Page 19 of Always Murder (The Last Picks #9)

I waited until Deputy Dahlberg showed up to take Three’s statement. I gave her Paul’s Pirate’s Cove card, and I told her where I’d found it. She said thanks, and she wrote everything down. She’s a professional like that.

Then I was free to go, so I went home.

I called Millie on the drive.

“Dash, now’s not really—Mom, no!”

The sounds of a scuffle followed, and then Christine, breathing a bit more heavily than usual, came on the phone. Her words, though, sounded like they were directed at Millie instead of me. “Yes, I am going to talk to him, Millicent. Because this is his fault as much as it is yours.”

“Hold on,” I said, “how is this my fault? For that matter, how is it Millie’s—”

“The two of you couldn’t leave well enough alone. You had to be a pair of—of nosey parkers! I hope you’re happy. I think it would be best for everyone if you removed yourself from the nativity pageant.” She dragged in a ragged breath. “You ruined Christmas!”

The call disconnected.

I didn’t try again, and Millie didn’t call back.

When I got to Hemlock House, the flat-iron sky was low, and in spite of the clouds, the day’s light made me squint. I went inside. The house was empty, and it had the wan cheer that Christmas decorations always do in the middle of the day. I wandered through the kitchen, picked at a piece of some sort of torte Indira had left, and stared out the window. The ocean was rumpled and frothy and looked like somebody had stirred it up with a fork. I left the half-finished piece of torte and decided I should try to write.

The problem was that I’d been so busy trying to solve a—I’d almost said a murder. A string of package thefts. A brutal assault. I’d been so busy trying to figure out who had hurt Paul and tried to frame him that I hadn’t actually done any thinking about my manuscript.

Maybe I needed more murders. My gaze wandered to the window again. No snow. No ice. Only the evergreen of the Sitka spruce forest. Maybe that was why it still didn’t feel like Christmas.

More murders could be good. Sometimes, that was the best way to keep a story hopping. And it was fiction, so you could have bodies dropping every other page. Now that was interesting. That was so much more compelling than trying to track down somebody’s stolen LED face mask. (I mean, do the lights even do anything?) Maybe Will Gower needed a serial killer! Of course, that didn’t go with the whole cozy noir thing I was trying to do.

The idea had tickled something at the back of my head, though. More bodies wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. Maybe people were dying…quite a few people, actually. And nobody knew why. Poisoned pills, like that Tylenol thing. Or a bad batch of whatever people take for their cholesterol. (I ought to know what it’s called—Bobby was always threatening me with it.) And someone saw their chance to get rid of someone, and they took it.

A little thrill ran through me. That wasn’t half bad. In fact, that could tie in rather nicely to cozy noir. Cozy noir was going to be all about the human aspect of justice. Maybe the killer was desperate. Maybe they thought this was their only way out. A string of inexplicable deaths…what’s one more? Nobody would think twice about it.

Except Will Gower, of course. My fictional detective would immediately notice something that was slightly different from the other deaths. Something that didn’t add up. Something like…

Well, I’d come up with it later.

The important part was that I’d solved—more or less—my problem of when to introduce the first murder. Kind of.

Having figured that out, I decided I should probably write some of it down, at least make a note of it. Instead, though, I alternated between brooding at my laptop screen and brooding out the window. I wanted one of those big ice storms that occasionally rolled in. Barring that, I would have settled for lots and lots of rain. Something dramatic, elemental, cataclysmic.

Something that would make me feel better about my own little internal tantrum.

They’d arrested Elliott for the thefts. That was great. That was fantastic. I mean, that was what I wanted, right? I wanted the sheriff and her deputies to be responsible for law and order. I wanted them to be the ones who tracked down all the thieves and murderers and, uh, stagecoach bandits. I didn’t want to have to solve every crime in Hastings Rock myself. I didn’t have time, anyway. I was too busy writing my book.

But Elliott? Honestly?

I mean, okay, yes, I might be biased by the tiny fact that I found him unbearable. And yes, I’d spotted a number of weird things—red flags like the fact that he and Angeline had met when he’d “helped” her with her ATM card, and then mysteriously, her account got hacked. And that wasn’t including the points Millie had made: that he’d cheated during a family game night, and how the details about his luxury apartment seemed to change. Not to mention the fact that the whole business about his “investment tips” for Millie’s dad had stunk to high heaven. And it would have been easy for Elliott to learn about Paul’s live streams.

So, I could see why the sheriff might suspect him.

There was also the slightly inconvenient fact that the deputies had found a Santa suit in his trunk along with several stolen packages.

