Chapter 11
After he left, I lay in bed with the lights on. I stared up at the canopy. It took a long time for the fear to leach out of my body. And when it did, the exhaustion that came in its place left me too tired for more than a distant, despairing awareness of how badly I'd messed up. Again.
Eventually, I dragged myself out of bed and turned off the lights. Mostly because I was terrified someone (Bobby) would notice they were still on and come check on me.
Then, in the dark, I lay there. I couldn't think, but my brain had the dark restlessness of the ocean at night—not quite thought, but images, sounds. The way he had curled his fingers toward his palms. I couldn't stop seeing that. The way he'd said, Thanks .
At the edge of sleep, the images became muddled. The pleasant warmth and relaxation from Bobby's massage had evaporated under the fresh tension of that terrible conversation. I ached everywhere. I was exhausted. And I was sick. Sick of myself. Sick of always getting in my own way. Sick of being, once again, the same old Dash. They say you should never write a passive protagonist. Never write one who feels sorry for himself. That was good advice, I thought through those ink-blot thoughts. Who would want to read about that?
My last conscious thought was how empty I felt. Like a bird. My bones full of air. I remembered, not so long ago, watching the sunset with Bobby. It hadn't been anything special; we'd both been relaxing in the sun parlor, which looked out on the cliffs and the ocean. A gull had floated on a thermal, looking weightless, untethered. And then it had turned, wings tilting, and that golden, end-of-day light lanced along its wings, and for a moment, it looked like something from another world, burning with faerie fire.
A heavy knock on the door woke me the next morning. I mumbled something that sounded like, "Kwuah?"
The knocking continued.
Even with a serious case of sleep-brain, I managed the process of elimination. Nobody had come bursting through the doorway, full of cheer, singing like a Disney princess. Therefore, it wasn't Millie. And nobody had tried to lure me out from under the covers with promises of overnight waffles. (If you're not letting your waffles rise overnight, you're doing it wrong.) So, it wasn't Indira. And I hadn't heard a single complaint about how adulthood was a trap, or about how a certain someone should have listened to their father and become a lawyer, or about how attractive Jack McCoy was, but, quote, in a mean way . Which meant it definitely wasn't Fox.
And, let's be honest, after last night it wasn't Bobby.
All of which—combined with the unmistakable teen aggression behind this little burst of machismo—meant it was Keme.
I tried to tell him to go away, but what came out was less of a word and more of a smacking noise.
"Get up, you donkey," came Keme's gravelly bark.
That, more than anything else, told me how serious it was. Not the donkey part—that was Keme's love language for me—but the fact that he was willing to, you know, talk to me.
I got out of bed with a surprising lack of bodily agony—that massage had definitely helped—and gave myself a horrified look in the mirror. I decided no emergency was worth not brushing my teeth, patted my hair down again (no luck), and found a hoodie and a pair of joggers. I even managed socks. (They were mismatched, of course, but one was Jimmy Neutron, so I was basically an adult.)
When I tracked everyone down, they were sitting around the table in the servants' dining room: Indira, Fox, Millie, Keme (sitting right next to Millie, mind you), and, of all people, Tony Lamb. Chester's dad looked exhausted. He sagged in his seat, his face lined and sallow, one hand pushed into his thinning hair.
"What's wrong?"
"They still can't find Lyndsey's body," Fox said. "It's gone."
I nodded and dropped into the seat that had become more or less mine. Indira slid coffee and the plate of orange rolls toward me. Not a plate. The plate.
"I figured," I said, although I'd have been lying if I said a part of me hadn't hoped they'd find her.
"But they found blood," Indira said.
"That changes things." My gaze drifted to Tony again, but he still hadn't looked up, and nobody had offered an explanation. "The sheriff promised she was going to take this seriously. I guess she is."
"You could say that," Fox said.
"They arrested CHESTER!" Millie said and burst into tears. "And he's so SWEET!"
She was sitting right next to Tony, which might explain why his head bobbled slightly—the sonic boom effect. But he pulled himself together.
"Wait, they arrested Chester?" The coffee hadn't hit my system yet, and I was struggling to connect the dots. "For what?"
Keme's look of disgust was a partial answer.
"For—" Tony stopped and swallowed. "They think he did it. They think he killed her."
"But that's impossible."
No one answered.
I took a swig of coffee, trying to knock off some of the rust. "Okay," I said. "The sheriff's not stupid. I guess the first question is, what did they charge him with?"
Tony blinked. It was more of a question when he said, "Murder?"
"Is that what they said? Did they tell him why he was being arrested? Who made the arrest?"
