Retool, p.5
Retool, page 5
part #12 of The Last Picks Series
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the book. It’s about all the cases I solved here.”
“Even better,” Fox said—which felt like a mixed message.
“Fox,” Indira said, “be kind. Dash, you sound like you don’t want to do it.”
“Why not?” Keme said. “It would be fire.”
I assumed fire meant cool, but I refused to verify. “There’s a lot of stuff still up in the air. Stuff we need to figure out.”
“You’d be ON TV.” Millie clapped her hands for emphasis. “JUST LIKE VIVIENNE!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Right.”
Bobby put his hand on my back and said, “The important thing is not to rush into anything. See what he offers you. Learn what this would take—what do they expect you to do, how much would you be involved. Talk to some other people in the industry.”
“You know, Vivienne was very hands-on with Matron of Murder,” Indira said, “but I don’t think that’s true for most authors who sell TV rights.”
“What if they wanted you to live in L.A.?” Keme asked—and the normally reserved boy sounded transparently excited. “That would be—”
“Fire,” I said. Around me, my friends beamed at me, and I tried to work up a smile. “Yeah, I know.”
Chapter 8
Surprise, surprise, I didn’t sleep well. I dozed, sure. I may have napped. There was some resting. But absolutely zero slumber. No repose. Nothing even close to the coma-like torpor that was the sign of a good night’s sleep.
(It’s not a good night’s sleep unless you don’t have to get up to pee, don’t toss and turn, and don’t have that weird dry mouth thing—sometimes it makes me wonder if sleep is steam-powered; like, where does all the water in my body go?)
Bobby was up at the crack of dawn, as usual. I woke again when he came back from his run. Because today was the first full day of the conference, I stirred—it involved flopping around, moving my legs back and forth, scrabbling for my phone on the nightstand. Waking up outside my normal sleep cycle was a whole process, and I was still working on it when Bobby came out of the shower.
No towel, by the way. Bobby wasn’t bothered by casual nudity, unlike the rest of us mere mortals.
On the other hand, if I looked like Bobby, I probably wouldn’t be bothered by casual nudity either.
“You didn’t sleep,” he said as he padded over to the bed.
“I might have had one snooze somewhere in the middle of the night.”
He bent to kiss my hair. He smelled like his soap, and he was warm from the shower. “How are you?”
“Okay.” And then I said, “Is it weird they were all so enthusiastic about the show? I mean, they don’t even know if it’s a good deal.”
A fraction of a second passed, and Bobby said, “Of course they’re excited for you. We all are.”
“You are?”
“Of course I am, silly.” I wasn’t sure the last time Bobby had called me silly—if ever—but before I could latch onto that, he settled on the bed next to me and grabbed his phone. “Look at this. What do you think?”
This was a listing for a studio apartment in Silverlake. I blinked blearily—from what I could make out sans glasses, it had a brick accent wall and a lot of smeary somethings. A powerful squint brought the rent into focus, and I said a few words that you probably weren’t allowed to say in Silverlake.
“I know,” Bobby said, “but this is an investment.”
“Bobby, this is a college education.”
“We can afford it,” he said with a slightly-too-forceful laugh. “A Work in Progress is still selling well.”
“For now.”
“And if something changes,” Bobby said, “we can revisit it.”
“There’s got to be a cheaper neighborhood. Wait, what am I saying? Bobby, I haven’t even signed the contract, and even if I do, I’m not moving to L.A.—”
“Silverlake would be a great spot,” Bobby broke in. “It’s very LGBTQ friendly. Or if you wanted to be closer to the studios, there are some places in Culver City I looked at.”
“What is happening right now? When did you look at them? You did research?”
“Last night,” Bobby said, his tone offhand. But he got up and moved across the room. “I was excited.”
“Uh huh.”
“And there are a lot of great nonstop flights between Portland and LAX, so it’d be easy for you to come back for the weekends.”
“Bobby.”
“Honestly, they’re way more affordable than I realized.”
