Ultraviolet by Nancy Bush Page B

cars—even when they’re parked in their own lot—makes me uncomfortable?

    Anyway, I’d begged off dinner, saying I had to be somewhere later and though Chuck had pressed me, I’d managed to get things the way I wanted them. I was still planning to meet Jenny and Julie at Foster’s, but much later. Chuck just didn’t have to know.

    “Hey, Jane,” Chuck hollered now over his shoulder. “So, I was reading on AOL that sausages can be good for you. Ease stress.” He leered through the grate that divided my seat from his and Josh’s. “I can think how they ease stress. How about you?” His laughter came from behind his nose, a dirty, snorting toot.

    Chuck is enough of an Oregon Duck fan to only wear green and yellow—a virulent combination that should be outlawed if it isn’t game day. I realized, belatedly, that I only tolerate Chuck because he frequents the Coffee Nook. This is definitely not enough to form a friendship on. I thought about several responses, chief among them being “Shut up, asshole,” and decided to smile tightly and keep my own counsel. If you can’t think of something clever to say, don’t say anything at all.

    I’d read that article, too, as it happens, and it was about the sound of sizzling sausages being something comforting as we headed into winter with all its bleakness and cold. But I kept that information to myself, deciding I could play passive/aggressive with the big boys.

    “You still meeting Jenny and Julie at Foster’s?” Chuck tossed into the silence.

    You would have to torture me for hours to make me give up that information to Chuck. I reminded him, “I’ve got business to take care of later. Can’t meet them.” Before he could press the issue, I said to Josh, “Somebody told me that their sister smashed her car into a tree, and the tree savior people arrived before the ambulance.”

    “Was your friend all right?” Josh asked.

    “Concussion, I think. Tree had extensive damage. Might have had to be put down.”

    Josh said mildly, “I take it you don’t agree with the city’s tree ordinance.”

    “I just struggle with people who use the tree ordinance to further their own political agenda.”

    “Whaddaya mean?” Chuck asked.

    “Like that neighborhood association that tried to stop the guy building that huge house on the lake? They tried everything to stop him. Used the tree ordinance as one means to delay. Had nothing to do with the trees themselves.”

    Chuck said, “Who cares? Let’s go hang around the bars, see if we can give somebody a DUI.”

    “It’s a little early,” I pointed out.

    “Hey, my friend Sonny got picked up at nine-thirty. Jesus, he blew like a .16. Shit hit the fan, I’ll tell ya. Wife kicked him out and now he’s got all these crappy classes where he has to say he’s got a problem. My day, the cops caught you, they just drove you home.”

    I gazed at the back of Chuck’s head. “You wanna bust somebody for DUI, but you’re grousing about your friend’s luck?”

    “Sonny’s a good guy.”

    Josh said to me, “Have you thought about joining your own neighborhood association? Then you’d have some say in the decisions. You could make a difference.” He looked at me through the rearview mirror and I hoped my horror didn’t show on my face.

    “I may be moving,” I said. Like, oh, sure. Me in the neighborhood association. I had a mental image of do-gooders of all ages, earnestness oozing from their pores. “And I’m a renter.”

    Chuck singsonged, “Bor—ing.”

    I decided that Chuck was right and changed the subject. But Josh regarded me thoughtfully in his rearview for the rest of our trip. I found this unnerving. It was lucky Chuck was so all about himself that he neglected to bring up that I was a private investigator. Somehow I didn’t think that would go over well with Josh. Unless his sister Cheryl had already spilled the beans, which was highly probable the more I thought about it.

    I said