Chapter 3

Deputies came. They hauled lights out to the beach, portable generators, protective barriers—to preserve the crime scene, I knew. It was a losing battle; nothing could keep back the tide. I stood there and waited. In the glare of the LEDs, with the waves crashing louder and louder, men and women calling back and forth to each other, it felt like I’d stepped out of my body and into a movie.

Deputy Salkanovic, who went by Salk and had been Hastings Rock’s star quarterback (take that however you want), and who got compliments from little old ladies when he wrote them speeding tickets, and who had once—when I’d stopped by the station for some reason—shouted, Dash-y, my man! and then given me double high fives—walked me back to the surf camp, and he let me sit in his cruiser with the heater running. A little later, Deputy Dahlberg—who had moved here to learn how to paint and who now gave a weekly class called “Rip His Head Off: Self-Defense through Video Games,” who still wore her hair in a blond Rachel cut, and who had once spent fifteen minutes telling me who in the sheriff’s office had, um, carnal knowledge of whom (Deputy Bobby earned some extra points that day for, apparently, being smart enough not to play on his own doorstep)—brought me some coffee from a thermos.

I asked Salk about Deputy Bobby. I asked Dahlberg.

Nobody knew where he was.

And then Sheriff Acosta opened the door of the cruiser, leaned down, and said, “Hello, Mr. Dane.”

Sheriff Acosta was stocky, with warm brown skin and her hair in a ponytail. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her not in uniform, and her only affectation—if it was one—was to gel her baby hairs to her forehead, where they almost hid a neat little scar. Although Acosta hadn’t been sheriff when I’d been framed for Vivienne Carver’s death, she still seemed to hold it against me that I hadn’t happily gone along with my own conviction. She’d been even less happy when, a few months later, I’d helped my ex, Hugo, prove his innocence.

I told her everything—not that there was much to tell: how Gerry had assaulted me; how Deputy Bobby had stepped in; the argument with West; and then my decision, if you could call it that, to check on Deputy Bobby and make sure he was okay. I told her about the figure I’d seen moving against the backdrop of the bluffs, and then finding Gerry’s body, and then the figure I’d seen above me on the cliffs, looking down at me.

When I finished, the sheriff said, “That’s a long way from camp. Why’d you need to talk to him so bad?”

“I just told you.” Acosta didn’t reply, so I said, “He was upset.”

Acosta still didn’t say anything. In her silence, I heard a bigger, larger silence—the party was over, a distant part of my brain noted. And I thought I heard a question.

“I understand,” Acosta finally said, “there was an altercation.”

“What?”

“You mentioned that Deputy Mai stepped in when Mr. Webb put his hands on you. But according to several witnesses, it was more than that: Deputy Mai punched Mr. Webb hard enough to knock Mr. Webb to the ground. Then Deputy Mai stood over Mr. Webb, threatening him.”

“That’s not—” I almost said true . Because it wasn’t true, the way she was saying it. Deputy Bobby hadn’t—I mean, yes, technically, he had. But it hadn’t felt like that. It hadn’t been like that. “—the way it was. He did punch Gerry, yes. But only to get him away from me. And Gerry only fell because he’d had too much to drink.”

“Was Deputy Mai intoxicated?”

That big silence rushed in again.

“Hold on,” I said. “You think Deputy Bobby had something to do with this? That’s ridiculous.”

“All I’m asking is if Deputy Mai had been drinking.”

“He had a beer. One. He wasn’t drunk. He certainly wasn’t out of control or aggressive or—I can’t believe this!”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“I told you about the person I saw on the cliffs. Why aren’t you out there looking for them?”

Acosta’s face didn’t change as she straightened. She rapped on the hood of the cruiser. “Think about it, Mr. Dane. Believe it or not, the best thing you can do for everyone involved is tell me everything.”

“I am telling you everything—hey!”

But Sheriff Acosta didn’t look back.

A moment later, Salk ducked down to look into the back seat. “Sheriff told me to drive you home. Your friends already left.”

“You don’t actually believe Bobby had something to do with this.”

Salk gave me an embarrassed half-smile, his cheeks flooding with color. “Dash,” he said with a weird little shrug. “Come on.”

He drove me back to Hemlock House.

I called Deputy Bobby; he didn’t answer.

I did not sleep.

Okay, I did. But it was awful; I slipped back and forth between sleeping and waking, hanging on the gray edge of dreams. I dreamed that I was following Deputy Bobby, only then it wasn’t Deputy Bobby, and then he was following me, and he was Gerry Webb with the side of his head cracked open, and he had his hands on me.

