Chapter 4

Staring at the shotgun pointed my direction, I made a snap decision: I was going to tackle Bobby.

It wasn’t a rational thought. It wasn’t a logical conclusion. It’s hard to even call it a plan, since it was something that seemed to happen at the cellular level. Someone was aiming a weapon at us, and my body tensed, seemingly of its own accord, as I readied myself. There wasn’t any sort of intermediate process.

“Sir—” Deputy Bobby said, in his best deputy voice.

“Daddy!”

The storm door clattered open, and a woman lowered herself down the steps in a flustered hustle that was impeded by the fact that she had to hold on to the rail with both hands and take each step one at a time. My first impression was of middle-aged dumpiness—the short, frizzy hair that had been fried blond; the extra weight; the varicose veins. But then I realized that wasn’t quite right, because even though middle age came to everyone, this woman had overlaid hers with a veneer of gas station chic. Instead of a dressing gown or a robe, she wore a plasticky kimono with a dragon on its back. Her nails were a fire-engine red, visible even at a distance. And when the breeze shifted, the fetor of the slough was replaced by something I could only imagine she called scent .

“Daddy,” she said again, as she lowered herself to the patio behind the house next door. “Put that down! You’re going to get someone killed!”

The old man didn’t even look at her.

“Put it away!” She pushed on the shotgun’s barrel until it lowered, and then she planted herself in front of him, balled up her fists, and set them on her hips. “What in the world’s gotten into you?” But she didn’t wait for a reply. She turned around. Apparently we didn’t deserve the fists-on-hips treatment, because one of her hands drifted up to clutch the kimono shut at the neck, while the other patted the air around her hair (not the hair itself, I was careful to note, which I was beginning to suspect was supposed to look that way). “I’m sorry. Daddy’s always been protective of his little girl.”

Then she giggled.

Bobby, bless his heart, was staring.

“She’s batting her eyelashes at you,” I whispered.

“You two must have had the fright of your lives.” The saccharine tone switched when she snapped, “Go back inside, Daddy!”

The old man gave us another long, lingering look before going inside. With the threat of imminent death removed, I was starting to think a little more clearly, and I did some mental math. It was possible—heck, it was likely—that this man was Vivienne’s father. It was difficult to imagine Vivienne having a father—or being a child, for that matter. But what was even more difficult was imagining that this woman was—what? Vivienne’s sister?

Whoever she was, she was all sugar again, swishing toward us in her kimono. “Are you all right? Honey, you look like you need to sit down.”

That last bit was directed toward Bobby, who was still staring. That surprised me a bit; Bobby was, under normal circumstances, unflappable. I’d once seen Mr. Cheek (owner of Fog Belt Ladies Wear, and a fervent admirer of Deputy Mai) lock himself in a dressing room so that Bobby would have to rescue him, only to jump into Bobby’s arms once Bobby got the door open. And Bobby had handled it like a champ (although he’d been less patient when Mr. Cheek had tried to unbutton his shirt). Right now, though, Bobby seemed to be having trouble processing what was going on, and it took me a moment to realize that he was trying to decide if he should act like a deputy.

I decided to take pity on him. “I’m sorry about coming back here unannounced. We should have knocked.”

“What? Oh, you mean Daddy. He’s always like that; it wouldn’t matter if you knocked.” She had gotten close enough now that she reached up and pressed the back of her hand to Bobby’s forehead. “You’re like ice! I think you’re going into shock.”

Bobby did not look like he was going into shock. Bobby looked like he might be going into deputy mode, and like he was about to begin dispatching all problems with extreme professionalism.

“We didn’t get a chance to introduce ourselves,” I said before the voice of the law could ruin everything. “I’m Dash Dane, and this is Bobby—”

“Oh my Gawd!” (You could hear the w.) “I thought I recognized you! Oh my Gawd! Oh my Gawd! I’m Candy Yamamoto. Candace, but I go by Candy. Candy Lundgren.” As though waiting for me to connect the dots, she rolled her eyes at Bobby and added, “Vivienne’s sister.”

I mean, okay. Technically anything was possible. And the longer I looked at her, the more I could detect a family resemblance—in the chin, more than anywhere else. If somebody bleached the dickens out of Vivienne’s hair and then plugged her into a light socket, maybe it would have been easier to match them up. But she certainly didn’t act like someone whose brother’s body had just been discovered. And even though I’d been expecting something like this—even though I’d already guessed, or half-guessed, that she was Vivienne’s sister—it was one thing to float a hypothesis, and another to have it confirmed.

