“Dash—”

  “You’re not a deputy anymore. Or you’re on leave. Or whatever.”

  “I’m telling you that this is too dangerous, and I’m asking you—”

  “And you’re moving.”

  He sounded like he was struggling to control his voice. “I am asking you,” he said again, “to promise me—”

  “In a couple of weeks, you won’t even be thinking about this case anymore. Gerry didn’t mean anything to you, and you’ll be busy with your new home and your new friends and your new life. You’ll forget all about—” Me almost slipped out of my mouth. “—Hastings Rock.”

  “If I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it.” His volume surged. “And it doesn’t matter that I’m not a deputy anymore. And it doesn’t matter that I’m moving, or that I didn’t know Gerry, or that I’m going to be busy with other things. I’m saying this because I care about you! Because I want you to be safe! And for God’s sake, Dash, I’m not going to forget you!”

  The light dimmed inside the shelter like an eclipse. The wind rattled the shutters. Deputy Bobby stared at me, breathing hard.

  I stared back. A prickle started in my eyes, but I refused to look away.

  For another moment, we both stayed like that. Then Deputy Bobby sagged back. He slapped the side of the desk, and the clap filled the shelter’s cramped space. I flinched and looked away.

  The break of the waves filled the silence.

  “I’m going to go,” I said.

  Deputy Bobby clasped his hands and rested his head on them. When I started to move, he didn’t look up, but he did say, “Don’t.” It wasn’t an order, not really. It was low. And it sounded like begging.

  So, I didn’t.

  After several long heartbeats, Deputy Bobby took a ragged breath. “Can we talk about something?” He seemed to struggle, and then he added, “I just need a few minutes.” The sound he made was a try at a laugh, but a bad one. “Anything, Dash. Please.”

  I didn’t mean anything by it; it had been on my mind, that’s all, and it was the first thing that popped out of my mouth. “Are you all packed?”

  “God, please. Anything but that.” He shifted slightly, as though trying to get more comfortable, but his head still didn’t come up. “What about your story? The anthology. Tell me about that.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “West.”

  “Uh, it’s going great.”

  Deputy Bobby laughed—croaked, really—but his head came up. His eyes were red, but dry. His knuckles had left livid spots where they’d pressed into his forehead.

  “It’s a disaster,” I said. “I mean, my parents assume I can just polish up something I’ve been working on and send it over. I honestly think they believe that I—I don’t know. That I write all the time, but I choose not to send it out, or I’m lazy, or something.”

  “You do write all the time.”

  “I sit at my computer. I type a few words. A lot more disappear. I call it the Case of the Vanishing Manuscript.”

  “Why don’t you just type more words and not delete any?”

  “God, wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “I’m serious: why don’t you? It’s just a story, Dash. You type one word. Then the next one.” Something changed in his face. What I might, if Will Gower had seen it, have described as a hint of good-natured devilry. “‘Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”

  I wondered if my eyebrows could fly off my face. “Sherlock Holmes and Lewis Carroll in one conversation?”

  He gave me that embarrassed half-smile and a one-shouldered shrug, but the question did seem sincere. From anybody else, I probably would have taken offense at the question. Scratch that: I would have gone into an icy rage, completely shut down, and retreated to Hemlock House to soothe myself with an abundance of snickerdoodles. But since it was Deputy Bobby, the question wasn’t just sincere. It was earnest. And, unexpectedly, I found myself wanting to answer it.

  “It’s hard to put into words.” A grin slanted across my mouth. “I guess that’s my whole problem; everything is hard to put into words, which isn’t ideal for a writer. I guess—it’s like, I have this story in my head, and it’s so good. I know it’s good. And I’m not just saying that. I’ve read a lot. And what I’ve sent out, I’ve gotten good feedback on. I’m not going to be the next Bill Shakespeare, but I know I’ve got good stories to tell. And then I sit down to write, and it’s like—it’s like there’s this blender in my gut, all these bright, shiny blades, and they start spinning as fast as they can. Everything I do seems wrong. And every time I do something wrong, I realize everything else is wrong too. And there’s this part of me that thinks if I can fix just this one word and get it perfect, then I’ll be able to get the next one. But instead, I putz around and make it worse, and then everything else is worse, and there’s all that sharp metal whirling around inside me, all this light and glitter like teeth trying to eat me up, and—” I made a gesture with one hand. “Poof. The Case of the Vanishing Manuscript.”

