Chapter 13

Later that afternoon, surrounded by people on the beach, I was still trying to wrap my head around what Candy had told me.

After that revelation, I hadn’t been able to get anything more out of Candy—she’d started crying so hard I thought she was going to make herself sick, and Ricky had asked us to leave. The ride back to Hastings Rock had been quiet. Too quiet, really, because I’d had too much time with my thoughts. And it hadn’t gotten any better in the stillness of Hemlock House. I couldn’t bring myself to check Bobby’s room to see if he’d taken more of his stuff. I tried holing up in the den to work on my story with Hugo, but my brain seemed to have quit working. Hugo was understanding, of course. After an hour or two, he politely told me he needed to jump in the shower, and we’d work on it again tomorrow, and to have a great afternoon. Jump in the shower, I thought. On a Sunday afternoon. Which meant he was going out. Or maybe just hooking up with someone. And I was alone in a Class V haunted mansion while Bobby moved in with a baby gay fresh out of the packaging.

I heard how unkind that thought was and gave myself a stern talking to, but it didn’t help.

Maybe that was why, when Fox told me to get in the van, I obeyed. I didn’t even ask where we were going. And that was how I ended up at the beach, with so many other people that I thought I could actually feel my hair turning white, for the sandcastle competition.

It was still a beautiful day; maybe even more beautiful, in fact, on the water. The sky was the deep blue of a summer day winding to a close, with puffy white clouds marching along the horizon. Under the late afternoon sun, it was almost warm enough to feel hot, but the breeze and the swash of cold water kept it comfortable. When I looked out at the ocean, and the bright patches of reflected sunlight churning in the dark green water, I thought of silver-backed leaves turning over and over in the dark. I thought maybe I’d use that in a book one day. In a scene after someone died.

I tried to turn my brain toward the mystery I was supposed to be solving, but that didn’t get me anywhere either. The revelation that Vivienne and Jane had been sexually involved— if it was true—changed the relationship dynamics underpinning the entire investigation. I knew, rationally, the revelation was important. I knew I needed to confirm it. But I felt braindead and hollowed out. When I tried to force myself to think, I came up with details that seemed useless—in Agatha Christie’s Nemesis, the question of a same-sex desire underpins much of the story, but it’s presented as obsessive and twisted. And Josephine Tey’s biographers have long suggested that she was a closeted lesbian herself. Were those facts important? Or were they just my exhausted brain randomly firing in an attempt to make connections?

I had no idea, which was part of the problem.

A bigger part of the problem was that it was hard to focus on a mystery, or on feeling sorry for myself—or, frankly, on feeling melodramatic—with so much happening around me. People—tourists and locals alike—crowded the beach, and it seemed like they took up every inch of available space. Many of them had clearly been there all day, working on elaborate designs, and I realized with a hint of guilt that my friends probably would have been here too if they hadn’t been making sure I didn’t get myself killed. We finally found a spot a quarter mile down the beach and got ourselves set up. It wasn’t a hard walk, and everybody besides me seemed to be in decent spirits. Keme was clearly thrilled about the opportunity to demonstrate for Millie his capacity for carrying heavy things.

I turned down Indira and Fox’s invitation to help them with their sandcastle. (In case you’re wondering—no, Keme did not offer, and I was going to remember that because his birthday was coming up.) I set to work on my own design, using the little trowels and scoops and buckets to excavate my raw material and then start building.

Even here, at the edge of the crowd, it wasn’t exactly quiet. A little girl shouted with excitement as she sprinted toward the water. When the swash rolled up the beach, she came running back. It was, apparently, an endless game. Mr. Cheek, who had dressed in one of those full-body, old-timey bathing suits (the striped kind, you know?), was busy having an energetic discussion with an out-of-towner in an enormous sunhat. (He was telling her about his own, personal additions to the standard sandcastle design. I swear to God, I heard the word bathhouse about seven times.) Brad Newsum, of Newsum Decorative Rock, had marshaled what appeared to be an army of teenagers to create a sandcastle city. The teens—the boys, in particular—looked over at Keme a few times. They didn’t say anything, though. And Keme pretended not to notice.

