“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But if you could have a look, I’d appreciate it. Liza and I were close, but you two were closer. No one knew how her brain worked better than you.”

  “Yes, of course, I will help. Why now, though? As you said, it’s been over three years.”

  She shifted a Cheeto around on her plate, turning the tip of her finger an alarming red-orange. “A few weeks ago, while looking into another case, I discovered something interesting about the Nolan family. I followed the lead but it went nowhere. Not yet. I need more information to convince that lead to talk with me. Which brings me back to the drive.”

  Lyda studied her, then nodded. “After lunch, then. And you will also tell me more about this lead.”

  Callie grimaced but nodded. She’d known there’d be a price to pay for coming to Lyda.

  Lyda inclined her head, as if acknowledging what she asked in return wasn’t a small thing. Then she smiled. “I hope you remembered I don’t have a computer.”

  Callie grinned back. “Good thing I brought two.”

  6

  They moved inside after lunch, and Lyda tidied the kitchen as Callie brought her bags—and computers—in. Lyda might not be much of a cook, but she was a stickler for keeping things orderly, often telling Elizabeth, then Callie, that the mind couldn’t quiet itself when surrounded by chaos.

  As someone who’d grown up in an impeccably clean home, the simple statement had hit Callie hard. She’d lived in a pristine environment, and yet her mind had never been quiet. She’d always been on alert for whatever might trigger her father’s, or her mother’s, next outburst. But rather than form a counterargument, Callie’s perspective shifted, like a gear sliding into place. Until then, she’d never known, or even considered, that her mind could be quiet. Lyda’s words, as simple as they were, changed that. She opened a new world, one where Callie owned both things—her right to have a quiet mind and the responsibility for quieting it.

  Now, she tended to be on the tidy side herself, but not out of fear. Or, like her parents, because she had an image she wanted to project. But because it worked for her. The mundane tasks of vacuuming and folding laundry and doing the dishes gave her brain the downtime it needed while giving her body—which tended to restlessness—something to do. Running, her exercise of choice, did the same.

  “Tell me about this lead. A man. Someone who makes you uneasy,” Lyda said as Callie walked back into the room and set the two computers on the dining table.

  Callie didn’t bother beating around the bush, not with Lyda. Besides, the woman was about to dig through her deceased daughter’s files, read her words, be reminded of Liza’s exceptional mind. The least Callie could do was give her a distraction, as tiny as it might be.

  “We grew up together. Sort of. His family had a small piece of land abutting the back end of my grandparents’ farm in Pennsylvania. We lived on the other side of town, but my sister and I spent as much time with our grandparents as we could, so we saw a lot of Gabriel and his brother Matthew,” she started as she booted up the computers. Lyda pulled up a seat beside her.

  “You were friends?”

  For the first time since she walked into the Falcons’ clubhouse and saw Gabriel again, memories other than from that one awful night came flooding back. Pickup games of kickball, sneaking out to swim in the local reservoir, lazy afternoons on her grandparents’ porch drinking ice-cold sodas and eating watermelon, occasionally, a trip to see a matinee. It hadn’t been just her and Gabriel, but Matthew and Daphne, as well as Kyle Streeter and his older brother, Jacob. Sometimes, Allison and Katie Porter would join them as well. A ragtag group of kids enjoying summer.

  “We were,” she said on an exhale. “I don’t actually remember when we first met. I was maybe six and Daphne eight. Gabriel was between me and Daphne and Matthew, a year younger than I.” She paused, remembering the younger Walker boy. “Matthew died, though. Several years ago.” She hadn’t had the courage to ask Gabriel yet about what had happened with his brother.

  “But it was you and Gabriel who bonded,” Lyda said. A statement, not a question.

  She inclined her head as she entered passwords into each computer. “We were always close, even when I…”

  “You never hated him.” Lyda pulled one of the devices in front of her as if she hadn’t just spoken one of Callie’s secrets.

