Chapter 13

Nothing I said could induce Deputy Bobby to stay. He had to get back to work. Which, the rational part of my brain acknowledged, was totally true and fair and appropriate. But I couldn't help feeling—disappointed? Was it disappointment when you felt a single moment of murderous intent toward the foursome who had tromped into your house and ruined—well, whatever that was?

We were in the kitchen, and Millie was still hugging me. Keme's face made it plain how he felt about that.

"We were so WORRIED!" she said for about the fourteenth time.

"We weren't that worried," Fox said. "Not after I saw that scrumptious Deputy Mai squire you away."

"He didn't squire me away," I said. "He was questioning me about a murder. Another one, I mean."

"Honey, listen to me: time alone with a delectable man is time alone with a delectable man."

"He has a boyfriend."

"This feels very objectifying," Indira said, "from someone who was lying on my kitchen floor not too long ago, moaning about the hypersexualization of the modern world."

"Yes," Fox said, "but have you seen Deputy Mai's tush?"

"And his face," Millie said, "he has the best face. Except for yours, Dash."

"Thank—"

"It's like two cantaloupes in compression shorts," Fox said. "Not yours, Dash. A bit flat, actually."

"—you. What is happening?"

"We're happy you're alive, dear," Indira said as she stirred something in a pot on the stove. Something hot. And chocolatey. And she had the mini marshmallows in a cute little bowl. "I see you enjoyed the cake."

"There was a cake-related emergency," I said. "I definitely didn't eat all that myself."

Keme snorted.

"What happened?" Millie asked. She finally released me. Keme was seated on a stool next to Indira, but I didn't miss the way he shifted in relief as Millie stepped away from me.

So, I told them about sneaking into Mr. Huggins's house, about how the door had already been forced, about how the place had been ransacked. I told them about the box of files on Matrika Nightingale that I'd found hidden in Mr. Huggins's office, about the revelation that Mr. Huggins had been the prosecuting attorney on the Matrika Nightingale case, and about what I'd heard downstairs: the sheriff's question, and then the gunshots.

Even as I was telling them, though, something about my own account seemed off. Yes, I'd heard the sheriff ask, What are you doing here? And there had been a gunshot. But had there been something else? Another shot, and then—a door? I'd heard a door slam, maybe. Possibly. But when? Before the gunshot? After? Was it a false memory? Witnesses were notorious for those.

"That doesn't make any sense," Fox said. "For Mr. Huggins to have been the prosecutor on the Nightingale case—well, he must have been a solid figure in the district attorney's office. Or a rising star, I suppose, but it seems hard to believe they'd have given a case that serious to anyone but an established professional. And Nightingale was convicted and sent to prison. That should have been a career-making case; how did he end up doing odd jobs for Vivienne in Hastings Rock?"

"Maybe he thought he'd get some of the same celebrity status as Vivienne," Millie said. "Maybe he thought they'd be a team, like they'd been on the Nightingale murders."

"But he didn't," Fox said. "Why? Why did he slink away and disappear?"

Indira came to the table with mugs of hot chocolate. When I took mine, that red light went on in my shoulder again, and I barely covered a wince. "What I don't understand," Indira said, "is why now?"

"What do you mean why now?" Millie asked. "She escaped. That's why."

"But why escape now? She's been in jail for decades—what has it been? Twenty years? Thirty? Has she really been obsessed with revenge for all that time?"

"Yes," Fox said, "obviously."

"Why wouldn't she run for the border? Disappear, start a new life? Why come here? And Dash made a very good point—why would Mr. Huggins help her?"

Millie and Fox both jumped in with answers, but the words washed over me in a swell of meaningless noise; I was just too tired. None of it made any sense. Something about Indira's question—why now?—tickled the back of my brain, but I couldn't form a coherent thought around the question. Because I'm here, I thought. Because apparently, I'm destined to get caught up in stuff like this.

I reached for the marshmallows (Indira's hot chocolate was amazing, of course, but she'd clearly miscalculated the correct number of marshmallows), and my shoulder lit up with pain again. Which really seemed a tad excessive for being bumped by a murderer-slash-burglar. I mean, I was young. I was in good shape. Decent shape. I did pushups. Well, I'd done one pushup. Once. Because Hugo had believed, in a truly endearing way, that I needed to get more exercise.

Movement made me turn, and I was surprised to see Keme standing next to me, an ice pack in his hand. He raised an eyebrow in question. I was still too surprised to really think about it, so I nodded. He wrapped a towel around the ice pack and pressed it to my shoulder.

Instant heaven.

Keme must have seen it on my face because he laughed, barely more than a breath, and adjusted the ice pack. Somehow, it was even better. It honestly felt so good that I thought, even with the cold, I could fall asleep—

"OH MY GOD!" The volume made it hard to tell Millie's tone, but I thought it was glee. "THEY'RE FRIENDS!"

Fox and Indira spun to look at us. In the wake of Millie's announcement, the silence was—to put it one way—deafening.