He actually might not have noticed because he was thoroughly engaged in some hardcore (and, frankly, agonizing to watch) teenage boy flirting. He stole Millie’s hat, and she had to chase him to give it back. He knocked over the tower she was building, which turned into a splash war at the edge of the water. He had somehow (God bless that enterprising young man) managed to find a reason to take his shirt off, and he had apparently chosen as his latest act of, uh, courtship to bump into Millie as hard as he could every time she tried to add a detail to their design.

Fox and Indira, on the other hand, had what appeared to be a solid working relationship. Fox, who had worn a magenta caftan to the beach (the outfit was completed by foam beach slides that were designed to look like googly-eyed fish), was snoring softly as they napped. Indira’s sandcastle was—let’s face it—perfect. It had some strong Sleeping Beauty vibes, and there was something soothing about watching Indira at work: the concentration on her face, the steady, self-assured movements of her hands.

“Dash, your rock looks good,” Millie said.

I stared at her. And then I looked back at my lump of a sandcastle.

Keme whispered something in Millie’s ear, and Millie giggled before she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“It’s not a rock,” I said. “It’s—I’m just getting started!”

“Why don’t you help me, dear?” Indira asked. “You’re so good at adding the little scallops.”

Okay, I have to admit—that almost worked. Because I was very good at adding the little scallops. But I caught myself and said, “No, thanks. I’m going to keep working on my sandcastle.”

Keme whispered something else, and that really cracked Millie up. She at least had the good grace to look guilty about it, though.

I was about to respond to that when an excited laugh broke through my thoughts.

Immediately to my right, no more than twenty yards away, Bobby and Kiefer had just arrived. Kiefer was on his feet, holding his hands up as though warding Bobby off, and grinning. Bobby, for his part, sat crisscross on the ground, shaking sand out of his shirt. To judge from the look on Kiefer’s face, I knew who had put it there. And to judge by the look on Bobby’s face—well, he was smiling. But it was clear Kiefer wanted to do some of the playful chasing I’d seen from Keme and Millie not too long ago, and it was equally clear Bobby had no intention of getting to his feet.

“Maybe you should come work over here,” Indira said.

I shook my head and bent over my sandcastle—it was not a rock. And, just to prove my point, I shaved a bit off the sides to square it up. And then I added windows. And then because there was something soothing about poking my finger into the sand as hard as I could, over and over again, I got a little carried away, and the rock-castle crumbled.

“That’s okay, Dash,” Millie called brightly. “That happened to me all the time when I was little.”

I chose not to respond to that.

The problem, though, was that now that I knew Bobby and Kiefer were nearby, I couldn’t help but notice, well, everything.

“I just feel so bad for her, babe,” Kiefer was saying. “I mean, she’s so talented, and she’s such a good person, and she totally didn’t deserve that.”

Bobby made a noncommittal noise in response. I recognized that noise. I had once, memorably, heard that noise when Bobby had been resting with his eyes closed and I’d ranked all the Spider-Man movies by gayness.

“I just don’t know how she’s ever going to perform again,” Kiefer said.

Bobby’s response came a moment later—polite, but distracted. “Who?”

“Ariana Grande,” Kiefer said, with all the charmed vexation of someone who is deeply (and newly) in love. “The bombing. Remember?”

“Right,” Bobby said in that same tone. “I don’t know.”

Kiefer gave an exaggerated sigh. Then, without missing a beat, he said, “Oh, remember how I told you Uggs were going to come back? Well, get this: they’re totally coming back.”

Bobby said, “Uh huh.”

Okay, I’m a terrible person. I admit it. But at that moment, I couldn’t help it—I turned my head down and focused on my sandcastle as I smiled.

At a generous guess, I’d say Bobby got about five seconds of precious silence before Kiefer said, “Oh my God, did you watch the clip I sent you?”

It might have been my imagination, but it sounded like Bobby’s troweling was getting a little more…assertive. His voice sounded level, though, when he said, “I don’t know. Which one?”

“Bobby!” But the mock disappointment vanished in excitement as Kiefer continued, “The one from Watch What Happens Live. You’ve got to watch it—I saw it last night, and I couldn’t wait to show you.” With that same callow attempt at weariness, he added, “That’s why I sent it to you. It’ll be so nice to just watch all the same shows once we move in together so I don’t have to remind you to watch the clips I send you.”

