tended to Sam, and which Miss Posey certainly shouldn’t blame a weeks-old dead man for neglecting.
