Chapter Two
Luanne struggled in a dream where someone was using a chain saw to slice up her head like a watermelon, the noise as overpowering as the pain.
She woke with an unbearable headache, forced her eyes open to a slit, and glared at the phone ringing on the nightstand. Ever so slowly, the events of the night before came back to her. The bar. Brett not showing. The other guy. She closed her eyes again. She couldn’t remember the name. Then it came to her on a thunderclap of pain: Gregory.
She groaned. Good God, how much had she had to drink? She hoped she’d had the good sense to walk home instead of driving.
The phone kept ringing, each chirp drilling into her brain. She picked it up just to quiet it.
“Luanne!” Jackie yelled on the other end.
Luanne pulled the phone a little farther from her ear. “What is it?” Was she late for work? She blinked. No. She had the weekend off. The twins’ birthday. She glanced at the clock. She had to pick them up from Jen in an hour. In spite of the pounding in her head and the rolling in her stomach, she forced herself to sit.
“I thought you might not have heard yet,” Jackie rushed to say. “Earl’s dead.”
“What?” Luanne’s hand froze in the middle of rubbing her forehead.
“The police found his body in the alley behind Finnegan’s. A car ran him over. He was covered in garbage.”
The alley. Earl. Car. Piles of garbage. Fuzzy images swirled in Luanne’s mind, making her dizzy. Her stomach rolled.
“Luanne?” Jackie asked, but then kept talking even when she didn’t receive a response. “The police are here at the motel. They want to talk to all the employees. Can you come in?”
Luanne cleared her throat. A long moment passed before she could line her thoughts up straight. She could probably ask Jen to keep the twins for another hour or so. “Sure.”
She hung up, fell back into the bed with a groan, but after a pain-filled moment got up again, all the way to her feet this time. She cleaned herself up, then she called Jen.
“Oh my God. What do you know? I just heard,” Jen tore into her before Luanne could say a single word.
Why was everybody shouting today? “I need to go to the motel. The police want to talk to the employees. Could you please keep the twins a little longer?”
“Of course. They’re no trouble. Call me the second you find out anything. I can’t believe this is happening. Let me know what the police say.”
Luanne promised, her mind struggling to catch up to full speed as she made coffee, only half hearing as Jen said, “You sound terrible. What time did you get in?”
Luanne tried to think back. “Not sure.”
“Date went that well?”
“Brett never showed.” But she couldn’t think about Brett. Last night was a fuzzy mess in her head. Her thoughts circled around Earl.
She hung up with Jen and caffeinated, hanging on to the hope that some java would untangle her brain. Her mind was a disjointed, foggy mess, the mother of all hangovers using her head for a punching bag.
Her dollar-store coffee was as dark and thick as tar, and just as tasty, but it did the trick. She felt half-human by the time she walked to her front door, ready to leave, dark premonitions circling in her semicoherent brain.