And there was a mind-boggler of a sentence, I thought.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kiefer showing Bobby something on his phone. (Fine, I admit it: I was watching them.) I knew when the video ended because Kiefer looked at Bobby, clearly waiting for a reaction. Whatever he wanted, though, he wasn’t getting, because finally he burst out, “Doesn’t he look terrible?”

“I think Andy Cohen always looks like that.”

“No, not Andy. Matthew Perry!”

For the first time, Kiefer’s frustration seemed real rather than manufactured. They lapsed into silence. And because I’m a terrible person, I couldn’t help but grin as I went back to work. I could even feel bad for Kiefer, a little. I mean, it was obvious he didn’t know Bobby at all. Celebrity news? Fashion trends? Bravo TV? Getting Bobby Mai to talk—to really talk, not just those polite, noncommittal responses—was no mean feat, but as someone who was a master at it, I could tell that Kiefer had zero idea what he was doing.

And then, in the tone of someone clearly out of his depths but trying—as always—so earnestly, Bobby said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about that stuff. Matthew Perry was on Friends, right? Why does he look so bad?”

Between one heartbeat and the next, I couldn’t breathe. It was like a big, brass hand had closed around my chest. Tears flooded my eyes, and even though I blinked as fast as I could, they spilled down my cheeks. I staggered to my feet, knocking over the rest of my sandcastle in the process, and lurched into the throng of people.

“Dash?” Millie called after me.

Indira said something I couldn’t hear.

I was fairly sure Fox snorted themselves awake.

All of it registered at a distance, though. All I could focus on was that crushing sensation in my chest, and the sobs tearing through me, and the press of bodies, the hub of voices, the pounding beat of music—all that noise and heat and proximity, sharpening the edge of my anxiety until it was close to full-blown panic, and all I could do was run.

It turned out that, even on autopilot, my body knew what to do; somehow, I ended up sitting on a parking stop behind the food trucks. It wasn’t exactly quiet, or even pleasant—the trucks’ generators were loud, and the air was thick with exhaust—but it was blessedly free of people. The curb was pleasantly warm under me, and the sun was at my back. I put my head between my knees and cried.

More than anything, it was the surprise of it—that feeling of being caught off guard—that was the most terrifying. Until now, I’d been angry at Bobby. I’d been frustrated. Yes, I’d been hurt. But all those feelings had been, in their own way, buffers—safety mechanisms to cushion me from this. And this , now that it was here, was so huge and so awful and so painful, that for a few moments, I thought I was having a panic attack of my own: the tightness in my chest, the thickness of my throat, the animal part of my body screaming at me that I was dying.

But it passed. It always does. And then I just cried out of hurt and disappointment and loss.

I was still crying when the hinges squeaked. There was a step. Then a pause. And then a familiar voice said, “Who do this?”

Wiping my face, I shook my head, but I couldn’t quite summon up words.

A moment later, Sergey crouched in front of me. The short-order cook for Let’s Taco Bout Tacos had thinning blond hair cropped close to the scalp, pink cheeks, and the face shape (and muscles, and hairy forearms, etc.) of a villain out of Die Hard . He was also a very big Dashiell Dawson Dane fan, for reasons I didn’t understand, although I suspected it had something to do with the fact that I single-handedly bought enough tacos to keep them in business.

Sergey stared at me for a moment. Then he patted me on the head. Not once, mind you—he just kept patting. And in a quietly terrifying voice, he asked again, “Who do this?”

“Nobody,” I said—or tried to. There was a lot of sniffling. My eyes stung, and I was snotty from all the crying. “Nobody. Nothing happened.” And it’s probably hard to believe, but there was something weirdly comforting about having him pat my head, and I found myself struggling with tears again. “I’m so stupid. I’m such an idiot, and I ruined everything.”

Pat. Pat. Pat.

Gently, Sergey said, “You no idiot. You number one boy.”

“No. I’m not number one boy. I’m number one dummy.”

“No,” Sergey corrected—a little forcefully. So forcefully, in fact, that if there had been less head patting, I might have thought we were getting into an argument. “You no dummy. You bear.”

