Page 3 of Moody as a Minotaur

“My team is with me,” he said.

“What team?” I glanced at Finley’s van and saw a couple of people eyeing me curiously. “Who are they? What’s going on?”

“Can’t talk now,” he said. “We still have to check in, haul our equipment inside and all that. Later.” He ran back to his van and hopped inside. A second later, he and his van of strangers sped off toward the Tarbeck Motel, the only motel he could be talking about. I tended to just think of it as Levi’s motel.

I sighed. Again.

Levi liked routines. He was going to be pissed about staying at work late. He hated waiting for people to book into their rooms. And, by the look of it, they must have reserved a few. Our mutual friend Carter and I always told him he should let his staff deal with the late arrivals. But Levi had a thing about wanting to meet the people he let stay at his place.

His hands-on approach was quirky, but that was hardly the most noteworthy thing about Willow Lake.

I grabbed my grandmother’s bags and made my way up the stairs.

Nana had already shed her jacket and was poking through my kitchen cupboards. I carried her luggage to my largest spare bedroom. I didn’t go into this room often, so I did a quick check that everything was as it should be before returning to the kitchen.

Now, with any luck, I’d finally find out what the hell was going on.

2

SOMETHING HINKY IS GOING ON (AND IT ISN’T BDSM, HOWEVER YOU DEFINE IT)

PARKER

I wasn’t unhappy to see Nana—not exactly—but this was the first time she’d ever visited me, which was suspicious. We usually only saw one another at family functions or on our bi-monthly video chats. It was safer that way.

I loved her, but Edith Girard was a force to be reckoned with. She wasn’t shy about offering her opinions and she had a lot of them, particularly about the lives of her unmarried grandchildren. She’d also made a formidable drill sergeant during her mandatory summer bootcamps, and that was an image that would be etched in my mind for the rest of my life.

You know the grandmotherly stereotype of a plump older woman who perpetually smelled of cookies, wore indulgent smiles when they saw their grandchildren, and dressed in pastels and polyester? That was not my grandmother.

Nana was more angles than curves, she couldn’t baketo save her life, she was more apt to make you want to confess to things you didn’t do than cheat to help a little kid win a game, she wouldn’t be caught dead in polyester, and she thought pastels should be reserved for children who hadn’t figured out how to talk yet. Presumably, at least according to Nana, once they could talk, they would then know how to protest such horrendous fashion decisions.

Today she wore a form-fitting black turtleneck and slim black slacks, like she was prepared to carry out a heist at a moment’s notice. The outfit was a striking contrast to the gray of her hair. I bet she had a black balaclava tucked away in her bags so her head could match the rest of her outfit.

“Your mugs should be above the dishwasher, not all the way over by the fridge,” she said without looking at me. She frowned at the kettle, like her ire would make it boil faster.

“Has something happened?” I asked, ignoring her commentary on the organization of my kitchen. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

She walked over to the window and flicked the curtain aside so she could look out at the street below. She glanced one way and then the other, as if checking no one was close enough to hear what she had to say. It didn’t matter that we were on the second floor. It was all very double-0. She tugged the curtain closed again, seemingly satisfied with what she saw… or didn’t see, maybe?

“You said something hinky is happening in this town,” Nana said.

“What? No, I…” My words trailed off. Shit. I’d forgotten about our chat last night. That explained why I was so tired today. The café opened at six, so I wasn’t usually up late.

It was all coming back to me now, though. As soon as I’d opened my mouth last night and mentioned how Willow Lake gave me a weird feeling sometimes, I regretted it. The silence on the other end of the line had been what you might call a speaking silence. I hadn’t really understood what that phrase meant until that moment. There was so much expectation and anticipation and tension suddenly between us. Even half-asleep, I remembered worrying about what she’d do. In my defense, I’d been sound asleep when she called. Hell, for all I knew, she’d chosen to call after midnight for that exact reason—knowing that if she woke me, I wouldn’t be as guarded. She was sneaky like that.

The kettle beeped to say the water was hot, and Nana set about making her tea.

“Do you want a cup?”

I got up to make my own, because I was too tired to have a conversation with my grandmother without some kind of bracing drink. Tea would have to do. It worked for the British, right?

“Well?” Nana asked once we were seated at my small dining room table. She narrowed her cool blue eyes at me.

My grandmother had worked for the government her whole life, but no one in the family knew what her job had been. My mother thought I was fanciful in thinking it had something to do with spying or interrogation—”She started working there in the seventies,” she’d say. “Of course she was a secretary”—but I didn’t believe it. Not for a minute. Especially not with my grandmother looking at me the way she was right now.

Of course, my mother didn’t know about Nana’s summer bootcamp either. The mottoWhat happens at Nana’s house, stays at Nana’s housewas a promise I’d never broken.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I said. “It’s nothing.”