Because I honestly couldn’t imagine someone more different from the Vivienne Carver I knew. Vivienne was all polish, all class. Vivienne was a razor-sharp mind. She was like Dr. Moriarty in Jackie O’s body. (Okay, that was definitely a book I was going to have to write.) And Candy Yamamoto, née Lundgren, was…not.

I felt bad as soon as I thought it. It was unkind, first of all. And it was grounded in nothing but a first impression. I didn’t know Candy. I didn’t know anything about her at all.

But as she pressed Bobby’s hands between her own (and, in the process, managed to bring his hand to her, uh, bosom), I had the feeling that, sometimes, first impressions were right on the money.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said. “I saw you on the news. You’re much cuter in person.”

“Um, thank you?”

“You’ve got to tell them to shoot you from your left, honey. Your left is your good side. No, wait, let me see. Well, maybe it’s your right. I don’t know!” This seemed to titillate her to no end—she burst out into fresh giggles.

“It’s definitely his right,” Bobby said.

Hands on her hips, she considered Bobby now. “And you ,” she said, “don’t have a bad side.”

“Thank you,” Bobby said.

“Oh, you know what you need?” She patted herself down. “You need a tattoo! Give you a bit of an edge. I’ve got a butterfly—if you’re good, I’ll show you—and my friend owns the Skin Art Collective, that’s where we all hang out—dang it, I know I have one of his cards.” And if my head wasn’t about to explode already from a sixty-something woman spouting phrases like that’s where we all hang out , she went and topped it by giving Bobby a coquettish look and adding, “He’s not my boyfriend, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

And Bobby said, “How do you know I don’t have a tattoo already?”

That was it. The end. My head officially exploded.

Candy, who was now somehow holding Bobby’s hand again, gave him a playful swat. “Oh you!”

“Yes,” I somehow managed to say. “Oh you.”

I know nobody’s going to believe me. I know that I’m going to sound like I’m making things up. I know it’s flat-out crazy. But even though I can’t prove it, I swear to God, in that moment, staring back at me with his typical impassive expression, Bobby winked at me.

“But what are you doing here?” Candy asked.

“It’s a long story—” I began.

“We heard about your brother,” Bobby said.

Which, to be fair, could have been taken any number of ways.

Candy chose to take it one particular way. Her eyes widened, and her expression quickened with what I wanted to call restrained jubilation. She looked like someone trying not to smile at a funeral. “You’re sleuthing!”

“I’d call it investigating—” I tried.

But Candy spoke over me. “You’ve got to come inside so I can tell you everything. ”

And without missing a beat, she looped her arm through Bobby’s and towed him toward the house. Bobby cast a backward glance at me, and I wanted to call his expression restrained you’re-going-to-pay-for-this.

Candy led us into the kitchen, which was, thankfully, free of any sign of her shotgun-toting father. It was a small, white space, and the only color came from the mauve-colored roses on the curtains and a Formica table that had to be at least fifty years old and was the same shade of green as a stick of chewing gum. Frilly tea towels hung from the oven door’s handle. A polyester mat on the table supported a vase of dusty plastic flowers. A cross-stitch sampler hung above the sink with the words TRUST IN THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART. It might have been kitsch in the right hands, but instead, it felt like someone had died, and they hadn’t cleaned out the house yet. The dirty dishes in the sink, and their sour smell, were part of that.

“Sit down, sit down,” Candy said, waving at the Formica table and the matching chrome-legged chairs. “Let me get you something to drink.”

“We’re all right,” Bobby said.

“You have to have something to drink. I can make you coffee.”

She bent to inspect a lower cabinet, which made the kimono do problematic things.

“We’re really fine,” I said. “And we don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

Candy fixed her gaze on me. “I was being polite.”

“We’ll have coffee,” Bobby said.

She didn’t actually sniff or shake a finger at me, but her message of disapproval came through loud and clear.

It wasn’t until we were all seated around the table with cups of truly subpar Folger’s that Candy said, “You’re here to prove Vivienne killed him, aren’t you? Mind if I smoke?”

“Actually—” I began.

But instead of a cigarette, she took out a vape pen and drew hard on it. The resulting vapor, which smelled like, well, candy, immediately took up residence in my skull in the form of a newborn headache.

“Why do you think we’re here to prove Vivienne killed your brother?” Bobby asked.

“Because she killed him.” Candy’s gaze moved to me. “And because he already proved she killed all those other people.”