I wiped my eyes and tried to get a fix on him. “Uh, not really. I mean, I’m not very hairy. Or big. Or snuggly. I’m not really into the whole tribe thing, but I guess if I had to pick, I’d be more of a—”

“No,” Sergey said. “Some men like cock.”

Ladies and gentlemen, you could have heard a pin drop. (Okay, not really, on account of the trucks and generators and seagulls.)

“What is happening with everyone’s language?” I asked. “First Fox, now you. And yes, I mean, some men prefer, um, dudes, and other men prefer, uh, dudettes.” Great. Now I was living inside a movie from the 1990s. (Why couldn’t I think of one movie from the ’90s off the top of my head? Point Break! But I wasn’t sure they said dudettes in Point Break —)

I couldn’t finish that line of thought because LaLeesha stepped out of the truck at that moment. LaLeesha is about half a foot taller than me, has the best skin I’ve ever seen, and spends a lot of time and money on her braids. She’s a certified taco genius, and at that moment, she looked like a goddess descending to earth with a compostable takeout container in her hands. Inside the takeout container were three tacos. I swear I heard angels singing hallelujah.

“He means a rooster,” explained LaLeesha. As she handed me the tacos, she continued, “And he’s talking about traits. Some people are like roosters.”

Sergey nodded as though this had all been rather obvious. “Some men like cock.”

I still feel like I wasn’t crazy for jumping to conclusions.

“You no like cock,” Sergey told me.

LaLeesha’s mouth twitched, and I sent her a dark look—which was, admittedly difficult when I was sinking my teeth into—

“Oh my God,” I moaned around the taco. “Is that pineapple-mango al pastor ?”

“You bear,” Sergey told me. And he put his hand over my heart. (Which did kind of get in the way of my taco-eating.) “You heart of bear.”

I paused mid-taco—mostly for air, but also to politely say, “Thank you, but I don’t feel like I—”

“And you brain of mouse.”

“Uh, because mice are resilient, I hope—”

LaLeesha didn’t even try not to laugh.

Sergey was nodding, but it didn’t seem to be about my rather optimistic interpretation. It seemed, instead, to be about something that had occurred to him. He was sitting back on his heels, considering me with a new look in his eyes. “And you body of hedgehog.”

“Okay, but—seriously, Sergey? Body of hedgehog? What about body of, I don’t know, deer? Deer are graceful. Or even, um, body of fox, I guess.” Now I was getting into it. “Or body of meerkat!”

“Body of hedgehog,” Sergey said, mostly as though in confirmation to himself.

“I liked heart of bear better.”

“You heart of bear.”

“I don’t know—”

“You heart of bear.”

There it was again—that tone like I’d better get on board, or things were going to get ugly.

“I guess I’m heart of bear.”

He said more forcefully, “You heart of bear.”

“I’m heart of bear.”

More loudly again, “You heart of bear.”

“I’m heart of bear!” I shouted (but not until I’d started in on the second taco, which—wait for it—was deep-fried Baja fish).

“Yes. And you number one boy.”

“I am number one boy!”

(Number one at eating tacos, anyway.)

Sergey nodded. He patted my head again. And then he reached behind his back and pulled out an enormous knife and said, “Now, you tell Sergey: who do this?”

“Okay,” LaLeesha said, “are we done here? Because I need my cook to stay out of prison.”

“Uh, yeah. Thank you, Sergey. That was—you didn’t have to do that.”

He nodded, murmured, “Number one boy,” apparently in approval, and let LaLeesha lead him back into the truck.

I sat on the parking stop and finished my tacos. (The third one was street corn chicken, which was incredible.) I felt…better. I mean, it was hard not to take the body of hedgehog thing personally, but I was going to assume it had been meant in the same spirit as the rest of Sergey’s comments. Like, maybe I was good at protecting myself? (Hold your laughter, please.) Plus it was hard not to have your spirits lifted after having people take care of you—the yelling call-and-response thing had been weirdly rousing, and the tacos hadn’t hurt either. I didn’t let myself think about Bobby and Kiefer. I just sat there, enjoying the warmth of the sun, the sounds of the waves and happy voices, and this private haven that gave me a few minutes of peace away from all the peopling.

