Chapter 6
We got out of the house without the other deputies—and, almost as importantly, our friends—noticing. Then Bobby drove us south in his Pilot, which was, admittedly, a smoother and quieter ride than the Jeep (which had been totaled in a snooping-related accident a few months before). The Pilot just wasn’t as cool. That wasn’t Bobby’s fault; that was science.
The fog was thick that night, swaddling the spruce and pine and fir that rose on either side of the road. In the dark, all I could see were glimpses of ferns at the shoulder, and then the shadows of the massive trees. The water suspended in the mist glinted jewel tones when the light struck it right, and the air that came through the vents was sweet and damp and cool. Summer on the Oregon Coast wasn’t what most people thought of as summer, but I’d been here for over a year now, and although I wasn’t a local—I swear to God, Fox was practically a duck, the way water rolled off them—I’d learned enough to bring a hoodie.
(It showed a unicorn playing Pong, and I wore it as much as humanly possible because the first time Bobby had seen it, his face had split in that huge, goofy grin I would do pretty much anything to see.)
It wasn’t until the third time Bobby checked the rearview mirror that I realized something was going on.
“What?” I asked.
“I think someone’s following us.”
“Huh?”
(Not my most articulate response ever.)
Twisting around in my seat, I tried to catch a glimpse of whoever was behind us. Unfortunately, the dark and the mist meant all I could make out was a pair of headlights and the diffuse rings of light created by the moisture in the air.
“They picked us up as soon as we turned out of Hemlock House,” Bobby said.
“But it’s probably somebody out for a drive, right?”
That didn’t seem likely, though, and we both knew it. Yes, this was the tourist season. And yes, Hastings Rock was filled to overflowing. But we were south of the city proper, and there weren’t any hotels or motels or even Airbnbs out this way. Tourists did drive south for day trips, but those would be—wait for it—during the day. And while it could have been a local, the odds were slim—the coast wasn’t exactly overpopulated.
Bobby’s answer jarred me out of my thoughts: “Only one way to find out.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he slowed the Pilot and eased onto the shoulder of the road. For a moment, I had a flashback—not that long ago, someone had tampered with the Jeep, and I’d ended up stranded on a similar stretch of road. That same someone had followed me, waited for me to break down, and taken the opportunity to try to shoot me. I watched the headlights, waiting for them to follow us onto the shoulder.
But as our tires rumbled over gravel, the car zipped past us.
“Chevy Malibu,” Bobby said. “White. Driver appeared to be female, short hair, thirties or forties.”
“Uh, roger. Copy. Am I supposed to say roger or copy?”
He rubbed his eyes.
“Oh,” I said. “No bumper stickers. And the license plate was covered in mud.”
“Now you decide to be helpful?”
“What was that?”
Instead of answering, Bobby eased us back onto the road, and we continued south.
“Could you really tell all that from a glance?” I asked.
“It’s more of a guess.”
“But a good one.”
He shrugged.
“Maybe it was Colleen,” I said.
“The hair was wrong.”
“Maybe she was wearing a wig!”
“Let’s think about that theory,” he said. “In silence.”
“Bobby!”
He let me smack his shoulder a few times before he caught my hand. He was trying not to grin.
“Since you’re so smart,” I said, “was she following us or not?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t like that her license plate was conveniently unreadable. And even though she kept driving…”
He didn’t finish, so I supplied the rest of the answer. “Something felt off?”
Bobby nodded.
“Yeah,” I said, slumping back into my seat. “That’s what I thought too.”
We drove the rest of the way in an easy silence, the way you can when you’re totally comfortable with someone. It didn’t even feel like silence. In part, that was because I was thinking so loudly that I was surprised Bobby didn’t ask me to keep it down. And in part it was because Bobby was right there, and it felt like half of the things we communicated to each other we did without words. Like when he wrapped his hand around my knee without even looking over, and we just kept driving like that wasn’t the single most romantic thing anyone has ever done in the history of the world.