I was up at the crack of dawn: eight-thirty. My body ached. My head throbbed. Even with the house warm and snug against the October cold, it was hard to drag myself out of bed. I showered. I dressed—my usual getup, which meant a gamer tee (it said CLASSICALLY TRAINED and showed an Atari controller), my canvas jacket, jeans (which Deputy Bobby had once called hipster drainpipes, and Keme had laughed so hard that soda had come out of his nose), and my Mexico 66s (white).

I made my way down to the kitchen. Today, more than usual, the house had a vast, echoing quality, like every sound I made was magnified. Part of me knew that it was only because the house was empty; when Indira and Keme and Fox and, especially, Millie were here, the house felt alive. And part of me knew it was also because I had found Gerry Webb after he died, and I was still processing everything from the night before. In that regard, Hemlock House was probably the perfect place to be—ideal conditions for brooding about mortality and death and dying and the inevitability of dying. If you love damask wallpaper, pocket doors, weird Victorian taxidermy under glass cloches (one was of a tabby cat playing croquet, I kid you not), and a constant reminder that all things must pass and that we, too, are dust returning to dust—well, have I got a place for you.

When I got to the kitchen, the only sound came from the refrigerator’s motor. I did not spy a single treat, cake, cookie, crumble, Danish, or other unspecified breakfast pastry. Which was, of course, totally fair. Indira wasn’t my servant or my employee. She was my friend, and she loved cooking and baking, and I, of course, happened to benefit from that. But I also wasn’t sure I was brave enough to risk making something for myself. A few weeks before, I’d finally worked up the gumption to break out the toaster. Indira hadn’t gotten mad—well, she hadn’t raised her voice at least. But we’d had a long—LONG, as Millie would put it—conversation about, among other things, toast sweat.

I still hadn’t heard anything from Deputy Bobby, so I tried his phone again. It rang until it went to voicemail. I debated leaving a message, disconnected, and sent him a text instead: Are you okay? Very smooth, if I do say so myself.

I grabbed my keys, got the Jeep out of the coach house, and headed into town. It’s not a far drive; Hemlock House is still technically within the city limits, even though it feels like we’re out in the middle of nowhere. That’s because of the old-growth forest between Hemlock House and Hastings Rock proper: spruce and pine and cedar, their branches strung with fog and moss, ferns bristling at the side of the road. Today, the fog was the exact color of the sky. Yesterday’s perfect weather had disappeared under the blanket of clouds that had moved in overnight, and the light had a thin, streaked quality that made it impossible to tell the time. (The clock said nine, and honest to God, how did people get up this early every day?)

When I’d first moved to Hastings Rock, I’d believed (thank you, phone) that Chipper was the town’s only coffee shop. That wasn’t technically true—coffee was part of the culture in the Pacific Northwest, and even a town as small as Hastings Rock had multiple options. But Chipper was the only coffee shop in a normal building. The others were drive-thru coffee stands, little frame structures the size of a garden shed, and they were all over the place—in the Box Bros lumber yard’s parking lot, next to the Shell service station, on the side of the road just before Bay Bridge.

And because Chipper was the only coffee shop where people could, you know, go inside, it got the bulk of the tourist traffic, and a large share of the locals as well. It didn’t hurt that it had a prime location: on Main Street, a couple of blocks from the water, with a great view of Hastings Rock’s adorable downtown: a hodgepodge of Victorian and modern coastal and even a few Cape Cods (one was a toothache-inducing pastel pink).

Chipper lived up to its name. The building was painted bright yellow, inside and out, and patrons were invited to draw on the walls—the unofficial theme was smiley faces and/or shining suns. Pretty much every inch of available space was covered, but that didn’t stop people from trying. Today, for example, JaDonna, who occasionally did clerical work for the county and whose husband worked at the timber yard and who had what I thought of as church hair, was helping a little boy trace a circle on the wall (presumably, the beginning of either a sun or a face). Driftwood accents made the space feel cozy, and the booths and seating clusters were all occupied, even though tourist season was over. Cyd Wofford was holding his morning Marx study (like a Bible study, but, you know) with Brad Newsum (Newsum Decorative Rock) and Princess McAdams (who was not, disappointingly, a real princess, but who did always carry a loaded shotgun in the rack of her old Ram). Aric Akhtar was reading on his iPad ( The Oregonian first, then the Los Angeles Times , and then Us Weekly ). Somehow, he was impervious to the clamor. The sealed concrete floor and the large open area meant that Chipper was noisy—the screech of the espresso machine, the overlapping voices, some sort of soft pop that made me think my inner teenage Dash would have loved to come here to wear a beanie and read poetry. The air smelled like good coffee and warm carbs and just a hint of the sea.

“DASH!”

Did I mention the acoustics?

Behind the counter, Millie was jumping up and down. Waving. With both hands. And then, in case I missed her, she cupped her hands around her mouth and—

“DASH! OVER HERE!”

