The A-Word A Sweet Dead Life Novel by Joy Preble

Author:Joy Preble
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781616952914
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2014-05-12T21:00:00+00:00

THE ONLY THING left was to nose around the apartment building where Amber and Terry had lived. We hiked the mile from campus, finding the street off Guadalupe with no problem. But it reminded me of the last time we were in Austin, looking for Dad. We’d found him at Taco Taco Taco. Renfroe had drugged his memory, but he’d remembered most of his old life by then. Except he still hadn’t come home.

I told myself: Jenna Samuels, do not take this as a sign. Think about something else. So I thought about tacos.

“I’m hungry,” I told Casey.

“You’re the one who wanted to do this.”

“Yeah. Maybe we can go to Torchy’s after?” (Torchy’s has the best brisket and avocado tacos in the universe.)

“We’ll find something, Jenna. We will.”

I wanted to agree with him. I had figured we were experts after last year and the whole Renfroe/Manny mystery. But now I was thinking we were amateurs. If there was access to all those convenient TV mystery clues like DNA and scientists who could figure out that it was Colonel Mustard in the library with the noose or whatever, even angels couldn’t get there.

The manager of the apartment complex had been there five years ago, at least—which did not say much for his upward job mobility but that was the recession for you. He was a stocky guy with a droopy mustache and a belly that lapped over his belt.

“I remember Amber Velasco,” he said. “Short and blonde, right?”

My heart sank again, but then he said, “Oh snap!” like a sixteen-year-old girl and amended: “No. She was the tall girl. The EMT who lived with that lab geek.”

“That’s the one,” I said. “She’s an EMT in Houston now. Spoke at our school about her job and mentioned how she’d gotten EMT care herself when her apartment was robbed. We’re doing a piece in the school paper on home safety. She said, um, that she remembered you.” Here I stopped, since he had not told us his name and was not wearing an ID badge.

He beamed, mouth turning up under that droopy mustache. “She remembered me? Carl Whatley?”

“Yup,” Casey chimed in. “She said a lot about you, Carl.”

Carl warmed up then, telling us that the “lab geek”—I assumed it was Terry, although he didn’t seem to know his name—called the front office hollering about shoddy security in the parking lot. How could someone have broken in and robbed the place? His girlfriend was all traumatized and no way was he letting them keep his security deposit and wasn’t it good that he had his laptop with him. He was an important guy at the lab, he’d told Carl. He was about to have some scientific breakthrough. He didn’t have time to deal with a traumatized girlfriend.

“Her boyfriend was working at a lab?” I asked, not sure who I was directing it to. “I thought he was a student, like Amber.” And probably a big braggart to boot.

Carl allowed that maybe he got that part wrong.

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