The further south we drove, the more curious I became. Hastings Rock proper was in the opposite direction, and the farther we drove in this direction, the more remote and rural the area became—I mean, we were in a temperate rainforest, for heaven’s sake. In my mind, it would have made sense for the mayor to live in town. That’s what I would have assumed people wanted from their mayor. But then, I also assumed people would have wanted a mayor who lived in town year-round and wasn’t exclusively focused on building up the tourism industry.
Then Bobby slowed and turned down a drive marked PRIVATE. We drove a few hundred yards, following a winding course through the trees, and then we reached an open expanse of short-cropped grass that spread out toward an enormous house.
My first thought was that it was like Hemlock House. Not in style, but in its remote location from the city, and in its dramatically commanding view of the ocean from the sea cliffs. A quick glance in either direction showed me more open ground, which suggested the mayor owned quite a bit of land. Hemlock House was situated on its own good-sized lot (I mean, good Lord, we had a hedge maze), but that was different—mostly because I hadn’t bought Hemlock House. I’d inherited it. Kind of. And I was having trouble right then making sense of how a small-town mayor could afford a place like this.
But the resemblance to Hemlock House ended there. Hemlock House was a beautiful monstrosity (said in the most loving way possible) of a lumber baron’s fever-dream imaginings. It was a Georgian-Victorian behemoth with a million chimneys, a slate roof, and way too many secret passages. The mayor’s house, in contrast, looked like a coastal cottage blown up on steroids—clapboard siding and picture windows and a deck that looked sun-bleached even in the moonlight. It wasn’t a coastal cottage, though. It looked like it slept sixteen instead of six. And—
“Is that a helipad?” I asked.
“She doesn’t have a helicopter,” Bobby said. “The last owner put that in.”
“Uh, not really the point.”
The lights were off inside the mayor’s house, and the windows glittered and looked like ice where they caught the night’s ambient glow. I looked for any sign that someone might still be awake—the flicker of a television, maybe—but I didn’t see anything. No cars sat out front, so if the mayor was here, she’d parked in the garage.
As Bobby rolled to a stop in front of the house, I said, “I’ll be right back.”
His hand—which had oh-so-adorably been resting on my knee—tightened now. “Excuse me?”
“You’re going to wait here. I’m going to go ask the mayor if she’s a thief.”
He didn’t let go of my knee. I wondered if it was freaky that he had such a strong grip. Were there exercises to make your fingers stronger? (Probably. I imagined tiny dumbbells.) Should I, as a writer, who crafted his words with his hands, be doing those exercises? (Also probably, but I definitely would not.)
“How did you decide that?” Bobby asked. It was the same voice he’d used after I’d fallen off the sofa while trying to do a backflip. (We’d put a mattress on the floor, so it was totally safe. Plus, Keme had dared me.)
“Well, you were right. This is asking a lot, and it’s not based on much.”
“I already said I believe you.”
“But you’re in the same position as Salk—if you go up there with me, you’re my, uh, accomplice? And you’d be aiding and abetting a known, um, mayor-slanderer.”
Bobby looked like he was silently counting to ten. Then he reached for his door handle.
“I don’t want you to get fired,” I said.
“I’m not going to get fired. I’m also not letting you do this by yourself.”
“Bobby, nothing is going to—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—happen.”
He must have been counting to ten again. Then he let out a slow breath and said, “Okay. Here we go.”
Which was how we both ended up on the mayor’s doorstep as I knocked. Then we waited. Seconds ticked past. In the deeper shadows of the mayor’s house, the air felt colder, and the wind off the ocean sliced through my hoodie. I shivered. I knocked again.
Nothing.
“She’s probably asleep,” I said through another shiver.
Bobby started unbuttoning his much more sensible jacket.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
He kept unbuttoning it.
“Bobby, really—”
And then, when the wind died, I heard something. Bobby must have heard it too, because his fingers froze on the next button.
Voices.
Two voices.
Furtive voices.
The voices of people who knew they were doing something they weren’t supposed to, and who were trying—and, in this case, failing—to keep quiet.
“Is that the mayor?” I whispered.
