Chapter 6

That night, the Otter Slide was crowded. My favorite bar—and the closest thing Hastings Rock had to a gay bar—did steady business, even in the off-season. Seely, the owner and bartender, was friendly, and the drinks were reasonably priced, and the kitchen did this thing with cheese curds—I mean, if I tried to describe them, it would get pornographic quickly. Tonight, though, the crowd was bigger than usual. Part of it had to do with the Sweethearts Festival—people had gone to Shipwreck Shores and decided to make it a night out. And part of it had to do with the fact that it was the weekend, and in Hastings Rock, there wasn't a lot to do on a Saturday night.

The Otter Slide wasn't much to look at from the outside—shiplap siding, a built-up roof, the front windows blacked out, and, of course, obligatory Bud Light banners. On the inside, though, it was great. Pendants of green-and-gold glass give enough light to make the space comfortable. There was a pinball machine ( Star Wars themed), a pool table, even a dance floor, although ever since Bobby had broken up with West, I'd made it a policy not to let myself get dragged out there. Seely had done the place up with little stuffed animals, and part of the fun of each visit was figuring out where she'd moved them and what she'd added. Tonight, the eponymous otter was perched on the pinball machine. It took me longer to find the unicorn, but that's only because it was with the bottles at the back of the bar.

By some miracle, we'd gotten a table to seat all of us—Fox, Indira, Millie, Bobby, me, and even Keme, who was going to have to leave fairly soon, on account of the fact that he was, technically, still a minor. (Don't try telling him that.) Bobby was still in uniform, which was, uh, distracting, and everyone else looked as tired as I felt. While Bobby had been at work, the rest of us had been at Shipwreck Shores, trying to figure out what we could about the woman I'd seen twice now—once dead, and once alive.

"She owns the park," Millie was explaining to Bobby. "And her name is Lyndsey Zeimantz, and she's married to Dagan Glass. He's the park manager; you met him last night."

Bobby nodded, but it didn't change the flat look on his face. Bobby wasn't exactly expressive—reserved might actually be understating it a bit. But once you got to know him, you knew that when he was extra quiet and controlled, it was because he was feeling big feelings. And I thought I knew what some of those feelings might be.

"And what was the name," he asked in a painfully even tone, "of the guy who held you against your will?"

"He didn't—" I tried. "You're missing the point. The point is that he freaked out when he heard them arguing. That's how I got away."

Bobby continued as though I hadn't spoken. "Because that's false imprisonment. That's a felony."

"His name's Tyler," Millie said (unhelpfully, in my opinion). "Tyler Handy."

"Go over that part of the story again," Bobby said. "I want to record this."

"Bobby, stop." I grabbed his hand because he was trying to open the voice recorder app on his phone, and I held on even after he gave up because, well, it felt good. "He didn't do anything—"

"He intimidated you. He held you against your will."

"He didn't—okay, I mean, he did intimidate me. Or he tried to. But I was fine, I promise. I could have left at any point if I wanted to." And then, because none of this seemed to be helping, I added, "I really can take care of myself."

Keme experienced a jaw-drop mid-cheese curd.

Bobby gestured as though this were proof of something and said, "Thank you."

"Rude! Double rude!"

"Tyler Handy," Fox said, "is a bully. He was a bully growing up. And he's still a bully."

"Wait," I said, "you know him?"

Fox made a face. Tonight, they'd opted for a garment that I could best—and only—describe as quilt-bag : it looked like they were huddled inside a quilt-bag, in case that wasn't clear (maybe it was a smock? That was a whole subgenre of clothing I wasn't familiar with). No gewgaws. No clockwork apparatuses. Not a single bustier or corset or thigh-high boot in sight. Like yesterday.

"We grew up together," they said. "Lyndsey too. They didn't live in Hastings Rock, but the coast isn't exactly overpopulated, you know." Fox paused, as though considering their words. "Tyler is a few years younger, so I didn't know him all that well, but the family is a mess. Tyler's dad died a few years ago, but everybody knew what he did."

"What'd he do?" Millie asked, almost in a whisper.

I shook my head, and Fox caught the gesture and grimaced. "Let's just say that Tyler and his siblings and his mom had a lot of accidents. They were always falling down stairs and walking into doors, that kind of thing."

"God." Indira shook her head. "That's awful. And nobody stopped him?"

"Tyler did, as I recall."

"Good for him."

"Yes, definitely. At the time, though, I didn't appreciate it quite as much. Mostly because Tyler and his friends had recently scratched a lot of nasty words into the paint of my semi-new Volkswagen."

