“Well, I did. Obviously. But I mean for crying. I’m sorry I’m such a mess.”

  It took Bobby a second before he said, “Why would you need to apologize for crying?”

  And, since he was Bobby, it was a real question.

  I didn’t answer right away. The late October day was thinning around us, and the gloom made the distances grow. A Schwan’s truck rolled slowly past, the rumble of its engine swallowing up smaller sounds, and it felt like it was miles away instead of a few yards. Even farther off, the last of the light came through the branches of a crimson-tipped strawberry tree. It set the little red berries aglow, and the peeling, cinnamon-colored bark looked like paper about to burn. Then the Schwan’s truck moved on, and the rumble fell away into the gathering shadows.

  I rubbed my chest without really thinking about it. Keme hadn’t shoved me hard enough to hurt, but when I tried to take a deep breath, it felt like I couldn’t. Like the muscles were too stiff—bruised. But, of course, they weren’t. That was only in my imagination.

  “Do you want me to drive you to Dr. Xu?” Bobby asked.

  “What? Oh. No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

  His hand slid from my shoulder to the back of my neck. With his other hand, he brushed my hair away from my forehead. It wasn’t anything you couldn’t do in public, but it also felt intensely intimate, like I was naked in the sheriff’s station’s gravel lot. I caught myself glancing around to check if anyone else could see us, but we were alone. A little, squirming part of me told me to shift, fidget, move in some way that would make him drop his hands.

  But Bobby spoke first. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head. And then words came tumbling out. “It’s all so awful. I was over at Keme’s mom’s place. Have you ever been there?”

  “Not inside.”

  “But you know,” I said. “Does everyone know? Does Indira? Does Millie?”

  “That they live at the RV park? Yes, everyone knows.”

  “Not that.” I tried to think about how to put it into words. “It would be so much…I don’t know, simpler, I guess, if his mom was just this outright awful person. But she’s not. She actually seems sweet. And she’s totally incapable of taking care of herself, much less Keme. I don’t know why. I don’t know if that’s how she’s always been, or if it’s like a learned helplessness kind of thing, and at some point, she decided to be that way because she thought it was easier. But that’s how it is. I mean, Foster is obviously the one making all the decisions, and before him, there was somebody else, wasn’t there?”

  Bobby nodded.

  “And there’s this part of me that sat in that stupid camper and wanted to scream at them. Wanted to shake September. Because even though I feel bad for her, I feel worse for Keme. I mean, it’s like she doesn’t care about him at all. No, that’s not right. It’s like—it’s like he’s somebody she knows, and she likes him, and she hopes everything turns out all right for him, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  Brushing my hair away from my forehead again, Bobby said, “That sounds like a defense mechanism. She hasn’t had an easy life either, from what I gather. At some point, it was too hard or too much to worry about Keme. And so she stopped.”

  “But how? I mean, he’s her son. If we have kids, I’m going to duct-tape them to chairs and not let them out of the house until they’re forty. Do you know what happens to kids in this world?”

  On the strawberry tree, a squirrel scampered up a branch, making it sway. A second squirrel chased after it, chittering.

  “Also, please stare into this memory wipe device,” I said, “and forget I said anything about having kids.”

  For an instant, the whole world lit up with Bobby’s big, goofy grin. Then he swept his fingers slowly across my forehead again. “I’m more worried about the duct-taping-them-to-chairs part.”

  “Wasps, Bobby. Trampolines. Middle school locker rooms. Do you know they expect you to shower? And don’t get me started on organized sports.”

  That white slice of his grin broadened again. But then it faded, and he said, “For some people, it’s easier to put up walls than to keep being hurt. And the walls look different for different people.”

  Leaning into the warmth of his touch, I let myself relax a little. “I know. It just—it just broke my heart. And then they found those bloody clothes, and as soon as I saw them, I knew they were Keme’s. I mean, I’ve seen him wear that stupid hamburger T-shirt so many times I’m surprised it hasn’t rotted away to nothing. In medical terms, I freaked the freak out. And then I came here, and the sheriff is actually thinking about arresting him, and he won’t say anything, and he’s clearly been in a fight—”

  I touched my chest again without thinking about it.

