Page 7 of Broken Bird (The Last Picks #4)

Big surprise, Bobby didn’t make it home for dinner. I know because I curled up in the den, ostensibly reading a printout of the manuscript Elodie had sent me, where I could also keep an eye on the driveway.

Indira fixed a ragu with pappardelle, along with polenta and an arugula salad. It was delicious, as always, and after dinner, Keme and I cleaned up. That had become part of the deal—and, more than anything, it signaled how far Indira and I had come. The kitchen was her space, and the fact that she trusted Keme and me to wash and put everything away in its proper place said a lot.

I still occasionally protested that she didn’t have to cook for us, and every time, she reminded me that she was an adult, and that she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. And, of course, I still worried. My coming to Hastings Rock had disrupted a lot of things, including Indira’s living arrangements. When Vivienne had gone to prison, Indira had lost her employer. Sure, as long as I owned Hemlock House, Indira would always have a home (her loft above the coach house, which I still hadn’t been invited to visit). And I knew she made some money picking up catering jobs and selling baked goods at the farmers’ market. But, as with most things in Hastings Rock, those were seasonal and depended on tourists. The few times I’d worked up the courage to ask about her financial situation, I’d been politely—but firmly—told to mind my own business, so I guessed she was fine. I still worried, though.

Fox showed up a little later (conveniently, after the cleanup was done, but that didn’t stop them from helping themselves to the leftover ragu), and Millie came over with candy cane-swirl ice cream that we proceeded to doctor up into sundaes. We all ended up in the living room, where a few weeks before, Fox and Millie and—to my eternal surprise—Keme had set up Vivienne’s enormous Christmas tree. They’d gone on a decorating spree, actually. Garlands hung throughout the house, filling it with their sweet, balsam scent. Little fairy lights were strung everywhere on the main floor. Keme had spent an entire weekend setting up a train track and Christmas village in the billiard room. I’d never seen him so focused: brow furrowed, biting his lip, slapping Fox’s hand when they tried to fluff some of the cotton batting that was meant to look like snow. I wasn’t a religious person, so to me, Christmas was more about happy memories of childhood, of family, and now, of friends. It didn’t hurt, of course, that it was the season of hot chocolate and sugar cookies. For our movie, Fox picked Gremlins , which I agreed was a Christmas flick even though Indira claimed it wasn’t. Millie was having too much fun trying to decide if it was pronounced grim-lins or grem-lins , and Keme just stared at her adoringly. So, we ended up watching it because the vote was two to one.

About forty minutes into the movie, Fox fell asleep (draped over the arm of the chesterfield and snoring gently), as did Millie (on Keme’s shoulder, of course, which meant the poor guy was frozen in this weird, shoulder-hitched position that had to have been killing his back, not willing to move in case it jarred Millie awake and broke what appeared to be the single happiest moment of his life). By the time Mrs. Deagle was about to take her final joyride on the stairlift, I decided enough was enough. I turned the movie off, ignored the murderous look in Keme’s eyes, and shook Fox awake. Their grumbling woke Millie, who laughingly apologized to Keme, and Keme accepted it with an indifferent shrug. I wasn’t exactly a communication wunderkind, but I was starting to suspect that there were other obstacles, besides the age gap, that were standing in Keme and Millie’s way.

“Does she have any idea?” I asked Indira as Millie and Keme headed for the front door.

“Oh God no,” Fox said. “That’s what makes it so entertaining. It’s not quite as fun as watching—” They cut off so abruptly that I gave them a closer look, and I was surprised to see a hint of color in their cheeks.

“As watching…” I prompted.

“Never mind,” Indira said, with a warning glance for Fox. “I think it’s time we all called it a night.”

Fox left in their van, and Indira went out through the back. On the other side of the window, she made a silhouette against the night sky. And then she was gone.

I made my way through the house, with only the gentle glow of the Christmas lights to see by. That was another of my favorite things this time of year: the soft, colorful light filling every room. Not bright lights. Not harsh lights. Just enough light, in fact, to smooth out the edges of everything. In Hemlock House, with its Victorian eccentricities, the effect was doubly magical. But even in my rather vanilla condo in Providence, Christmas lights had made the admittedly ordinary space into something a tiny bit wonderful.

The den had escaped most of the decorating, although someone had added a small Christmas tree to the corner—Keme and Millie, I figured, who had probably dug up yet another tree from Vivienne’s seemingly inexhaustible supply. I settled into what was quickly becoming my favorite chair, snuggled into my favorite blanket, turned on a reading lamp (no particular preference there), and grabbed Marshall’s manuscript, ready to pick up where I’d left off earlier that day.