“Could you explain that?” I asked. “It’s still not clear to me why anyone thinks Vivienne had anything to do with this.”

Candy took another puff of the vape and said, “I told the police all this.”

“I know, but it’d be helpful to hear it again.”

“They thought it was great stuff. They wrote it all down.”

“Uh.” Genius struck, and I took out my phone. “I hope I have your permission to record this session.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded, and I got the sense that Candy Yamamoto was wondering how a bozo like me had managed to catch Vivienne in the first place.

After I’d started recording, I said, “Could you explain this to us the way you explained it to the police?”

Candy sprang into action. “The first thing you’ve got to understand is that nobody really knows Viv. I mean, everybody thinks they do. They see this big-name author lady, and they see her in her fancy dresses and with her hair done and those fake nails, and they figure that’s who she is. But they don’t know the real Viv. Everybody falls for the act, you know?”

I almost—but not quite—said, Not everybody .

“See, Viv’s only ever cared about one thing: herself. As long as she’s been alive, she’s been focused on taking care of number one, and she never cared who got hurt in the process.” She played with the vape. “Look at Neil.”

“Who’s Neil?” Bobby asked.

Bobby got a dose of Candy’s look too before she said, “Neil Carver. Her ex -husband.”

I mean, part of me had understood that, at some point, Vivienne had been married—she’d been Mrs. Vivienne Carver, after all. But I’d always assumed that Mr. Carver had gone wherever husbands who were inconvenient to the plot go. (Heaven, presumably?)

“Neil’s just the sweetest man on two legs,” Candy continued, “and Viv couldn’t even hang on to him. It’s because she’s so cold. Some girls are like that, you know? They don’t know how to have fun.” At that point, Bobby got a very different kind of look from Candy, and she took a lot of time uncrossing her legs and crossing them again. “It’s a shame, too, because Neil’s a catch, too. He and Dad still go fishing. Can you believe that?”

“You still see Mr. Carver?” I said.

“Yeah, of course.” And then, in a tone meant to suggest it was no big deal, she added, “He takes me to lunch, too. I think that’s pretty sweet, don’t you?”

I thought about how I’d feel if Hugo still wanted to go hunting with my dad or take my mom out to lunch. The politest phrase was probably blow a gasket .

“Very sweet,” I said. “Did he—”

“He could have done much better for himself,” Candy said. “He was very popular in high school, and nobody can figure out why he stuck with Viv.”

“So, they were—” I tried.

“It’s because he and Richard were best friends, of course,” Candy said over me. “And Neil’s such a sweetheart. Once he realized what a cold fish Viv was, he was in too deep. He stuck it out as long as he could, I guess.”

“Neil and Richard were best friends?” Bobby asked.

“They were all friends, the four of them, ever since they were in high school. Richard and Jane, and Neil and Viv. They were going together the whole time. They even wanted to get married on the same day, only Jane got cold feet, and that’s why Richard and Jane got married later.” Candy took another puff, and the sickly sweet vapor rolled over me. “Don’t get me started on her ,” she said, which was apparently preamble for, well, getting started. “Jane never knows when she has a good thing. She and Richard were always fighting. I mean, I don’t think that’s right, do you? It’s the woman’s job to make her husband happy.” She leaned forward and laid her hand over Bobby’s. Red nails scratched lightly at his knuckles. “Don’t you think?”

Bobby pulled his hand away—politely—and said, “So, Jane is Richard’s widow?”

This time, annoyance flickered in Candy’s expression. “That’s right.” And then, as though Bobby had somehow missed something obvious, she added, “I’m divorced, you know. He left me .”

Somehow—barely—I managed to turn my laugh into a cough.

Bobby’s sneaker connected with my ankle, and my cough turned into a yelp. His voice was as untroubled as a baby’s bathwater (is that an expression?) when he said, “You mentioned arguments. Do you know what Richard and Jane were fighting about?”

“Sex. It’s always sex. Or money, I guess, but they didn’t have to worry about that. Richard had a good job at the cannery.”

As any number of mystery novels or true crime TV shows (hello, Dateline ) will tell you, a good job and a healthy income have never been obstacles to arguments about money. But I decided to follow up on Candy’s obvious bait. “Was Richard having an affair?”

“What? God, no. Richard never even looked at another woman. He loved Jane. It was Jane. She was having an affair.”

The whisper of a footfall made me glance at the hall that led off from the kitchen, but I couldn’t see anyone. I hadn’t imagined the sound, though, and when I caught Bobby’s eye, I could tell he’d heard it too.