Bobby shook his head. He listened a moment longer and then said, “Get in the car.”
“What? No!”
For a moment, despair fought with fear in his face. This was the same guy who kept all his good sneakers in display boxes to make sure they stayed exactly how he liked them. But after a moment, he managed to say, “Stay behind me.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, I could do.
We started toward the side of the house, which took longer than you’d think, since the place was massive. It was hard to tell because of the wind and the crash of the surf against the cliffs, but I thought the voices were growing louder. Occasionally, when the wind dropped, I thought I heard something else—metallic sounds, ticking and scraping and clinking. Maybe, I thought, we’d overlooked one of Millie and Keme’s favorite explanations for all things mysterious and inexplicable: robots.
Bobby risked a look around the side of the house. He made an unhappy noise when I followed suit, and he even went so far as to grab a handful of my hoodie—probably because he was thinking about throwing me off the cliff and starting over with a nice, sensible, sane boyfriend. (Who wasn’t a writer.)
On this side of the house, a deck offered a view of the ocean. Huge windows opened this side of the house to take advantage of the view, along with a pair of French doors that led inside. Two figures dressed in black were at the doors. One of them—the bigger of the two—was fiddling with the lock. That explained the metallic sounds I’d heard. The other—the smaller of the two—stood next to him.
“Rake the pick, Jonny. You have to rake the pick.”
“I am raking the pick. Stop telling me to rake the pick.”
My heart dropped.
My stomach dropped.
My bowels dropped.
I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even whisper. All I could do was think, Dear God, no, as I crouched next to my deputy boyfriend and listened to my parents squabble over how to commit burglary.
Bobby’s groan was so deep that I didn’t even really hear it—I felt it, this deep, despairing sound in his body.
It launched me into action. I gave up on secrecy and sneakery and quiet. I straightened next to Bobby, shook his hand off my hoodie (to be fair, he’d loosened his grip, probably because of the stroke-inducing rage he was experiencing), and stormed around the side of the house.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked.
My dad jerked halfway to his feet. My mom jumped.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I snapped. A classic from childhood came floating back: “Are you out of your minds?”
“Dashiell,” my dad said with a breathy not-laugh.
My mom pressed a hand to her chest. “You startled us.”
“Startled you? I startled you? No, Mom. I caught you brEAKING INTO THE MAYOR’S HOUSE!”
(Millie taught me well.)
“Keep your voice down,” my dad said with a glance at the house in question. “Unless you want to get busted.”
“You’ve already been busted,” I said. “This is me busting you. Bobby, arrest them.”
Next to me, Bobby exhaled through his nose. Then, in a surprisingly calm voice, he said, “Hello, Mrs. Lockley. Hello, Mr. Dane.”
“Just Patricia and Jonny, dear, if you’re going to arrest us.”
That mind-blowing sentence only threw Bobby for a second. “I’m not sure what’s going on here—”
“We’re trying to pick this lock,” my dad said. “But it’s being a pain in the rear.”
(He did not say rear . In fact, he peppered those sentences with a lot of Talon Maverick’s favorite words.)
“The mayor stole Nathaniel Blackwood’s diary,” my mom explained.
“What?” I said. “How do you know she stole it?”
“Because she’s the most obvious suspect. She’s the only one with a clear motive. And nobody else had an opportunity—we were all log-jammed in the living room.”
“The cupcake distraction was a nice touch,” my dad said as he returned to fumbling with the lock.
“Will you knock that off?” I said. “You’re not even doing it right. And it’s illegal. Seriously, what is going on with you two? You’re acting insane. You’d never try this stuff back home.”
“That’s because we live on a farm in the middle of nowhere,” my mom said.
My dad nodded. “We never had a chance.”
“It was a real missed opportunity,” my mom said. “I’m seeing that now.”
“Small-town America,” my dad put in. “That’s where we should have been.”
“Vivienne knew what she was doing.”
“She always did.”
“And Dashiell’s had a wonderful time.”
“He’s a natural.”
