Chapter 1
THE MAN WHO’D INTRODUCED HIMSELF to them as “Sam” twenty-five years ago hadn’t looked like a serial killer. That had just been a terrible stroke of luck.
Barb Bonifacio has tried her best to move on from that fateful night Lorelei died and everything changed suddenly and irrevocably.
It isn’t easy to do, especially living in Seaside, where memories of her best friend are everywhere.
For instance, the particular stretch of beach she’s standing on now has a clear view of Wonderland’s infamous skyline, and Wonderland is where they all met Sam.
She forces herself to look away from the amusement park in the distance. The woman she’s interviewing deserves her full attention, and she holds her phone closer to Edna Sparrow’s chin so her voice memo app doesn’t miss anything.
“From a distance, I thought it was a piece of driftwood,” Edna Sparrow says with a shudder. “But it wasn’t. Not even close.”
Barb nods, inwardly stifling a yawn. It’s not that the discovery of a detached foot on the beach isn’t interesting, but Barb’s become a bit desensitized to stuff like this, especially since she started working freelance for the Chronicle. It’s Seaside. Macabre stuff happens here all the time.
“I sat right over there on that picnic table, drinking my morning coffee and watching the sun come up like I always do.” Edna points to a spot closer to the water, just beyond the yellow crime scene tape.
“Then O’Henry starts barking and digging at something in the sand.
Turned out to be a shoe. I didn’t think much of it at first. Random objects wash up on this beach all the time.
There’s something about the direction of the tides and water flow at certain times of the day that causes things to float toward—”
“Right,” Barb says, hiding another yawn by fake-coughing into the crook of her arm. “And when did you realize it wasn’t just a shoe?”
“When he dropped it at my feet and I picked it up.” Edna shudders again. “My finger touched something goopy and I looked inside it and then—”
“Screamed bloody murder,” Eileen Sparrow cuts in. Barb had almost forgotten that Edna’s identical twin sister is standing nearby. “She screamed so loud I could hear her from the damn porch, and you know we live halfway up the hill.”
“And that’s when you called 9–1–1?” Barb asks them.
“No, she called me first,” Eileen says. “My sister is not good in a crisis.”
“I needed to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing before I called the police,” Edna retorts. “Didn’t want to be making a fuss over nothing and wasting valuable resources the town barely has.”
“There was definitely a whole foot inside that shoe,” Eileen says to Barb. “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, know what I mean?”
The Sparrow sisters have shared a house inside the private gated community known as Legacy Sands for as long as they’ve been alive.
One is a retired high school principal; the other still cuts hair at a salon on Main Street.
Back in the day, when one was a blonde and the other a brunette, it was easy to tell them apart.
But now both women have let their hair go gray and are dressed in similar-looking Bermuda shorts, running shoes, and pastel-colored sweatshirts.
“I did think she was messing with me about finding a foot when she first called,” Eileen says. “But it turns out that’s exactly what it was.”
“I wouldn’t joke about finding a human body part.” Edna glares at her sister. “There’s nothing funny about that.”
“Of course there isn’t,” Eileen says. “But you make stupid jokes all the time.”
Barb clears her throat. “And while you were both waiting for the police to arrive, that’s when you discovered the rest of the body?”
“We didn’t find it.” Edna points toward a tree where two Bernedoodles are napping despite all the commotion. “The dogs did. When Edna called, I brought Snickers down to the beach with me. He and O’Henry are from the same breeder—”
“Got them at the same time, though they have different mothers—” Eileen says.
“And that’s when they started barking and going crazy,” Edna finishes. At least Barb thinks it’s Edna. She’s lost track. “That’s when we saw part of a leg sticking out from behind the log. At first we thought it might be detached, too—”
“Thank god it wasn’t—”
“But then we saw the rest of the body, and that’s when we called 9–1–1.”
“I called 9–1–1,” Eileen says. “You were too frazzled.”
“Well, considering I’d just been holding a human foot with no body attached to it, I’m pretty sure frazzled is a normal human reaction,” Edna snaps. “Wouldn’t you agree, Barbara?”
Both women turn to her.
“I would, Ms. Sparrow,” Barb says. Definitely Edna, she thinks, her mind flashing back to that day in June more than two decades ago when Principal Sparrow had addressed her graduating class from a podium on the Seaside High football field.