It was actually pretty good. If I were being fair, it probably pushed over into excellent. I’d never been a big fan of Marshall’s stories—for some reason I’ll never understand, I didn’t connect with a six-foot-six, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound badass with hands the size of ham hocks. And over the years, the Chase Thunder stories had lost some of their zing. The Titus Brooks manuscript, though, was Marshall at his best—it was fresh, it was electric. It was, honestly, so much better than anything he’d written lately.

So, it wasn’t the manuscript’s fault that I couldn’t stay focused. I found myself thinking about Hugo. I’d done a decent job (at least, I considered it a decent job) over the last half a year of not doing too much second-guessing, fretting, or other generalized worrying about Hugo and the life I’d left behind. I didn’t stalk Hugo on social media. I didn’t even think about him some days, which, when I realized it, struck me as both strange and a little sad. I certainly didn’t spend time dreaming about what could have been.

But in that moment, a wave of something washed over me. Not sadness, exactly. Or maybe a particular form of it that I hadn’t experienced before. Because I knew what Hugo would be doing: he’d be wrapping presents, and he’d have a glass of eggnog, and he’d be listening to Ella Fitzgerald on vinyl (of course he would—that was Hugo). If Hugo was dating someone (and it was hard to believe he was still single, since he was charming and sweet and handsome), then Hugo would want to sit next to them on the couch, and they’d probably have matching Christmas pajamas, and in the morning (eleven-thirty was still morning), Hugo would wake them up and have pancakes and bacon and eggs ready, because that was something he liked to do. And they’d go to winter markets and candlelit dinners and Christmas music concerts. They wouldn’t spend the holidays in a house full of horse paintings, surrounded by brass globes and crystal gewgaws and the skeleton of a rat under a glass cloche, alone.

Knock it off, I told myself. You didn’t want to be with Hugo. That was a choice.

And that was true. In a life full of self-doubt, overthinking, and all-around waffling, breaking up with Hugo was one decision I’d never reconsidered. I hadn’t loved Hugo, and I wanted to love whoever I was going to spend my life with. Apparently, that person was nobody. Or a lot of mean-looking stuffed owls. I didn’t have any regrets about breaking up with Hugo, and I didn’t wish I were back with him, and I didn’t want to change that part of my life. But I was all by myself, and it was Christmas, and for a few minutes, I wanted…something.

A key rattled in the lock of the front door, and a moment later, the hinges creaked. I dropped the manuscript on the side table, kicked free of my blanket, and hurried out into the hall.

Bobby was already starting up the stairs.

“Hey,” I said.

He glanced over as he took a couple more steps. “Hey.”

“You’re home.”

This time, Bobby stopped and looked down at me. He seemed like he was a long way off—which was partly because that staircase was so freaking big, but partly something else. Finally, he said, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Do you want to eat something? After you change, I mean.”

“I grabbed something during my shift.”

“Oh. How about some cake? I was about to have some.” (It wasn’t technically a lie. Every day of my entire life, I was always about five seconds away from having cake.)

“I’d better not. Indira’s cooking is starting to catch up with me.”

And that definitely was a lie, because even in the glow of the Christmas lights, there was no mistaking Bobby’s figure in that uniform, and it was, uh, poppin’. (Is that a thing the kids say?)

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll eat cake, and you can tell me about your day.” In a rush, I added, “Not the investigation. Just, you know, tell me how things went.”

He put one hand on the banister and ran it along the wood. “Actually, I was going to change and head to the gym.” He dropped his hand to his side again. “I didn’t have my gym bag.”

“You’re going to the gym,” I said. “Right now.”

“It’s barely ten, and they’re open until—”

“After you worked a full shift. Or did you work a double today?” He opened his mouth, but I said, “It’s hard for me to keep it all straight.”

Bobby closed his mouth. That sense of distance had grown. Hemlock House was a big house, but it wasn’t that big—and right then, it felt like Bobby was so far away that I had to shout. A small part of my brain wondered if maybe I was shouting. Maybe we both were.

“What’s going on?” Bobby asked.

“You’re going to the gym. After work.”

“I—”

“Again.”

The grandfather clock ticked.

“I don’t understand why you’re upset,” Bobby said.

“I’m not upset.”

“I’m going to the gym.”

“I heard you.”

“Why is that a problem?”

Because, I almost said, you’re always at the gym, or at work, or at the beach. You’re always gone. But that would have put me firmly in crazy-roommate territory. It might even have put me into stalker-obsessed-parasocial-relationship territory. Or, worst of all, it might just have reminded him of West.

