Chapter 27
The sheriff arrived, along with Deputy Dahlberg and—ugh—Deputy Dairek. They took Graeme away; a gunshot wound to the arm was serious, but he’d survive. He didn’t shout or make dramatic pronouncements of revenge. Mostly, he looked like he was in shock. (And like he was about to throw up.)
It was a long, tedious process: managing the crowd of terrified people, collecting names and statements, beginning the work that would take this from a dramatic showdown to a solid prosecution.
It helped that several hundred people had witnessed Graeme’s quasi-confession and attack.
Bobby and I waited in one of the empty multipurpose rooms. Deputy Dahlberg got me a bottle of water, and I drank half of it and then sat there, hands wrapped around it so that they wouldn’t shake.
Eventually, Sheriff Acosta came to take my statement. It was as straightforward as it could get, with me explaining—more cogently this time—what Graeme had done and why.
“He wanted us to find those reviews,” the sheriff said grimly. “He wanted us to know Whitney posted them.”
“He wanted somebody else to take the blame,” I said. “But you didn’t take the bait that I’d killed Vivienne—his first plan. And Thatcher decided to alibi Margaux. And then Graeme had to kill Steven to keep him from talking. He was running out of options.”
The sheriff shook her head. Fatigue lined her face; she’d had two murders and an officer-involved shooting in the last week, and if I were her, I’d be thinking about a long, well-deserved vacation in Bali (or, let’s be real, at home, but I’d pretend I was gone and I wouldn’t answer my phone).
Finally, she said, “I’m glad you’re okay. ”
Bobby drove me home.
We were quiet for most of the drive. It was only mid-afternoon, but it was overcast, with a hissing kind of rain that wasn’t strong enough to break the fog but kept up an uneven staccato against the windshield.
Sitka spruce and lodgepole pines emerged out of the gloom one by one, zipping past us and then dissolving again.
The air from the vents smelled faintly like turpentine.
“I’m sorry you had to shoot him,” I said.
“What?”
“I didn’t think—I mean, we were in a crowded room. I didn’t think he’d try anything.”
“Dash, I’m not upset I shot him. I wanted to shoot him.”
“Uh.”
“I would have felt bad if I’d killed him, but he’ll be fine.”
“Oh.” The tires whispered against wet pavement. “I wanted you to shoot him too.”
Bobby looked over at me. And then, slowly, the goofy grin slipped out, and I surprised myself by laughing.
“It’ll be okay,” Bobby said.
“But they have to investigate you.”
“Of course. And they should. But there’s a roomful of people who saw Graeme attack you, and I wasn’t close enough to stop him any other way.” In a gentler voice, he said again, “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
I knew that wasn’t something anybody could promise. But it was still nice to hear it. And if anybody could promise it, it would definitely be Bobby.
When we got home, it was too early to go to bed.
(My preferred option in almost every scenario.) Instead, I showered to get rid of the flop sweat (Eau de Confession is not going to be a bestseller), and then I lay on the bed while Bobby cleaned up.
I must have fallen asleep—so much for my theory about it being too early—because I stirred briefly when he climbed into bed next to me, and he kissed my shoulder, and then I slept again.
I woke, and it was still dark, and—a rare change—Bobby was still next to me.
His breathing was slow and even, and he lay on his back, one hand resting on my arm.
Like I might, in the middle of the night, get away somehow.
Moonlight puddled on the floor where it passed between gaps in the curtains, and the room seemed unusually bright, so that even when I closed my eyes, I couldn’t fall back asleep.
Familiar sounds wrapped themselves around me: the shift and settle of the old house.
The wind in the hemlocks. The rhythm of the waves.
After a while, I slipped my arm out from under Bobby’s hand, found my glasses, and padded into the bathroom. I shut the door before turning on the light. I peed. In the mirror, I stared back at myself.
Why did you get your glasses?
I turned off the light and let myself out through the opposite door—the one that led into what was technically Bobby’s room.