  Deputy Bobby stared at me. He had eyes the color of burnished bronze, and his pupils were huge in the low light. He’d clasped his hands again, and his knuckles blanched under the pressure.

  “It’s hard to describe,” I said. “My therapists—notice the plural—have suggested a lot of reasons. I mean, I’m a perfectionist, obviously. And there’s a lot of pressure to perform because my parents are who they are. And I can’t remember the term from the DSM, but I’m a diagnosable whack-a-doodle.”

  He still hadn’t said anything. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. I had a strange moment where I thought I remembered this—the way he’d seemed stunned, struck to silence by something. It had been with Hugo, I thought. Or when I’d been telling him about Hugo. And then the moment was gone, and I couldn’t call it back.

  “Anyway,” I said into the stiffening silence, “please refer back to this conversation whenever you need a refresher on why I’m painfully single.”

  Deputy Bobby jolted, and his face changed as though he were suddenly seeing me again. He worked his jaw. And then, in a tone I couldn’t decipher, he said, “Do you know what my dad said when I told him I was moving back to Portland with West?”

  It was such a strange question, with such a yawning emptiness behind it, that I couldn’t answer; the best I could do was shake my head.

  “He asked how I was going to find an apartment.” Deputy Bobby gave a jagged laugh. “And my mom said, ‘Good, now you can be a doctor.’”

  “Jeez.”

  He let his head fall back to thunk against the desk.

  “I thought—” I stopped. “I mean, I just assumed you were going to be a police officer—”

  “That would make sense,” Deputy Bobby said, and the words had an unfamiliar edge, “wouldn’t it?”

  I thought about West, though. His anger. His fear that lay behind that anger. And, through the door that Deputy Bobby had cracked for me, if only for an instant, I saw a line of people behind West going a long way back in Deputy Bobby’s life.

  “I didn’t mean to bring that up,” Deputy Bobby said. “My point was—I guess, parents are hard. I get that.” Then he gave me a sideways smile. “Even if they’re not famous.”

  “The famous part is actually amazing. I go to fabulous parties with the Kardashians, and everything I own is made out of diamonds—”

  “Even your underwear?”

  “—and I’m offended you never once asked for my autograph.”

  I got the goofy grin. Just for a moment. “I’m sorry I raised my voice.”

  “I’m sorry I, uh, tapped into a strong passive-aggressive ley line.”

  “You didn’t have any friends when you were a kid, did you?”

  “Deputy Bobby!” But I was grinning.

  “It’s like one thing after another that makes zero sense when it comes out of your mouth.”

  I was still trying to tamp down my grin—and working on my comeback, obviously—when Deputy Bobby stood. He held out a hand, and I let him help me to my feet. He had a nice hand, by the way. Strong. Defined. Solid. And it was funny, I thought, how you could know right away whether your hand would fit just right with someone else’s. (Tragic backstory reveal: my hand did not fit just right with Shawn Laffleur’s during the 6:35 p.m. screening of 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He had popcorn fingers, and he gripped me way too hard. But we still made out anyway.)

  “You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Deputy Bobby asked.

  “Definitely not. I’m going to call all my friends and make them fly out here to prove I was popular.”

  Deputy Bobby straightened my jacket for me. And then he gave me a look.

  “It’s not right,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  He nodded. “So, as soon as you’re out of my sight, let me guess—you’re going to break into Gerry’s beach house?”

  “I actually didn’t know he had a beach house. Also, this feels like entrapment.”

  “Maybe I should just arrest you right now,” he murmured.