“Bobby.”
“A lot of these places go fast, though, so we should probably see about putting down a deposit.”
“Bobby!”
He jolted like I’d startled him. And then, running a hand through his hair, he smiled.
“I haven’t decided anything yet,” I said. “And this is my home. Here. With you.”
“I know.” He took a breath and said again, a little more convincingly, “I know, Dash. I’m just happy for you. And I wanted to, you know, help. In fact, I wanted to—I was wondering if we could go out to dinner tomorrow. To celebrate. I know you’ve got your conference, but I thought it would be fun if it was just us.”
All this delivered with an intensity and a painfully bad attempt at casualness that suggested—what? That it wasn’t about having fun; that much was obvious.
“Um, yeah. Sure.”
“I know you’re busy.”
“Bobby, I have to eat dinner. We can get dinner.”
“And everything with Vivienne.”
“God, I don’t even want to think about that.” But then I immediately said, “Everyone at the conference knows she’s dead. Did you get that? That’s why Julian showed up here last night. He was too polite to say he wanted to see if I’d been arrested.”
Bobby came back to the bed. He rubbed my leg through the blanket. And he said, “You want to investigate.”
“I don’t want to.”
He nodded. The soft whisper of his hand moving over the blanket filled the space between us. “I know you heard what the sheriff said to you last night. And I know you understand why she said that. But I also know that you’ve been through this before, and you have legitimate reasons for believing you need to be involved.”
“It’s not—” I tried, and then I stopped. “I know the sheriff is a good person, Bobby. But I feel so helpless. And it’s Vivienne. And I keep thinking there’s going to be a trick or a trap or something because everything about Vivienne is always such a mess.”
His hand fell still. Outside, far off, a gull cried.
“Okay,” he said. “What are we going to do?”
“Well, first I—oh no.”
It wasn’t exactly a smile, but the expression on his face gave me a glimpse of what a young Bobby Mai must have looked like when he got up to trouble.
“You can’t,” I told him. “You’re a detective.”
“Exactly.”
“But the sheriff told you to stay away from it.”
“And I will. I’ll take a couple of personal days, and I won’t do any police work. I’ll hang out with my boyfriend. Spend time with him. Follow him around and make sure he’s okay.”
“No, Bobby. The sheriff will be so mad.”
He shrugged. “I’m not going to let you do this on your own.”
“I’ll be fine—”
“Dash, you went through this by yourself once already. Being a suspect. Being accused.” He did smile now, but it was soft and small. “I told you: it’s not going to be like last time.”
And what, ladies and gentlemen, was I supposed to say to that?
“Thank you” seemed like a pretty good place to start.
Bobby bent. His hand curled around the back of my neck, and he kissed me. It was a serious kiss. Not playful. Not flirty. Intense. And a promise.
Let me tell you, it did something to me. I’m surprised my pajamas didn’t pop off like they were spring-loaded.
“Nope,” Bobby said.
“It’s still early—”
“We have a conference to get to. And we’ve got Keme’s surf competition this afternoon.”
“There’s some wiggle room in the schedule.”
“Great. Maybe later.”
“But you’re naked!” It was practically a wail.
Here’s the thing: Bobby isn’t the smirking type. He’s smart and observant, so he knows how attractive he is. But he doesn’t care about it. And if you’ve ever known somebody like that, somebody who is heartbreakingly beautiful and somehow kind of…careless about it, you know it’s ten times as powerful.
Which was why I decided to treat myself to a show, and I lay there and watched Bobby get dressed: jeans, polo, jacket.
“If you’re not out of that bed in five minutes,” he said as he combed his hair, “I’m turning the shower to cold and shoving you in.”
“How dare you?”
But you’d better believe I hopped in the shower two minutes later.
After a quick breakfast in the kitchen—oatmeal for Bobby, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for me—we hit the road.
I drove.
