Page 5 of Broken Bird (The Last Picks #4)

“You’re going to do great,” I said as I squeezed the Jeep into a spot at the end of the block. It wasn’t tourist season, but the Rock On Inn was located close to Hasting Rock’s downtown, and parking was always at a premium. Not to mention the inn’s private lot was full of sheriff’s office cruisers.

Keme glared at me and yanked his hood up.

That last part might have only partially been a show of anger; he had to be cold. It was another December afternoon—a low ceiling of clouds the color of machined steel, damp cold, and a sea breeze that cut through clothing like a knife. Keme wore a Baja hoodie and joggers with Billabong slides. I honestly didn’t know how his feet hadn’t frozen off. I’d given him a pair of Nikes, passing them off as an early Christmas gift, and he’d worn them twice before they’d disappeared. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what had happened.

“All you have to do is keep her talking,” I said. “About anything. It’ll be easy.”

It was remarkable how much scorn—and what appeared to be genuine disbelief at how stupid I was—he could communicate without opening his mouth.

“Ask her about her rates for a writers’ conference,” I suggested. “Tell her I want to invite a bunch of people, and see what it would cost to book the whole inn.”

Keme reached for the door.

“And be charming,” I said. “I need you to keep her occupied.”

He turned back to look at me.

“And, um, maybe smile?” I said, but it came out as more of a question.

Keme bared his teeth.

“You are a terrifying young man,” I said. “You know that, right?”

His expression shifted into a smirk, and he dropped out of the Jeep.

After counting to sixty, I followed him.

The Rock On Inn was a sprawling building behind a massive boxwood hedge, which gave it the illusion of privacy even in the busy heart of the town. The inn itself had started life as one of Hastings Rock’s stately old Victorians. The original structure was still there, with clapboard siding and decorative gables and a single arched window of stained glass in the tower. As Hastings Rock had evolved into a tourist town and business had grown, Cheri-Ann’s parents had added on to the structure. The additions were more practical than decorative, extending back from the house and to either side.

The presence of the sheriff’s office cruisers in the parking lot—one of which I recognized as Bobby’s—was the important detail. It was one thing to have approval from the sheriff to do some light investigating. It was another thing entirely to come face-to-face with Bobby during said investigating. Especially because things had been so weird lately. The last thing I needed was for him to think I’d started following him to work because I was so desperate to spend more time with him.

Fortunately or unfortunately (I wasn’t sure), there was no sign of him outside. Deputy Tripple was guarding the parking lot, but Keme appeared to have slipped past him without any trouble. It wasn’t hard to see why: Tripple—who was a middle-aged white man, completely bald, with a disturbingly wrinkled forehead/scalp situation—was fending off two people who both appeared to be extremely determined to get past him. The first was Pippi, who was shouting, “I have a constitutional right as an American citizen and as the Matron of Murder to go in there!” And the second was Hayes, who was doing less shouting but looked, if possible, even more frustrated.

I had no idea why—or how— Pippi was here, but I definitely didn’t want her to think this was a team-up kind of situation. I kept close to the bushes lining the edge of the lot and slunk past the brouhaha, but not before Hayes said, in the tone of someone nearing the end of his patience, “You don’t understand: I have a legal and financial responsibility to the estate—”

“And you can talk to the sheriff about it,” Tripple said over him.

I hurried around back. Through a window, I spotted Keme perched on a stool in the kitchen, sitting at the island, drinking what I guessed was tea as Cheri-Ann leaned over the granite slab to chat. She was middle-aged, white, with long auburn hair that she wore with severe bangs. To go with the tea, she was holding out a box of Snackwell’s (for Keme’s sake, I hoped they were Devil’s food cake). Keme, for his part—well, the look on Keme’s face suggested imminent murdering (likely, my own), but as I watched, he said something that sent Cheri-Ann spiraling into laughter. Keme was a lot of things, it turned out. Predictable was not one of them.

I had a vague plan to use my lock-picking skills (thank you, YouTube), but when I got to the back of the building, a housekeeping cart propped the door open. I listened, caught a snatch of what sounded like music and cheap speakers, and risked a quick look through the doorway. The hallway was clear in both directions, and it smelled like Fabuloso and bleach.

I figured Marshall, being the big, famous author that he was, would have wanted the best room in the house—which meant it was on the top floor and at the front of the building (ocean view, and all that). Darting across the hall, I headed for the stairs. The music faded behind me, and I was halfway up the stairs before voices floated down to me, followed by the crackle of a radio. I peered up at the landing; it was empty, but I knew the deputies had to be up there. Probably conducting their search of Marshall’s room.

I slowed as I got to the top of the stairs and listened again.

