Page 12

It was a long, cold, miserable night. Not least because the storm broke as I was still wriggling out from underneath the blackberry bush.

By the time I got home, I was soaking wet, scratched to, um, heck, and shivering uncontrollably.

To say Bobby was unhappy when I woke him up would have been to put it mildly. He locked me in the bathroom, and then—with nothing but a pair of sleep shorts and his gun—he secured the house. He called the sheriff’s station. And then he came back and did one of the things he does better than anyone else in the entire world: he took care of me.

He got me in a hot bath. And once my core temperature was above freezing again, he cleaned up my scratches as best he could. He bundled me into fleece pajamas and put me in bed with a mug of instant hot chocolate.

And then the inquisition began.

I told him all of it, starting with when I heard Keme sneak out of the house, and I’d barely finished by the time his phone buzzed. Bobby went downstairs, with firm orders for me not to get out of bed.

I didn’t. I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to. I was exhausted, and in spite of the bath, I was still shivering. Some of that, a part of me acknowledged, was doubtless the adrenaline finally working its way out of my system. And part of it was the lingering fear. I felt strangely lucid, and it felt like I was seeing everything that had happened earlier that evening through the wrong end of a telescope. There’s nothing like being chased through a darkened forest by a maniac with a gun to put things in perspective.

Eventually, a cruiser arrived—and because it was just my luck, Tripple was driving it.

Bobby stayed with me while Tripple searched the grounds. And even though Bobby went downstairs to talk to Tripple after he finished, I heard enough to know that Tripple hadn’t found anything and that he thought this was another cry for attention. You’d think, after solving how many murders, I’d get a little credit, but apparently for Deputy Tripple, I was such a glutton for the spotlight that there were no depths to which I wouldn’t sink.

“Not to mention,” Tripple said, his voice carrying up the stairs, “it’s our job. We’re the ones who should be doing it, not some kid with a bony butt who can’t stay home and mind his own business. God, he makes you look like a joke, son.”

“What did you say about Dash?”

Bobby wasn’t the threatening type. He wasn’t the bluster and shout and wave his arms type. He was the ask questions type. Real questions. With real consequences.

And apparently Tripple knew it, too, because he mumbled, “It’s not safe for him—”

“I know it’s not safe. And so does Dash. But Dash is the only reason Keme is not still sitting in a cell. And Dash is the reason we know Channelle was having an affair. Dash is the one who found her. So, if it’s our job, we’re doing it pretty poorly.”

Tripple said a few things that suggested his negative opinion of amateur sleuths near and far, and Bobby said something that suggested the conversation was over, although in less polite terms.

I tried to be understanding of Tripple. He’d been working nonstop, from what I could tell, ever since the murder, and so—like Bobby—he must have been exhausted. On top of that, it was a miserable night, and he must have gotten soaked, no matter what kind of poncho or raincoat he was wearing. And maybe it did seem like a hoax. After all, I couldn’t prove anyone had been out there. I couldn’t even give them the beginning of a description. But part of me still wanted to march downstairs and remind anyone who would listen that attention gave me hives.

When Bobby came back upstairs, there was nothing for us to do but sleep. We’d never find Keme tonight, not in this weather. So, I closed my eyes. And I emptied my mind. (I mean, I tried. I really did.) But I couldn’t fall asleep, even though exhaustion kept dragging my eyelids down. Even with Bobby’s arm pulling me against his chest. It was hard to remember that anything had been wrong between us. If anything had been wrong between us. If it hadn’t all been in my head.

And that, of course, was when I finally dozed off.

Bobby woke me the next morning.

It was seven o’clock.

I was sure there was some kind of mistake. I mean, this wasn’t the accidental, sorry-I’m-making-too-much-noise-as-I-get-ready-for-work kind of wake-up. (Bobby never did that, by the way. He was always very considerate. Plus he got dressed for work in ‘his’ bedroom.) This wasn’t even the cute, let’s-fool-around-because-I’ve-got-five-minutes-before-work kind of wake-up. (I knew because those started with kisses.)

This was businesslike.

This was professional.

This was rude .

“Stop faking,” Bobby said. “I know you’re awake.”

I cracked an eye.

He was already dressed in his uniform, and although he had to be exhausted, he looked as crisp and alert as ever. “I want you to stay home today, okay?”

I grumbled something.

“I don’t want you going out,” Bobby said. “Not until we figure out what’s going on. Someone tried to kill you last night. I want you where I know you’ll be safe.”

I chose not to mention what we both knew—Hemlock House wasn’t exactly the Fortress of Solitude. Plenty of people had gotten into the sprawling old house before, and several of them had wanted to shuffle me right off this mortal coil. Instead, I said, “Maybe they were trying to kill Keme.”

“They didn’t seem too particular.”

“Keme’s still out there somewhere. Keme could be in danger.”

“I’m going to look for Keme.”

“No, you’re going to work. And you’re going to do whatever the sheriff needs you to do, because it’s your job, and you’re a good deputy. And meanwhile, Keme is out there, and he could be freezing to death, he could be hurt, he could be hungry.” (I realized in order of magnitude, I’d gotten off track.)

“Keme knows how to take care of himself,” Bobby said.

“And I don’t?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you implied.”