Before I had to answer, though, the front door opened with a squeak of its hinges, a light came on, and a familiar voice said, “Now, we’re going to have to be quiet, but I wanted to give you an insider’s view of where the magic happens, so to speak. Hemlock House was built in 1897 by Nathan Blackmore, and since then, every owner has been murdered in their sleep by the new owner, creating what I like to call the bloodiest square footage in America. Don’t get me started on the ghosts!” (Pause for a laugh.) “Now, I want to start by showing you where we crack cases—we call it the deduction chamber.” Pippi’s voice—because it was, unmistakably, Pippi—changed. The stagey, mock-conspiratorial whisper reverted to her normal tone and volume as she said, “I didn’t like that last bit, Dylan.”

Her son answered with an enthusiastic “We’ll fix it in post. Just keep going—this stuff is gold.”

“This stuff is gold?” Bobby said from the stairs.

“Now,” Pippi said again in that affected voice, “I want to start by showing you where we crack cases—we call it the clue conservatory, and that’s where we’ve solved three—count them, three!—murders together, not to mention the one we’re working on right now—”

As Pippi spoke, she emerged from the vestibule into the hall. Her son Dylan came after her, with a camera trained on her. Pippi still hadn’t noticed me or Bobby because her back was to us, but Dylan spotted us right away.

“Cut!” He lowered the camera and gave a frustrated wave. “Come on, you guys. You’re right in the shot.”

“What’s happening right now?” I asked. “Is this a nightmare?”

Maybe it was, because Bobby turned and headed up the stairs without another word.

“Oh!” Pippi said, and she put on an enormous smile. “Dashiell—I mean, Dash! What a lovely surprise! Don’t mind us. We’re just going to poke about—”

“I do mind, actually,” I said. “I mind very much. What are you doing breaking into my house, Pippi? For the second time?”

“Mom,” Dylan asked in a low voice, “should I be recording this?”

“We’ll use it in the blooper reel,” Pippi answered in the same tone before turning back to me with another huge smile. “Dash, this is all a huge misunderstanding. I needed to get some B-roll. You know how it goes.”

I didn’t know how it goes; I didn’t know anything about anything, apparently, as that conversation with Bobby had recently proved. I didn’t know what had come over me, or why I’d acted the way I had, or what I was supposed to do now that I’d done it. Death by immolation seemed like a nice way to apologize; I already felt like my face was on fire.

Since it was easier to focus on Pippi than process what had happened with Bobby, I turned my full attention to the mother-and-son production crew. “Pippi,” I said, “what are you doing in my house?”

“We’re not breaking and entering,” she said a little too quickly. “We were shooting some footage of the exterior, you know, and then I thought people might like to see where we work together—”

“We don’t work together.”

“Of course we do! We’re working together right now. In fact, this is a golden opportunity to do some behind-the-scenes work. Do you have a minute? Great. Dylan, let’s get him set up for a—how does kitchen confessional sound?”

“Like you’re a genius,” Dylan said. And then he high-fived his mom. I was starting to get a sense for why none of Pippi’s sons had left the nest (or, as it were, flown the coop). “He’s pretty shiny, though. We’ll have to grab some blotting sheets—”

“I am not doing a kitchen confessional!” I didn’t mean to shout; it just kind of came out that way. “Or any kind of confessional. For that matter, I’m not doing anything with anyone.” (Jeez, that was a little truer than I liked.) “I want you to leave, and I don’t want you to sneak in through a window or conveniently force open a back door or anything of the sort.”

Throughout my little speech, Pippi was making frantic keep rolling motions to Dylan, who had the camera aimed at me again. As soon as I finished, Pippi said, “That was perfect. We’ll save that for when we need it. Now, let’s try something else. Ask me if I found anything today. But make it sound like a crime thingy.”

“Like an investigation?” I asked.

“A little louder,” Dylan said.

Maybe I was having a schizophrenic break. People with schizophrenia often believed they were being recorded on camera, right?

My pause must have gone on too long because Pippi gave Dylan a sideways “We’ll add it in later,” and then launched into “It’s been a long, hard day, but I think I may have turned up something crucial to our investigation.” And then she winked at me. Honest to God. I think maybe because she was so pleased she’d remembered to call it an investigation, and not a crime thingy . “Did you know Ophelia Crowe is right here in Hastings Rock? Now make your face look surprised! Dylan, can you do something about his eyebrows?”

“You want to shoot your eyebrows, Mr. Dane,” Dylan informed me, pulling away from the camera to demonstrate, his eyebrows rocketing up and then back down, up and then down, up and then down.

