Page 341 of Devil’s Disciples

I shrugged. “It was rhetorical but go ahead.”

“Bill Murray.”

“Bill Murray?” I looked at him like he was nuts. “Why the fuck would Bill goddamned Murray be in that fucking diner?”

He shrugged. “You told me to guess. He lives here, you know. I thought maybe you bumped into him.”

“No. I didn’t bump into Bill fucking Murray.”

I glanced around his office, trying to decide if I wanted to continue with my story or not. As Ghost suggested in his letter, I was the club’s voice of reason. Unless I wanted to talk to myself, I was going to get smart-assed responses and poorly thought out opinions.

“You going to enlighten me?” he asked. “Tell me who it was?”

“The chick who put her panties in my pocket,” I said. “From the funeral.”

His eyes thinned. “She was in the diner?”

“Sure was.”

“Did you find out what the hell she was thinking when she did that?”

I chuckled. “Said I looked like I needed my spirits lifted. She thought that’d do it.”

“Did it?”

I shrugged. “A little.”

“What’d she look like?”

“She’s kind of—”

“Wait,” he interrupted. “How’d you know it was her? Did she just walk up to you and say, ‘Hey, I put some panties in your pocket at a funeral the other day.’?”

I didn’t want to tell him about my lucid daydream, or that I felt some strange connection to her that I couldn’t explain. I decided to stick with telling him about her quirky personality and smart mouth. If he was receptive, I’d tell him about poking my finger in her twat at the restaurant.

“I recognized her from the funeral,” I said. “I walked up to her and asked how she knew Ghost.”

“Well?” He leaned onto the edge of the desk. “How’d she know him?”

“From the diner. She said he thought she looked like Abby. They’d been eating breakfast together for a few months. Right up until the day he died.”

“No shit?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Guess there’s a lot about Ghost we didn’t know.”

There was a lot about Ghost we didn’t know, and it bothered me. I planned on learning as much as I could from George and Ally. I hoped a better understanding of his last days would bring me comfort. The sorrow and guilt would remain, but I was deserving of both.

“So, this chick,” I said. “The one who left the panties. We rode up to Encinitas and—”

He went bug-eyed. “You let a split-tail get on the back of your bike?”

“Jesus with the interrupting, Baker,” I complained. “Yeah. I took her for a ride. It was part of the agreement.”

“What agreement?”

“The agreement we made. I had to drop off the car with the guy that owns that diner, that George fella. I didn’t really want him to give me a ride back to my place, because I didn’t know him, and at that point in time, I didn’t like the thought of him getting that car. So, I asked that chick if she’d give me a ride back to my place. She said she would if I gave her a ride on the bike afterward. I agreed to it.”