At that point, I finally recovered the power of speech. “A natural? At what? Blundering into murders and somehow managing not to get myself killed? And let me get this straight: you want to live in a small town with an impossibly high murder rate?”
“He’s doing it again,” my mom murmured. “He’s minimizing.”
My dad pitched his voice toward me as he fumbled the lockpick again. “You know we don’t like it when you talk badly about yourself, kiddo. You’re so good at everything. You’re so smart—you’re a genius—”
“I am not a genius! And I’m not good at anything!”
It was such a petulant, childlike response—not to mention, I’d all but screamed it—that a flash fire lit up my face as soon as the words left my mouth.
“Oh Dashiell,” my mom said. Then, with forced cheer, she said, “Bobby, I bet you’re much better at this than we are. Why don’t you come show Jonny how to do it?”
“I don’t need him to show me how to do it,” my dad said. “I’ve almost got it.”
When I opened my mouth, Bobby squeezed my arm and said, “Jonny, I’m not on duty, but if you keep trying to pick that lock, I’m going to have to place you under arrest.”
My dad and my mom traded a look.
“Can I record it?” my mom asked. “There’s nothing like firsthand research.”
“Vivienne’s not the only one who can get arrested in this town,” my dad said. He got to his feet stiffly, holding on to my mom with one hand, and bracing himself against the door with the other. “All right, Bobby, let’s do this. Now, are you carrying a gun? Because I’ve got to warn you, I’ve been trained to take them away from people.”
“Remember ABC,” my mom said to Bobby. “Awareness, balance, and control. Those are the fundamental principles of a well-executed arrest.”
“And watch the hands,” my dad told him. “The suspect’s hands are the most dangerous part. You always have to watch the hands. Now, are you going to cuff us in front or in the back?”
“In the front?” My mom sounded scandalized. “He’s not an amateur, darling.”
“On account of our agéd and decrepit bodies.”
They both got a good laugh out of that one.
“How about a nice, simple, straightforward execution?” I asked. “Is that an option?”
Bobby’s face was unreadable in the moonlight.
“Oh! Do you know who would love this?” my mom said. “Hugo!”
“Forget the execution,” I said. “I’ll just jump off the cliff.”
“Dash, get a picture of Bobby arresting us.” My mom was checking her hair in the big windows as she said this. “Bobby, you’ll have to tell us all about the time Hugo and Dash were sneaking around outside that house. From what I understand, you gave them quite the dressing-down.”
“Tore their hides off,” my dad put in. “That’s how Hugo put it.”
“I think right now—” Bobby began.
“You don’t have to tell them anything,” I said. “Let’s go, Bobby—we’re leaving. And we’ll call this in, and another deputy can arrest them.”
“We’re trying to get to know him,” my dad said.
“Yes.” My mom made a shooing gesture at me. “Let Hugo talk.”
The pause that came next wasn’t silent, because of the waves and the wind. And because of my blood boiling in my ears.
“Bobby,” my mom said. “Let Bobby talk.”
I opened my mouth.
“Walk it off,” Bobby said in a tone that didn’t leave room for argument. “I’m going to handle this.” And then, in case I didn’t get the message, he gave me a little nudge.
It was enough to get me moving, and my legs responded automatically, carrying me forward. My steps sounded hollow on the deck.
Behind me, Bobby said in that same voice, “I think we’re done here. I’m going to walk you to your RV.”
“Assertive,” my dad said. “Clear. Nice and direct. And did you notice how he didn’t lose his cool? That’s good stuff. You wouldn’t believe how many manuscripts I look at that have trained law enforcement officers hopping around and waving their arms and shouting their heads off.”
“Not to mention he seems like a good foil to Dash’s energy,” my mom said. “Unflappable. A bit stern. No coddling, thank God.”
“Have you ever thought about doing informational sessions, trainings, that kind of thing, with writers? I’d love to set you up with some friends of mine—who am I kidding? I could use some help too.”