“I know Ophelia is in town,” I said, “and for that matter, the sheriff knows—”

“I always want to give the wife the benefit of the doubt—” Pippi said extravagantly.

“Why? Like, ninety percent of the time, the romantic partner is the killer.”

“—but it’s hard to ignore the fact that she’s staying not thirty miles from here under an assumed name!”

“Wait, you found her? You know where she is?”

“At the Wyndmere! No, wait. Dylan, was that too much?”

“A bit over the top,” Dylan agreed.

“She’s staying at the Wyndmere,” Pippi said. “And there’s only one possible reason she’d be staying under an assumed name.”

“So much better, Mom!”

“This is ridiculous,” I said, and I didn’t only mean Pippi’s second take. “The fact that Ophelia Crowe is staying at a nearby resort under an assumed name at the same time that she’s in the middle of an ugly divorce and then her husband is conveniently murdered, leaving her everything, might be a coincidence.” Although, when I said it all out loud like that, it didn’t exactly sound great.

“Great stuff,” Dylan coached, “but could you look into the camera at the end? And maybe say something ominous that will make a good cliffhanger before the commercial break? Think of something they’d say in Dateline , like ‘But was her name really Ophelia Crowe?’ or ‘But what did Ophelia Crowe’s friends have to say about all this?’ Or ‘But the real question is, was Ophelia Crowe acting alone?’”

“I’m not going to—” I began. And then it hit me. I sprinted back to the den, grabbed the manuscript, and began paging through it. Titus Brooks, merchant seaman security officer, was physically powerful, coldly analytical, and an irresistible ladies’ man. That last point was established a number of times in the novel—often, with a squirm-inducing level of detail. (It will surprise you to learn, I’m sure, that I have the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old.)

One of the women who, uh, succumbed to Titus’s advances also happened to be one of the Bad Guys (in a gender-neutral sense). She’d only slept with Titus, in fact, because she was trying to cover up the fact that she’d arranged the death of her husband—conveniently, the captain of Titus’s ship—with the help of a corrupt businessman. I want to say he was a shipping broker? And a part of me wondered if there was something…there. Prefigured, one might say, in the relationships of Marshall’s story: a recent widow with a close connection to her husband’s business partner.

“Okay, I know this is going to sound crazy,” I began.

“Roll tape,” Pippi whispered frantically. “Roll tape!”

“But remember how the Titus Brooks manuscript disappeared? I have an idea why someone might want to make it go away.” I summarized the plot as best I could and said, “What if—”

“It’s the very crime we’re investigating!” Pippi screamed (with excitement). “The wife and the agent conspired to kill Marshall!”

“It’s a stretch,” I began, “but—”

“And Marshall figured it out, and he put it all in his manuscript, only they still managed to murder him, and now this manuscript is the only evidence that points back to the killers! Dylan, how’s my chin?”

“B+,” Dylan said. “We’ll airbrush it.”

“Okay,” I said, “when you get all excited about it, I start to doubt myself.”

“This is genius,” Pippi said over me. “What if I stand on this side of him? Say it again, Dash. Oh, and—” She patted my tummy. “Suck in.”

“I will not—there’s nothing to suck!” (I really, really, really hoped Dylan wasn’t, as Pippi liked to say, rolling tape when I said that.) “And I’m not saying it again, and—you know what? It was a dumb idea.”

“That’s the kind of story that makes the front page, darling. A murdered author. His treacherous wife. Secrets buried in a literary masterpiece. It’s like The Da Vinci Code meets Days of Our Lives .”

“Everything about that sentence bummed me out. And I wouldn’t call Titus Brooks a literary masterpi—hey!”

That hey came when Pippi tried to snatch the manuscript from me. I managed to wrest it back, and I held it behind my back. “What are you doing?”

“Dashiell—Dash, I have to have the manuscript if I’m going to confront Ophelia with her treachery.”

“You’re not confronting anyone with anything. You’re going to go home—ideally, right now—and you’re not going to break into my house again, and you’re not going to try to steal this manuscript, and you’re not going to go to the Wyndmere tomorrow to talk to Ophelia. And do you know why? Because the whole point of this—this insanity was to clear your name, and you’re only going to make things worse for yourself if you go around with your own personal three-ring circus. No one is going to talk to you—certainly not Ophelia. No one will even take you seriously.”

Pippi drew herself up and fixed me with an icy stare. “Fine,” she snipped. “I see how it is. You’re cutting me out.”

“I’m not cutting you out of anything. I’m trying to help you!”