  “West would certainly have opinions if he found out you had plans to handcuff me.”

  Deputy Bobby didn’t say anything to that. But, for an instant, his eyes came up to mine, and his smile wasn’t goofy at all. It was slow and small and sure, and I was suddenly painfully aware of his fingers still holding my lapels, of how close we were standing, of the cramped shelter, of the faint hint of that clean, masculine scent. If you’ve ever had a firework go off inside you—in a very, very, very good way—you know what I’m talking about.

  “I’ve decided to enter a monastery,” I said.

  For one last heartbeat, I got that other smile, the one I’d never seen before. The one with promises. And then Deputy Bobby released my jacket, stepped back, and said, “That would be a waste.”

  I could still feel him, though. The echo of him.

  He turned for the door and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Oh,” I managed to say. “You’re going with me now?”

  “If you’re going to be a smart aleck about this,” he said as he stepped outside, “I’ll lend Fox and Keme my handcuffs.”

  Chapter 6

  Deputy Bobby insisted we wait until dark before breaking into Gerry Webb’s beach house, but he also didn’t trust me not to go without him, which meant we had to kill time together. We got lunch at the Otter Slide. And then we stopped by the library to pick up some books (for me). And then Deputy Bobby needed one of those special TV boxes to pack up his TV. As we ran errands, I tried to do some light cyberstalking of Gerry, but I didn’t get far. Deputy Bobby kept saying interesting things. And I kept saying funny things. (At least, I thought they were funny; Deputy Bobby just got that little furrow between his eyebrows and stared at me earnestly, waiting for clarification.) And it was all so…good.

  Faster than I expected, dark settled over Hastings Rock. Gerry Webb’s beach house was just on the north side of the bay—not far from the beach where the surfing competition had been held. It was hard to believe that had only been the day before; it felt like years. The house was set back on the lot, with privacy hedges on either side to screen out the neighbors, and the lawn and flower beds had a tidy look that suggested professional landscaping at the end of the season. The design of the house itself seemed to be based on a farmhouse aesthetic, built long and low with a gable roof. But some diagnosable whack-a-doodle had added their own twist on things—a sharp peak to the roofline above the entryway, for example, or the garages (yes, two), which had been built skinny and tall, the way a little kid might draw them. The general effect, I decided, was as if a six-year-old had tried to build a barn out of Legos.

  The street—worn-down asphalt crumbling at the shoulders—didn’t look like it got much traffic, but Deputy Bobby made me drive to the end of the block. I parked, and Deputy Bobby said, “Hang here for a minute while I check it out.”

  “Nice try.”

  He gave me his professional-grade deputy stare, but maybe being on leave made it less effective. I unbuckled my seat belt and slid out of the Jeep.

  As I made my way down the street, Deputy Bobby’s steps crunched the broken asphalt behind me. When he caught up, he had a little furrow between his eyebrows. “It might not be safe.”

  “It’s cute, Deputy Bobby.” There was that word again. “And I appreciate it. But I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to search the whole house while I sit in the Jeep playing Wizard Princess on my phone—”

  “What is Wizard Princess?”

  “How are you a person? What do you do all day—lift heavy things, catch bad guys, and surf? Don’t you ever just scroll Instagram until your eyes fall out of your face and play games that make lots of awesome sounds and you have to tap the screen really fast?”

  He seemed to give this serious—and in my opinion, undue—consideration. Finally he said, “I like Scrabble.”

  “Scrabble is literally the worst game ever! Do you know what it’s like to have writer’s block and play Scrabble?”

  “I know this is my first time breaking and entering, but honestly, I thought it would involve significantly less yelling.”

  I refused to acknowledge that statement.

  When we got to the house, Deputy Bobby made a straight line to the front porch. I trailed after him. The breeze off the ocean stirred the hedges, and the rustle of leaves swallowed the sound of our steps. I glanced left and right, but I couldn’t make out anything on the other side of the boxwood. I hoped it worked the other way as well—we were exposed to the street, but I was more worried about a nosy neighbor spotting us and wondering why we were, uh, ingressing.