  Callie rolled her lips. Sometimes it had felt that way, but she knew better now. “I envied him,” she said. “He always had a smile, a joke, an easy hug. He always knew the best games to play or the perfect time to sneak out for a swim. Kids flocked to him, followed him.”

  “A natural leader?”

  Callie hesitated, then nodded. “Everything I was supposed to be but wasn’t.” Lyda glanced at her, then turned back to the computer. Callie sighed. “Even then, though, we were close. And as we got older…” She hadn’t thought this part of their relationship would be hard to talk about. The things she’d said to Gabriel that night? Yeah, she expected that to suck when she gave voice to them. But this? The early days of discovering that something was changing between them? Of realizing that they shared a bond, a connection, that at thirteen, she had no way to describe. Even at thirty-five, she didn’t have the words. She remembered how it felt, though. How confused it made her. She hadn’t understood how something could be both terrifying and rooted in her soul.

  Not knowing what to do about the subtle shift in their relationship, she—and he—had ignored it. For three years, they pretended to be nothing more than friends. And for three years, their connection only deepened, like the roots of a tree digging into the earth, searching for sustenance and growing stronger in the process.

  “Oh.”

  Lyda’s comment pulled Callie from her memories. Leaning forward, almost curled toward the computer, Lyda had a file open, her finger tracing a line of text.

  “Do you see something?” Callie asked, shifting to look over her shoulder.

  “How did you find Nolan’s and Quayle’s names?” Lyda asked.

  “In the first paragraph of the first file, one word has a baseball bat emoji in front of it,” Callie said. “It took me a while to make the connection⁠—”

  “Nolan Ryan,” Lyda said. Callie nodded. “How that girl fell in love with baseball, I will never know, but she did love the game,” she said, a fond smile playing on her lips.

  Callie smiled, too. Liza had been fanatical about baseball and Nolan Ryan her favorite player. She’d never actually seen him play, but admired his focus, commitment, and talent. She also liked that he persevered for twenty-seven years in a sport with an average career length of less than six.

  “What about Quayle?”

  Callie opened a file on her own computer, enlarged the text, then pointed. “Once I realized the importance of the baseball bat, I figured this one out.” In the second line of text, a single word had an emoji of a quail.

  “That’s not a lot to go on.”

  “I know,” Callie agreed. “But in the fourth file, there are dates in Roman numerals. I wasn’t able to decipher the text after the dates, but several of them coincide with events attended by Michael Quayle or one of the Nolans. It’s thin, as I’m sure a lot of other things happened on those dates, too, and maybe I only found what I went looking for…”

  “But it feels right,” Lyda said, sitting back. Callie nodded. Lyda stared at the computer, then shook her head. “I owe you an apology, Callie.”

  “I can’t imagine what for.”

  “I sent you the thumb drive without even looking at it.”

  “It had my name on it,” she replied.

  “But I should have known my daughter better. I did know my daughter better. I was just…” Blinded by grief went unsaid. Callie wanted to hug her but sensed it wouldn’t be welcome. A steely edge was creeping into Lyda’s spine.

  “We were supposed to do this together,” she said, gesturing to the computer.

  Callie frowned. “What makes you say that?”

  “I can’t read it, not like it is, but I recognize it. You’re right; it is in some sort of code, and I’ll leave the cipher for you to figure out. But the language is Tewa, our native tongue. If you can decode it, I can translate it.”

  7

  Four days after Ava agreed to look into the Nolan family, Philly walked into Mystery Lake Hospital with a bouquet of flowers and a faint hope that Mitch wouldn’t be lurking in his wife’s room. Not that he expected Mitch to be anywhere else, not with his son safely tucked away in the private Warwick daycare center housed on the grounds of HICC. But the arson investigator was a moody bastard, and Philly wouldn’t put it past Mitch to blame him for his wife’s bed rest order. The fact that Ava had just started looking into the Nolan family when she felt contractions way earlier than she should was purely a coincidence. However, like most of the Warwick men, Mitch tended to be unreasonable when it came to his wife.

  “Oh, thank god,” he said on an exhale when he walked in.