Two Girls and a Scoop (hands down, the best ice cream truck in Hastings Rock) was starting to call my name when my phone vibrated. Which, I guess, was someone literally calling me.

I didn’t recognize the number, but I thought I had an idea this time what to expect.

“This call is originating at the Oregon State Penitentiary from,” said a prerecorded voice. And then Vivienne said her name.

I accepted the call and said hello.

“I’d like an update,” Vivienne said. “How is the investigation progressing?”

“Not well.”

Her silence only lasted a beat. “What does that mean?”

“It means—” I stood and started down the boardwalk, moving away from the crowds and the rumbling generators. “—it’s hard to conduct an effective investigation when the client lies to me.”

“What in the world are you talking about? When did I lie to you?”

“Withholding information, Vivienne. That’s lying by omission.”

“Explain yourself.”

“No, you explain yourself. I’ve spent the last few days trying to put together a story that’s thirty years old, Vivienne, and being uncomfortably aware that everyone in your family seems to have a reason to lie to me. You didn’t bother telling me that your ex-husband is still very much a part of the family. You didn’t bother mentioning your little group of friends. You didn’t tell me your ex had married Richard’s widow, or that Jane was having an affair, or that nobody can account for Candy’s whereabouts that night. You didn’t tell me that someone would try to kill me, and let me tell you, I’m sick and tired—”

“What do you mean, someone tried to kill you? What happened?”

“Someone ran me off the road and then tried to finish the job with a gun.”

“Are you all right?”

I ignored the question. “So, why don’t we try this again: is there anything you want to tell me about Richard’s disappearance? Anything you think I should know?”

The quality of the call wasn’t great; in the background, the connection crackled, and static flared.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“I don’t know, Vivienne.” I glanced around, cupped my hand around the phone, and whispered furiously, “How about, ‘Yes, Jane was cheating on Richard, and it was with me.’”

Nothing. Into the silence of our conversation came the sounds of a city still busily alive: a family emerged from a shop down the street, the little girl talking excitedly about the kite she’d just gotten; Cyd Wofford zipped by on his bike and rang the bell in greeting; Althea Wilson roared around the corner in a boat of a Cadillac and nearly took out a newspaper box. (They were part of the tourist schtick, not real newspapers, although it was fun to see what Jemitha Green came up with every week.)

And then Vivienne made a faint sound.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Is it true?”

“All this time,” she said, “someone knew.” She gave a strange laugh. “Who?”

“So, it is true.”

Her voice gained strength. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t think that was important?”

“No, Dashiell—Dash. No, I didn’t. Because it wasn’t important. Jane wouldn’t have killed Richard. She loved Richard.”

“But she was sleeping with you.”

“Yes.”

But she didn’t say anything else.

“Do you know what I should have asked you when you got me started on this idiotic search?” I said.

“Where was I the night Richard died?”

“That’s right. What’s your alibi, Vivienne? Because I’ve got to admit, Candy doesn’t make a particularly compelling case—the nonsense about the money, about you leaving for Portland, your arguments with Richard. But when she told me about you and Jane, well, things started to take on a different light.”

“I never would have hurt my brother.”

“Everyone keeps telling me how much they loved Richard. Jane loved him, but she was sleeping with you. You loved him, but you were sleeping with his wife. Neil was his best friend, but now Neil’s wearing Richard’s jewelry and living in Richard’s house and has basically taken over Richard’s life. Hell, everyone tells me Neil is the son Arlen never had. Even Candy claims she loved Richard, but then it turns out she thinks he ruined her life. So, the problem, Vivienne, is that I’m not sure anyone loved Richard. He sounded like an unhappy, troubled man, who in the last year of his life was causing a lot of problems for the people around him. It’s easy to talk about how much you love someone when he hasn’t been around for the last thirty years to make your life more difficult.”

I waited for the reaction—the denial, the insistence, maybe even the shouting. Instead, I thought I heard Vivienne swallow, and then she asked, “He’s wearing Richard’s jewelry?”

The question caught me off guard. “A bracelet,” I said. “I saw it in the photo you sent me. Neil was wearing it the other day.”

“I see.” But her voice sounded numb.