  Deputy Bobby stood on the porch, considering the door. Off in the distance, wind chimes rang softly. The windows of the house were dark, and in the day’s half-tone light, it was impossible to see inside beyond a few feet—I glimpsed an uncomfortable-looking bench, the edge of a glass coffee table, and a lamp that looked like someone had made it by using tin snips on a can of tuna.

  “We should try the garage,” I said. “I watched a YouTube video about how to use a plastic water bottle and—wait, do you have a pair of tin snips?”

  Deputy Bobby said, “Hmm,” the way I sometimes did to Millie.

  “Are we going to pick the lock?”

  Deputy Bobby said, “Maybe,” in a way that I’d definitely said to Millie before.

  “I could try to pick it,” I said, “but we’d have to go back to Hemlock House for my picks. Also, I’m not very good. Also, I know you’re going to think I’m making this up to get rid of you, but I have to admit I’d feel a certain amount of, er, performance anxiety if you were just standing there watching me, and—what are you doing?”

  Without answering, Deputy Bobby crossed the porch to a decorative ceramic bird that perched on a three-legged table. He lifted the bird, turned it over to expose a hole in the base, and gave the bird a few experimental shakes. Something metallic rattled inside, and a moment later, a key tumbled out. Deputy Bobby caught it, set the ceramic bird back in its place, and gave me a look.

  “You knew that was there,” I said.

  He might have been smiling.

  “That’s impossible,” I said. “That couldn’t have just been a guess.”

  With a tiny shrug, he turned to the door.

  The key went in smoothly, of course, and a moment later, we stepped into the house.

  Inside, the décor appeared to be farmhouse meets industrial chic meets zebra. Lots of earth tones. Lots of monochromatic “warmth.” Matte black finishes on exposed metal. A zigzagging geometric pattern on one wall. On another, just to keep things interesting, a Tommy Bahama-inspired tropical wallpaper. The whole thing suggested that an interior designer had been given free rein and a blank check. It also suggested, quite possibly, that the interior designer had been working with his or her eyes closed.

  We stood in an entry hall with a door on our left and a flight of stairs on our right. Ahead of us, the entry hall flowed into a great room, at the far end of which a wall of windows looked out on the ocean. The great room was combined, in true open-concept fashion, with a big, beautiful kitchen.

  Deputy Bobby called out, “Hello?”

  I jumped out of my skin.

  No one answered, and Deputy Bobby might—might—have been smiling again. “Just checking.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “What?”

  “Can you just not be so—so Deputy Bobby for, like, five seconds?”

  He was definitely smiling. I just couldn’t quite see it.

  Before I had to murder him—and then get dragged into the tiresome process of disposing of the body, cleaning up the crime scene, and then continuing an already frustrating investigation—I moved over to the stairs and went up to the first landing. From there, I could see that the stairs continued into a large, open loft with—

  “What kind of idiot puts a grand piano in a loft?” I asked.

  “One with plenty of money,” Deputy Bobby said.

  When I got back to the entry hall, the door across from me was open, and Deputy Bobby stood inside what appeared to be Gerry’s office, where the theme was urban cowboy: a big, masculine desk; nifty pens in a mug that said WORLD’S BEST DADDY (which I hoped to God was a joke); lots of aerial photography on the walls that, after a moment, I took to be some of Gerry’s development projects. A cowhide rug covered the floor. A steer skull hung above the desk. He even had a taxidermy vulture (a little on the nose, maybe) that would have fit in perfectly at Hemlock House. Large windows looked out on the lawn and the street—which, I was relieved to note, appeared to be as sleepy as it had seemed.

  Deputy Bobby already had on a pair of disposable gloves, and he began opening desk drawers.

  “How do you have gloves?” I asked. “Are you always prepared for potential burgling?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared at him. It’s an interesting sensation, when you can literally feel your blood pressure rising.

  “No,” I said. “You’re not.”

 

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