"Well, Deputy Dahlberg and Salk." He seemed to consider something before adding, "They didn't say they were arresting him. But they told him he had to come to the station. And Chester told me I had to get a lawyer."
"So, they wanted to talk to him," I said. "That's not so bad. Maybe they think he knows something that can help them." I didn't say the next part out loud, but it wasn't exactly a good sign that they'd picked him up.
But everyone traded looks as though I were missing something.
Millie was the one to speak. "But they found her clothes."
"Whose? Lyndsey's?"
Millie nodded. "The ones she was wearing when she was killed. They were—" She stopped herself and gave Tony a compassionate look.
"They were covered in blood," Tony said in a thick voice. "And they were in Chester's studio at the park. Mixed in with the rest of the costumes."
"But that doesn't make any sense," I said.
"I know," Millie said. "Chester would never hurt anybody."
"More importantly," Fox said drily, "why would Chester keep the clothes and put them in an absolutely terrible hiding place, but still get rid of the body?"
Keme shook his head at the question.
"Why were the deputies searching the photo studio?" I tried to draw a mental map. "I don't even know where that is. Is it close to the fun house?"
"It's not," Indira said. "It's on the other side of the park."
"That boss of his," Tony said, and his voice thickened with anger. "Dagan. He told the sheriff he knew why Chester killed Lyndsey. But it was just—I mean, he wasn't serious."
"What does that mean?" I asked. "What did he know?"
A flush made Tony's cheeks hectic, and he pushed his hands through his hair again. "Chester loves Shipwreck Shores. And his mother and I have been…encouraging him to find steady work. You know, something to get out of the house more."
Keme rolled his eyes.
"This job has been a godsend. Chester's excited to go to work every day. He loves seeing how the park functions. He loves all the attractions, figuring out how they work, what makes people excited about them. They're like puzzles, he says. Giant puzzles. And you know he loves puzzles."
This last bit was directed at me; since my knowledge of Chester was mostly limited to Tony's attempts to drag me kicking and screaming into a state of wedded bliss with his son, all I could do was give a bewildered nod.
"He was working on a business plan. Nothing on the scale of the park, but kids are always looking for something to do, and Chester was thinking about opening one of those escape room places near the college." His voice faltered. "Or that's what he told us. But Dagan said Chester wanted to kill them and buy the park. He said Chester had it all worked out. The sheriff showed me the paperwork. The business plan, I mean. I didn't know what to say; Chester never told us anything about that. And then Dagan said he had security footage of Chester going in and out of the fun house when he was supposed to be in the studio, but he was with me—that's when we saw you, Dash. I said it all had to be a misunderstanding, but the sheriff just asked me where Chester had been last night, and I said with you, and she said no, not with you."
His voice broke at the end, and his big shoulders hitched in a sob. He dropped his head and covered his eyes. To my endless surprise, Keme put a hand on his shoulder.
I tried to think through all the revelations. I remembered, on my first visit to Shipwreck Shores, seeing Chester emerge from Davy Jones' Locker. He'd been a way off, but I thought I'd seen him wiping his hands, and he hadn't offered an explanation of why he'd been inside the fun house. But I couldn't wrap my head around Chester as the killer. The business plan was a surprise, but it wasn't exactly damning evidence.
But Fox must have been reading my thoughts because they said, "It gives him a motive."
"A weak one," Indira said. "It's too elaborate. And what about the first woman?"
"Easy," Fox said. "A mistake. Dash told us he couldn't see the woman very well in the dark, and he said the women resembled each other; they weren't identical. He killed the wrong woman first, assuming she was Lyndsey. Then, when she wasn't, he had to try again."
Tony brought his head up to stare at us.
"Chester didn't kill anyone," Millie said. "I've known Chester my whole life. Plus he's too handsome to be on Dateline ."
Keme didn't exactly look happy about that.
"Handsome people can be murderers," I said.
"But they can't be on Dateline ," Millie said. "It's not believable."
That felt like a losing battle, so I forged ahead. "Chester told me he had plans last night." I omitted the part about my plan to play a little joke on Tony since I now felt SUPER GUILTY, in Millie speak. "I'm sure that when the sheriff asks, he'll explain where he was, and he'll have a solid alibi. I don't know what to tell you about the business plan. It's a motive, yes, but the sheriff would need a lot more evidence before she could convince the county prosecutor to charge him."
"Like the murder victim's bloody clothes," Fox suggested.
Oh. Right. I'd forgotten about those.
Keme caught my eye and spread his hands in the universal sign for a question.
"I think Keme's right," I said. "I think the question is why frame Chester."
"Because the killer is afraid of getting caught," Indira said. "It's one thing for Dash to claim he found a body in the fun house. It could have been a mistake. He might have been confused. But for it to happen twice?"