That statement might not sound all that exciting. But trust me, it was. Because for over a year, ever since I’d been forced off the road while doing some light snooping, I’d been without a vehicle. Most of the time, it had worked out all right—Bobby had let me borrow the Pilot, and he’d either gotten a ride with coworkers, or I’d dropped him off at the station, or occasionally he’d been able to bring a cruiser home.
But recently, we’d made some changes as—
Well, I almost said as a family.
Which was interesting. And I filed that away to think about later.
We’d made some decisions as a couple. In a moment of extreme generosity, Bobby had given Keme the Pilot. The SUV was in great condition (of course it was; Bobby had been its only owner, and he always made me pick up my straw wrappers, so it was essentially spotless, inside and out). And we’d both known that while Keme was still figuring out what he was going to do with his life, he needed some help that his mom couldn’t provide. Anyway, if you’ve never seen an nineteen-year-old die from happiness, let me know, and I’ll send you the video of Keme when Bobby gave him the keys.
Bobby had done the responsible thing and bought himself a Dodge Ram, black, low mileage, and—somehow—gotten an amazing deal on it. It was an upgrade from the Pilot. It had reasonable payments. And let’s be real: Bobby had always wanted a truck—he’d gotten the Pilot because he’d somehow convinced himself it was more practical.
I, on the other hand, did not do a responsible thing.
Thanks to the miracle of self-publishing—and the unexpected success of A Work in Progress—for the first time since I’d stopped getting an allowance from my parents, I had money. (For the last year and change, I’d been making do with what little I could earn teaching creative writing courses at Arcadia College, which was awesome and fun and paid less than being a bag boy at the Keel Haul.) And thank God that Bobby is an understanding and patient and loving boyfriend, because he didn’t even blink when I told him what I wanted to buy.
It was a 2008 Jeep Wrangler X. It had a manual transmission. It was loud as, um, heck. And it had over a hundred and twenty thousand miles on it. It was bumblebee yellow with black trim, and Keme refused to ride in it after a bunch of kids he knew from high school asked if we were playing Transformers.
I loved it. I loved everything about it.
Especially that I was able to buy it with cash. (Very rudely, nobody would give me a car loan based on a few months’ worth of royalty payments. Mrs. Hines at Hastings Rock Savings and Loan was very nice about it even though she used the phrase “credit history” a disturbing number of times.)
So, we barreled down the state highway in the Jeep—the wind whipping at the soft top, the engine roaring, the Jeep bouncing every time we went over the slightest bump.
It was heaven.
(In unrelated news: Bobby always offered to drive.)
When we got to the college, campus was quiet. A few students, geared up against the cool autumn morning with backpacks and coffees and, in one case, pulling a wagon full of books, made their way among redbrick neo-Colonials. Dew glittered in a thousand points of distilled sunlight, and the grass was that rich green that you know means somebody is taking serious care of the lawn. When I opened the Jeep’s door, the air held a cool, wet scent, a welcome contrast to the smell of the heater. (Also, full disclosure, it did sometimes smell like gasoline.)
“What’s the plan?” Bobby asked.
“Start with Graeme. He’s the conference organizer, and I saw him talking to Vivienne yesterday not long before she, uh—”
“Was murdered?”
“Passed that final boundary all men must cross?”
“Is that Shakespeare?”
“It might be? I read it in a Walt Longmire book.”
Bobby didn’t miss a beat. “Graeme sounds like a good place to start. If we hurry, we can catch him.”
“Oh, he’ll be here all day. That’s kind of his job.”
Pointing, Bobby said, “He just got on that bus.”
“Change of plans,” I said and started to run.
We got to the bus as the driver—Mrs. Nelson, who also worked at the Super Suds, spotted me and closed the doors.
(One time—one time—the washer had been out at Hemlock House, so I’d gone to Super Suds, and my pajamas had gotten all twisted up around the wringer, and now I’m a criminal for the rest of my life.)
(Also, one time I forgot some Legos in my pocket, and they got stuck in the hole thingies, and you would have thought I’d intentionally sabotaged the entire Super Suds operation.)