“—check the closet,” a familiar voice said. Bobby.

“Hurry up.” That was Deputy Dairek, whose head seemed to be permanently stuck up his, uh, tailpipe. “We’re not going to find anything here anyway.”

I chanced a look. The hallway was empty, but one of the doors stood open, and from beyond it came light and the sounds of movement. The door opposite had a DO NOT DISTURB sign hung on the handle, and I thought if I were Marshall, I’d want my assistant and my agent nearby. Particularly my assistant. And if I were Cheri-Ann, I’d want to put them in rooms that were close because it would be easier when it came time to clean. So the odds were good, I thought, that the room I was looking at belonged to Marshall’s assistant.

It also happened to be right across from where Bobby was working.

I moved down the hall as quietly as I could and tapped on the door. Nothing happened. I tapped again, longer this time, and eventually the sound of steps came from the other side. The door opened on the chain, and a bloodshot eye stared out at me.

“Hi,” I said as quietly as I could. “Are you Marshall’s assistant? Elodie?”

She stared at me for a moment—nothing more than an eye in that inch-wide opening—and then, voice hoarse, she said, “No comment.”

As she started to shut the door, I said, “No, no, no!” It wasn’t a shout, but the urgency definitely bled into my whisper. “I’m not a reporter. I’m, uh, Dash. We met last night.” And then I had a stroke of genius. “My parents asked me to check on you. To make sure you’re okay. They’re friends with Marshall. I brought him that package, remember?”

Something changed in her expression. In her eye, I guess. What I could see of it. She mumbled, “Just a minute,” and then the door swung closed long enough for her to remove the chain. She wore a fleecy pink robe and matching slippers, with her mousy hair in a scrunchie, and she looked like she’d been crying for hours: the bloodshot eyes, sure, but also tear tracks on her face, and the all-around rawness that you see in the face of someone who’s been weeping uncontrollably. “Do you want to come in?”

I followed Elodie into the room. It had the usual furniture: bed, dresser, nightstand, chair, all of it with an old-fashioned aesthetic that wasn’t period specific (I lived in a Class V haunted mansion, so I knew what I was talking about), but it still managed to make the place feel antiquated in a quaint, comfortable way. It smelled faintly like boiled grass. That was Cheri-Ann at work—more tea. The window looked out on the town instead of the ocean, and I wondered about that. Why hadn’t Marshall given her a room with a view of the water? It couldn’t have been availability; at this time of year, the inn was almost entirely empty. The best answer I could come up with was money, but even that seemed…cheap.

Elodie stopped, turned, folded her arms. Her shoulders were curved in. Her eyes skated away from mine. “I’m fine.” The words were choppy. Then she seemed to take herself in and added, “I know I look a bit rough, but that’s only because I’ve been up all night. It’s nice of your parents to want to check, but I’m—” Tears spilled down her cheeks again, and she wiped them away. “There’s nothing anyone can do.” After a deep breath, she said, “If you want to give me the package, I’ll make sure Ophelia gets it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You had something for Marshall, right? I thought maybe you’d want Ophelia to have it.” As though I were a bit dim, she added, “His wife.”

“Oh. Right. No, sorry. I gave it to him last night.”

She frowned, but all she said was “Oh.”

“I’m so sorry about your loss,” I said. “I didn’t know Marshall well, but like I said, he was friends with my parents.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say that he was a good guy, so I settled for “He was always larger than life. A force of nature.”

“Exactly,” she wailed and started crying again. I guided her to the chair, found the almost empty box of tissues, and sat on the bed. She didn’t cry for long; I figured she’d more or less already cried herself out. What was left was the real stuff, what you couldn’t cry out, the bone-deep grief that stayed with you.

When she finished crying, her eyes and nose were even redder, and she clutched the tissues in one white-knuckled hand. “I’m sorry,” she rasped. “It’s all so sad.”

“You and Marshall must have been close,” I said. “Did you work with him for a long time?”

She nodded. “Since I was in college. We met when he was doing a visit, and—” A squeak escaped her, and she pressed the tissue to her mouth. Another wail tore loose: “He was so kind.”

Maybe he had been, I thought. But I suspected that the same guy who’d called me Killer because I hadn’t wanted to go hunting, the same guy who’d mocked Pippi in front of her friends and neighbors—that guy, I was pretty sure, hadn’t been kind unless he’d wanted to be.

“Elodie, did you know that the sheriff believes Marshall was murdered?”

She nodded. “She was here all morning, talking to me, asking questions, looking through Marshall’s stuff. I told her that Marshall always had me take care of his pills. That was one of my jobs. He didn’t like doing stuff like that, remembering things like that. That’s why I had his keys. That’s why I carried his wallet. He had more important things to think about, you know?”

