Chapter 6
Believe it or not, trained professionals do not take the word of a mystery writer.
Deputy Salk (that’s Deputy Salkanovic, Hastings Rock’s former star quarterback, about whom I once heard Maudette at Krabby Kuts say she wanted him to give her a piggy-back ride) (I was so uncomfortable I actually melted into that weird hair-cutting cape) and Deputy Nava (a new hire, finally) got there first. They worked together to get Vivienne out of the pool.
Then Salk tried to take my statement while Deputy Nava checked on Vivienne—even though I told her that Vivienne was dead. Repeatedly.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Salk said. He had the same wide-eyed look he’d gotten when I’d tried to explain the plot to one of my favorite books. “Take a deep breath. There you go. Doesn’t that feel better?”
It did feel better.
And about two seconds later, I became vaguely aware that I must look—and sound—deranged.
“You okay?” Salk asked. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. “Is she really dead?”
Deputy Nava made a face at Salk, and Salk said to me, “We’re going to walk down the path a way and take a break.”
So, we did. And Salk was nice about it, even when I couldn’t stop pacing. He asked me what had happened, and I told him.
And then Bobby was there, coming out of the darkness at a full sprint. He stopped when he saw me, and I couldn’t help it: my eyes stung, and all the terror that had been trying to boil up inside me finally broke free.
I didn’t even remember closing the distance between us; Bobby’s arms around me, crushing me to him, while he told me in a low voice that everything was going to be okay.
The sheriff came. The district medical examiner. More deputies. Portable lights went up. Bobby sat with me on the stone retaining wall until the sheriff finally came to talk to us.
She was a solidly built woman, hair in a ponytail and wearing a hat that said RIDGE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE; it covered the little scar on her forehead.
“Are you okay?”
(Everybody was going to ask me that tonight, it seemed.)
“Fine.”
“What happened?”
So, I went through it all again, from the beginning: being approached by Vivienne in the conference center, and what she had told me about solving a murder, and my suspicion that she was going to try to do something.
“Something in particular?” the sheriff asked.
“No. I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “No, I didn’t know what she was going to do. But I guess I thought it would be…something like last time.”
“Faking her death?”
“She is dead, isn’t she? For real this time?”
The sheriff nodded.
Some of the strain in my body finally relaxed. “Thank God,” I said. And then immediately, “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant, Dash,” the sheriff said.
“And we’re sure it’s Vivienne?” Bobby asked. “It’s not a double or—or—”
What he didn’t say—what nobody had said, yet—was that the last time, when Vivienne had tried to fake her own death, our last sheriff had helped her pull it off.
“I ID’d her myself,” the sheriff said. There was a certain stiffness in the words. Then, relaxing, she said, “We’re going to do everything by the book.”
“I know,” I said. I squeezed Bobby’s hand. “Thank you.”
“Do you know why she was out here?” the sheriff asked.
“No clue. But she seemed like she was—I don’t know how to say it. Like it was something official, or like it was business. There’s this way she carried herself at the conference, and when she left the veranda, that’s how she looked, still in conference mode.”
“Did you see anything after she left the veranda that might help us?” the sheriff said. “We’re having a hard time finding a camera near the grotto.”
Of course they were.
“Not after she left the veranda, no,” I said. But I mentioned the conversation I’d witnessed between Vivienne and Graeme, as well as the short argument—or whatever it had been—between Vivienne and the petite woman on the veranda.
“Thank you,” the sheriff said. “I’m going to say something you won’t like.”
“Am I a suspect?”
“I don’t think you killed Vivienne, Dash. But you also need to understand that it’s in your best interest for this investigation to move forward fully and transparently, without any sign of partiality from the sheriff’s office.”
“You’re telling me not to investigate.”
“I’m telling you that the best thing you can do—for yourself, and for everyone else—is not to get involved. The further you can keep yourself from this, the better.”
“So, I am a suspect.”
“Dash—” Bobby said.
“This isn’t a productive conversation,” the sheriff said. “I’ll be happy to talk to you about it again after everyone’s had a chance to calm down.”
“Calm down? I’m not going to calm down. You’re telling me that you might not think I killed Vivienne, but everyone else will?
Why? Because she tried to frame me for murder, and then she tried to kill me, and then, after she gets out of prison unexpectedly and we have a public confrontation, she dies under mysterious circumstances, and I’m the one who finds the body? ”
(Okay, when I said it all out loud like that, it wasn’t great.)
“Now would be a good time to get Dash home,” the sheriff said to Bobby.
Bobby nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
“You’d better stay with him.”
“Oh no,” I said. “That’s not fair. This is Bobby’s first murder!”
They both looked at me.
I mumbled, “As a detective.”
“I understand, Sheriff,” Bobby said.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “Why? Because he’s my boyfriend?”
“Go home,” the sheriff said as she turned back toward the grotto. “Get some rest. Let me know if you remember anything else.”