“Do you know that for a fact?” Bobby asked.

“Of course.”

“Who was Jane having an affair with?”

Candy opened her mouth to fire off the answer. Then color rushed into her cheeks, and she faltered. “I don’t know. Not exactly. But she was .”

“That sounds like a motive,” I said.

“God, no,” Candy said. “She never would have hurt Richard. Besides, she wasn’t even home that night. See, they had a big fight, and she left.” As Candy spoke, her tone changed—the gossipy thrill became more subdued, and her account began to sound formulaic. Either rehearsed, I thought, or memorized. “When she came home the next day, Richard was gone. The money, too.”

“The money?” Bobby asked.

“They always kept some money in the house. A few thousand dollars, you know. Richard said it was for emergencies. Anyway, the money was gone. So, Jane came over here—”

“She checked the money first?” I asked. “Before coming over here?”

The question interrupted Candy’s flow, and she seemed off balance for a moment before saying, “I don’t know.” She picked up the thread before I could interrupt again. “She came over here, but none of us had seen him—”

“Were you home that night?” I asked.

“Daddy was taking care of Mommy. She was super sick by then, so by the time she fell asleep, he was exhausted.”

“Right, but were you home?”

“I just said none of us had seen him!”

It was the first time her annoyance had bled through the story, and the bright edge of it made me sit up a little straighter. Something at the back of my head stirred, and I studied Candy more closely.

Bobby seemed to be considering her more carefully too. “And what happened then?”

The rote nature of Candy’s answers changed again, and what sounded like genuine emotion filtered into the words. “It was horrible. Nobody knew what had happened. He was gone, that’s all. His friends didn’t know where he was. We called the police, and they weren’t any help. They thought he’d run away and taken the money with him. By the time they really started looking, we all knew it was too late. They finally said it might have been a robbery. Might.” She laughed, and the sound had an old, jaded quality that was the first honest thing I thought I’d heard from her. “They weren’t wrong about that.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Viv,” she said, and her tone suggested that—to borrow Fox’s phrase—my cheese done slid off my cracker. “I mean, she wanted to move to Portland. That’s all she’d talk about, how she had to get away from here. But Daddy wouldn’t give her any money, and she’d already divorced Neil, and she and Richard were at it like cats and dogs all the time.”

“Vivienne and Richard fought a lot?”

“And then one day Richard’s gone, and the money’s gone, and a couple of weeks later, Viv’s gone too. Took herself off to Portland. Where’d she get that money from, that’s what I wanted to know at the time. Guess we know now.”

I tried to wrap my head around that, but Bobby was the one who spoke first. “You think Vivienne killed Richard and took his money because he wouldn’t give her enough to move to Portland?”

Candy stared at the vape pen as though she’d forgotten what it was. And then she said, “You know what she did with all that money she made? All those books? The TV show, all of it?” It was a rhetorical question because Candy answered it herself. “She spent it on herself. All of it. She never sent a dime back. You could call her up and tell her you didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and she wouldn’t give you a cent. She changed her number—did you know that? So we couldn’t bother her. Oh, sure, when Daddy got sick—”

Heavy footsteps came from the hall. Candy’s father appeared in the opening, his face dark. On my second look at him, I took in the man’s big frame. He was tall, and at some point in his life, he had been strong, but now that strength had wasted away, and he had that too-thin look some men age into. “All right, that’s enough. Get out of my house.”

Bobby only said, “Hello, sir. Who are you?”

“I’m the son of a gun—” (My words, not his.) “—who owns this house, and I want you out. Right now.”

“That would make you Arlen Lundgren, then?”

“Daddy,” Candy said, “this is Dash Dane.”

“I know who he is,” Arlen said, “and I want him out of here.”

“Mr. Lundgren—” I tried.

“They want to talk to us about Richard,” Candy said.

“Talk?” Arlen said. “Nobody wants to talk to you. If men wanted to sit around all day listening to you yap, you’d still have a husband, and I’d have some gosh darn peace and quiet.”

(Again, I’m paraphrasing.)

Tears rushed into Candy’s eyes, and her doughy cheeks filled with color. “I can talk to whoever I want. Go back to your room—”

“This is my house,” Arlen shouted and slapped the wall. The crack of the blow rang out in the tiny house, and Candy jumped out of her chair. She raced past Arlen, and a moment later, a door slammed shut. Then Arlen turned his gaze on me and Bobby.