Keme looked like he was desperate to get out of the booth. His shoulders were drawn in, his face was turned down, and he was trying, as much as he could, to make himself smaller. Indira was watching him too, I realized, and pain etched her face. I opened my mouth to say something—to ask if he was okay, I guess, although I have no idea what words would have come out of my mouth.

Before I could though, Bobby squeezed my hand. It was a shock—not just the squeeze, which was tight and urgent, but the fact that I was still holding his hand and had somehow, in the conversation, become so comfortable with it that I'd forgotten.

"It is awful," Bobby said. "But it's not an excuse for how he treated Dash. I think maybe Keme and I should pay him a visit. Make sure he understands that Dash has people looking out for him. What do you think, Keme?"

It was such an un-Bobby thing to say. It was showy. It was bro-y. It had way, way too much testosterone. And it was the first time, I was sure, I'd ever seen Bobby act like this.

But the effect on Keme was undeniable. Keme's head came up. He was still flushed, and his face still held a hint of its guardedness. But when he met Bobby's gaze, he nodded, and a hint of teenage swagger emerged. He even pushed his long, dark hair behind his ears. And then, because he was seventeen and had zero game (and no judgment, I mean, look who's talking), Keme ruined all of it by checking to see if Millie had noticed.

She had. And she was beaming as she said, "Don't you DARE! You two can't go around beating people up! That makes you as bad as they are!"

"It's less convincing," Fox told her, "when you're smiling."

"Also," I said, "I feel like I have to say this again because no one ever listens to me, but I can take care of myself."

Bobby's face became carefully noncommittal.

Keme scoffed.

And then the two of them bumped fists.

I would have followed up on that little display of machismo, but then something Fox had said earlier came back to me. "Wait, you know Lyndsey too?"

Fox nodded. "Of course. She grew up here too."

"Were she and Tyler friends?"

"Not even close. I don't know that she even had any friends, except maybe some of the theater kids. Or maybe someone at church. She was super religious, always going on mission trips, service projects, that kind of thing, although I always thought that was just to drive her dad crazy. It must have stopped being fun after a while, though, because she cut ties and moved east to live with some relatives out there. She definitely thought she was too good for the rest of us; her family has owned Shipwreck Shores longer than I've been alive." They turned a warning look on Keme. "Go ahead and say something about that."

Keme grinned and buried his face in his Coke.

"Would you—" I tried to figure out the best way to ask.

"Recognize her corpse?" Fox asked drily.

"Well, not in so many words."

"But she's not dead, is she?" Millie said. "Dash saw her today."

"Lyndsey's not dead," I said. "But somebody who looks like her is. I wasn't seeing things or hallucinating or having a fainting spell."

"Like a Victorian maiden," Fox murmured.

"We believe you, dear." Indira frowned and brushed that witch-white lock of hair out of her face. "But what in the world is going on? Were they really identical ?"

I hesitated a moment too long.

Disappointment darkened Millie's face.

Keme grimaced.

Indira frowned.

Fox burrowed deeper into their quilt-bag.

Bobby studied me.

"I don't know," I said. "I mean, you've been inside the fun house. You know what it's like. It's dark in there, and they've got those weird mirrors. The whole point is to disorient you. I saw her once, for a few seconds. But I got close enough to check for a pulse. I touched her." I struggled, but the best I could come up with was "They looked a lot alike."

Even I could hear how weak that sounded.

In the background, Bon Jovi was playing—"Livin' on a Prayer." Pool balls clicked against each other. The pinball machine dinged. At the bar, a cheer went up (who knows why?), and Seely called out, "This guy won himself a free drink!"

"I'm ruining everyone's night," I said. "I'm sorry. Let's drop it. Forget about it."

"Don't be ridiculous," Indira said. "Could they have been twins?"

"I was thinking twins," Fox said, and it was the first time in days they'd sounded excited. "But then I thought, we've already done twins."

"I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say this," I said, "but we are not living in an episode of Law Dagan had gotten it stuck in my head.

"There's always a cover-up with UFOs," Millie said. "You know who you should ask? You should ask RYAN. HE HAS A TELESCOPE!"

I kid you not, in the wake of that excited ANNOUNCEMENT, even Bon Jovi sounded a little subdued.

"Actually, I took his telescope," Bobby said, and he even sounded apologetic. "The last time I had to break up a fight between him and Paul."

Millie's brothers—like Millie herself—had a certain overabundance of energy. A zest for life. A… joie de vivre . (Can you call it joie de vivre if their favorite food group is Slim Jims?) Whatever it was, it resulted in the two brothers, who were best friends and inseparable, also scrapping and brawling pretty much every time they got in a disagreement. Which was about every other day.