Some of you will leave this town for your next great adventure . . .
And some of them wouldn’t. Barb thought she’d be writing best-selling novels from a penthouse in Manhattan by now instead of churning out two-hundred-word articles for a small-town newspaper hardly anyone reads anymore. But her dreams died the same night Lorelei did.
“It’s actually more common than you think,” Eileen says, her tone matter-of-fact. “Feet washing up on the beach, I mean. I watched a documentary recently that explained how the feet—”
“Dammit, the dogs are all twisted up,” Edna says, pointing again to the tree where the Bernedoodles are tied. They’re awake, their leashes tangled together. Just like their owners, the dogs also appear to be identical.
Eileen waves to a tall man who’s currently working at untangling them. “Thanks, Morris!”
Though Barb doesn’t say so, she knows exactly which true crime show Eileen Sparrow is referring to, because she watched that one, too.
Human feet washing up on the shores of the Pacific Northwest are actually nothing new.
Over the past two decades, nearly two dozen detached feet have been found along the coastline at beaches just like this one.
But as gruesome as that sounds, none of the instances have been ruled foul play.
Forensics analysis have determined that each foot was separated from the body it belonged to as a result of natural decomposition.
Because it was encased in some type of shoe or boot, the foot was able to stay afloat until it reached shore.
And other than a few that were never conclusively ID’d, almost all the deaths were the result of an accidental drowning or suicide. It was sad, but not suspicious.
Today, however, was different. Because not only was a detached foot found, the body it might have been attached to was found as well.
“I thought we were finally past all this dark stuff,” Edna says, and her sister nods. Finally something they can agree on. “It felt like Seaside had finally turned a corner. With all the new construction, and the young families moving in, and Wonderland’s grand reopening—”
“I’m telling you, it’s because Wonderland is reopening,” Eileen says. “It’s drawing all this bad juju back here. They should have torn it down completely after the scandal instead of selling the park off to some foreign investors and slapping a makeover on it.”
“The investors are Canadian, which is hardly foreign—”
“Yes, but they’re based in Quebec. They speak French. And now, with the Criminal Confessions thing coming out, it’s all just . . . too much.” Eileen waves a hand.
“Speaking of which, you aren’t going to be in the show, are you, Barbara?” Edna asks, her eyes wide.
“You’re making it sound like a musical. It’s not a show, it’s a documentary series.” Eileen turns back to Barb. “I nearly choked on my muffin when I saw that the next season is going to feature the Carnival Killer. We heard the producers were hounding you for an interview.”
Of course they heard. Barb had only mentioned to a couple of people that a producer from the show had reached out, but that’s all it took in Seaside.
“I told them no,” Barb replies. Her actual words had been Fuck no, but she can’t say that to the Sparrow sisters.
“And they asked Nicolette, too,” Edna says. “Do you know if she agreed?”
Barb blinks. “Nicolette? We, uh, don’t get a chance to catch up that often.”
It’s an understatement. She hasn’t spoken to Nicolette in nearly twenty-five years.
“You poor girls,” Eileen says, even though Barb and Nicolette are both on the verge of turning forty. “All that documentary will do is remind everybody that bad things happened here.”
But bad things did happen here, Barb thinks.
It’s only when the sisters stare at her in surprise that she realizes she actually spoke the words out loud.
She clears her throat. “I usually do enjoying watching Criminal Confessions, but it’s probably best that I skip this season. Anyway, thank you both for your time.”
The sisters wander off to chat with their neighbors, most of whom are milling around watching the police activity.
The entire community of Legacy Sands must be down here at their beach now, the flashing red and blue lights from the police cars drawing the residents out of their homes at a time when they’d normally be having coffee and watching Good Morning America.
Several golf carts are parked at the edge of the sand, as the road leading down to the beach is quite steep.
The gated community is made up of about seventy-five homes, most of them owned by retirees whose families have lived here for generations.
Through the crowd of onlookers, Barb catches a glimpse of the Seaside police detective who’d avoided her earlier.
She’d like to tell herself it was because she’s a plucky reporter fishing for information the police aren’t ready to give, but it was more likely because they’d gone on a few dates a couple months ago until she’d maybe/kind of/definitely ghosted him.
Dating is hell when you live in a small town. It’s impossible to not shit where you eat.