“Mr. Lundgren,” I said, “Vivienne asked us to help—”

“That woman hasn’t been part of this family for thirty years. She’s no daughter of mine, and I don’t care what she wants or how much she told you she’d pay you.”

“No,” I said, “that’s not—”

“You get out of here. And don’t come back.”

At a nod from Bobby, I got to my feet. We’d barely made it out the door when he slammed it behind us, and as the crash faded, I thought I could hear Candy crying in the distance.

Bobby and I made our way around front, and we got in the Jeep. I started it up. And then I said, “That could have gone better.”

“Drive to the end of the street,” Bobby said.

“What?”

“Drive to the end of the street,” Bobby said again. “And park where he won’t be able to see us.”

“Wait, what—”

“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “Let’s see.”

I drove to the end of the street, turned around, and parked at the curb. The houses here all had their curtains pulled, and while I was sure that some nosy neighbor would notice us—or had already noticed us—it wasn’t like we were running a professional stakeout. This was more of the bargain bin variety—

The front door to Arlen Lundgren’s house flew open, and Candy lurched outside. She looked like a mess—even from a distance, I could tell she was crying, and although she’d changed into jeans and some sort of sparkly top, her clothes looked like they’d been thrown on. She was carrying a purse that could have doubled as a shipping container, as well as several other plastic shopping bags that—I guessed—contained whatever she could grab close at hand. One of them appeared to hold a lamp.

Arlen appeared in the doorway a moment later, steadying himself with one hand on the jamb, and he said something. Candy whirled around and screamed back at him. She was loud enough that I might have been able to make out the words, but they were distorted by her rage. Arlen snapped something back at her, but before she could reply, he went back inside and slammed the door. Candy screamed at him again. Nobody came out to check on them, and I had the feeling this wasn’t anything new. It had all the pathetic weariness of two people playing parts they’d played for years—parts they should have aged out of a long time ago.

Candy stumbled around the side of the house, in the direction of the garage and workshop I’d noticed when we’d been, uh, exploring. I waited, but a car didn’t appear. After a few minutes, Bobby nodded, and I started the Jeep again.

We were halfway to the Lundgren house when a truck turned onto the street ahead of us. It barreled down the street, well above the speed limit, and then turned sharply into the Lundgrens’ driveway. I waffled for a moment between stopping the Jeep or continuing, but I decided to continue. Stopping would have looked even more suspicious. We passed the truck as the driver got out, and he stopped, hand on top of the cab, and looked over at us.

He had a dark, refined complexion that was too different from the Lundgrens’ Scandinavian coloring for him to be a blood relation: dark hair that was thinning on top, and dark eyes. A pleasant-looking guy who wasn’t exactly handsome but probably didn’t give himself grief when he looked in the mirror. A bracelet with what I was fairly sure was a small saint medallion glittered on his wrist in the stark June sunlight, and I thought I remembered seeing it before. Then he threw the door shut and headed toward the garage. On the back of the truck, a bumper sticker said, WE AIN’T QUAINT.

I pulled to the curb again to watch.

“Someone called him,” Bobby said.

I nodded. “Want to bet that’s Neil Carver?”

“And he got here fast.”

“Did you see the bracelet?”

Bobby glanced over at me.

I thought about being mature. I thought about acting like an adult. Instead, in my too-cool voice, I said, “You know, little gold thing on his wrist.”

“I know what a bracelet is.”

“Oh. Okay.” I waited just long enough before adding, “Then you noticed it looks a lot like the one Richard Lundgren’s wearing in the picture Vivienne gave us.”

Bobby’s face doesn’t usually give a lot away.

But it was enough to make me grin.

Before I could follow up on that mixture of exasperation and what I wanted to call pique, movement behind us drew my attention. A woman stood on the stoop of the house next to Arlen Lundgren’s—the house where Richard Lundgren had been living when he’d been killed. She was White, and she was tall and wiry, with her long gray hair in a braid that fell almost to her waist. She was looking at the truck, taking nervous steps back and forth as though unsure of what to do.

The decision was taken out of her hands when the man I suspected was Neil Carver came down the drive again. He looked once in our direction, and there’s no way he could have missed the Jeep, but he didn’t storm down the street to confront us. Instead, he headed toward the house that had belonged to Richard Lundgren. The woman said something to Neil, and he shook his head and made a shooing gesture and followed her inside. He shut the door behind them without giving us another glance.

“What in the world is going on?” I asked.

Bobby shook his head, but his gaze stayed fixed on the house. “No clue. But if we’re still making bets, how much would you wager that woman is Richard Lundgren’s widow?”