I found myself suddenly adrift in the conversation—without the friction of her resistance to give it direction. After another silent moment, I tried to soften my voice. “Vivienne, I understand that you grew up in a different time. I know things weren’t the same. But the world is different now, and whatever happened between you and Jane, it was a long time ago. You trusted me to try to find whoever killed your brother. For heaven’s sake, I’m gay. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“You’re right.” She cleared her throat, and a trace of her usual briskness came back into the words—but it was still only a pale imitation. “You’re right, Dash. I should have told you. I apologize. I think—I think I’ve wasted your time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I understand that you aren’t willing to take their claims at face value,” she said. “I understand that it’s your role to be suspicious. But I promise you, neither Neil nor Jane killed Richard. Certainly not so that, years later, they could get married, and Neil could, as you put it, take over Richard’s life. That’s simply not what happened.”

“With all due respect, Vivienne, I don’t think there’s any way you can know that.”

“Yes,” she said. “Well.” And then she cleared her throat again. “I apologize again for not revealing the full extent of my relationship with Jane.”

The pain in her voice, more than anything else, gave me pause. And there was something else too, a note I’d heard before, like she wasn’t ready to stop talking.

So, I asked, “What happened?”

It was a broad question, and I meant—well, I wasn’t sure exactly what I meant. Why did you both decide to marry men? Why did you have an affair? Why did it end?

Maybe Vivienne heard all of them. Maybe, after all those years of hiding, she simply wanted to talk.

“It was a different time,” she said, and that familiar matter-of-factness I knew from watching her on television was blended now with something more human. “We knew about homosexuals, but not in any personal way. On top of that, there was far less discussion, shall we say, about how women were supposed to feel in a relationship. I loved Neil. And Jane loved Richard. They were both smart, athletic, handsome, and charming. It all seemed straightforward—we’d get married, Neil and Richard would get jobs, and we’d go on living the way we had been, as best friends.”

I didn’t say anything. The distant voices from the sandcastle competition competed with the crash of the surf.

“And then I actually did marry Neil, and…well, not to put too fine a point on it, but we discovered there was a long distance between a polite kiss on my father’s porch and, well, the act itself. Neil did his best, of course, but I knew from that first night it wasn’t going to work. We waited a respectable time, or what felt like a respectable time—we were children, so any time at all seemed like an eternity—and we divorced. My mother and father were furious, of course.” She stopped. “Have you met my father?”

“In passing. Would it surprise you that he didn’t want to talk?”

“Not particularly.” Her hesitation suggested a silent struggle, and then she asked, “How is he?”

I thought about that. “Ornery. He threatened me with a shotgun the first time he saw me.”

A bright, almost childlike laugh burst out of Vivienne. “That sounds like my father.”

“Candy says Neil is more his son than Richard.”

“By now, I imagine that’s true. He took to Neil from the first time they met; Neil came over to study, and my father recognized him from the basketball team. They were a match made in heaven.”

“Why was your father’s relationship with Richard so strained?”

She laughed again, but it was colder this time. “No, Dash, I’m sorry. My father didn’t kill my brother.”

“Everyone talks about how charming Richard was. Why didn’t it work on your father?”

“I suppose precisely because he was our father; parents tend to know us in a way no one else does. Richard and my father…they were like oil and water. Once Richard became a teenager, they couldn’t agree on anything. I’m sure you know how it is. Part of that was simply the son asserting himself, trying to establish his own identity. Rebellion against the authority figure of the father and all that. But part of it was personality; at some point, I believe, Richard decided to push back, and once Richard decided something, there was no changing his mind.” Something about that tugged at the back of my mind—something about Richard, how he’d been fighting with everyone before he disappeared. But before I could try to follow up on the question, Vivienne continued, “Of course, it didn’t help that our mother loved Richard so much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Richard was the favorite. He could do no wrong. I’m barely a year younger, but you’d think I’d come from another family. Everything was Richard. It drove my father crazy, especially once he and Richard started fighting.” Vivienne stopped, and then she broke her own silence unexpectedly. “The only time she ever fought with Richard was when he married Jane. I honestly thought my mother would rather kill him herself than see him in the hands of another woman. She never liked Jane; she thought Jane was putting on airs, which, if you know Jane, is the last thing Jane would do. It only got worse after the wedding. When Richard…went missing, my mother was already sick. She stopped speaking to Jane the moment she heard Richard had disappeared, and she never spoke to her again.”

