My phone rang in my hand.

Pop.

“What’s up, Pop?” I scooted out of the booth.

“Someone’s outside the window, Maggie. I can hear them scratching on the glass.”

“Wait, wait! Slow down! What do you mean, you heard something outside? Are you on the sofa? Where’s Trude? Are you alone in the house?”

“Trude had to leave. We just got back from the ER. I slipped and fell, and they had to recast my ankle.” I got up, without giving Eli a backward glance, and made my way through the crowded bar to the front entrance. Cold air gusted down from Blue Wolf Mountain, cutting across the back of my neck. “Are you coming home soon?” he said in a small, shaky voice that sounded nothing like my father. “The pain pills are wearing off fast, and —”

“Hold tight, Pop. I’m leaving Fat Daddy’s now. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I pocketed my phone and wove my way through Fat Daddy’s parking lot. Locating my little VW nestled between a slew of monster trucks wasn’t easy until I remembered I’d parked it near the dumpster. I skirted a red pickup and stopped short.

My poor Velma looked like she’d been pulled out of a swamp.

Buckets of cheddar cheese nachos, half-eaten burgers, barbecued chicken wings, and fries — oh, so many fries — all scraped from dirty plates, had been dumped like a giant clump of seaweed on her hood. The windshield was strewn with takeout containers and greasy napkins, all of it smeared with heaps of Fat Daddy’s Famous Tennessee chili, clearly past its prime.

I stared at my car, not sure what to do. I had to get home. My father was waiting for me with a broken ankle and two cracked ribs, worried that someone was outside trying to get in. I had to get home now.

I glanced down and noticed the gash on Velma’s front tire. Dammit to hell.

This hadn’t been done by a half-blind line cook who had tried to dump the night’s food scraps into the dumpster opening and missed. Or by some pissed off busboy who had cleaned off one too many tables and never seen a tip. This had been done on purpose. By someone who either hated vintage Volkswagens or me.

And I was betting on the latter.

Eli was suddenly behind me. “Do you want me to call the sheriff?”

“Who would do this? Who would vandalize my car like this?”

“I’ll give you a ride home. You’ve drunk too much tequila to drive anyway. I’m parked over there.” He pointed to the beat-up blue pickup he’d been driving the night we discovered his grandmother’s dead body.

“Nice truck,” I said, climbing into the cab. “Where’d you find it? Propped up on cinder blocks in somebody’s front yard?”

“I found her at the Kitty Hawk Bait Shop. She’s a rescue.”

“Kitty Hawk, North Carolina?” I sighed. “I bet it’s beautiful there. I’ve never been to the beach, and I’ve always wanted to go.”

“Just a lot of sand and saltwater.” He glanced at me. “You’ll get there someday, Mountain Girl. But right now, after hearing how worried you sounded talking to your father on the phone, I need to get you home.”

“You’re making it awfully hard to keep hating you.”

“That’s the plan.”

It crossed my mind that I might be hitching a ride with a murderer — Hadn’t he just told me he despised his dead grandmother? — but I couldn’t let myself think about that right now. Or what had happened to Velma. Not until I got home and made sure Pop was okay.

The other thing I didn’t want to think about was the fact that almost everyone in town knew the little black Volkswagen bug with a peace symbol sticker on the back left bumper belonged to me — Maggie MacGill.