  Ava snorted. “I kicked him out. He was looming over me. Normally, I like it. When we’re home and well, I can distract him, but the doctor said none of that. Not until after the babies are born,” she added, wrinkling her nose.

  “TMI, woman,” Philly said, adding his bouquet to a vase half-full of dahlias, his nose twitching at the fragrant lilies sitting beside them. “How are you?”

  “Bored.”

  He stared at her.

  She sighed. “Fine. It was a little startling, scary, when I realized what was happening. But the doctor has assured me it’s not uncommon with twins. Something they monitor, but unless other risk factors pop up—which they haven’t—it’s more of a yellow flag, not a red one.”

  “How long till they let you out?” he asked, taking a seat in the tiny plastic chair beside the bed. He grinned, thinking of Mitch perching in the same spot. Mitch wasn’t huge—not like Monk—but he wasn’t small either.

  “Tomorrow, if I promise to stay on bed rest for another week at home.”

  “Is that possible?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have a computer that works in bed. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t work.”

  “Fair. You need anything?”

  She snorted. “Between the Warwicks and my parents, I’m good.”

  “Maybe some time alone, then?” he asked, only half kidding. The Warwick clan was huge and growing. And she was her parents’ only child.

  “No, not yet. Let me tell you what I found.”

  He frowned. “You only started looking into the Nolan family when all this happened.” He waved vaguely in her direction.

  “But I’ve been here for almost two days. I had Sabina bring me a computer within the first few hours. Mitch tried to get her thrown out—then tried to take the computer from her—but my boss is wily.”

  “And she has Chad on her side.”

  Ava grinned. “That, too.” Sabina Warwick, married to Chad, the oldest of the Warwick cousins, weighed about a hundred pounds soaking wet, and Philly was sure 50 percent of those pounds were in her brain. Chad, though intelligent in his own way, was the brawn in that situation. Although, as Ava said, Sabina was a wily one.

  “So, what’d you find?” he asked, kicking his legs out and crossing his ankles.

  “Nothing obviously unusual,” she said.

  “Which rules out something triggering Callie’s interest. What about something not obviously unusual?”

  “A man after my own suspicious heart,” she replied. “As you said, they own several clothing brands as well as cloth-related home goods and textile supply businesses.”

  “What the hell is a ‘cloth-related home good’?”

  “Sheets, towels, dish towels, throw blankets. Those sorts of things.”

  “That’s a separate business?” he asked. There was so much about the world he was fine not knowing.

  “A lot of big brands have their own lines of those things, but yeah, it’s a business.”

  “That doesn’t sound sketchy so far,” he said.

  “And not sketchy in general,” she said.

  He narrowed his eyes. “That’s not what you implied.”

  “That’s the thing. From what I could find, they don’t seem sketchy. Books and records look in order. Deals seem aboveboard…”

  “But?”

  “It all seems too clean to me. I could just be suspicious, though. In my line of business, it’s a good thing to be.”

  “Or your deep well of experience is telling you something is off.”

  “Or that,” she conceded. “Probably that.”

  The door swung open, and Mitch strode through. Glaring at Philly, he crossed the room to his wife, bent to give her a kiss, then handed her an insulated coffee mug. “Bun Times sends their regards. And a decaf caramel vanilla something. What’s he doing here?” he asked, jerking his head in Philly’s direction.

  “Getting an update,” Ava said, unfazed by Mitch’s gruff communication style. They were an odd couple. Ava had a wicked sense of humor, loved everything glamorous, and could chat up a feral cat. She’d even adopted an orphaned raccoon, and Eleanor, the raccoon, now lived with the family in the lap of luxury. Mitch, on the other hand, preferred not to string more than ten words together at one time.

  “He’s been updated long enough,” Mitch said, sending Philly a narrow look.

  Philly rolled his eyes more to annoy the man than for any other reason. They both knew Philly could take him if it came down to it. Not that Mitch was a slouch, but he didn’t have the training Philly did.

  “I’ll keep looking,” Ava said as he rose from the seat.