I made my way through the dark, into the thicker, velvet darkness of the hall, and the smell of furniture polish and floor wax and the slight mustiness of chilly days, before we turned on the heat.
The ticking of one of the big, old clocks, and nothing else.
Not even a mouse—but that was at Christmas, anyway.
Light came into Vivienne’s study from the sleeping porch, where the curtains hadn’t been closed after Graeme had broken into the house—gray, pale, hourless light. The sound of the waves crashing against the bluffs was louder here. I closed the door to the hall and turned on the lamps.
It was still a mess: papers everywhere, books on the floor, drawers ajar. I stood there for a while, arms wrapped around myself, considering it. I picked up a few pages and let them flutter back to the floor.
Before I could think about it too much, I grabbed the trash can from under Vivienne’s desk and went to work.
I gave each piece of paper a cursory glance—anything that might have been related to a crime went into one pile.
Around the world, I suspected, men and women were appealing—and would continue to appeal—their convictions; nothing helped an appeal, I suspected, like the revelation that the person who had put you in prison had manufactured evidence in some of her most famous cases.
Anything financial went into a separate pile.
Someone would have to deal with Vivienne’s estate.
She would have a lawyer. Or, eventually, the probate court would handle it.
And they might need some of the information here.
But tomorrow—er, later today—everything in those piles was going down to the cellar, and I never wanted to see it again.
Everything else seemed to be about writing, and that went into the trash can.
Outlines and notes for books in the Matron of Murder series.
Research material. Sketches of ideas. Synopses.
Letters—yes, honest-to-God letters, because Vivienne had been writing for forty years—to and from editors and agents.
In spite of my determination to get this job done, I couldn’t help slowing as I worked my way through the papers.
I’d grown up reading the Matron of Murder books.
Vivienne had been—well, not an idol, but someone whose writing I’d enjoyed and respected.
And I was, after all, a massive nerd; there was something fascinating about seeing the thought and planning that had gone into those books behind the scenes.
Maybe I was doing a disservice to the world.
Maybe I should have boxed up these papers as well and donated them to a college or a university or a library.
The Vivienne Carver Collection. (Which also sounded like it could be a home décor line or, uh, intimate apparel for the mature woman.) But the thought was small, buzzing at the back of my head, and I kept going.
As papers went into the trash and I worked my way across the floor, older outlines and notes gave way to more recent projects.
Many of these were unfinished, or preliminary sketches that even I could tell were, to put it politely, half-baked.
Ideas for several new series—in one, Vivienne planned to follow the madcap adventures of a murderous nanny as she took her charges with her on a quest for revenge.
Also, there was a bit of magic in there, and at least one scene of them flying over London, so it was kind of like the Quentin Tarantino version of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
Not my cup of tea, but listen, every book has its ideal reader somewhere.
Other papers suggested that Vivienne had been working, at her agent’s suggestion, on a follow-up to Matron of Murder.
One of the beauties of the Matron of Murder series was that the protagonist, Genevieve Webster, had an endless supply of nieces and nephews (who could, as the occasion called for, either be murdered, suspected by the police of murder, or function as convenient excuses for Genevieve to be dragged off to London or New York City or wherever else she might stumble onto a murder or herself be suspected of murder—can you tell there was a formula?).
Apparently, someone thought it was a great idea for Genevieve’s niece Amber to become the next Matron of Murder, passing the torch to the rising generation, etc.
, etc. Oh, and she had a boyfriend who was a surfer.
Or maybe a rapper. Or would it be too much if he were an astronaut?
(Matron of Murder on the Moon was basically a book that wrote itself.) At the bottom of one of these pages, in her unmistakable handwriting, Vivienne had written, If I have to write these books, I’m going to kill myself.
And then I came across the book that Vivienne had plagiarized from Pippi.
I’d forgotten about it, if I was being honest. Forgotten about that whole bizarre situation.
Forgotten that at some point in her life, Vivienne had been in such despair about her writing that she had tried writing a cozy (called, egad, Café Capers).