I tapped on the glass.
Mrs. Nelson looked at me.
I called, “Sorry we’re late.”
Mrs. Nelson turned to face out the windshield.
“Uh, could you—”
The bus lurched forward.
“Hi, Mrs. Nelson,” Bobby said.
And presto-chango, the doors opened.
We got on the bus. Mrs. Nelson let the bus rock forward as I was climbing up, and I would have fallen if Bobby hadn’t caught my arm, and I swear to God: she did it on purpose. When we reached the seats, two dozen faces stared purposefully around me.
(As an aside: we writers wear a lot of cardigans. And glasses. And, apparently, hats. One woman had a hat that looked like the one Jennifer Aniston had in that movie—Keme knows which one I’m talking about.)
“Sorry,” I said to the crowd.
They still didn’t look at me. The woman in the hat actually tilted it forward so that the brim covered her face.
Mrs. Nelson grumbled something, and the bus lurched forward. Bobby steadied me and turned the movement into a nudge to keep moving.
At the back of the bus, Charlie poked their head out into the aisle and waved. “Mr. Dane! Back here!”
Graeme was sitting at the front of the bus, a clipboard in hand, a massive backpack occupying the seat next to him. He gave me that smile again—the one that was more like baring his teeth—and said, “Were you signed up for the expedition? You’re not on my list.”
“Uh, no,” I said. “Last-minute change of plans.”
To judge by Graeme’s face, last-minute changes of plans were for imbeciles, but he flashed his teeth at me again and said, “Find a seat.”
“Sure,” I said. “Actually, do you mind if I take this one—”
“Uhn-uh,” Bobby said and gave me a less polite nudge.
“There’s plenty of room back here, Mr. Dane!” Charlie did a two-armed wave this time, in case I missed them.
I subvocalized a groan. Bobby chuckled as he followed me down the aisle.
(Mrs. Nelson, by the way, was hitting every bump and pothole she could find, likely in the hope of shooting me out a window while everyone else remained safe and sound. She also liked to ride the clutch.)
“Hi,” I said as I reached the back of the bus.
“Oh my God, Mr. Dane,” Charlie said. “We’re so glad you’re okay!”
“Just Dash,” I said. “Hi, Charlie!”
“Everyone said you got arrested for killing Vivienne Carver!”
“You didn’t kill her, did you?” AJ asked. Today’s septum piercing had a lot of yellow crystals and looked uncomfortably heavy. “Because everyone says you did.”
“Do you actually believe—” I began.
“No one can understand what happens in a moment of life-or-death conflict,” Thatcher said, shoving his beanie back. “No one except the man who lives it. And he’s the only one who can judge his actions in that moment.”
I stared at the three of them. I bounced when Mrs. Nelson ran over what sounded like a small car.
“I did not—”
“Quietly,” Bobby murmured behind me.
It reminded me that approximately two dozen people were actively trying to eavesdrop without admitting they even knew I was on the bus.
“I did not,” I repeated in a whisper, “kill anyone.”
“I know,” Charlie said.
“This is totally going in my memoir,” AJ said.
“It’s only when we’re locked in the ultimate struggle that we fully come alive,” Thatcher said. And then he held out his fist to me and said, “I got you, brother.”
“Oh my God,” I said under my breath.
“You need to sit down,” Graeme called from the front of the bus.
Bobby and I took a pair of empty seats in front of the ducklings.
Peace and quiet didn’t last long; Charlie tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Are you here because you’re investigating?”
“No, I’m—wait, what is this? Where are we going?”
“It’s a morning at the farmer’s market,” AJ said. “It was an optional expedition. You were supposed to sign up in advance.”
“Why are you going?” I said. “You live here; you don’t need an expedition to the farmer’s market.”
“Because we’re investigating!” Charlie announced.
I twisted around in my seat to get a good look at them. They were flushed with excitement and beaming at me.
“Are you insane?” I asked.
