Free Slightly Irregular by Rhonda Pollero Page A

offerings. I’m still warming up to the blue diamonds,and now they have horseshoes, balloons, shooting stars, hourglasses, and leprechauns. And don’t even get me started on the magical key and door. What’s the purpose of adding a marshmallow that disappears when the milk is added? Not that I use milk. I’m a right-out-of-the-box consumer.
    Now I was jonesing for Lucky Charms. Instead, I had to content myself with three strips of crispy bacon and a twenty-four-ounce coffee. Just as I merged back onto the highway, my mind finally placed the face of the blond woman at the traffic light. She was the blonde who’d been copying the license plate on Ellen’s Volvo.
    I felt my brows pinch as a strange feeling came over me. The car she’d been driving wasn’t a standard-issue traffic enforcement car. I’ve gotten my fair share of tickets, so I know they use smart cars and/or clearly marked and painted four-door sedans with ramming grates mounted on the grilles. The blonde’s car looked more like a rental. Was I being followed?
    “Am I being ridiculous?” I asked myself over the techno vocals of Lady Gaga singing “Poker Face.” I couldn’t fathom why anyone would be following me. The other times I’d been followed, there had been reasons for it. None of them positive, mind you.
    My cell rang, and the caller ID showed it was Jane.
    I hesitated for a minute, then pressed the Answer button with my thumb. I uttered a stiff, “Hello.”
    “Please don’t be mad.”
    After a brief pause I said, “I have no reason to be mad.”
    “But you are, I can hear it in your voice.”
    “Sorry.”
    “C’mon, Finley! It wasn’t like I planned anything. I was dancing and drinking fruity drinks that creep up on you. Everyone makes that mistake. You’ve made that mistake.”
    She was right. About everything. But she’d conveniently left out her ultimate too-much-to-drink Paolo disaster.
    I, on the other hand, had unceremoniously renounced any claims on Liam, and on an occasion or two I’ve been known to overindulge. “I know. You didn’t do anything I should be upset about.”
    “But you are and I’m ninety-nine percent sure nothing happened.”
    “Liam stripping you naked is not nothing.”
    “I wasn’t naked. I still had on my bra and panties.”
    “I’ve seen your bras and panties. You might as well have been naked.”
    “Fin, please!” she begged. “I swear I didn’t do this on purpose.”
    “I know. Give me a little time, and I’ll get over myself.” I hope. “What was Liam doing at ladies’ night?”
    “I have no idea. But he was at a table with Ashley.”
    Great . “Why did they get divorced? He goes out with her all the time.”
    “Maybe they’re divorced with benefits.”
    “Thanks for the thought. Now I’ll have that image in my head all day.”
    “I’ve got a client waiting,” Jane said. “I just want everything with us to be okay. I swear I’d never do anything to intentionally hurt you. You know that, right?”
    “Sure.”
    “Let me take you out for dinner,” she said on a rush of breath.
    “I’ve got to study.”
    “So I’ll bring you dinner, and I’ll help quiz you or something.”
    “Fine.”
    “I’ll see you around six thirty?”
    “Six thirty works. ’Bye.”
    “’Bye.”
    Monotonous doesn’t begin to describe the drive out to Indiantown. Get a few miles away from the beach and the landscape changes drastically. Palm trees give way to pine trees, and the dense vegetation is replaced by groves, fields of crops, horse farms, and cow pastures.
    Where there are cows and crops, there is the stench of manure. I switched my air-conditioning to “recycle,” which cut down on the smell but didn’t eradicate it completely. The odor clinging to my clothes would just top off a seriously lousy morning.
    The homes I passed were paradoxical, running the gamut from large, two-story custom houses to shabby, dilapidated trailers. The only thing they had in common was land. These