Every eye turned toward me. I was so busy trying to crawl inside my own jacket that it took a moment to register Keme, who was sitting on a stool that he’d pulled over to the service counter. (Tessa, the owner, wouldn’t allow him to hang out with Millie in the employees-only area.) Keme looked like he was enjoying my latest round of social panicking; he found a lot of pleasure in the little things.

“Hi, Millie,” I said, and I even offered a tiny wave—which only made me blush harder—as I worked my way over to the counter.

Tessa offered a sympathetic smile. She looked tired, but then, she usually did—it might have been a homeostatic response to Millie’s constant caffeinated buzz. “Morning, Dash. What can I get you?”

“As a famous artist once said, ‘Life is meaningless, and I’ve wasted the precious seconds I’ve been given, and we’re all just sand running through the hourglass of fate, please pass the bacon.’”

“Fox was having a day, huh?”

“Honestly, I don’t even know if it was a bad day, but they certainly ate a lot of bacon.”

“Bacon, egg, and cheese on Asiago?”

“Yep.”

She started to key it in.

“Actually,” I said.

Because Keme is a traitor, he groaned.

“I was thinking about some sausage.”

I couldn’t hear him, but I knew Keme must have said something because Millie burst into uncontrollable giggles.

“Never mind,” I said, “I’ll have the farmhouse.”

“Not the bacon, egg, and cheese,” Tessa said. “Or the sausage.”

“That’s right. The awesome avocado.”

“It’s not his fault,” Millie said in answer to more of Keme’s groans.

Tessa must have taken pity on me because she smiled and said, “Tell you what: I’m going to make you the Dash special. How does that sound?”

“Terrifying. And probably like it stays up too late. And it needs to spend more time brushing its teeth.”

She laughed, but apparently she took that as a yes because she asked, “And what about something to drink?”

Keme groaned again. Dramatically.

“The caramel apple latte did look good,” I said, “but, on the other hand, there’s a case to be made for the salted caramel mocha, and—”

“I’ll bring you something you’ll like.”

“Does it come in Big Gulp size?”

She laughed, and she took my money, and she shooed me away. Which is to say, Tessa knows how to run a good coffee shop.

I dragged a stool over to the counter, ignoring Keme’s death glare. Millie came around to hug me—I swear I heard my ribs creak—and then she said, “Dash, are you okay? We were so WORRIED! Keme ALMOST CRIED!”

Keme’s eyes got huge, and he shook his head frantically.

“That’s so sweet,” I said.

He tried to kick me, but I dodged.

“I knew you were a softy.”

He tried again, but this time, Millie got in the way. She rubbed my arm and looked into my eyes, and I thought I was about five seconds away from getting another of those rib-pulverizing hugs. “That must have been terrible last night. How are you doing?”

“All right, I guess.” She was still looking at me, and for all her volume and energy and general excitability, Millie had a way of looking at you so that you knew she was seeing you, and that she cared, and that if she ruptured your eardrums, it was only because she loved you. I felt myself sink down onto the stool, and I propped an elbow on the counter. “I mean, it’s weird. I didn’t like him, obviously. He was a creep. And I would have been happy never to see him again. But I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, and when I found him—”

“You felt guilty,” Millie said softly.

“I guess so. Because I was so mad at him. And I did want something bad to happen to him, maybe. Just not that.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was a terrible night.”

Millie rubbed my arm some more. “And you didn’t even get the number of that cute bartender.”

“Well, that wasn’t really—”

“And Bobby had to FIGHT someone for you.”

I tried to give her a look. “Yeah, like I said, it was terrible—”

“And then Bobby and WEST got in a fight because Bobby had to save you.” When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Remember?”

Keme was biting the collar of his ancient Quiksilver tee, trying not to laugh.

“Yes, Millie. I remember. Like I said: it was terrible.”

Maybe it was my tone. Millie’s face fell, and she rubbed my arm some more. Keme, for his part, finally managed to kick me in the leg, but it was gentle, and the look on his face was concerned, so I decided to consider it a love tap.

“Here we go,” Tessa announced as she joined us. She passed a tray to me. “The Dash Special.”

It had four quarters of bagel arranged neatly on the plate. Not one bagel cut into four pieces; four different bagels—Asiago, everything, plain, and whole wheat. And the sandwiches themselves looked different. I spied ham on one. Sausage on another. Avocado, definitely. And, gods be praised, bacon.

“Campfire s’mores latte,” she added as she handed me an enormous mug. “Not quite a Big Gulp; there are probably legal considerations if we make them any bigger.”

“You’re the single greatest human who’s ever lived.”

Tessa laughed.

“You’re a saint crossed with an angel crossed with a taco.”

Keme rolled his eyes. But that didn’t stop him from taking the ham and egg bagel quarter from my plate.

“Millie,” Tessa said, “I need you to restock.”

