Free Make Me Sin by J. T. Geissinger Page B

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    Rolling her eyes, Trina sighs. “Did you, or did you not, attend elementary school?”
    I did in fact attend elementary school. It was a private school that my parents paid thirty thousand dollars a year in tuition for, so I could finger-paint and bang on drums and “learn music, theater, dramatic play, athletics, and environmental awareness, all of which stimulate the senses and support different ways of learning.”
    Trina went to public school in Venice, where she was in a girl gang.
    I simply answer, “Yes.”
    “Okay. So you remember that little asshole kid who would pick on you, and pull your ponytail in class, and try to trip you when you were walking past him at recess?”
    I frown. “How did you know about Mikey Dolan?”
    “Because every girl has a Mikey Dolan, dummy!”
    I stare at Trina. “Did you smoke a bowl before you came to work? Because you’re sounding a little stoney.”
    “Ugh. Never mind.” She holds out the order form. “What I needed to tell you was that order from Big—excuse me,” she amends when she sees the warning look on my face. “That order from Mr. Edwards is a no go.”
    “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
    She shrugs. “The address is wrong, or incomplete. They sent an email from the wire service to let us know. So they need a correct address, or a telephone number, so they can call the recipient. They’re going to hold it until we get back to them.”
    I take the order from her hand and review it. It’s for one hundred long stem white roses, which we charge seven hundred dollars for. He’s not kidding around.
    “There’s no message for the enclosure card.”
    “He didn’t want one.”
    Trina and I share a look. The only time men don’t want to include a message with a bouquet of flowers they’re sending is if the woman they’re sending them to is married to someone else, or if he’s a stalker.
    “All right. I’ll follow up on it, thanks.”
    Exactly how I’m going to follow up on it is a mystery, because there’s this fun little device called a phone that’s missing in the equation. I have no way of contacting A.J.
    Directly, anyway.
    Deciding it’s too early to call Kat, I look up the address on Google Maps. The street and city names are a tangle of unpronounceable words. I type slowly, looking back and forth from the order to the screen, making sure I’m entering it right: 4, Prospekt Devyatogo Yanvarya / 66a, Prospekt Alexandrovskoy Fermy.
    Google produces the result. I’m looking at a link for the Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
    My hands fall still on the keyboard. A little shiver runs down my spine.
    You want to know what I see when I look at you? Ghosts.
    I look at the name of the intended recipient. Aleksandra Zimnyokov. I murmur several variations of the last name, trying to get the pronunciation right, but give up quickly. Whoever this woman is, I’m sure she won’t appreciate me butchering her name.
    I look back at the computer, thinking. Into the search box I type “A.J. Edwards Bad Habit.”
    There are, no joke, nine hundred eighty-three thousand results. I click on the Wikipedia link near the top and start reading.
    Alex James Edwards (born 9 July, 1987), known professionally as A.J. Edwards, is an American musician and singer-songwriter, best known as the drummer for the rock band Bad Habit.
    He’s twenty-eight, three years older than I am. Funny, I thought he was older. Maybe that’s because he always seems like he’s got the weight of the world around his neck. I keep reading and learn he was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, to a pastor and his homemaker wife. Due to their religious beliefs, he was homeschooled for his entire education.
    I have a hard time imagining A.J., tatted, surly, antiestablishment A.J., as coming from such a square background. Although being homeschooled by my mother would certainly have made me jump off the deep end, so I shrug, reading on.
    For one of the members of such a famous band,