Night Shift
Page 10

“What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Kiki demanded.
For a few pleasant moments, Fiji had forgotten all about her sister’s presence. “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “Unpack. Or fix lunch. That would be nice. And helpful.” And then she started out back to her car, only to spin on her heel.
“And leave the kid alone,” she said.
“Oh, for God’s sake. How old is he?” Kiki was partly angry, partly curious.
“Younger than you think.”
“Too young to drive the woman back to her house?”
“No driver’s license,” Fiji hedged.
“Why?”
“He’s foreign.”
“He sure doesn’t look Mexican.”
“He’s Dutch,” Fiji said. “Now, I’ve got to go.” And she made good her very temporary escape.
 
 
3
 
 
Manfred gave the sister—Kiki?—a nod and a wave as he got into Francine Owens’s car. The sister nodded back, but without enthusiasm. That was okay with Manfred. She wasn’t impressed with him; he surely wasn’t impressed with her, either. And he’d seen the way she looked at Fiji when Fiji’s back was turned.
Manfred couldn’t drum up much conversation with Francine on their short drive to her house. She asked if he’d lived in the area long, seemed relieved that he hadn’t (so presumably he wouldn’t gossip about her fainting in the store), and thanked him several times for helping her, though his appearance clearly made her very uneasy. She had no idea how much he had helped her, but that was okay with Manfred.
Her house was a small ranch in a neighborhood of similar homes. Gardens and basketball goals and barbecue grills and the smell of cut grass, though it was the tail end of mowing season in Texas.
After Francine Owens had thanked them both several more times, and they had reassured her that they’d been glad to help and they hoped she recovered completely, they were all able to part ways with ill-concealed relief.
Manfred climbed into Fiji’s car and leaned back, heaving a sigh. He didn’t feel like talking about Francine Owens again. It was simple to think of another topic of conversation.
“So how come your sister showed up, after all this time?” he asked. “Didn’t you tell me none of your family had come to visit you in Midnight, since you inherited?”
“Truth. Kiki says she’s here now because she’s broken up with her second husband. And also, my dad has Alzheimer’s. So she doesn’t want to stay with Mom and Dad.”
“Two reasons, huh? One wouldn’t do? You don’t have a telephone, she couldn’t call ahead?”
“Yeah, it seems pretty weak to me, too,” Fiji told him. “I can sort of see her not wanting to go to my mom and dad’s if Dad is getting hard to handle. She never has liked to take responsibility for someone else. But the split with her husband—that seems pretty hinky to me.”
“I don’t know what ‘hinky’ means, but the situation does seem kind of suspicious. More explanation called for.”
“Right.”
“Doesn’t she have a job?”
“Good point, Manfred. Yes, last I heard, she was working at a Banana Republic or something. A mall clothing store. And even if she and her husband split up, it seems like she’d need to work. Maybe especially.”
Manfred didn’t know a lot about conventional families, since he’d never known the name of his father and he’d spent a bit of his childhood and almost all his adolescence with his psychic grandmother, Xylda Bernardo, who’d never met a camera she didn’t like. “So are you thinking she’s come here for some other reason entirely? Or that she’s got bad news about your mother, too? Or what?” He glanced over at Fiji, who was clearly mulling over possibilities. “I’ll find out, I’m sure,” Fiji said. “Even if I’d rather not.”
“And your parents picked a theme to name their children?” It was time to lighten the atmosphere.
“Beach people,” Fiji said, with a shrug.
“They actually went to Fiji?”
“On their seventh anniversary. Saved for four years. Mom got pregnant with me while they were there.”
“And Waikiki?”
“Third anniversary.”
He choked back a laugh. “Really?”
She tried not to smile. “Really.”
“I never had a sibling—one I knew of, anyway.” Maybe he had six brothers by his unknown father. Just with other women. “But it’s got to be weird to be obliged to stick by someone you didn’t pick as a friend. Or am I crazy?”
He glanced over to see that Fiji looked taken aback.
“I never thought of it that way,” she said slowly. “You have to stick by family, unless they’ve done something truly terrible to you. I know there are families who are sadistic or neglectful. I suspect Olivia’s was.”
Manfred was careful just to nod, because he didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Fiji’s thoughts.
“There’s a bond when you’ve been brought up in the same household together,” she said finally. “Whether you want there to be or not. There are times, growing up, when you get into trouble together. When it’s kids versus parents. I love Kiki, but that love is tempered with . . . a lot of wariness.”
“Interesting,” was all he could think of to say. After they drove a few more miles, he said, “We have to tell everyone about Francine Owens.”
“Yeah,” she said, without enthusiasm. “Maybe you could take care of that?”
Again, Manfred was surprised, and not in a good way. Keeping everyone in town on the same page was a Fiji thing. Something was going on with his friend, something beyond the unexpected arrival of her sister. Cautiously, he said, “There anything you want to talk about?” He half-hoped she’d say there wasn’t.
“I think having my sister turn up, on top of suicides and a suicide attempt, is enough,” she said, after a pause that was just a little too long.
“Okay,” he said, hoping his relief didn’t show. “But you know where I am if you need me.”
The adrenaline that had fueled his great tackle of the about-to-be suicide had long faded, leaving him dragging and dull. Now that they’d gotten rid of this last body (fortunately, still breathing), Manfred found himself longing for his computer and his telephone and his privacy.