fruits, and cleaned up the weird gunk that was on the side of the industrial-size salad dressing bottles. She was in the middle of dumping out the bloody remains of a tray of pickled beets when her phone rang.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
“How’s my princess?” David said.
“Still working. You talk.”
“Well, I’m here in . . . I don’t remember the name of the town. We had dinner at Cracker Barrel. And now I’m at the local firehouse helping run a raffle for a group of candidates in this area. If you play your cards right there might be a basket full of lavender bath salts in your future. What do you have for me?”
“Do you like used potato salad?” she asked.
Stevie noticed her manager eyeing her curiously.
“Gotta go,” she whispered. “I think they know I’m on the phone.”
“Talk later. And remember, if these coasters I’m looking at are telling the truth, it’s always wine o’clock somewhere. Think about that for a while.”
At eleven, Stevie Bell, student sleuth and destroyer of salad bars, clocked out and stepped into the muggy night. Her mother’s maroon minivan was there, waiting by the curb. Stevie did not have a car of her own; that was definitely out of the Bell family’s financial reach. Every night, one of her parents came to get her.
“Have a good night?” her mom asked as she got in the car.
“It was okay. I got the cheese you asked for.”
American cheese, of course.
“You talk to David tonight?” her mom asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Uh-huh.”
“How is he?”
“Fine,” Stevie said.
“He’s a good one.”
Historically, Stevie and her parents had not gotten along. She wasn’t what they expected from a daughter. Daughters were supposed to like prom dresses and getting their hair done and shopping. Stevie assumed those things were all fine and good, but she didn’t understand them, really—at least not in the way that you were supposed to understand them. She never once in her life felt the desire to dress up, do her hair and nails, accessorize. She stared blankly at Instagram ads for new makeup palettes that looked, to her eyes, exactly like every other makeup palette. The only clothing item she really adored was her vintage red vinyl raincoat from the seventies. She wore a lot of black, because it suited her and it always seemed to go together. Sometimes she felt like she was missing a chip or a gene or something that made this all matter, but it never bothered her much.
Before Ellingham, Stevie’s lack of daughterly graces was a sticking point, but there had been peace in the household for months now, and not because Stevie had solved a murder. No. It was because she had a boyfriend—and not just any
boyfriend. Stevie’s boyfriend was David Eastman, who happened to be the son of Senator Edward King. Stevie’s parents loved Edward King. That Edward King had recently been the subject of a major scandal and had to withdraw his bid for the presidency did not diminish their love for him. Like any true believers, they felt that the more Edward King was accused of wrongdoing, the more right he must be, the more it had to be someone else’s fault.
Her parents didn’t know that David was the one who had gotten his father busted. They certainly didn’t know that Stevie had seen the proof against Edward King with her own eyes.
David had been pulled out of school when his father found out what he had done. He finished the school year remotely, then left home to work with a voter registration campaign that traveled around the country. This was why he didn’t know what town he was in tonight, and why he was standing around at a Cracker Barrel with baskets full of lavender bath salts and coasters.