  This time, Bobby’s hand wrapped around mine, and in an unfamiliar voice, he asked, “Did he hurt you?”

  It took me a moment to register that new note as anger. Tightly controlled, yes. But definitely there, and shaded with protectiveness and something else, something even scarier, a matter-of-factness that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Like Bobby was going to handle it—permanently—if anyone hurt me.

  (And yes, I kind of liked it.)

  “No,” I said. “And knock it off. I don’t want you going in there after I leave and beating him with wet towels or rubber hoses or, um, ladies’ swimming suits.”

  It took about two seconds before “What?”

  “They’re kind of like the intersection of wet towels and rubber hoses, right? An all-purpose, leave-no-marks torture device? You could really whip him with a bikini top.”

  Three seconds before “Dash.”

  “And I know this part is dumb, but it was weirdly embarrassing to fall on my butt in front of the sheriff. I know she didn’t care. I know it doesn’t matter. But it hurt, and then I started to cry and that was even more embarrassing.” The rest of it flowed out of me, and I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to. “And the worst part is I thought I was being brave. I thought I was doing, you know, something good. Going outside my comfort zone. Showing him how much I cared about him. I mean, Bobby, my God, I was going to hug him, and it wasn’t a funeral or National Taco Day. We weren’t even shipping him off to war.”

  “What war?”

  “And instead, I was just…wrong. I mean totally, completely, humiliatingly wrong. He didn’t want a hug. He didn’t need a hug. He definitely didn’t—I don’t know what I was thinking. At the best possible times, I’m the most annoying person he’s ever met. I should have remembered that.”

  “Dash,” he said softly.

  “That’s all,” I said.

  The hum of tires came from the next block.

  “The end,” I said.

  I thought, maybe, I could hear the ocean, but it was probably just the blood in my ears.

  “I’m done emoting,” I told him.

  He didn’t actually say, Thank God, but sometimes you can tell.

  Then I asked, “Are you okay?”

  In the strawberry tree, the squirrels were still playing tag, barely more than shadows chasing each other now. The hum of tires faded. The light faded, and the world grew thinner.

  “Yes,” Bobby said.

  Because he was Bobby.

  “I swear to God, if that’s all you say after I spilled my guts,” I told him.

  He wasn’t exactly the eye-rolling type, but he did give my hand an amused little shake. “How did you put it? It made me feel feelings.”

  “More,” I growled.

  He actually laughed, which all things considered, was very rude. But the amusement dropped away, and when he spoke, his voice was heavy. “I’m…not happy.”

  “Okay. This is good. Keep going.”

  “I—” Bobby released my hand and rubbed his eyes. My heartbeats counted out his silence. He stopped rubbing his eyes and put one hand on the roof of the Pilot, and he looked off into the dark, and I didn’t know what he was seeing. “I tried to talk to him,” Bobby said, “and he looked at me like—like I was nobody. Like I wasn’t even a person. Everybody else who tried, he stared in the mirror, but he looked at me.” Bobby stopped again. I could feel him battling himself, fighting to control his emotions. “I should have—” But the words cut off. And then he said, voice tight, “I should have done something.”

  “He’s scared,” I said. “And he doesn’t know what’s going on.”

  “He knows. He’s scared, but he knows.”

  “Bobby, he idolizes you. He was probably embarrassed you saw him like that.”

  Bobby shook his head. “I should have done something.”

  “Like what?”

  He made an unhappy sound that wasn’t exactly a laugh. Then he looked at me. “I’m proud of you for taking a risk with Keme. I know that was hard for you. And I don’t think you should read too much into what Keme did. He loves you.”

  “You realize this is a pot-and-kettle situation, right?”

  “I’m kind of gathering that.”

  “Well, I’m going to help him even if he does think I’m the most annoying person in the world. Keme didn’t do this. I understand the sheriff is in a bad spot because there’s all this evidence, but I’m not going to let anyone pin this on Keme.”