There was so much to follow up on, and I scrambled to pick the best question. “I heard Jane got cold feet before the wedding.”

Vivienne measured breaths came across the call. “And you want to know if we were already involved.”

“I don’t know what I want to know. I’m just trying to understand. If she and Richard were already fighting, or if he did something—”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She inhaled sharply, as though trying to rein in her temper. “No, Dash. Nothing happened. And no, we hadn’t begun our…our affair, which simply sounds too tawdry. It began later. Neil and I were already divorced. One night, Jane came over. She was upset. Neil and Richard had been fighting.” I could hear her struggling to master herself, trying to summon up that Matron of Murder matter-of-factness, but her voice quavered. “Had been brawling like teenagers, as a matter of fact. By that point, Richard was fighting with everyone, but it was most upsetting when it was with Neil, of course. She didn’t want to go home. And I didn’t want her to go home.” For a moment, it was like Vivienne didn’t remember she was speaking to me. “She had rain in her hair, and she smelled like camellias.”

In the silence that came after, the sound of her painful, dry swallow came clearly across the phone’s tiny speaker.

“Did Richard know?” I asked.

Waves slapped the sand. The afternoon sun laid a golden filigree over the surface of the water.

“Of course,” she finally said.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

Something must have roused Vivienne, because she said in a poor attempt at briskness, “My time is up. I believe I’ve changed my mind. I no longer require your services, and I expect you to end your investigation immediately.”

“What? Vivienne, they’re going to hang this murder on you. Candy’s story isn’t all that great, but there’s no alternative. Actually, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. When I asked her where she was that night, she lost her mind—”

“As I said, I no longer require your services.” Vivienne continued in a gentler tone. “But since you are so hungry for alibis, allow me to put your mind at rest. I was with Candy the night my brother disappeared. She’d gotten herself into trouble. There was a man—”

“Zane Potthof?”

For a moment, Vivienne’s surprise was audible in her pause. “Well done, Dash. Yes. Candy was infatuated with him. He was, among other things, a wastrel, a gambler, and a batterer of women. Richard had run him off once, to Candy’s dismay. Father hated him—I mean, my God, can you imagine?” Her voice turned mocking. “Arlen Lundgren, exalted leader of the Fraternal Order of the Sons of Sweden, Astoria Chapter, and his daughter is hooking up, I believe you’d say, with a man who was arrested the month before for public indecency. Candy went looking for Zane after Richard scared him away, of course; she’s always been unhappy, and she’s always been convinced that a man will solve her problems. She also, inconveniently, has terrible taste in men and doesn’t have the common sense God gave a pair of shoes. I remember after the divorce watching her prance around Neil; I could have told her that wasn’t going to work. Anyway, she’d gone after Zane, and he’d decided to soothe his wounded pride by taking his anger out on her, rather than facing Richard again. She called me from a pool hall across the state line, and I spent the night with her at a hospital. I had to go get her because if I didn’t, Father would have tracked her down and killed her himself.”

“But she made it sound like she was home when Jane came over.”

“She was,” Vivienne said. “I got her home a little before dawn. So, there you have it, Mr. Dane. Everyone has an alibi, and you can rest easy knowing you did your best on an impossible task.”

Before she could disconnect, I blurted, “What happened with Jane?”

She was still there, still listening.

“Why did you leave? Why didn’t you—I mean, you loved each other, didn’t you?”

Her silence lasted so long that I began to think she wouldn’t answer. But when she spoke, her voice was strangely gentle. “Allow me to tell you something you’d have learned on your own over time, Dash: love is never enough.”

“What does that mean?”

Screams of excited laughter drifted down to me. Happy people living their happy lives. Birds cut the sky, nothing more than dark wings scissoring across the sunset. The waves kept coming.

“It means I was afraid.” Vivienne’s words were tight, the sound of someone trying their hardest to buckle down a sovereign emotion. “She wanted more. And I wanted to be famous.”