A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) by Darynda Jones

“Never, sis. My toes are very private.”

Quincy and Zee had decided they were twins separated at birth when they met four months ago. Since Quince was a blond-haired, blue-eyed wreck with few worthwhile talents—because the ability to sleep standing up didn’t count—and Zee was a tall, gorgeous Black woman who could shoot the wings off a fruit fly at a hundred yards, Sun highly doubted the validity of their claim. Also, neither was adopted. So there was that.

“Okay, Quince, I have a random, off-the-cuff question,” Sun said randomly and off-the-cuff.

“Shoot.”

“What in the name of God is my mother doing here?” Sun watched as her mother tiptoed through the sultry night air, easing closer to Quincy’s back porch. She’d pulled her graying blond hair into a ponytail that always made her look younger than her fifty-five years. A gauze tunic hung loosely over her slim frame.

“You said to call for backup.”

“And you called my mother?” she asked, her voice rising a notch.

“No. I called her book club. Those ladies are fierce.” The grin he wore made it impossible to be annoyed. He had a point, after all.

Sun scanned the area, now littered with women who’d run out of fucks to give decades ago, and focused on two in particular. They carried butterfly nets, one as though it were an assault rifle, the other as though it were a missile launcher.

“Just two more quick questions,” she said.

He pulled the goggles back into position, and said, “Hit me.”

“Why the hell do they have butterfly nets and where did they get them on such short notice?”

He chuckled and gestured toward a wily, five-foot firecracker in full camouflage regalia and neon pink crocs that were so blinding through the goggles Sun had to look away. Wanda also happened to be the one carrying her butterfly net like a missile launcher, which fit her personality to a tee.

“I think every time the men in white coats come for Wanda, she steals their nets and runs away.”

The deputies laughed softly through the comm, Zee’s an alluring, husky thing, and Deputy Salazar’s a bubbly giggle like champagne. Or denture-cleaning tablets.

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Sun said, wondering in the back of her mind if any of her mother’s book club mates could be associated with the Dangerous Daughters. If it were even real. “It would also not surprise me if she brought the butterfly net more for you than for the raccoon.”

He laughed again, but quickly changed his mind. Concern flashed across the part of his boyishly handsome face that she could see. “You’re joking, right?”

Sun shrugged. Wanda had always had a thing for the intrepid deputy. Sadly, the intrepid deputy had always had a thing for Sun’s mother, which would explain his calling in her book club more than his lame-ass excuse.

She used to think Quincy’s crush was just a post-pubescent schoolboy thing, but since she’d moved back to Del Sol four months ago, Quince constantly asked about her mom, the lovely Elaine Freyr. How was she? What she was up to? Had she ever had an affair with a younger, freakishly comely man?

It was weird. And getting weirder every day. So much so, in fact, that Sun had caught onto his ruse about a month in. He was deflecting. Straight up. He was in love with someone else, and he didn’t want her to know. Her. Sunshine Vicram. His best friend since the sandbox.

Sun vowed to find out who he was rounding the bases and sliding into home with if it were the last thing she did on this Earth. To date, she’d narrowed it down to thirty-seven women (and two men, just in case). She was so close she could taste victory. Or wishful thinking. Emotional figures of speech tasted startlingly similar.

Her phone dinged with a text from her date asking if everything was okay.

Before she could answer, Quincy whispered so loudly he probably scared off the masked bandit. “There he is!”

Sun glanced at the porch and, sure enough, the little guy was climbing out of a tiny hole in the ceiling of Quincy’s porch as though being poured out of it, his fur fluffing up to three times his actual size. It reminded Sun she needed to cut back on the carbs.

Quince slid his goggles down and raised his dart gun, a non-lethal tranquilizer launcher that looked like a combination of an Uzi and a water gun.

“Please don’t tranq my mother,” Sun said, cringing as she stood beside him and watched the critter through her goggles.

Before he could get a clear shot, however, Wanda ran forward, her net at the ready. “I’ll get ‘im!”

“Shit,” Quince said. Abandoning his cover, he vaulted around the bush toward the melee of vigilant women.

Sun fought off the branch again and followed, trying not to twist her ankle. She watched as Wanda, her mother, and Darlene Tapia, another member of the infamous Book Babes Book Club, ascended the stairs to the porch and rushed the panicked, screeching creature.

Poor little guy. Sun would’ve screeched, too. Those women were alarmingly fast runners.

“Don’t get near it!” Quincy shouted.

“It’s okay, handsome.” Wanda took a swipe at the ball of fur, just missing it by several tenths of a mile. “I was vaccinated for rabies when I was a kid. I’m immune.”

Sun’s heart jumped into her throat as Wanda got closer. The rabies angle had yet to occur to her. “I’m not sure it works that way, Wanda!”