Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (40 page)
Read Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery Online
Authors: Betty Webb
Ali
Ali frowned at the closed door. Juliana was great, but all this secrecy was getting irritating. Whisper, whisper, whisper. What did Juliana think she was protecting her from?
As if she needed protection, like, if she hadn’t already lived through all the hell a person could live through, finding her family dead like that, then spending all that time in juvie with the gangster girls threatening to kill her every day.
Yet whisper, whisper, whisper.
So random.
Ali had, like, a whole list of questions she wanted to ask Lena, mostly things like how you become a private investigator, do you have to be a cop first, or can you just go out and do it? Ha! Just do it, like the Nike commercials. Just do it!
Not a bad way to live. That’s what she wanted. To be a private investigator.
Just like Lena.
Ali smiled, and sure enough, that Indian guy, Jimmy Sisiwan, thought she was smiling at him because he smiled back, all white teeth and brown skin. That was okay. He was a good-looking dude, a hunk, even, with that big curvy tattoo on his forehead. Tribal, that’s what it was. Not tribal like some of the lame-ass phony tats the kids at school wore, but real-deal tribal, like old Indian tribal. Pima, that was his tribe. Cool dudes, those Pimas.
She looked down at her new watch. If Juliana didn’t hurry up in there, she wouldn’t have time to have a nice long talk with Lena about becoming a private detective like her someday, and helping people like she did, because helping was important, maybe the most important thing in the world.
But if they didn’t stop yakking…Well, then Ali and Juliana would have to rush straight out to see that real estate lady and it would be rush rush rush and Ali hated to rush. This house might be THE ONE, Juliana had said, all on a single floor, four bedrooms, three baths, new kitchen, big pool, a block from Kyle’s house and all that crap. Juliana was so fussy, she was all “our house has to have this and our house has to have that,” but all Ali needed was a yard for Misty and to be close to Kyle and most of all a house that didn’t look anything like her old house, the house where…
No, better not think about that.
Never ever think about that. Never again.
It hurt too much.
Do what Juliana said to do, think about the good times, about the way things were before…
Just before.
Like, think about the time her and Alec and Mom and Dad all went to Disneyland and Dad couldn’t stop obsessing about that stupid Small World ride, and he made them go through it four times and would have made them go through it ten-dozen more times, but then Mom put her foot down and said enough was enough, it was driving her crazy, but Alec said, no, let’s do it, I wanna do it, so to shut him up Ali said c’mon, Mom, just once more, crazy never hurt anybody, that Alec was just as obsessive as Dad, and what was wrong with that, Dad’s kind of crazy got him through medical school and helped save people’s lives, didn’t it, and then Mom started laughing, and then they were all laughing like crazy people, even Dad who never really laughed all that much, he just laughed and laughed and so they went through the stupid Small World ride again and came out singing that stupid song and even Mom was singing it too…
Yeah, that was the kind of thing to think about.
Juliana knew all kinds of things, about what to do when you got knots in your stomach and that tight feeling in your chest and what to do when your eyes started burning…Yeah, Juliana knew, all right, because a couple of times Ali had walked in on her and saw Juliana crying like she was about to die, but then she would always hide it, saying some bullshit about allergies.
As if.
Ali knew why Juliana cried, oh yes, she did.
That was something else she’d learned, that Juliana wasn’t half as smart as she thought she was, and Ali—after everything that had happened—wasn’t half as dumb as she used to be.
Because Ali knew. The only thing was, she had to figure out how to say it so it wouldn’t upset Juliana too much, because Juliana wasn’t half as tough as she pretended to be, either. In a kind of way, she was just like Ali, all big and tough on the outside while on the inside was all this hurt.
But Ali would figure out a way to tell her because she wanted everything out, no more secrets, even if it meant admitting she’d snuck around Juliana’s condo and looked through a bunch of stuff she wasn’t supposed to look through, and for sure wasn’t supposed to find what she found.
So now she wanted to tell Juliana, tell her what she knew. She didn’t know yet exactly how she’d tell it but maybe she’d start as soon as they got to the car. Ali would just blurt it right out, no matter how stupid it sounded.
And once Juliana got through being mad about her sneaking around, Ali would finally be able to say the word she wanted so much to say again.
She’d say, “
Mother.”
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