“Wait, you had access to his medication?”

“Of course.” She dabbed at her eyes with the wadded-up tissues. “He’d never remember to get the prescription refilled otherwise. And he didn’t want to carry things around, so I kept his diazepam in my purse in case he needed it. The same way I did with everything: pens, notebooks, ChapStick. If he needed it, I kept it in my bag.”

“God, that’s awful. Did someone steal it?”

“What? Oh, no. He kept the prescription vial with his other pills. I only took a few of them with me when we were out.”

“I know this has got to be hard for you, and I’m so sorry you have to go through this, but I can’t help wondering who would do something like this. I mean, who would want to hurt Marshall?”

“Nobody! That’s what I keep trying to tell the sheriff. Everyone loved Marshall. But all the sheriff wanted to talk about was that stupid argument—” She cut off, fresh color rushing into her cheeks, her nails digging into the tissue she clutched.

“I, uh, might have heard some of that,” I said. “At the end.”

“It wasn’t anything.” Her voice had a brittle insistence. “It was a misunderstanding.”

“I know he could be a hard guy to get along with sometimes. He wasn’t always very nice to me. I mean, you heard him with that ‘Killer’ stuff. And—”

“We got along great! Everything was fine—it wasn’t like that at all!”

In the wake of her shout, she sank back against the chair, breathing hard. It didn’t look like she was crying again, but she covered her eyes, and her shoulders shook.

“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this. One of my friends—” Now there was a stretch. “—is a suspect right now. All I want to do is learn what happened last night.”

“Who?” Elodie dropped her hand and blinked red-rimmed eyes at me. “That horrible woman?”

I didn’t say anything.

“That’s who it is, isn’t it?” She struggled to sit up. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was her. She’s crazy! Do you know what she did? She found out Marshall was going to do a reading, right? And she went bonkers. She had to be part of it. She had to do her own reading as well. She started calling, and you know who had to answer? Me. At first, she was insistent. ‘Wouldn’t it be a great idea?’ and ‘I’d be so honored.’ And ‘I really think I bring a lot to the table.’”

I could hear Pippi’s particular brand of self-promotion at work.

“And Marshall didn’t have any interest, of course. She writes cozies. I mean, my God. Have you ever read a Chase Thunder book? Why would you put those two authors together? But she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She started throwing fits. She’d get on the phone and scream. And then I guess she finally decided to do it the old-fashioned way: she went to her friend, that librarian, and demanded that the library add her to the reading. When Marshall found out, he called her up and gave her a piece of his mind. He said he’d get her fired from that stupid library for pulling a stunt like this. He said she’d never have another author do a visit. But that lady’s a battleaxe—you know what I mean. She wouldn’t back down. And that’s when—”

Elodie looked down. After a moment, she picked at the stitching on her robe.

“That’s when what?” I asked.

“He didn’t mean anything, okay? He was angry, that’s all. He dashed off a few stupid tweets; we’ve all done something like that. And you’ve got to admit some of her stuff is pretty silly. I mean, these twenty-year-old girls running around looking for payphones, or they all wear these old lady brands that nobody’s ever heard of, and they’re always talking about these actors that are, like, a million years old.”

So, that answered one question. I’d wondered why Pippi had gone on her podcast and threatened to kill Marshall before he’d ever arrived in Hastings Rock. Now, I knew: because Marshall had been poking fun at (or, better said, ripping apart) Pippi’s books long before he’d arrived. Which meant, if I were the sheriff, that it looked like Pippi had plenty of time to stew about Marshall’s behavior. Plenty of time, even, to come up with a plan.

“Hayes told him to take the tweets down, but of course, Marshall wouldn’t,” Elodie continued. “That’s how he was: he never backed down from a fight.”

Especially, I thought, when he was the bigger dog. “Was Marshall in any sort of financial trouble? Or is that a better question for Hayes?”

“What? God, no, he couldn’t write books fast enough. Thunder Clap broke some of his publisher’s records, actually.”

“Really? I thought my parents told me he was going to stop writing the Chase Thunder books. Some sort of new project.”

(Okay, maybe I needed a nun to rap my knuckles, because this lying thing was getting out of control.)

“You’re talking about Titus Brooks,” Elodie said. “I told him he shouldn’t be promoting it yet; that’s all people want to talk about, and it’s muddying the waters. Hayes told him the same thing. We want everyone raving about Thunder Clap right now.”

“Is that what you and Marshall were arguing about?”

Elodie made a face and adjusted her robe again. “I told you; it wasn’t an argument. It was a disagreement. And I hate that those were the last words I said to him.”