“Dylan, we’re leaving.” Pippi spun toward the door. Then she whirled back, stabbing a finger toward my face. “But you haven’t seen the last of me.” The moment hung, and then she glanced at Dylan. “How’d I do, sweetheart?”

Her son gave her a huge thumbs-up. “Aces, Mom!”

From somewhere inside myself, I managed to summon up words: “What is wrong with you people?”

“Our fans like a little drama,” Pippi said. “That’s going to make a fantastic teaser.”

I fought against the scream building in my throat.

“Everything okay?” Bobby asked from the doorway. He’d changed to joggers and an old blue sheriff’s office tee, which fit him, ahem, like a glove.

If my life had been a cartoon (not that far from the truth), Pippi’s eyes would have been as big as silver dollars. “Deputy Mai. Well, hello.”

“Oh,” I said, “no, he’s just—”

“Hi, Pippi.” Bobby offered a professional smile. “Hi, Dylan.”

“We didn’t know Dashiell—Dash!—had company.” Her gaze snaked toward me. “We’ll get out of your hair.”

“No, he’s not company, he’s—”

“See you tomorrow, darling.” And then, a bit archly (and very much like a character from one of her own books), she added, “See you tomorrow, Deputy Mai.”

“Don’t go to the Wyndmere!” I called after them, but they were already gone.

I was pretty sure I heard Pippi say from the vestibule, “Please tell me you were still rolling.”

“The Wyndmere?” Bobby asked.

“You realize she thinks—I mean, not that it matters—I mean, not that we’re doing anything wrong—” I finally managed to say. “Somehow, Pippi found out that Ophelia Crowe is staying at the Wyndmere.”

Bobby grunted.

“I know, I know. I promise I’ll be careful.”

“You should be careful. You know she’s dangerous, right?”

“I mean, I think everyone I talk to in this investigation is at least potentially dangerous.” I dropped the manuscript on the table. “Someone killed Marshall, and I’m sure they’ll do whatever they can to keep that secret.”

“Yes,” Bobby said. “And that includes Pippi.”

The wind picked up again, battering the house.

“You think Pippi killed Marshall?”

“I think that the sheriff is investigating Pippi because there’s enough evidence to justify it. And I think you’d be making a mistake not to take that seriously.”

“I do take it seriously.”

“It doesn’t seem like you do. It seems like you’re playing around with all this podcast stuff, and every time you open your mouth, you tell Pippi everything you’ve learned. That’s not exactly standard protocol with a prime suspect.”

Shaking my head, I said, “Bobby, I don’t believe she killed Marshall.”

“That’s the whole point. It doesn’t matter what you believe. Until you have the right person in custody, you have to treat all the potential suspects as legitimate possibilities. Instead, you two are making a spectacle of yourselves. And every time you tell her something, she blasts it out to her followers. What if the killer was smart enough to figure that out? It costs five dollars to get access to that stupid podcast. For a lousy five dollars, you’re sabotaging this whole investigation.”

It was his tone. It was the implication that I was doing this for money. It was, most of all, the fact that he was right. “I thought you were going to go to the gym.”

“I am.”

“Maybe you should go then.”

He didn’t, though. He stayed there, standing in the doorway: brows drawn together, eyes hooded, body tense. And then he stalked off.

I wiped my hands on my jeans and let out a shaky breath. After a couple of jerky paces back and forth across the den, I threw myself into my chair. I picked up the manuscript and tried to read, but the words swam back and forth, and I tossed it back onto the table. I thought about grabbing my phone, calling Bobby, and giving him a piece of my mind. Bits and pieces of the conversation flashed in my head: I didn’t even want to do that stupid podcast . No, that sounded like I was still doing it. She showed up here and started recording; I didn’t have anything to do with it . That was better. And Where do you get off, coming in here and talking to me like that? That was a little vaguer, but it had the right tone of moral outrage. Don’t talk to me about suspects and evidence . That had some zing to it. The one-liners zipped faster and faster, but it was hard to concentrate on them, hard to come up with what I really wanted to say. Mostly I sat there, sick to my stomach and a little shaky, because it turned out maybe I did still hate conflict. At least, some kinds of conflict.

Finally, the rational part of my brain reasserted itself. He’s tired, I decided. He’s tired, and he’s pushing himself too hard, and he’s legitimately worried about you. It just didn’t come out the way he intended. This is Bobby we’re talking about; if you talk to him—

But that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? Because at some point in the last few months, Bobby had decided he didn’t want to talk to me. Didn’t want to be around me. And there wasn’t anything I could do about that.

The whole line of thought was making me so miserable that I decided it was time for bed. I got to my feet, switched off the reading lamp, and the whole house went dark.