I looked at Keme. He didn't quite roll his eyes, but his face held a kind of reluctant amusement.

"Obviously we're friends," I said.

"Now you should get matching tattoos," Fox said.

This time, Keme did roll his eyes.

"Now you need to be BEST friends," Millie told us.

"One thing at a time," I said.

"You should be ROOMMATES!"

The kindest word for what must have shown on my face was amazement. Keme breathed another of those silent laughs as he adjusted the icepack again.

"Stop teasing them," Indira said. And then, to us, "I'm very happy you two have worked things out."

That seemed like a generous description of what had happened—as far as I could tell, me simply existing had driven Keme to the brink of murder, and then, by hurting my shoulder, I'd won him over completely. Best friends, I thought. And next, roommates.

Before I could voice any of those thoughts, though, I caught a glimpse of Keme's face: the unabashed pleasure at Indira's words, the genuine happiness there. I decided to keep my opinions to myself and said, "Me too."

"The matching tattoos could be of a dolphin wrestling a whale," Fox said. "On your face."

"I think we'll wait on the tattoos. That might raise some questions when I go in for my next job interview."

"Oh, don't do that. That sounds terrible."

"What do you mean?" Millie asked. "You have a job. You're going to stay here and live in Hemlock House and write books."

"A few problems with that," I said. "First, I've hit a dry spell with the writing, which was kind of the whole reason I came here. And second, I think there's still someone out there trying to—I don't know. Frame me. Kill me."

"But if Keme is your roommate—"

That made me do a mental double-take. I'd thought she'd been joking. Keme caught the look on my face and gave me a slanting smile.

"You should get a gun," Fox said. "How many guns do you have?"

"You hate guns," Indira said.

"I really don't think I want a gun," I said.

Fox shrugged. "Deputy Mai has a gun."

I managed to refrain from reminding them that Deputy Mai also had a boyfriend.

"I can borrow my dad's gun," Millie said.

"No!" We all shouted at the same time.

"I don't want to leave," I said, "but honestly, I don't know what else to do. I don't have a job here. I'm sure once they sort out everything with Mr. Huggins, they'll be able to prove I don't really own Hemlock House. I've got nowhere to live. And I've got a murderer who's still focused on me for some reason. The last one seems like a really good reason to take a permanent vacation from Hastings Rock."

Millie looked like she was about to cry. "But you're our friend. We can figure it out. We can find whoever killed Vivienne, and then you'll be safe."

Keme resettled the ice pack. Hard. Kind of like he was hitting me with it. When I started to protest, his glare stopped me. I took the nonverbal message and tried to go for accommodating. "I don't know who we have left. I mean, there's Pippi; she had a motive, I think, but I don't know how we'd prove she managed to get inside Vivienne's room and kill her."

"It's not Pippi," Fox said.

"It's not?" I asked.

Fox shook their head.

"But the story. She had a secret she wanted to cover up—she was paying Vivienne to write a bestseller for her."

"Oh, I don't doubt that. But have you ever read one of Pippi's books?"

"Well, no."

Indira laughed. When I looked at her, she said, "I honestly didn't think about it that way."

"What way?"

"Pippi's books always end the same way," Fox said. "She's always got this thirtysomething female protagonist who loves cupcakes or loves knitting or loves tea—"

"I saw the ones about tea."

"—and they bumble around, spending most of the time talking to their friends about relationship problems, or worrying about relationship problems, or baking cupcakes, or picking out yarn for a special, uh, yarn thing, or steeping tea—"

"Fox," I said.

"Right. Well, every book, she apparently realizes she has to actually solve the mystery that her characters are nominally trying to solve, and so at the end, the bad guy walks onstage and tries to kill the cupcake girl, and that's all the proof the police need. Oh, she always survives, in case you were worried."

"I was not." But something about what Fox had said made my brain stir and stretch. I couldn't put my finger on it, not yet, but it was there, itching at me. Like Indira's question: why now.

"Now, if it were Vivienne's books," Fox continued, "there'd be some kind of twist—and she usually had good ones. The killer would have amnesia. Or the victim would have amnesia. Oh! Or the real killer would be dead the whole time."

I wish I could say I was a deductive genius. I wish I could say I carefully assembled the evidence until all the pieces fit. I wish I could say I was the perfect detective like Will Gower. But writers' brains—at least, this writer's brain—didn't work that way. My brain worked in fits and starts, in intuitive leaps, and all of a sudden, I knew what had happened. The way I had known those (okay, admittedly few) times when a story had come together for me. Vivienne's empty bank accounts. Mr. Huggins's murder. The intruder. Even the food missing from the cellar.

"I know this is going to be asking a lot," I said over Fox. "But I need your help. And it's going to be dangerous."

No one said anything. To be fair, they probably didn't know what to say—or what I was talking about. And then Keme, with a small smile, rapped me on the head in the universal sign for dummy.