  “Ava,” Mitch said, a hint of affection—and exasperation—in his tone. The Warwicks tended to be very protective of their spouses—whether said spouses needed it or not.

  Throwing Mitch a bone, he nodded but added, “Your health and those twins come first. I’m sure I’ll be hearing from Callie again. Being forewarned would be nice, but it’s not a necessity.”

  Mitch tipped his head an inch. Acknowledging his olive branch or plotting his murder? Philly couldn’t tell.

  “Oh, Philly,” Ava said as he reached the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “I did come across one rumor. It’s from one of those conspiracy sites that take you down into the quagmire of people’s thought process, sucking you so deep you can’t tell if they’re genius or mentally ill.”

  “So, take it in that context?”

  She nodded. “Aiden takes a lot of trips to places that aren’t as strict as the US or Europe about prostitution. Of all sorts. But a lot of those places are also significant producers of textiles.”

  “I see,” he said, unsure what to do with that information. Tuck it away for a rainy day, he supposed, as he didn’t think that’s what brought Callie to Mystery Lake. With another nod to the couple, he exited the room and headed out into the gray day.

  Stepping through the sliding doors of the hospital, he hunched his shoulders. A cold bite of wind whipped around him as he looked up at the overcast sky. They might get another few mild days before winter committed to creeping in, but his gut told him the coming season was going to be a long one. Good for the town, which relied on tourists for much of its income, but a slog. Maybe he’d book a trip to Tahiti in February. Sit on a beach and do nothing but stare at the ocean.

  Unbidden, a picture of Callie beside him invaded his brain. All long limbs and smooth, dark skin. For a half second, he let himself wonder. Wonder what their lives would have been like if that night had never happened. Wonder if she’d ever let herself relax long enough to lie on a beach all day. Wonder what kind of cocktail she preferred.

  Just as quickly, he shook those thoughts off. Someday they might each move past—or through—the ugliness of that night. But even if that happened, the best thing to come of it would be moving on with their lives without all the baggage. Their separate lives.

  Running a hand over his face, he started walking toward his truck again, only to pull up short when Joey and Leo waved to him as they walked up the path.

  “Did you see Ava?” Joey asked as the couple came to a stop in front of him. She carried what looked like an ice cream sundae and Leo carried a huge bag of Red Hots. If nothing else, Ava was going to get a sugar high out of her stay.

  “Yeah. Word of warning, Mitch is hovering.”

  Leo chuckled. Joey rolled her eyes. “Mitch always hovers. He’s the worst of the lot,” she said, referring to her brothers and cousins. Eight in total.

  “Ava give you her update?” Leo asked.

  “She told you?”

  Leo shook his head. “I shut her computer down for her when the contractions started. I caught a quick glance at her screen.”

  “What update?” Joey asked.

  “Something she’s looking into for Philly,” Leo replied.

  “If you don’t want to share, you shouldn’t have brought it up in front of me, Leo,” Joey replied, her eyes narrowed on her significant other.

  “He’s nosy. Not one of his better qualities,” Philly said. “He mentioned it in front of you so you would insist on knowing. Then I’d feel bad about you not knowing and tell you both everything so that he can be in the know, too.”

  Joey stared at him, then transferred her gaze to Leo. Leo shrugged. “I am nosy. It makes me good at my job. Besides, it’s not official business, so it’s not confidential.”

  “And you like to be the one helping the club,” Joey added.

  Leo shrugged again. “Yeah, I do. I’m kind of offended you went to Ava and not me,” he added with a pointed look at Philly.

  Philly shook his head. “I’m not getting into this with you. If you want to help, you work it out with Ava. If I start talking to you, she’ll be pissed at me, then Mitch will be more pissed at me than he already is because I pissed off his wife. That’s more drama than I need.”

  Leo grinned. “Fair. I’ll talk to Ava. Mitch will be on my side. I’ll let you know.”

  “Will you be at Rita’s tonight?” Joey asked. “We’re having our last planning meeting for the Halloween party.”

 

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