Free Jex Malone by C.L. Gaber, V.C. Stanley Page B

hours.
    â€œFor the record, I didn’t even live here yet when it happened. My mom and dad moved here a couple of months afterwards from Tampa, and I once overheard my mom say they got such a great deal on the house because this neighborhood would be forever linked to a girl disappearing and probably dying,” Nat informs me. “I was only three at the time, so I wasn’t on the case. Yet.”
    â€œWow, Tampa,” I reply, sipping a giant cup of coffee that I have poured myself. Only half listening to her now, I reply, “Florida. Hot. Gators. Dangerous.”
    â€œAnd also for the record, my parents never worried too much about our neighborhood’s safety. My mom blamed the Matthews family for their daughter’s disappearance and would say, ‘They probably had unsavory friends. You lie down with dogs, you get bit by fleas,’” Nat says.
    That one gets my attention.
    Even Nat has to drop her FBI act and laugh.
    â€œMy mother,” she sighs. “The canine-loving poet.”
    For the first time all morning, the three of us burst into laughter, and for some reason it’s so ridiculous and funny and scary to talk about all this that I laugh so hard that tears form. Like a blur, I see Cissy race off to the bathroom.
    Cissy is in there forever, which gives Nat time to explain “the case” to me in detail.
    â€œLet’s just put it this way: Patty’s choice of boyfriend probably was the last bad choice she made—at least, that’s what I think,” she says.
    I stop her mid-sentence. Resting my head on the actual kitchen table, I mumble something to Nat that basically asks her how she got so interested in detective work.
    â€œI suppose in a completely subconscious way it’s been Patty’s ghost—or rather the ghost of Patty’s case—that got me interested in forensics in the first place,” she says. “That, and I happen to be pretty good at science. My mom thinks I’m going to go to medical school one day. Keep dreaming.”
    I can tell that like Dad, Nat thinks that bodies are only interesting when they’ve assumed room temperature.
    â€œI can’t tell my parents that I’m going to be a detective someday. If my mom ever heard me utter those words, that would be the last I’d ever see of that can of spray Luminol I managed to get with my allowance,” she says.
    â€œLuminol?” I ask. “Is that some new fragrance?”
    Nat laughs in that snorty kind of way that makes me smile. At least I haven’t lost my sense of humor in all this heat.
    â€œOf course, Luminol is what police spread around the room to see if anyone has been ‘offed.’ Even the wiped up, cleaned up, tidied up blood shows up or illuminates.
Brill-i-ant!
” Nat says. “You know you can even buy the stuff on the Internet? That’s how I got mine, but don’t tell anyone.”
    I give her the peace sign to indicate my silence. Then I wonder if Cissy is in our guest bathroom getting a kidney transplant. She has been in there a long time.
    When she finally returns, Nat is in the middle of lecturing me about repositioning the ugly, supposedly decorative mirror in our hallway.
    â€œYou really should position mirrors above counters so you can see who is sneaking up behind you. You know, just in case of armed robbery,” she says.
    Cissy has returned with a pained look on her face and a small picture in her hand. “I swear, Jex, I was just looking for a hand towel when I opened the bottom cabinet and found this,” she says, handing me a photo of my dad and some skinny blonde.
    â€œLook. I don’t care who my dad dates!” I say in much too loud a voice, which makes Cissy shrink down and Nat perk up.
    â€œWatch it girl, no one yells at Cissy—except maybe me and Deva, and, of course, her mom and sometimes the teachers,” Nat says. “Okay, everyone yells at Cissy, but not new