"And they tried to kill YOU TOO," Millie added with unnecessary enthusiasm. "Remember, Dash?"
"Yes, Millie. I do, in fact, remember. But—" And this was the strange part. "—I'm not sure that's what they were trying to do. Pushing me down the ladder shaft could have killed me. But if the killer had really wanted me dead, they could have made sure. I was pretty out of it for a while. I made an easy target."
Keme raised his eyebrows. I thought I knew what that meant, and I chose to ignore his suggestion that I pretty much always made an easy target.
"Here are the things I don't like," I said. "I don't like that both killings happened in the fun house. And I don't like that both bodies disappeared. I don't like the fact that the security cameras don't work when it would help us catch the killer, but when the killer needs to frame someone, well, footage is easy to come by. I don't like the fact that Dagan had a story ready to tell the sheriff about why Chester might want to kill Lyndsey. And I don't like the fact that someone was able to get into Chester's studio and plant those bloody clothes."
"If you don't like that," Fox said, "then you'll hate this. Dagan tried telling the sheriff that Lyndsey was flying back east, to visit her cousins. He had a whole song and dance about how he forgot. And then, when they found the blood, he changed his story again."
"Good Lord," Indira said with disgust.
"That's another thing," I said. "Last night, it took a long time for Dagan to get there. I saw him at home before I found Lyndsey's body, so maybe he was trying to establish an alibi, but that's, what, five minutes to get from their house to the park? And it took even longer for Tyler to show up. You'd think that someone finding a body would motivate the park manager and the head of security to, you know, find out what's going on." A memory surfaced from the night before. "The first thing that Dagan said was ‘What do you mean she's gone?' Or something like that."
"Gone?" Millie asked.
"Yeah. Not ‘dead.' ‘Gone.' And the other day, he acted super guilty when I tried to talk to him—I mean, he practically jumped out of his underwear when Jessica said something about knowing where the bodies are buried." I drew a deep breath. "On the other hand, last night, he seemed…terrified. And confused. I mean, maybe he's just a really good actor, but I'd bet money that he was genuinely frightened."
"Whatever the case," Fox said slowly, "I imagine he knows more than he's telling the sheriff."
"Could he and Tyler be working together?" Indira asked.
"God, no." Fox shook their head. "They hate each other. Ever since Dagan and Lyndsey came back, those two have been like cats and dogs. I'm honestly surprised they didn't fire him—or that Tyler didn't leave."
"There was something else," I said. "Tyler's behavior was strange last night too. He kept acting like…like he was acting. Like he knew how he was supposed to react, and that's what he was trying to do."
"Like he already knew Lyndsey was dead?" Millie asked.
I nodded. "But the super weird thing was before that. When I was talking to Jessica, Tyler called her. I didn't really think about it at the time; I was frustrated that Tyler interrupted our conversation. But the strange thing was that he called her."
"Is this like Marshall's manuscript?" Millie asked, referring to a murder from a couple of months before. "Old people call each other on the phone all the time."
"Okay, in the first place, Jessica's, like, thirty, and thirty isn't old—" Millie's impish smile, and Keme's more blatant look of genuine disgust, made me reel myself in. "No, Mildred," I said, struggling to watch my tone. "My point is that everyone in the park uses walkies. When I was trying to find Jessica, the staff used walkies to get in touch with her. So, why would Tyler call her?"
"Because he had something to say that he didn't want everyone else to hear," Indira said. "Do you think Tyler and Jessica are working together?"
"I saw Jessica searching Lyndsey's office," I said. "That makes two people who have some beef with Dagan and Lyndsey, who know the park inside and out, and who both would jump at the chance to run it the way they think it should be run." I spread my hands in a silent question.
Fox grimaced. "That's an unpleasant possibility. This is all quite a mess, isn't it?"
I nodded. A mess was putting it politely. There were so many obstacles to a traditional investigation—starting with the lack of a victim. Sure, sometimes a murder was prosecuted without a body. In Lyndsey's case, the sheriff might eventually charge someone. But defense lawyers, from my understanding, had a field day with the fact that no one could actually, you know, prove someone was dead—that kind of thing worked wonders when it came to creating reasonable doubt in the jurors' minds. A traditional investigation typically attempted to establish motive and opportunity. In our case, we had an abundance of motive, but opportunity was going to be almost impossible to prove. We didn't even know when these women had been killed, for starters.
"What are we going to do now?" Millie asked.
Tony sucked in a wet breath. The sound startled me; I'd almost forgotten he was there. Wiping his face, he looked at each of us in turn before his gaze came to rest on me. "You can help him, can't you? Chester, I mean. You can prove he didn't do this."
