Chapter 1 #2
Must be why people read so many novels, he guessed. Because real life was so predictable. Few kangaroo kidnappings. Fewer
guppy-men with fins on their dicks.
Besides a September flu outbreak, nothing unexpected ever happened in Harlot’s Bay. Especially not to a cranky, solitary bastard
like him. And halle-fucking-lujah for that, right?
Two days later, sitting at the kitchen table of her small LA bungalow, Molly pushed the power button on her laptop and waited
for the endless updates to finish loading.
Her shoulders hurt, and she rolled them. Rotated her stiff neck. Drank her tea with honey, doing her best to stay present
in the moment. Be mindful. Get hygge with it.
Any minute now, the relaxation would begin.
Any . . . minute . . . now.
She’d slept an hour longer than usual, as befitted the first morning of a four-week vacation. Since workers would be arriving
tomorrow to address the roof and plumbing issues—guided by a casual friend of hers who happened to be a contractor—best to
take advantage of the last peaceful day she’d have for a while.
Those upcoming home renos were, of course, the entire reason she was taking such a lengthy vacation in the first place. An audiobook narrator needed quiet above all else, and even the best in-home recording studio couldn’t entirely eliminate the sounds of hammering and power
tools buzzing and whirring and squealing through metal and wood.
She’d put off the repairs too long. They’d become urgent and overwhelming and freaking expensive, and she wanted to get them
done in one fell swoop so she could ignore the entire issue of renovations again for another decade or two afterward.
Something else would probably go wrong the week after the workers left, though. Houses built an entire century ago needed
continual upkeep to stay functional. Too bad she loved hers so much. The location at the foot of the Hollywood Hills—well,
more like the shin; getting to her home required surmounting a brief but steep incline—was convenient and gorgeous, and even
the constant traffic wasn’t particularly bothersome for someone whose commute was approximately twelve feet from her bedroom.
Moving would require disassembling and rebuilding her studio elsewhere. And wherever she went wouldn’t contain the memories
this home did. Her beloved grandparents had lived here for over fifty years, her one geographical constant in a rootless life.
They hadn’t left until a decade ago, when they’d sold the home to her for far below market value and moved to a much cheaper,
equally sunny town in Arizona.
Blasting her from this place would require . . .
She didn’t know what would suffice. Nothing had done the trick so far.
Not the upkeep costs. Not the bitter memories of her failed marriage contained within these walls.
Not even her doctor’s warning that she needed to eliminate sources of tension however she could, because the insomnia was getting worse, her blood pressure kept creeping up, and her headaches had turned increasingly vicious.
“Think about moving somewhere with less upkeep,” Dr. Janus had urged at Molly’s last checkup. “And if you won’t do that, at
least go outside more. Have a picnic in Griffith Park. Walk along Venice Beach. Sit in your backyard and try to whistle with
a blade of grass. Whatever it takes to lower your stress level.”
Only mountain goats would find her backyard a comfortable seating location. Besides— “Are you telling me to literally touch
grass?”
“I suppose I am.” Looking pleased with herself, the doctor straightened her shoulders. “It’s all very Gen Z of me. My daughter
would be proud.”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Molly could safely say that, having met the preteen at Vons when the young woman was reluctantly accompanying
her mother on a grocery run.
“No, she wouldn’t,” Dr. Janus agreed. “But I’ll tell her anyway. I enjoy making her roll her eyes and call me cringe.”
“That’s fair,” Molly conceded, and the appointment had ended without an actual, definite plan for stress reduction. Which
hadn’t dismayed her in the least.
As it turned out, the thought of planning for stress reduction caused stress too. Irony!
Hopefully she wouldn’t even need a plan, since a heady, vacation-induced rush of relaxation should be arriving and flushing
away all the cortisol in her system. Any minute now.
Another sip of tea didn’t do it, sadly. Neither did a few more rotations of her neck.
Conceding defeat, she glanced down at her laptop. There. Finally. The updates were complete, and she could check her email. There shouldn’t be any urgent messages, given her empty September calendar. But maybe a publisher would write to book one of her two remaining free slots in December, or—
Hmmm.
She frowned, eyeing a message sent earlier that morning from Lise Utendorf. Aka Sadie Brazen, a good friend and one of Molly’s
most prolific authors.
The email’s subject: Bad news from Harlot’s Bay.
After leaving Maryland two decades ago, Molly hadn’t bothered writing or calling anyone there. With one exception. But her
closest friendship in Harlot’s Bay had disintegrated before her first winter break at UCLA, and then she was too busy with
school and work to keep up with casual acquaintances.
Even after she’d begun narrating Lise’s books, she hadn’t known the identity of the woman behind Sadie Brazen. Until one day
when they’d hopped on a Zoom call to discuss a particularly challenging scene and . . . there she was. Lise Utendorf. The
shy, sweet girl Molly had worked with on the literary magazine back at Harlot’s Bay High.
Small world. Big coincidence.
Lise had become a good friend, but they hadn’t talked much about their shared past, probably because Molly didn’t welcome
reminders of that period of her life. Harlot’s Bay had been the one place she’d semi-attempted to make a real home, find a
real community, as a kid. And that home had been ripped from her under unpleasant circumstances, even before her fraught friendship
with Karl had cracked irretrievably. Remembering all of that didn’t precisely spark joy.
