“Roddy, what a true joy to see that in addition to invading my personal space, you’ve driven over an hour to show up at my home,” Zig said, adding an extra scoop of charm, hoping it would defuse whatever was coming. “Though if you’re here for the block party, you’re actually two weeks early,” he added, loud enough so Waggs could hear.
Roddy didn’t laugh, didn’t even grin, like he was still processing the—
“Oh. Heh. I get it. You’re making a joke. That’s funny,” Roddy said, his odd smile back in place. He took his cap off his head, revealing short black hair that was shaved to the scalp on the sides. Big yellow letters on his car door read Jersey City Police. A Jersey cop out in southeastern Pennsylvania. Whatever Roddy was up to, he was crossing state lines to do it.
“Would you mind hanging up your phone, Mr. Zigarowski?”
“My phone isn’t—”
“I can see you’re midcall,” Roddy said, holding up a small high-tech tablet. The kind that usually only feds had.
Zig still didn’t hang up his phone.
“Mr. Zigarowski, I’m obviously here to talk about my sister—and I have a feeling you want to hear what I’m about to tell you. I can’t do that if there’s a stranger listening in.”
Zig stood there a moment. He didn’t have much choice.
“Ziggy, don’t hang up!” Waggs called out.
Click. She was gone.
“Mhmm,” Roddy said, making a satisfied noise as he stared at his tablet. The line was clear. “My foot fell asleep two times today. Y’ever have that happen? Twice in one day?”
Zig just stared at him. “Roddy, back at the funeral, you said you had problems when you were younger. I’d like to know what those were.”
Roddy barely moved, staring up at Zig’s gray clapboard bungalow with the white trim that needed painting. “You worry about her, don’t you, Mr. Zigarowski? Nola. Your body shifts when I say her name. You’re her friend. I didn’t think she had anyone who cared for her.”
“If you have a specific ques—”
“You understand that she and Colonel Mint—they knew each other,” Roddy said, his voice slow and methodical.
“Knew each other where?”
“From one of Nola’s first assignments. Where she did one of her first paintings. At a place called Grandma’s Pantry.”
12
Guidry, Texas
Twenty-one years ago
This was Roddy when he was seven.
Once again, he was hiding. And chewing gum, Juicy Fruit. They were all hiding and chewing gum—him, his foster sisters, and his foster brother—huddled together at the top of the stairs, spying down, like they were trying to spot Santa Claus on Christmas.
But this definitely wasn’t Christmas.
“She in trouble?” one of them asked. Chew, chew, chew.
They all chewed back. They didn’t have to answer. Nola was always in trouble.
“It looks like . . . I think she’s eating,” said the oldest, Anne Marie, squinting through the slats of the banister toward the kitchen, where their mother and father, Barb and Walter LaPointe, were serving Nola dinner. “Mac and cheese.”
Not just any mac and cheese. Space Jam mac and cheese, plus the rest of Nola’s favorite meal: chocolate milk and Oreos—Double Stuf, of course.
“Here you go, sweetie pie,” Walter said.
That was the tip-off. Nola was never sweetie pie. Only his three biological kids were.