Okay, so Elliott had done it. Elliott was the thief. Fine. I wasn’t entirely sure of the sequence of events—I suspected there’d been some sort of long con happening, with Elliott trying to get money out of Angeline and her parents, and the package thefts had been an opportunity that fell into Elliott’s lap.

But was I supposed to believe that Elliott had also attacked Paul? That he’d tried to beat him to death?

Before I could think about what I was doing, I had my phone out and was calling Bobby.

“What’s up?”

It was such a strange, flat question that it knocked me slightly off balance, and I burst out, “Elliott didn’t attack Paul.”

Empty seconds ticked past.

“We’ve got our hands full right now,” Bobby said.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t help myself, though. “But he didn’t. You know that, right?”

“I don’t know that, actually. Elliott still hasn’t been interviewed. And we haven’t had a chance to re-interview Paul to see if he’s remembered anything.”

“Bobby, it doesn’t make any sense. Con men aren’t violent. That’s why they’re con men.”

“That’s not necessarily true. It’s hard to predict how someone’s going to behave when they’re cornered.”

“But that’s the whole point: Paul didn’t corner him. Someone tracked Paul down at that storage unit and tried to kill him.”

“Maybe he thought Paul knew he was the thief.”

“That’s the problem, though—we’re right back where we started. If someone wants to argue that Elliott might be violent if he were frightened and trapped, okay, maybe I’ll buy that. But tracking someone down and assaulting them in cold blood?”

“They argued. It escalated.”

“I don’t think so. I think someone walked right up to Paul, someone he knew and trusted, and they beat the snot out of him. Who knows what would have happened if Millie hadn’t shown up?”

“Sounds like Elliott.”

It did sound like Elliott, which was probably why I made an embarrassingly high-pitched sound of frustration. “Okay, but if it was Elliott, why would he attack Paul and then stick around?”

“Matthew wanted to make some investments the day after Christmas.”

I said a few words you can’t say when you’re sitting on Santa’s lap. “What about the money in Paul and Ryan’s car? If Elliott’s a con man, he wouldn’t give up ten thousand dollars like that.”

“We’re going to see if we can recover any prints from the tire. Listen, Dash, I’ve got work to do—”

“What about Paul’s Pirate’s Cove card?”

After a silent second (probably considering disconnecting), Bobby said reluctantly, “What about it?”

“Why would he leave that at Three’s house?”

“To frame Paul.”

“But where did he get it?”

“I don’t know, Dash. We haven’t had a chance to interview Paul again.”

“Why not leave his driver’s license?”

“Maybe Paul left the Pirate’s Cove card in his desk. We don’t know how Elliott got into his wallet. We don’t know anything yet, which is why I don’t understand why we’re having this argument.”

“It’s not an argument, it’s—it’s analysis. Why would he steal Three’s book?”

“What?”

“The manga Three ordered, why would he steal it?”

“He was stealing packages, Dash. He didn’t know what was in them.”

“But everything about it was different. He hid. He waited. He ran up to the porch and grabbed it out of Three’s hands. And it wasn’t worth anything .”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you figure it out and tell the rest of us?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. And then, it all came crashing back—the way he’d asked about turning off the light, the way he’d said, Thanks , even that strange little jab from earlier that I hadn’t even realized until now was a jab, when he’d called me Mr. Intuition.

Mr. Intuition I was not. But I wasn’t totally clueless either.

But I couldn’t quite keep the disbelief out of my voice as I asked, “Are you mad at me?”

More of those vast, empty seconds ticked past. And then he said, “I’m not happy with you right now, no.”

“What? Why?”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t know. If you didn’t want me to help Millie or—or interfere with your investigation, why didn’t you—”

He cut through my words with a barely suppressed whisper. “Why? You want to know why? Because you told the sheriff I was going to apply for the detective role, Dash. I mean, my God, what were you thinking?”

Somewhere at the back of the house, the wind rattled a window.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought—”

“I know what you thought. Everyone knows what you thought because you told everyone, Dash. Everyone .”

I didn’t remember standing, but I was on my feet, lurching back and forth, rubbing my free hand against my joggers. “Bobby, I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t—I wouldn’t—” Tears stung my eyes. “I don’t understand. I thought you wanted to apply for it.”

“Oh yeah? Why? Why did you think that?” A beat. “Did you ask me?”

I knew, in that second, if I tried to say anything, I’d burst into sobs.

“I have to go,” Bobby said—his voice stiff now that the heat had died out of it. “Let’s talk about this later.”