“Oh, right. Sure.” But Millie’s eyes cut to me. “I’ll do it right now, Tessa.”

Tessa sighed. “In five minutes.”

“Thank you, Tessa!”

Already walking away, Tessa gave a lazy wave over her shoulder with a bar towel.

I tried to eat, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. Fortunately, Keme was more than willing to help—for such a short, skinny kid, he knew how to pack it away. I focused on my latte, which was chocolatey and marshmallowy and, yes, coffee-y, and all around amazing. My headache shrank to a manageable size. And although I still wished I could have slept to a reasonable hour, I did feel a little better.

“Have you talked to Bobby?” Millie asked.

I shook my head. “You?”

Keme grimaced. Millie said, “We haven’t seen him since, you know, the fight. We waited for you, and then the deputies told us to go home, and—” Her voice thinned. “He’s okay, right?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said. “I think he’s got bigger things to worry about than an argument with West, though. The way Sheriff Acosta was asking questions, it sounds like they’re looking at him for Gerry’s murder.”

Keme frowned around a mouthful of my bacon, egg, and cheese bagel. Millie glanced over at him.

“What?” I asked.

“What makes you think that?”

“I told you: Acosta kept asking about Bobby, about that stupid fight.” I was so upset that I forgot I wasn’t hungry and polished off the rest of the farmhouse bagel sandwich. “It wasn’t even a fight. I mean, Bobby punched him. Once. That’s all.”

“No, I mean, what made you think it’s a murder?”

“Because someone pushed Gerry off that cliff. I saw them.”

Millie looked at Keme.

Keme snatched the final quarter of bagel and took a savage bite.

“Will you just tell me already?” I said.

“Well, everyone thinks Gerry fell.”

Coffeehouse pop played softly in the background. Chairs scraped across the sealed concrete flooring. A grown man (we’re talking late forties) was whining to his mom that his frappe had too much whipped cream.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I told the sheriff I saw someone. I saw someone on the beach last night, and I saw someone on the cliff.”

“Right,” Millie said. “Totally. And we believe you.”

Keme grunted around a mouthful of avocado, egg, and cheese to suggest that he might not believe me.

“It’s just…” Millie shrugged.

“Who told you it wasn’t a murder?”

“Dairek.”

“Dairek?” I barely managed not to say that Deputy Dairek flirted with every female tourist under the age of fifty, had an uncanny ability to find a way to bring up the fact that he was a deputy, still lived with his mom, and had once gotten caught in his own zipper in the restroom of the Otter Slide. (I’d been there. I’d heard the screams.) Instead, I managed to say, “Dairek doesn’t get to decide the manner of death. That’s up to the district medical examiner. And there’s no way the district medical examiner has already made a decision; in the first place, it’s been less than twenty-four hours, and in the second, it’s a weekend.” I tried to stop, but I kept going. “And I might not be a cop, but I’ve done enough research to know that with any suspicious death, the appropriate course of action is to treat it as if it were a homicide. That way you don’t lose valuable evidence. This is a procedural travesty.”

“Uh, right,” Millie said, “but I think they did investigate, and they didn’t find anything.”

“But I didn’t want any whipped cream,” the fortysomething wailed behind us. “And now it touched it!”

“That’s impossible,” I said. I was so outraged that I barely noticed Keme had stolen my s’mores latte and was now guzzling it. “That’s ridiculous. I saw somebody on the cliff! I’m an eyewitness!”

Which, okay, might have been stretching it a tiny bit.

Keme gave Millie a significant look over the rim of the mug, and her cheeks colored.

“There’s more?” I asked.

“Uh, no.”

Keme was still looking at her.

“What?” I asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s nothing, really. I mean, it was just Dairek, you know. I don’t think it’s what the sheriff or—”

“Millie,” I said.

The words left her in a rush: “Dairek says you’re making it up for attention.”

I said some words that you can’t say around your grandma.

The fortysomething dropped his frappe, and his mom (who had to be in her sixties) covered his ears and led him out of Chipper.

A little girl who had been drawing smiley faces on the wall repeated one of the, uh, words. Loudly.

Keme’s eyes got huge, and the corner of his mouth started to twitch.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I mumbled it a few times, in various directions, making sure Aric and Cyd and Brad all heard me apologize. I said sorry again to Tessa, who waved it off with a pained smile. I said sorry to the mom of the little girl (like Keme, the mom looked like she was trying not to laugh).

“Dash—” Millie said.

“Thanks for letting me know,” I said.

I slipped off my stool and headed for the door.

But when I got to the Jeep, I sat there, hands wrapped around the steering wheel.

I had not imagined someone on the cliffs. My eyes had not been tricking me. I was not an Edwardian heroine prone to hysterics. (I probably would have been, though, if I’d been alive then.) I knew what I’d seen.

I shifted into drive and drove north out of town.