So Molly avoided discussing Harlot’s Bay, and Lise had respected that unspoken boundary. If she now felt obligated to share news from there, whatever happened must’ve been big—and not simply bad. Terrible.
With trepidation tightening Molly’s neck muscles once more, she opened the message.
Molly, I wasn’t sure whether to write you about this. As far as I know, you’re not in contact with anyone from Harlot’s Bay
but me, so maybe you won’t care. But I thought you should hear it from me, just in case. If only because you two were close
for a while.
Karl Dean was murdered. His obituary ran in yesterday’s Harlot’s Herald.
Molly gasped in horror and curled in on herself, covering her mouth with one shaking hand. Her eyes instantly grew wet, and
the words blurred in front of her.
The obit said he was killed by a mysterious enemy while camping—
Even through her tears and shock, that struck her as odd. Nature had inconvenienced and infuriated Karl, to the point where
she’d once seen him address an offending tulip as “you purple-petaled motherfucker.” His hatred of Mother Nature was the entire
reason he’d enjoyed mowing. To him, it was a sort of ritual homicide.
Back then, infeasible threats had been Karl’s raison d’être, and explaining their impracticality to him had been hers. And
many of those threats had been issued against flora and fauna, so . . . yeah. Karl “if that fucking branch snags my fucking
sleeve one more fucking time, I will personally throttle that fucking tree with my bare fucking hands until its rings become
a solid fucking line” Dean wouldn’t camp. Not under any circumstances.
Although maybe he’d changed over the last two decades.
Or maybe a wife or girlfriend or boyfriend or whoever had dragged him outdoors, because he might not be a natural camper, but he was a secret softie.
When she’d known him, he’d mowed his elderly neighbors’ lawns without asking for money, even though his
family was large and not especially wealthy. And when he’d seen her tutoring Ned in chemistry during homeroom, he’d grumpily
helped, even though the other kid had once cheated off of him.
Karl was gone. She couldn’t believe it.
Her chest ached. Her head throbbed. Her eyes burned.
Her heart hurt.
—and even more bizarrely, there was speculation about possible cannibalism. Involving muffins. That part was a bit unclear,
apart from the Soylent Green references.
What. The. Hell.
Lise had sent a link to the obituary. After clicking, Molly tried her best to comprehend the words, but reading through tears
wasn’t easy. Dimly, she registered the too-brief account of his life. The bakery he’d bought and turned into a cornerstone
of his community. The list of his surviving family, which didn’t mention a spouse or children.
After the standard obituary elements, the reporter delved into the mysterious and violent circumstances of his death before
offering an assurance to her readers:
The Harlot’s Herald will continue to investigate threats made and received by Dean, as well as the identity of any possible enemies in the greater Harlot’s Bay region and the possibility of a coverup by local authorities, who stubbornly deny that a heinous crime even occurred in our community.
We will also verify the ingredients contained within muffins originating from Grounds and Grains.
If anyone knows more about Dean’s murder and/or the possible involvement of criminal gangs attempting to sell the newest street drug, Special K, to our youths, please contact the paper without delay.
Molly checked the reporter’s byline.
Sylvia Plude. Even back in Molly’s high school days, that woman had been—to put it politely—somewhat seasoned in years. Maybe
she’d become hard of hearing and somehow misunderstood the situation?
Because Karl couldn’t truly be gone. Not so soon. Not like that.
Quickly, her unsteady fingers fumbling over her smartphone’s screen, she texted Lise. Are you certain the obit is plausible? Because it sounds utterly bizarre.
Less than a minute later, Molly’s cell dinged.
Been holed up on deadline, so I’m not sure about all the details, but I do know his bakery was closed for a week. No warning
or explanation. First time that’s ever happened. Sorry, Molly. Wish I could give you better news. ? ? ?
In other words: The announcement of Karl’s death was probably correct, no matter whether Sylvia had misunderstood the specific
circumstances.
No matter how fervently Molly wished it was wrong.
The reporter hadn’t mentioned the timing of a memorial service, but surely it would happen within the next several days. Unless
Karl had changed significantly, he might not have many close friends at that service. Acquaintances, yes. People he’d known
his whole life, people he’d helped without ever allowing them to acknowledge his efforts . . . sure. Lots of those. Not friends.
Once upon a time, though, she’d been as close to him as their situations and mutual defenses would allow.
The nature and extent of that closeness—her feelings for him, and his increasingly obvious interest in more than friendship—had begun to trouble her after she’d left, so she’d cut things off.
Even knowing she should talk to him about the issue directly.
Two things could be true at once: He shouldn’t have written like that to her while he had a girlfriend, and she should’ve
handled the situation better.
But before then, they’d been friends. Genuinely. Maybe, if she hadn’t ghosted him, they could have worked things out, reconciled,
and become friends again.
Either way, she could be a friend for him now. One last time.
Using her knuckles to dash away her tears, she sat at her kitchen table. Studied September’s empty calendar. Glanced at the
furniture shoved into corners, stacked into untidy mountains, and covered with drop cloths, all in preparation for the imminent
renovations. Spotted, on the other side of the table, yet another letter from her ex-husband, no doubt written in yet another
attempt to convince her to sell her house to him and his fiancée.
Allowed herself to remember.
Let herself be rash and spontaneous and unwise, for once in her life.
And less than twenty-four hours later, she was back in Harlot’s Bay.