Heather Webber - Digging Up Trouble

I was smiling like a fool.

A lovesick fool.

I pounded on Ana’s door. Her SUV was in the lot and the lights were on. She had to be home.

“Let me in!” I shouted. “I have a key and I’m not afraid to use it!”

I heard the lock turn. The door opened slowly, and Ana stood there, wrapped in a robe, a bashful look on her face.

“I was going to call.”

I barged in. “Before or after I worried to death?”

Digging Up Trouble

223

“Sorry,” she said. “I, um, got tied up.” She giggled. A male laugh came from the bedroom.

I rolled my eyes. I figured she’d gotten more than information out of Jake last night. So much for Shakes.

“I’m going,” I said. I wondered if the search warrant had been served on Growl yet. I’d very cleverly hidden the accounting books in a printer paper box.

“So soon?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were alive. You are.

Good-bye.”

“Wait! Don’t you want to hear about Jean-Claude?”

I hesitated. “Maybe.”

“Sit. I’ll make some popcorn. I haven’t eaten all day. I’m starving.”

I didn’t really want to know what she’d been doing all day. I could guess.

And I was jealous.

“Well,” she said, “I met with Jake at All Shook Up, and it turns out he’d arranged for Jean-Claude to show up after his set.”

“Set?”

Ana stuck a bag of popcorn into the microwave, hit the Popcorn button. She leaned against the counter, waggled her eyebrows. “He works at Steel.”

“Steel? Is that some sort of gym?”

Ana shook her head, smiled. “Nope.”

“It’s a strip club,” a voice from behind me said. “I worked there during college to pay tuition. The pay is great.”

To my shock, it wasn’t Jake.

Nor was it S. Larue.

It was Dr. Feelgood.

I looked at Ana. “Shakes?”

She shrugged.

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I groaned.

“Hi,” Dr. Feelgood said to me. “I’m Johan Hornsby.” He wore nothing but a pair of boxers. Looked to be the same ones I’d had on the other day.

The microwave beeped. Ana took the bag out, holding it carefully by the corner. “I came back to the hospital after meeting with Jake last night. You were gone by then. I ran into Johan.”

I slid off my stool. “Hi,” I said to him. “ ’Bye. I’m going.”

“Wait!” Ana said.

“What?”

“Jean-Claude. He wants to talk to you tomorrow morning, tell you everything.”

I nodded. “You two have fun.”

“Oh we will,” Ana said, closing the door behind me.

Twenty-Five

I looked up from the hummingbird garden plans on my desk at the soft knock on my door. “Well, if it isn’t JC Rock.”

Jean-Claude sat in the chair on the other side of my desk.

He rolled his eyes. “It’s a stage name.”

“But JC Rock?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s such a stripper’s name. You couldn’t have been more clever?” I kicked myself now that I hadn’t put it together before. Hind-sight was evil.

“Stop. I heard enough from Ms. Bertoli.” He fussed with a hangnail, said, “You’re not mad?”

I shrugged. “I’m mad that you’re doing a crappy job for me lately, but not because you’re a stripper.”

“Exotic dancer.”

“Is there a difference?”

“My thong doesn’t come off.”

I held up a hand. “Too much information!”

He grinned. “Sorry. Look, I don’t want to stop working for you, but I really need the money.”

“I hear the money’s good for str—exotic dancers.”

“Better than I make here.”

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Heather Webber

My jaw dropped. I knew how much Jean-Claude made working for me. It was a lot. “Really?”

He nodded.

Maybe I’d gone into the wrong business.

I tried to imagine my mother’s reaction to her oldest daughter being a stripper. It wasn’t pretty.

“Well, working both jobs isn’t working out,” I said.

“I know.”

“Why do you need the money, Jean-Claude?”

Clearly uncomfortable, he shifted in his seat. “It’s my brother.”

Jean-Claude had two brothers who lived with him, one older, one younger. As far as I knew, there were no parents.

“Michel?” Ana had dated him a few months ago. I didn’t think it had gone much farther than a one-night stand.

“No. Henrí. My younger brother. He’s fourteen.” He looked me in the eye. “He’s in jail.”

I blinked. “In jail? At fourteen? Why?”

“Because he’s stupid. Thought selling Ecstasy and mushies would get him the girl he liked. Now he’s in juvie pending his trial. They want to try him as an adult, make an example out of him. He was just a stupid kid making a stupid mistake.

I need the money to get the best lawyer possible. He deserves to be punished, but not like that.”

Mushies. The word jumped out at me. I’d just heard that.

Where? “What are mushies?” I asked.

“Street name for hallucinogenic mushrooms. Liberty caps, usually.”

I nearly fell out of my chair. Mushrooms!

“Nina, you okay?”

It all came together so fast. Boom-Boom Vhrooman had ordered her turkey burger the other night at Growl with extra mushrooms. “Mushies,” she had called them, probably oblivious to what she was ordering.

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Oh my God. It all made sense now. Goosh. The closet of mushrooms. The blackmail. Bill was a dealer. Selling mushies through Growl.

I remembered how upset Mr. Cabrera had been at being charged fifty dollars for his and Boom-Boom’s meal. It hadn’t been a slip of the tongue by Goosh. He’d been charging Mr. Cabrera for the mushies.

Extra mushies, Boom-Boom had ordered.

“Can you O.D. on these mushrooms?”

“Well, yeah,” Jean-Claude said. “They’re like any other drug. You don’t look good.”

“Did you ever hear of a place called Growl?”

Eyes wide, he opened his mouth, then snapped it closed.

After a while he said, “I don’t really want to get involved in this.”

“Too late.”

“Listen, Nina—”

“Growl, Jean-Claude. What do you know?”

“Henrí mentioned it.”

“As a place to get mushies?”

He nodded.

My God. No wonder Boom-Boom had seen polar bears.

Had crashed.

It all made sense. The nighttime delivery. The extra income on the days Bill worked—he probably only sold the mushrooms on the days he managed. More foot traffic, more sales.

“How do you know about Growl?” Jean-Claude asked.

“My son works there.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t even think of that! Was Riley involved somehow? I couldn’t let my brain go there. Not yet. I needed to stay focused.

“Where does one grow mushies?”

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“They grow everywhere naturally—fields, woods, yards.

It’s just a matter of being able to tell them apart from other mushrooms.”

Woods. Like the ones behind the Lockharts’ house? I’d seen mushrooms growing there the day BeBe got loose.

“Would you know one if you saw one?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Do I want to know how you’d know?”

“No.”

“Okay, then.” I stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Where are we going,” I said. “On a field trip.”

It took fifteen minutes to drive to the Lockhart house. An -

other five to show Jean-Claude the mushrooms growing in the woods and for him to tell me they were harmless.

I’d been so sure.

“What now?” he said.

“Plan B.” I walked out of the woods and couldn’t help but admire the job well done in the Grabinskys’ backyard. Even without the sod it was a hundred times better than what it was.