Page 3 of Broken Bird (The Last Picks #4)

I stood there, trying to make sense of what Pippi had told me. Marshall’s death was a murder. That sent a thrill through me—nothing so ghoulish as excitement, but a kind of low-grade electrical thrum. The fact that Pippi was the prime suspect was a little harder to process, but as Pippi began to cry, I had to believe she was telling the truth.

Someone poked me in the ribs.

“Ow!”

Keme pushed past me, with a look of disgust for me, and Millie followed him into the den. Then Keme seemed to hit a wall and stopped, standing in a pose every guy knows: hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, head down. Portrait of a human male who has no idea what to do around strong emotions . I was feeling a bit of it myself. As a matter of fact, I realized my hands were in my own pockets.

Millie, on the other hand, hugged Pippi. She helped her sit in one of the tufted chairs, and then she pulled a footstool over and perched there, patting Pippi’s hand. “It’s okay, Pippi. Everything’s going to be all right. Do you want some water? Pippi, did you hear me? Do you want something to drink? Pippi. Pippi. Pippi. Pippi. Pippi. Pip—”

Pippi’s head came up, and her eyes had a wild quality that suggested someone about to bolt. “What?”

Patting her hand again, Millie said, “Do you want some water?”

“Maybe we’ll worry about water in a few minutes,” Fox said from the doorway, where they stood with Indira.

“Is everything all right?” Indira asked.

“Uh,” I said.

Fox gave me a look.

What? I mouthed.

Fox gave me another, more pointed look.

I spread my hands.

“Do something,” Fox whispered furiously.

And Keme added a gesture not appropriate for mixed company that suggested I was, um, wasting everyone’s time.

“Why me?” I whispered back.

“Because it’s your house,” Indira said, as though that explained anything.

“When I cry, I get the hiccups,” Millie was telling Pippi. “Oh! And one time my Aunt Susan got the hiccups, and I tried to scare her, you know, to make her hiccups go away, and so I waited around the corner, and when I jumped out at her, she SCREAMED!”

Pippi jolted in the seat and gave a little scream herself.

“And then her hair topper fell off, only I didn’t know that at the time because I was only seven, but it was right there on the floor, and then I screamed, and Aunt Susan was still screaming, and I was still screaming, and Mom made me go to my room, and later, Ryan told me that the hair topper fell off an angel, and I thought all angels were bald until I was nine.” Millie seemed to consider this story and added, “That was before Aunt Susan had her stripper wig.”

“Why do I write mysteries?” I said under my breath as I moved over to Pippi. “I should write horror. I’m going to have nightmares for weeks.” In a louder voice, I said, “Millie, why don’t you get Pippi a glass of water? And, uh, maybe some of those sugar cookies for the rest of us.”

Keme gave me a disappointed look.

“To keep up our strength,” I said, but even I thought it sounded a bit weak.

Keme went with Millie, and I took a seat on the footstool. Pippi snuffled and wiped her eyes, and Indira touched my shoulder and passed me a box of tissues. I held a few out to Pippi as she composed herself.

When she’d recovered, she gave me a watery smile and said, “Well, I certainly didn’t mean to fall to pieces like that.”

“That’s all right,” I said warily—because it was hard to forget some of Pippi’s other dramatic roles like, J’accuse! The Pippi Parker and Dashiell Dawson Dane Story (brought to you by the producers of Kinky Boots) . “Being accused of murder isn’t all that fun. But I’ve got to admit I’m a little confused. I didn’t think Marshall’s death was being investigated. And I have no idea what you’re looking for.”

“ I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Pippi admitted. “I thought maybe—I mean, you gave him that package last night, and I thought, since you’re always involved in people getting murdered around here…”

“I’m sorry, are you telling me that you were trying to prove I killed Marshall?”

“No! No, no, no. Thank you, sweetheart.”

This was for Millie, who beamed at Pippi as she passed her the water. Keme was still glowering, body angled protectively, as though he suspected that—at any moment—Pippi might reveal her true, murderous intent and attack Millie. Honestly, it would have been Keme’s dream. I think a knife fight would have given him an excuse to take his shirt off, and that was probably ninety percent of what he thought about when he was around Millie.

After a sip of water, Pippi continued, “No, I need help , Dashiell.”

“It’s just Dash. And I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t help you. I have no idea why someone would want Marshall dead, aside from the fact that he—” He was a massive jerk wasn’t exactly respectful toward the recently deceased, so I changed it to “—rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. If Marshall’s death was a homicide, then the best thing you can do is leave it to the sheriff. She’ll work this investigation the way it’s supposed to be worked: she’ll interview witnesses, she’ll run background checks, she’ll do a deep dive into Marshall’s life and figure out who might have had a motive.”

“Yes, exactly, that’s wonderful.” Pippi set down the glass so hurriedly that water sloshed out of the glass. Fumbling a battered memo book out of her bag, she said, “Keep going like that; that’s excellent.” She found a pencil, licked the tip, and began scribbling furiously on the page.

“Uh,” I said. “Keep going with the absolutely most basic elements of a criminal investigation?”

“Say that part about motive again.”

“Pippi, you’re a mystery writer. You know all this.”

“Bah,” she said. (Yes, really. And no, I’d never heard a real, live human say it before either.) “It’s not the same.”