"I don't know," I said. "Tony, it's not always that simple—"
"You can," he said. His voice was full of an unbearable hope. "I know you can."
"Let's see what happens. It sounds like the sheriff hasn't arrested Chester yet, and for all we know, she'll release him after they've questioned him."
The light in Tony's face dimmed. Indira gave me a disappointed look. Keme balled a fist in threat. Millie beamed at me, apparently already convinced I was going to do the right thing—whatever that was.
Fox said, "This song and dance again?"
"I'm not doing a song and dance," I protested. "I'm just saying—"
In a broken voice, Tony said, "Please."
I mean, I'm not made of stone.
I rubbed my eyes. I took a deep breath to tell everyone that I wasn't Columbo or Miss Marple or even Vivienne Carver. I was the human equivalent of a cyclone in a trailer park, as my string of recent fiascos with Bobby proved. How was I supposed to help Chester when I couldn't even figure out if a boy liked me or not?
The only mystery he can't solve is himself .
Somehow, the ironic distance of that was enough to shake me out of my self-pity.
"Okay," I said.
I kid you not, Millie actually cheered.
My glare bounced off her unnoticed.
"The problem, though, is that there's not necessarily a straightforward solution. If Chester has an alibi for last night, he'll be fine. If not—well, we can try to find evidence that he's being framed. Or we can try to prove someone else killed Lyndsey."
"It sounds like Dagan was prepared," Indira said. "I mean, after they found that blood, how long did it take him to start pointing the finger at Chester?"
I frowned. "Was Chester having problems at work? Did he say anything about arguments with Dagan or Lyndsey? Or maybe the opposite? Maybe they were being too friendly, or someone was making him feel uncomfortable."
"Everyone makes Chester uncomfortable," Tony said with unexpected grumpiness. Then he seemed to remember himself and added, "Not you, Dash. He thinks you're perfect."
This, of course, was when Keme chose to contribute to the conversation by announcing, his voice filled with horror, "Gross."
"Uh—"
"It's not gross," Millie said. "It's beautiful."
"It's none of our business," Indira said.
"It's confusing," Fox said. "That's for sure."
"It's very sweet," Tony informed the rest of them. "And don't you think they'd look cute together?"
"They'd look precious," Millie said.
"We're not a pair of porcelain dolls," I said.
"What time of day are we talking?" Fox asked. "Because if you've ever seen Dash in the morning—hold on a second, I saw this GIF of a cartoon racoon chewing through a power cord."
"Oh, Chester doesn't like mornings either," Tony said proudly.
"Why don't we talk about something else?" Indira tried.
"Is he dying?" Keme, apparently, considered this the only possible explanation. Except for possibly: "Is there something wrong with his eyes?"
"Here it is," Fox said.
I saw the GIF.
I mean, I'm not going to say they were wrong. But it was definitely uncalled for.
"That's not what I look like in the mornings," I said, not quite honestly. "And anyway, it doesn't matter because Chester and I are—"
"He's going to say they're just friends," Fox said.
Millie made a sound like that was adorable. And then she said, "Oh my GOD! Do you know who Dash should date? That guy who had a SCREENPLAY!"
"That guy was the worst—" I tried.
Indira was frowning. "I thought he liked that young man on the unicycle."
"I don't like anyone!" I couldn't help myself, though. "And he couldn't even juggle!"
"Chester can juggle," Tony said in a painfully bad attempt at an off-hand tone.
Keme looked like he was trying not to throw up.
"And for the record," I said, "Chester and I are just friends," I said. They all looked at me with varying mixtures of pity and appeasement.
"Oh!" Tony said. "I remembered something!"
"What?" I snapped. "That Chester plays classic video games? That Chester reads mystery novels? That Chester loves to take long walks on the beach? Everyone loves to take long walks on the beach!"
"Not me." Fox displayed one thigh-high boot. "Gout."
I refused to engage with that. "I appreciate that you think I'd be a good match for Chester," I said to Tony, "but maybe I'm not looking for a relationship. I'm not ready for that yet. Maybe I'll never be ready. Maybe not everyone has to have a partner to be happy. Maybe I'm better off alone. I don't know. But I do know that I don't need people putting pressure on me to—to rush into anything!"
A lot of very wide eyes stared back at me.
The only sound came when Keme dropped the orange roll he was holding.
Tony had to try twice before he got the words out, and even then, his voice was small. "I was going to say, I remembered Chester said someone broke into the studio."
No one spoke.
"You asked if anything strange happened," Tony said apologetically. "This was the other day. After you found that woman in the fun house, someone broke into the portrait studio the same night."