Free Grave on Grand Avenue by Naomi Hirahara

dirty inside, too; there are tons of balled-up wrappers from various fast-food chains all over. The thief’s main dining criterion seems to have been food that can be purchased for less than a buck.
    I curse myself for not having my phone with me. Not only that, I’m without my Glock. When it’s so early, I don’t think about carrying my gun around. In my experience, most criminal types are still in bed until way after noon. I try the door and it’s locked; my keys are hanging on my living room wall.
    Much to Shippo’s disappointment, I cut our walk short. I need to get my keys, then make a call into the station.
    I jog back to the house, only to find an older man lookingthrough the window screen to my living room. He’s wearing jeans with a khaki shirt that looks like it could use a good wash and ironing. His hair is a mix of black, white and gray—the colors of a raccoon. When he turns, I see that he’s white, or maybe Latino, with a heavy, untrimmed mustache. He could be a handyman, finding himself at the wrong house, or he could be a Peeping Tom.
    “Can I help you?” I say, lowering my voice at least an octave. Shippo starts to bark furiously.
    “Bacall!” he calls out. A small black poodle, unleashed, comes out of the bushes. She’s a mini-projectile, heading straight for Shippo. As she gets closer, she emits a high-pitched screech. Shippo is not amused and unleashes more barks of his own. The old man scoops Bacall up before she torpedoes my dog.
    “What the hell?” I cry out. “Leash your damn dog! And what are you doing on private property? You’re trespassing.”
    “Ah, Ellie. Ellie Rush,” he says.
    I am so pissed that it takes me a minute to register that the old man knows my name. “I don’t know you,” I say.
    “Puddy Fernandes,” he says. “And this is Bacall.”
    Bacall is groomed as well—or should I say as badly—as her master. But then again, Shippo and I are not ones to talk.
    “You don’t know who I am,” the man says when I fail to react to his name.
    I let the heat of my anger cool down. Is this guy some kind of family friend or something I don’t recognize? I don’t want to say anything that I may possibly regret later.
    Then he reports, “I’m your grandfather.”
    I hear the words, but they don’t make any sense. “No, you’re not,” I say. I don’t know what I pictured when I thoughtabout my long-lost grandfather, but it’s certainly not this guy. “Prove it.”
    “Your grandmother is Estel. She has the prettiest red hair and a mouth shaped like a heart.”
    Most of her former coworkers and friends call Lita by her nickname, Essie. Most people don’t know her real name. But if he really knows her at all, it’s also obviously been a while since this man has actually seen Lita. Lita now has hair the color of orange popsicles, thanks to some box dye that she uses. And she pretty much has to draw her lips on.
    “Call your grandmother. Estel will tell you.”
    I ignore his directive. “What are you doing here? Are you the one who stole my car?”
    “ Your car? I don’t think so. I bought that car from a Chevrolet dealer in Burbank in 1969. I don’t believe that you were even alive then.”
    “It is mine. I have the pink slip to prove it. My grandmother gave it to me.”
    “Then why do I have this?” He pulls out a chain from his neck. Hanging around it is a rusty key, the same shape as the one I have on my key chain.
    I’m starting to feel slightly nauseated. How can this man have an extra key to the Green Mile? Could anything he was saying be true?
    “That wasn’t the true color of the Skylark, you know,” Fernandes tells me. “It was yellow like a canary bird. This here is one lousy paint job.”
    The Green Mile had been that same ugly green color for as long as I remember, but Fernandes’s comment has a ring of truth to it. My little brother, Noah, scratched the sides with a hanger when he was about three years old, and I’d noticedthe original