“Why was Marshall so eager to promote the Titus Brooks series?”

“He kept saying it was the perfect opportunity. He and Hayes got into a huge fight about it, actually. And that was a fight.” She glanced up, eyes wide. “That’s not what I meant. Hayes would never—I mean, nobody would—I mean—”

She stopped, apparently unable to finish those rambling excuses. Finally, I said, “Did you pick up the manuscript after Marshall collapsed?”

“What?”

“The Titus Brooks pages he was going to read. Did you take them?”

“No. That librarian gave me Marshall’s stuff after the paramedics took him—” She made a choked sound and pressed the tissues to her eyes again, but a moment later she was on her feet, digging through a satchel at the desk. She pulled out a leather portfolio, opened it, and drew out a sheaf of pages. After a quick scan, she said, “It’s not here.”

“What’s not there?”

“The Titus Brooks pages. I mean, this is the excerpt that Marshall was going to read from Thunder Clap , and this is his portfolio. But the Titus Brooks pages are gone.”

“And you said Mrs. Shufflebottom gave you the portfolio? Did she give you anything else?”

Elodie shook her head. “I told you Marshall didn’t like to carry things around. I gave him the portfolio when we got to the library, and it had everything he needed for the reading. Then he—he got sick, and then, after the paramedics left, that librarian said I should take this since it was his. That’s how she said it. Something like that.”

“I don’t suppose you could print me a copy of the manuscript, could you? I know it’s a strange request, but I’m curious why someone would take it. Maybe it’s nothing, but it might help if I could scan the pages.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Marshall was extremely strict about how many people saw his manuscripts. Hayes read them. A few writer friends.” She hesitated, and her voice took on a strange note. “Ophelia, of course. And there might be legal considerations since the manuscript hasn’t been published yet. It’s a valuable piece of intellectual property, you know?”

Nodding, I said, “I understand. I promise it won’t leave my hands. I know you cared for Marshall, Elodie, and I know this sounds farfetched, but I honestly think this might help us figure out who would have wanted to hurt him.”

She blew her nose and then, movements decisive, she pulled out a laptop and sat at the desk. After asking for my email address, she did some clicking and typing, and a moment later, my phone buzzed. The incoming email was from Elodie Sinclair, and it had a document attached.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Just be careful,” she said. “If someone does want that manuscript, well, then you might be in danger now too.”

I nodded. And because I hadn’t forgotten Pippi’s tidbit about Hayes sneaking out at the beginning of Marshall’s reading, I said, “I was wondering if you could introduce me to Hayes. I wanted to ask him some questions as well, and it might go more smoothly if you explain what I’m doing.”

“I can give him a call,” she said. “I don’t know if he’ll say yes.”

“Maybe we could swing by his room.”

“Oh, he’s not staying here. I didn’t even know he was going to be here, so I only booked rooms for me and Marshall. Hayes showed up right before the reading last night, and I’ve got no idea where he’s staying.” She wiped her eyes and, in what must have been her firm voice, said, “I think I need to lie down.”

As she led me to the door, I said, “I don’t know if you’re going to be helping Ophelia with arrangements for Marshall, but if there’s anything I can do to help, please tell me. It’s hard to handle things like this long distance.”

Elodie laughed—a short, unhappy sound, as though I’d made a joke that wasn’t all that funny. “Long distance,” she said. And then “It’s so ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean, here we are, on the opposite side of the country, and it’s the first time they’ve been in the same room in almost a year.”

“Wait, Ophelia is here?”

“Yeah, of course. To get the divorce papers signed.”

“They’re getting divorced?”

“Finally,” Elodie said. “It’s been dragging on forever. The prenup, you know. I guess she finally decided to cut her losses—she’s walking away with nothing, but that’s what happens when you sign a prenup.”

“And she was here?” I asked. “You said they were in the same room.”

“Yeah, in Marshall’s room last night before the reading. They were screaming at each other. I thought that was why he seemed a little off…Like maybe he’d had a few drinks to calm himself down. Oh my God, do you think she…”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But you should tell the sheriff that, if you haven’t already.”

Elodie nodded and opened the door, and I realized I had forgotten to check that the hall was clear.

It wasn’t.

Bobby and Dairek stood there, filling out forms on clipboards, and they both looked up at the same time. It was hard not to appreciate the sight, although a part of me knew the pleasure was going to evaporate quickly . Somebody had known what they were doing when they’d put Bobby in that khaki uniform: those broad shoulders, big arms, strong thighs. I had occasional dreams about the hat. Dairek’s expression started at stunned and then went to somewhere in the ballpark of staggering confusion. Bobby’s ran from surprise to jaw-clenching control.

“What,” he said, “are you doing here?”