  I waited for the arguments, but what Bobby said was “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help you. The sheriff is keeping me out of this.” Sourly, he added, “Rightly so.”

  “I know.”

  His jaw was tight, but he spoke with forced casualness. “What are you going to do?”

  “Do we have any idea where Keme got those bruises?

  Bobby shook his head.

  “I think I should talk to Millie,” I said. “What did she say when she gave her statement?”

  “She didn’t. She ran out of the station the minute you went with the sheriff. Louis too.”

  “What? Why?”

  All I got in answer was a patented Bobby Mai shrug.

  “Well, I’ll see if I can pin her down. If Keme was at that party, maybe I can figure out where he went next. Put together a timeline, you know? All we have to do is establish an alibi for JT’s time of death.”

  “And you might suggest that next time, Millie not lie to the sheriff. That kind of thing only makes this worse for Keme.”

  I sat up straight. “Oh, I had a brain, um, flash.”

  Bobby did not look suitably impressed.

  “What if we framed Louis for JT’s murder? Hear me out! That’s two birds with one stone. We get rid of Louis, and we save Keme.”

  Bobby considered me for a long time. Then he said, “I know you’re joking, but just in case: absolutely not.”

  “He called me Dan! And he said Fox’s ‘costume’ looked nice! And he said mysteries are like dessert, and that’s an insult to mystery novels and to dessert.”

  Leaning in, Bobby kissed me and said, “Please be safe.”

  “He’s a philosophy major.”

  Bobby didn’t look back, but he gave me a little wave over his shoulder as he headed into the sheriff’s station.

  I waited until he was inside, and then I gave him an extra minute, just to be safe. I wanted to make sure Bobby didn’t come back to ask a follow-up question, or tell me he’d changed his mind and was on board with my plan to frame Louis, or kiss me again. (I definitely wouldn’t have minded the last one.)

  I had to wait. Because Bobby would have known, as soon as I turned the Pilot out of the lot, that I wasn’t going to Millie’s. I turned the other way and drove toward the Bay Bridge Suites.

  Chapter 8

  On my drive across town, I called Lyda Hayashi, defense attorney extraordinaire. Lyda worked out of Portland (believe it or not, Hastings Rock didn’t have an established criminal defense lawyer, which seemed like a real missed opportunity). She’d helped me and Hugo when we’d been suspects in murder investigations, and when I explained the situation with Keme, she agreed to see what she could do. I asked if there was a punch card or a loyalty rewards system. (Buy two murders, get one free. Actually, it would be ‘Buy two murder defenses’—you get the point.) She laughed, and somehow, when she disconnected, the sound was very expensive.

  Then I turned my mind to the task ahead of me. What I’d told Bobby was true—I needed to talk to Millie. I wanted to know why she’d tried to give Keme such an easily disproven alibi. And I wanted to know what Millie could tell me without Louis around, which I was starting to suspect would be more difficult than I’d realized. The idea of establishing a timeline for JT’s murder was a good one, and I needed to do that too.

  But every murder investigation is ultimately about the nexus of people surrounding the victim. And there was one person who should have automatically been at the top of the suspect list: JT’s wife, Channelle. In the first place, because the spouse was always the most likely suspect. And in the second, because Channelle and JT had argued the same night JT was killed. They had a history of domestic disputes, as a matter of fact. And if JT really had been killed in anger—if someone had grabbed something in the garage and hit him with it, as the sheriff had suggested—then the pieces fit. It wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened: Channelle had gone back to the house that night, and they’d resumed their argument. Things had gotten out of hand, and boom—no more JT.

  It was certainly more convincing than the theory that an eighteen-year-old boy, who was kind of my brother and kind of my foster son and kind of my seventh-grade bully, had murdered JT for no apparent reason. And even though I knew that any modern law enforcement officer would say that evidence and opportunity were the deciding factors, I still believed motive was important. Call me old-fashioned.

