A Deadly Inside Scoop by Abby Collette

Author:Abby Collette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

chapter

TWENTY-FOUR

I didn’t see how the day could get worse.

I was so sad. I felt like getting in my little blue Toyota Corolla and driving to a parking lot. Several parking lots. They must’ve had some kind of therapeutic effect considering how much time my mother spent sitting in them.

But I had to keep busy. Thank goodness a steady stream of customers came in.

“Hello.” It was my new employee, Candy Cook. She’d arrived for her five o’clock shift at four thirty, minutes after my mother and Riya had left. She pulled her earbuds out and took her book bag off her back.

“Hi, Candy,” I said, glancing up at the clock. Her first day and she was half an hour early. I liked that. She had been scheduled for opening day, but as it turned out, I hadn’t needed her help.

Candy Cook was nineteen, and, per her own words, a serial foster kid. While she’d aged out of the foster care system, her last foster mom loved her like her own and she’d opted to stay even though there were no legal ties. She’d been transferred around so much she hadn’t finished high school, and was presently working on getting her diploma.

“I came early,” she said. “Didn’t know if there’d be a change in anything. Wanted to be prepared, just in case.”

“Things are usually pretty routine around here,” I said, and smiled. “You can count on that.” Candy was short and round, and smart. When she interviewed, and today, she held on to her iPhone like it was an additional appendage. She had shortish ginger-colored hair, pulled back into a messy ponytail. Her black-rimmed glasses had neon-green arms, and she wore jeans that she’d rolled up at the bottoms and gray canvas sneakers with no socks. Her cotton top fit snug around her belly rolls.

“You ready to get started?” I asked Candy.

“Yep. And my mom”—she looked down at her feet—“I mean, you know, my foster mom, told me to be sure to tell you thank you for this opportunity.”

“I’m glad to have you,” I said. “And super glad you came early, because Maisie”—I pointed to her—“and I have an errand to run.”

“You leaving me by myself?”

“I trained you, and I think you mastered everything right off. You feel comfortable being here alone?”

“I’ve been alone all my life,” she said.

I didn’t have anything to say about that. It was too sad to think about.

“You ready to go?” Maisie asked. I think she knew to get that conversation steered in another direction.

I let out a sigh and glanced up at the clock.

“I guess,” I said. “You know I don’t like doing this. Trying to be an amateur detective.”

“I do,” Maisie said, and smiled.

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