"But I'm not talking about investigating," I said. "I'm just trying to come up with a workable theory. How could I have seen two women who look so similar, but one was dead, and the other was clearly alive?"

"The most likely answer is that they're related."

I gaped at him. "Twins? Honestly, Bobby? That's your answer?"

He gave me a long look before he said, "You already told us that, considering the weak lighting in the fun house, you're not sure how closely they actually resembled each other. This could be a mother, a cousin, a sister—" He actually hurried to add, "Not a twin. It could be a weird coincidence. There are people who look a lot alike, and it's not all that uncommon for them to cross paths. That's how people came up with the idea of doppelgangers."

"That's a terrible theory," I told him. "Pod people was a better theory."

Keme's face didn't change, but he kicked me under the table.

"Ow! When are you going to start wearing flip-flops again?" It's weird how satisfied Keme can look about causing agonizing pain. As I rubbed my leg, I made a face and said, "Okay, that's not a terrible theory. But why kill this relative? And why make the body disappear? I mean, Lyndsey has to be involved, right?"

"I don't know," Bobby said. "Why don't I talk to the sheriff tomorrow? I'll tell her that you identified the woman as looking a lot like Lyndsey. There's still not a lot we can do—no missing persons report, no evidence of a crime, nothing that gives us a reason to poke around the park."

"No body," Fox said dourly.

"But I'll talk to her, and maybe we can do some digging about Lyndsey, try to figure out if she has family in the area."

"She doesn't," Fox said. "She was an only child. Her mom died when she was young, and her dad died—God, I don't know. Twenty years ago? She was at college. Get this: she didn't come back for the funeral."

"Why not?" Millie asked. "He was her DAD."

A pained look crossed Indira's face, and it was strange how Keme's expression mirrored hers.

"Families are complicated," Indira said.

"She was always strange," Fox said. "And she and her dad never got along. She'd do anything to drive him crazy. Do you know what I think? I think she acted out to get attention." Fox sniffed. "Can you imagine?"

This, coming from someone currently wearing a quilt-bag, was a lot to take in.

"What are we going to do now, Dash?" Millie asked.

"Wait safely at home," Bobby said with a martyred look. "Write a book. Eat cake."

I pointed at him. "Don't use cake for evil."

"For evil? I'm trying to—"

"I guess I need to talk to Lyndsey, right? I mean, I didn't have any luck today, but I'll keep trying."

"They have a house behind the amusement park," Fox said. "That's where she grew up."

Keme was already shaking his head grimly.

"I know," I said to him. "If she's caught up in this, she won't want to talk to me. Even if I do manage to catch her, I don't think she'll say anything useful. But I've got an idea of someone else I can talk to as well."

"CHESTER! Oh my God, Dash, that's a great idea!"

My face didn't actually catch on fire, but that felt like a technicality.

"Uh, no—"

"Oh my gosh, he'd be perfect. He works at the park. And he's SO HOT. And he LIKES you!"

"In the first place, nobody likes me—"

"Chester likes you?" Indira asked.

"Why?" Fox said.

"Why?" I asked. With a tone.

"I just mean that boy is a Mars bar of scrumptious body and beautiful hair."

"I don't know what that means, but I think it's rude." I felt obligated to add, "To me. Not to Chester."

For some reason, at that point, Bobby had to take a long drink of his beer (Rock Top Brewing's seasonal stout). If I hadn't known better, I would have said he was scowling. It reminded me that Bobby had seen (might have seen) me talking to Chester before I scurried into the fun house. It also made me think of how Bobby had acted with Keme earlier, and their little display of machismo.

"Can we focus please?" I asked. "I didn't mean Chester. I'm not going to talk to Chester." I tried to stop there, but despair made me keep going. "No matter how many times Tony tries to set us up on a date."

The look on Bobby's face was definitely a scowl now.

"Is that why he called to ask if you had any food allergies?" Indira asked.

And because this was Indira, it was impossible to tell if she was joking.

"I'm not engaging with that," I said. "If Lyndsey won't talk to me, I have someone else in mind—not Chester!" (I had to rush to add that because of the look on Millie's face.)

"Keme and I can look at Lyndsey's Instagram," Millie offered.

Believe it or not, he perked right up about that.

"And Fox can do some inquiring about the family," Indira said. "I know a few people who work in the park. I'll ask around and see if they can tell me anything interesting."

Bobby's expression, to put it politely, was frustrated.

"I promise I'm going to be careful," I told him.

"Careful doesn't mean safe." But he didn't leave me time to respond to that. He straightened in his seat, and as he looked around the table, his face softened. "I guess we have a plan."

"We?" I asked.

Bobby raised his eyebrows and shrugged.