Maybe, I thought, there was a limit to Bobby’s patience. There had to be, right? Everyone ran out of patience eventually. So, in theory, this nightmare couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later, Bobby would get fed up and shoot them, and then we could go home, and I’d sleep for a week.
Movement in one of the enormous windows caught my eye. Startled, I turned toward it, with the half-formed thought that I had no idea how I was going to explain this mess. But it was only my reflection. On the other side of the glass, a spacious room was surprisingly well lit. Or maybe not so surprisingly—this side of the house faced the ocean, so most of the walls had been given over to windows to take advantage of the view. All those windows meant a lot of ambient light made its way into the house. It was hard to tell colors in the low light, but everything was pale and clean and modern—shiplap and high plank ceilings and furniture that managed to look trendy and comfortable at the same time. I was looking into what had to be one of the main living areas of the house, with plush sofas, a pool table, and a massive TV. A glass of what I thought must be wine sat on a small table next to one of the sofas. Maybe the mayor had wanted a drink before bed; she’d been upset from the argument with Mrs. Shufflebottom. Or, maybe, she’d been a little worked up because she’d just stolen an irreplaceable diary.
I started to turn back to my parents and Bobby. I could hear Bobby repeating himself in a low, clear voice—stern was actually a very good word for it, and I wondered what it said about me that it, uh, did something for me. And then I saw the hand.
It stuck out beyond the edge of the sofa. Aside from being white, I couldn’t tell anything else at that distance. For several seconds, I stared, trying to decide if I was hallucinating (obviously because I was hysterical with rage from dealing with my parents). Then I said, “Bobby.”
He cut off and trotted over to me. I pointed through the glass.
A full second passed, and he said, “Call it in.”
“What is it?” my mom asked.
“I knew Dash would find something,” my dad said. “Dash, what did you find?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “You’re doing a great job.”
Bobby jogged back to the car while I placed the call. I didn’t recognize the voice on dispatch tonight, so I identified myself and explained where I was and what I’d seen. It’s hard to convey the urgency of seeing a hand—I mean, I knew that there were all sorts of explanations for why the mayor might be lying on the floor. The most obvious one, of course, was that she’d had too much to drink. But sometimes, you can know something without knowing all the details. And when I’d seen that hand, I’d known. I couldn’t explain that to the dispatcher, so I settled for saying that Deputy Mai was on the scene and had told me to call for backup.
By that point, Bobby was back with a J-tool, which was one of the things he carried in the Pilot. He worked it between the French doors—doing a masterful job, by the way, of ignoring my parents, who were telling him to “Put it in straight-ways” and “Now yank it up” and then “Go back, show me how you did that”—and in one smooth, clean movement, flipped the latch. One of the doors swung inward, and Bobby said, “Stay out here.”
It was a nice try, but look who he was talking to. (I guess I can say at least I come by it honestly.)
As we moved through the house, I saw what I’d missed before. In the entertainment center, a cabinet door hung open, revealing rows of DVDs inside (apparently, the mayor had been a fan of CHiPs ). Books had been pulled from the shelves and were strewn across the floor, including an entire set of the Encyclop?dia Britannica . One wall had been given over to what appeared to be theater memorabilia, with framed playbills and ticket stubs and even actor headshots. Several of these had been thrown to the floor, their glass shattered, their contents scattered around the room. Board games spilled their pieces everywhere—I stepped on a wishbone from Operation before I could stop myself. Someone had been here, I thought again. Someone had been looking for something.
Then we reached the mayor. She lay on the floor. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing. I caught a faint whiff of her perfume again as Bobby knelt next to her and tried to find a pulse. After several seconds, he shook his head. I couldn’t see any injuries, and my mind jumped immediately to the wine—poison, maybe?
My dad broke the silence. “What are we supposed to do? CPR?”
His voice was scratchy and thick, and I realized, from a long-off point in my brain, that he looked overwhelmed. My mom, too. She was clutching his arm, and he was clutching hers right back.
“Don’t touch anything,” Bobby said. He glanced around.
And I said what we were both thinking. “It’s not here. The diary. It isn’t here.”