  By the time I got to the Bay Bridge Suites, night had settled fully over Hastings Rock. The motel was a two-story cinder-block building in a courtyard design. It was painted a creamy white, and light splashed against the walls from decorative floods. Cute little ’50s-ish wall sconces with ribbed-glass jar shades provided additional touches of light. Along the exterior corridors, the doors alternated in pops of red and blue. The sign was red too, the fat, mid-century letters pushing back the dark with their neon glow. It looked like it could have been in a Hopper painting, albeit one with a splash of Andy Warhol. There was even a pool, and if this had been a noir movie, it would have been a great place to find a body floating in it. Instead, a stocky little black duck was squawking in outrage at an abandoned pool noodle.

  I parked across the street in front of a darkened real estate office, and I sat and watched. A light was on in the motel’s office, and more lights shone in the curtained windows of the rooms, but my overall impression was that this was a sleepy space. We were past the peak of tourist season, and although the town still had a fair number of visitors through October and into November, it was obvious that the Bay Bridge Suites had rooms to spare. The first and most important question was: which one was Channelle’s? If this were a mystery novel—and if I were Will Gower—I’d have been able to determine where she was staying through a combination of common sense and reasoning. For example, Will Gower might realize that with the motel mostly empty, Channelle would likely be staying where it was easy for the staff to clean her room—near the office. In real life, there was probably something to that, but my brain didn’t exactly work that way. My brain was more inclined to spout every single possibility, no matter how unlikely, and assume they were all equally valid. For example, what if she’d asked for a room on the end because she wanted privacy? What if she’d wanted a view of the bridge? What if she’d hurt her leg committing murder, and she didn’t want to use the stairs? Maybe, I decided, I should count the windows that had lights in them, and then, by process of elimination—

  Someone rapped on the Pilot’s window.

  I swear to God: I shot out of my shorts.

  (I also said some words that never made it into the Bay Bridge Suites’ promotional materials.)

  Brow furrowed, Indira gave me a slightly disapproving look through the glass. It was made more effective by the enormous pistol she held in one hand.

  “What are you—” I buzzed down the window. “What are you doing? And put that away.”

  On anyone else, I would have called Indira’s expression haughty as she slid the gun into her purse. “The same thing you’re doing, I imagine. Trying to talk to Channelle Haskins.”

  I imagined how Bobby—not to mention the sheriff—would take this latest development. I wasn’t sure the town could handle another amateur snoop. I mean, sleuth.

  So, I said, “No, I’m not.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  That one stumped me, but then genius struck. “Buying a beach house.”

  It’s kind of amazing how good Indira is at the mom look—you know, the one that says she knows you’re full of horse plop.

  “Indira,” I said, “you can’t.”

  “Why not? You can. Is it because I’m a woman? Is it because of my age?”

  The sky was totally clear, and it had been an absolutely perfect day (in terms of weather, not in terms of having your friend framed for murder). But I’m not joking: I heard thunder.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “It’s because—” Feet don’t fail me now, I thought. “—you’re an upstanding citizen, and Keme needs you not to get yourself thrown in jail.”

  “I’m not going to get myself thrown in jail,” Indira said. But she shifted her purse, and her gaze slid away from mine. Her voice tightened. “Keme is—is sitting in a cell right now, Dashiell. He’s alone.” She stopped, and several seconds passed before she spoke again, her voice thinner and higher as she forced the words out. “And I have to do something. If you’re not going to help me, I’ll talk to her myself. She’s in room two-oh-six; I called and asked.”

  “And they told you?”

  Indira ignored me. “I’m perfectly capable of handling this on my own.”

  And then she stood there, clutching her purse with both hands, staring at that stocky little duck as it screamed at the pool noodle.

  Several things clicked. She’d been here, waiting. She hadn’t gone up to the room, even though she knew which one it was. And when I’d arrived, she’d tapped on my window. And now she was just standing there. Plus the fact—of which I was occasionally reminded by people who loved me and wanted the best for me—that normal people like Indira didn’t regularly do things like interview strangers about the murders of their husbands. (The implication was: unlike me.)

 

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