A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper 1)

"You still don't smoke, Jane," Charlie said.

She looked up. "So what's your point?"

"Nothing. " He handed her the keys to the rental car. "Can you grab me some toothpaste while you're out?"

She gave up searching for the lighter and threw the cigarettes back into her purse. "What is it with this family and the compulsive dental hygiene?"

"I forgot to bring any. "

"Okay. " Jane braced the keys in her hand, ready to go in the ignition, and tucked her purse under her arm like a football. She dropped into a crouch and pulled down her mirrored, wraparound sunglasses that, with her short platinum blond hair and Charlie's black pinstripe suit, made her look a little like a cyborg assassin from the future getting ready to dash out into the poisonous atmosphere of planet Duran Duran. "It's fucking hot out there, isn't it?"

Charlie nodded and held up the doughnut box again. "The glazed have suffered. "

"Oh," Jane said, lifting her glasses again. "Cassandra called. After you called this morning she noticed your date book on the

nightstand. Well actually, she said that Alvin and Mohammed dragged her in there and pushed it at her. She wondered if you needed it. "

"What about Sophie, is she okay?"

"No, she's been abducted by aliens, but I wanted you to digest the bad news about forgetting your date book first. "

"You know, that right there is why Mom is ashamed of you," Charlie said.

Jane laughed. "Guess what? She's not. "

"She's not?"

"No, this morning. She told me that she always knew who I was, always knew what I was, and that she has always loved me, just the way I am. "

"Did you card her? There's an impostor in our mom's bed. "

"Shut up, it was nice. Important. "

"She was probably just saying that because she's dying. "

"She did say that she wished I wouldn't wear men's suits all the time. "

"She's not alone on that one," Charlie said.

Jane fell back into assault mode. "I'm off on the floss mission. Call Cassandra. "

"Done," Charlie said.

"And Buddy needs a doughnut. " Jane threw open the door and ran out into the heat screaming like a berserker charging the enemy.

Charlie closed the door behind her so as not to let the air-conditioning out, and watched through the glass as his sister ran across the zero-scaped yard like she was on fire. He looked beyond her to the red rock mesa rising out of the desert. There seemed to be a deep crevasse in it that he hadn't seen there before. He looked again, and saw that it wasn't a crevasse at all, just a long, sharp shadow.

Then he ran out into the driveway and looked at the position of the sun, then at the shadow. It was on the wrong side of the mesa. There couldn't be a shadow on this side - the sun was also on this side. He shaded his eyes and watched the shadow until he thought his brains were cooking in the sun. It was moving, slowly, but moving, and not the way a shadow moves. It was moving with purpose, against the sun, toward his mother's house.

"My date book," he said to himself. "Oh, shit. "

Chapter 18

18

YO MOMMA SO DEAD THAT. . .

On her last day, Lois Asher rallied. After not having even been able to get up to go to the breakfast table, or into the living room to sit and watch TV for three weeks, got up and danced with Buddy to an old Ink Spots song. She was playful and full of laughter, she teased her children and hugged them, she ate a chocolate-marshmallow sundae, and she brushed and flossed afterward. She put on her favorite silver jewelry and wore it to the dinner table, and when she couldn't find her squash-blossom necklace she shrugged it off like it was a minor thing - she must have misplaced it. Oh, well.