Chapter 1
Chekhov’s Wig
This story takes place before Again with Feeling.
“It’s not that I don’t want to do it,” I said into the phone as I drove. “It’s that I’m scared.”
On the other end of the call, Fox—nominally my friend—sighed. Heavily.
“Also,” I added, “full disclosure: I actually don’t want to do it.”
“Too bad,” they said. “You owe me—”
“Oh my God.”
“You owe me, Dashiell, for getting you off the Cakery’s blacklist after you made a federal case out of that frosting debacle.”
“I wasn’t blacklisted! And it was a misunderstanding about ganache! It could have happened to anyone!”
“And when you got yourself on that International Thespian Society mailing list, who got you off it?”
“You, but only because I couldn’t find the unsubscribe button.”
“And when that seagull was bullying you, and I drove it off? Remember?”
“Yes, I remember, but in the first place, I could have handled that.” (I mean, in theory.) “And in the second place, this is not a comparable favor. This is like asking me to throw myself on a grenade because, I don’t know, you passed me the salt.
” The rest of the words burst out of me: “And you know Mr. Cheek doesn’t, uh, like me. ”
“Big surprise.”
“Because of Bobby! Not because of me!”
Fox made a sound that suggested this was still up for debate.
“He’s had a thing for Bobby forever, and I think he thinks—and I know this is crazy—that I’m, like, in his way.”
“Insane,” Fox said. “Ludicrous. Where would he ever get such an idea?”
“Also, I know you’re making fun of me, but I want to circle back to the scared part, because I swear to God, a couple of weeks ago, I was halfway through a crosswalk, and Mr. Cheek was waiting at the stop sign, and he revved his engine.”
Fox’s silence lasted one second, then another, and then another.
“Why do you need a box of wigs anyway?” I asked. “How many wigs does one person need?”
“How many dreams does one person need, Dashiell?” Fox asked in what I thought of as their theater voice. “Besides, there are some clothes in there too, and Mr. Cheek was giving them away.”
“I really don’t think a bunch of old wigs are worth me risking my life—”
“Get. the. box.” They took a deep breath and added a saccharine, “Thank you.”
Then they disconnected.
Which left me with no other option but to keep driving.
It was a beautiful day—July in Hastings Rock was close to perfect.
The weather on the Oregon Coast cleared up.
Sunny days—like today—were plentiful. The air warmed nicely without ever getting too hot, and the breeze off the ocean meant jackets were still occasionally a good idea, and the evenings cooled down pleasantly.
We had the beach. We had one of the 100 Cutest Towns in America (I made that up, but Hastings Rock is one of the cutest towns in America, I’m pretty sure).
Oh, and we had tourists.
They filled the shops and restaurants. They spilled out onto the streets and clogged sidewalks and intersections.
They spent a lot of money, sure, and in their own weird way, they actually seemed to love Hastings Rock as much as the rest of us.
One time I saw this little old man in Seattle gear kiss a seagull.
(I’m not sure if that’s a great example, but you get the idea.) But they did make driving anywhere in town almost impossible.
Not that I was complaining today. I inched along in the Pilot.
I waited at stop signs. I braked so that an entire family—Mom, Dad, and, no joke, seven little blond angels—could cross in the middle of the street.
The mom waved enthusiastically at me. I waved enthusiastically back. Take as long as you need.
Because I liked my life in Hastings Rock.
I liked getting to live in a big old mansion that I had inherited under extremely dubious circumstances.
I liked getting to putter around, working on my writing, crafting the kind of mysteries that all too often, I found myself dealing with in real life.
I liked spending time with Bobby—that’s Deputy Bobby, of the Ridge County Sheriff’s Office. And I liked, well, being alive.
And I had the feeling that approaching Mr. Cheek alone, without Bobby’s, um, protection, might be the last (and stupidest) thing I ever did.
But eventually—even though I waited for a crew of retirees to load up in a massive Sprinter van and slowly back out of a parking stall; and even though I stopped while a fat squirrel scurried around in the road, picking up the honey-roasted pecans a tourist kid had dropped; and even though I made a quick stop to get a Baja fish taco from Let’s Taco Bout Tacos (it’s a food truck, and they’re the best tacos in the galaxy)—I ran out of road, so to speak, and found myself parking in front of Fog Belt Ladies Wear.
It was a storefront in a single-story building with shake siding and big display windows.
Today, one of the display windows featured a mannequin wearing a maroon jumpsuit with neon trim.
It made her (I was assuming the mannequin was a her—you can tell because of how they do the hands) look like one of those women from Sex and the City, but with Kim Jong-Il flair.
I want to say her name was Minerva? She drank a lot of appletinis?
Mr. Cheek’s idea of fashion might have been…
eccentric, but tourists loved it—there seemed to be nothing more liberating for Mom and Grandma from Boise than finding a coral-colored caftan or hemp harem pants or a skort (Mr. Cheek kept those in the back).
A box sat next to the front door.
It couldn’t be that easy, right? It couldn’t just be out there, waiting for me. Right?
On the other hand, I had been a very good boy lately. I hadn’t even eaten Keme’s ice cream sandwich when he forgot about it because he was so busy playing Xbox.
I parked. I slid out of the SUV. I looked both ways, not yet ready to step up onto the sidewalk.
In cartoons, sometimes there’s a box being held up by a stick, and as soon as the unlucky rabbit—or other animal—steps underneath it, someone yanks the stick away, and the box falls down and traps them.
Not that cartoons are real. I know that.
But, you know.
Sometimes.
A middle-aged couple paused to look at one of the touristy maps the town gives out.
From the other direction, a woman was walking briskly toward me.
She stopped on the sidewalk in front of Fog Belt Ladies Wear and then turned to go inside.
She stopped again at the box. She bent and opened the flaps.
A fluffy tuft of wig poked out.
The woman looked around. Her gaze settled on me. Our eyes met.
She tensed.
At some level, I already knew what she was doing, but I started to explain, “Sorry, that box is—”
She grabbed it and ran back the way she’d come.
For a moment, I stared as the woman—and the box of wigs— got away.
Mr. Cheek threw open the door. Today’s outfit seemed to have come from the Pink Panther collection: black sneakers, black trousers, a black turtleneck (yes, in July), and an abundance of mascara and eye shadow.
Also, I know I can’t prove this, but I think he was wearing those Halloween vampire teeth.
(Because, I assume, he was planning on biting me.)
“Oh God,” he screamed, “my wigs!”
And since my options were: a) stay and possibly be bitten by Mr. Cheek, or b) literally anything else, I sprinted after the woman and the stolen wigs.