In that regard, she wasn’t wrong. It’s not the same was undoubtedly the gentlest way to put it. Pippi wrote cozy mysteries, and, as Fox had once explained to me, they mostly involved ladies being best friends and hanging out in cupcake shops or teahouses or bookstores, often in a small, scenic town, often with a solicitous, patient, and respectful gentleman caller (or two). The mysteries, what there was of them, tended to be, well, seasoning—a little something sprinkled on top. But still, even in a cozy, means, motive, and opportunity were pretty standard ingredients.

“You know,” I said, “I don’t think I should get involved in this. I’m sorry that the sheriff is considering you as a suspect; I don’t know why she would do that, but if you’re innocent, the truth—”

“Don’t give me that nonsense about the truth. You know as well as I do that the truth, if it ever comes out, does so slowly— and often, far too late. Sheriff Acosta believes I killed Marshall because I said I was going to kill him. And, of course, because doing so would have been totally justified.”

“Uh,” I said.

“I mean, you heard him! Those horrible things he was saying. His ‘jokes.’” I could hear the air quotes around the word. “He was so—so smug. Okay, he wrote those grim, bloody thrillers. Fine. Wonderful. Everyone can read what they want to read. But that doesn’t make him a better writer, just because his stories are dark. And it doesn’t make me a bad writer because I write stories that are happy and pleasant and people actually want to read them. You want to talk about unbelievable? His entire series is about a man in his late forties who, in book after book, exclusively beds women who wear D-cups and drive sports cars. That’s fantasy.”

“You’re right.” Although I’d never thought about it that way before. “But you’re missing my point. I don’t want to get involved in another murder investigation. Let the sheriff do her job—”

“Oh, I see.” Pippi flipped the memo book shut and sat forward to jab the pencil at me. “You’re not interested in helping me because there’s no glory in it for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You won’t get to be the star. That’s what this is about.”

“This isn’t—” I stopped. I tried to hold back. And then the words exploded out of me. “You’re the one who accused me of murder, remember? You stood up on that stage and told everyone in town that I’d killed Vivienne.”

“Because I thought you did!”

“That doesn’t make it better!” Even though a part of me had to admit that, technically, maybe it should. “You’re the one who made a big deal out of how you had assumed Vivienne’s mantle, and you were the new Matron of Murder, and all that BS. And then you came here, and you lied to me, and you tried to ransack my house, and—” I tried to stop. Really. “—you brought soup!” I could hear my volume approaching Millie levels. “I mean, it’s flavored water. Does it even have any potatoes in it?”

“You’re losing ground,” Fox said from the doorway.

I wrenched myself back to the topic at hand. “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted because I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to interfere with a homicide investigation.”

Before Pippi could say anything in response, I turned and left.

I ended up in the servants’ dining room. It’s exactly what it sounds like—well, we don’t have any servants, but you get the idea. Table and chairs, gingham curtains in the windows, the smell of Indira’s bread baking in the oven. Out beyond the cliffs, the ocean had a rucked-up look, the edge of every crease and fold gleaming like tinsel.

The sound of the door made me turn as they filed in: Millie first (she gave me a hug, of course), and then Indira, Fox, and Keme last of all.

“She is unbelievable,” I said.

The four of them exchanged looks.

“What?” I asked.

“Dash,” Indira began, “no one blames you for feeling the way you do about Pippi.”

If I squinted, I could almost see the but at the end of that sentence.

“But,” Fox said, “you’re not looking at this the right way.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “She didn’t even have the decency to tell me she needed help, not until I caught her pawing through my stuff. She came here to sniff around for something she could use against me. If she didn’t find real proof, she would have tried to frame me.”

“Well, of course,” Fox said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s wrong about the fact that you’re the best person to help her. I mean, technically, we work best as a team.”

“That’s not what you said when we were playing Super Smash Bros and you said maybe I should be on my own team.”

With a sniff, Fox waved the words away. “Not to mention the fact that you’re dying to investigate.”

“I am not!” I opened my mouth to continue the argument—and then I stopped. Because who was I trying to fool? These were my friends; they loved me, they knew me, and they were, for reasons I still couldn’t process, unbelievably patient with me. Yes, I’d already been half-convinced Marshall’s death had been anything but natural. Yes, I wanted to know who had killed him. I hadn’t liked Marshall, but I hadn’t wanted him to die. And while I wouldn’t lose much sleep over Pippi being the prime suspect, the reality was that the longer the sheriff focused on Pippi, the more time the real killer had to cover their tracks. And, if I were fully honest with myself, I did have what Bobby occasionally called an overdeveloped sense of justice, which came from reading way too many hard-boiled detective novels.

“Fine,” I said. “But only because I can’t stand the thought of somebody getting away with murder.”

“And because you’re a good person,” Millie said, “and you wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Pippi.”

“No, that’s not—”

“And it’ll be so nice to have something to talk about with Bobby,” Indira said.

“That is absolutely not why—”

“And you’re an inveterate snoop,” Fox said.

“Hey!”

Keme put his hands on his hips, considering me, and then said, “Plus, you’re a donkey.”

Considering I was about to jump into another murder investigation, with Pippi Parker as my, uh, client—well, it was hard to argue with that.