I sat there, pages loose in my hands, and forgot about the trash can.
I’d forgotten how bad things had gotten for Vivienne at the end.
Her stories blocked. Her creativity dried up.
The thing she had loved most, the thing she had sacrificed everything for—her writing—slipping out of her hands no matter how tightly she tried to grasp it.
I mean, my God, she’d been planning on stealing ideas from me; that’s how you know she was desperate.
And I found myself thinking about the letter she had written to me.
At the time, it had seemed like—I don’t know.
A mixture of Vivienne being a know-it-all about writing (definitely in character) and, later, a clue about where to take the investigation, by looking at Simona’s publishers.
But now, in that strange bubble of time and space that the middle of the night brings, I wondered if it wasn’t more.
Not Vivienne’s letter to me. But, in a strange way, Vivienne’s letter to herself.
Everyone must choose who they are going to be.
And Vivienne had chosen the money over the writing.
Maybe that wasn’t fair; she was a good writer.
She was a brilliant writer. And she had loved writing.
But in little ways, she had chosen other things over writing again and again.
Until, when she needed it, the writing was gone.
I set the manuscript aside. Pippi would want it. She could sell it to Pippi’s Privateers or Pippi’s Pioneers or Pippi’s Piranhas (jeez, there was a fitting name).
As I worked my way around the room, I crawled behind the desk to pick up the papers that had fallen there.
Instead of full sheets, a pile of smaller pieces of paper lay on the floor: sticky notes, the pages from a day planner, a scrap torn from the corner of what appeared to be a takeout menu.
One said, You only have today. And another said, Write what you love.
And then there was Remember why you do this, and Writing is its own reward, and then, on half a napkin, in blue ballpoint that had torn the paper, a single word: Write.
Two had clearly been handled more than the rest—they had wrinkles from careless foldings, and their edges had that soft, brushed look of paper that has been worn down.
The first said, You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
And the second said, A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I’m not sure how long I would have sat there if a soft tap at the door hadn’t pulled me back.
The door opened, and Indira stepped into the room carrying two mugs.
The scent of chocolate—warm, creamy, sweet chocolate—bloomed.
She was dressed in sensible sleep pants and a sleep shirt, with a rain jacket.
Her hair was loose and pulled over one shoulder.
Her face still slightly soft with sleep, she looked strangely vulnerable.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Indira said. “And I saw the light.” She tipped her head toward the window.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Not at all. I was already up.” But she stopped and waited and asked, “If I’m not intruding?”
I hesitated. Then I shook my head.
She came around the desk and sat on the floor next to me.
The mug warmed my hands—I hadn’t realized, until now, that my fingers were cold—and the hot cocoa was perfect.
Not as thick and rich as the hot chocolate Indira occasionally made, but the right balance of sweet and flavorful to be a good nightcap.
(Was it a nightcap? A good back-to-bed beverage? What’s the term for that?)
“Thank you,” I said.
Indira nodded and sipped her cocoa.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” I said. And I glanced around. “And this makes me look like I’m insane, I am realizing in exactly this moment.”
Indira laughed quietly. But all she said was “Sometimes it helps to have a project. Something to do. The nights can be long, otherwise.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“I’m not trying to get rid of her,” I said. “Or erase her or anything.”
“I know.”
“I—it felt like it was time.”
Indira nodded. “Dash, it’s your house. Your home.”
We sat there for a while.
“She wasn’t always that way,” I said. “Or maybe she was, but there was—there was more, you know. I don’t think a lot of people saw that.”
“She was a complicated person.”
I nodded. It felt like something huge shifting inside me, a glacier cracking, a sheet shearing off and plummeting into dark water. My eyes stung. I shook my head, wiped my eyes, and took a deep breath.
Indira rubbed my back.
“She wasn’t a good person,” I said, my throat tight, and even though I fought to get the words out quickly, the tears came faster. “But she didn’t deserve that.”
“I know,” Indira said quietly, and I started to cry.