Bobby drew a deep breath. Tension marked his brow. Then it relaxed, smoothing away, and he said, “I don’t want to fight with you.”

And because he was Bobby, that was exactly what he meant.

It took me about five seconds of childish petulance before I could mumble, “I don’t want to fight with you either.”

“I know you know how to take care of yourself—”

“Then you know I’ll be fine!”

He waited a beat before finishing, “—but you could have gotten killed last night. This person, whoever they are, has already killed two people. They almost killed a third last night.” I opened my mouth to make my point again about how I had managed to stay alive, but Bobby spoke over me. “Dash, it’s not a question of knowing how to handle yourself. Bad things can happen to anyone, no matter how good they are at taking care of themselves. Deputies and police officers and federal law enforcement officers—bad things can happen to anyone . And if something happened to you—” He cut off. His hands opened and closed against his thighs. He always kept his nails trimmed, almost blunt. I could see little crescents where they’d bitten into his palms.

Bobby has a lot in common with the superheroes. He’s strong. He’s fast. His moral compass points true north. (No wavering, not even when you could skip leg day and nobody would notice.) And I’ve mentioned the abs. He also is a little too responsible sometimes; I honestly think that at some level, he believes he could fix anything if he only tried hard enough.

“Come here,” I said. I gathered his hands in mine. I kissed his knuckles. I looked up at him and said, “I love you.”

He nodded, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

“I promise I will make safe, responsible decisions. Just like if I had a tiny Deputy Bobby with angel wings sitting on my shoulder.”

His laugh was short, almost more of a cough, as though he was clearing his throat. “I’d find that reassuring, but I know about the little Fox with the red horns who sits on your other shoulder.”

“You can’t lock me up and keep me safe,” I said. “We don’t know that I’m the target. It might be Keme. Even if it’s not, I’m worried about him. He’s my—what’s the word when he’s kind of your foster son, but he’s also weirdly your older brother, and he pulled your hair so hard one time it actually made you cry, oh, and he’s part wolf?”

Bobby’s eyes finally found mine. He freed his hands from my grip, and he brushed them over my hair. “Please,” he said in a low voice. “Please be careful.”

“I will.”

He considered me for another moment, still brushing back my hair. “It took me a long time to find you. And it took us even longer to get it right. I do not have the energy to go through all that again if you get yourself killed.”

“Bobby!”

That big, goofy grin flashed out. He kissed me, gave me what had to be the most weirdly endearing tug on my ear, and left.

I decided I liked him better when he didn’t make jokes.

I took my time getting ready for the day. A long shower, because last night’s cold seemed to have settled into my bones. My new favorite hoodie (it said CHAOTIC GAY on the front, and honestly, nothing has described me better). Comfy joggers. My Mexico 66s. I was ready for the day.

There was no sign of Indira in the kitchen, not even the breakfast she usually left me. Maybe it was because it was still so ungodly early. (Nine o’clock.) I grabbed the keys to the Pilot, told myself for the millionth time I was going to figure out how to buy a new car, and hit the road.

The worst of the storm had broken up as it moved inland, but the day was still gray and droopy. The clouds looked like someone had done them in grease stick, and precipitation hung in the air in an unpleasant, lingering way that wasn’t quite mist but wasn’t quite a drizzle. (Also, it was super annoying if you had to wear glasses.) The air was fresh, but it had that waterlogged smell that came after really heavy rains, as though the entire world was beginning to mildew.

It was a Tuesday, so I decided—to paraphrase Paul—to hope against hope. (Fox said that once when I made my New Year’s resolution to pump iron every day, and even though it was super rude, I had to admit I liked the sound of it.) I started at Hastings Rock High.

Big surprise: Keme wasn’t there.

Also, the principal wanted me to pay some of Keme’s textbook fines.

And apparently there was a question about some vandalism.

And he gave me back one of my credit cards that Keme had tried to use at the lunch line.

It wasn’t a great visit.

I tried the RV park next. It was on my list of places to snoop—uh, investigate—ever since I’d seen those tenant account statements in Channelle’s motel room. And I wanted to talk to Foster and September about their eviction and JT putting their belongings into storage.

When I got to the RV park, though, it looked like the sheriff had had the same idea. Two cruisers were parked in front of September’s little camper, and farther down the street, a bedraggled Deputy Dahlberg was holding a newspaper over her head, trying to protect her hair, as she knocked on the door of a mammoth RV. (She’d told me she was thinking about changing it—her hair, I mean. She’d loved getting the Rachel, but she thought maybe it was time. I chose not to weigh in.)

It didn’t seem like I’d get a chance to talk to Foster or September anytime soon, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to poke around the RV park while the deputies were canvassing it. The sheriff—and Bobby—might both be incredibly patient and understanding people, but even they had their limits.

The Otter Slide was still closed (even if it had been open, I was pretty sure Seely would have called me if she’d seen Keme). I drove by the timber yard with a sick feeling in my stomach. Keme had slept here occasionally, back before he’d started staying at Hemlock House more or less full-time. It was hard to look at the yard, with its acres of bare, hardpack dirt and logs and heavy machinery and office trailers, and think that a boy had slept here, and not feel like you—along with everyone else in the world—had failed somehow.

If he was there, I didn’t see him, and the lady at the gate—who was very polite and also very (scarily) firm—wouldn’t let me drive around the yard to make sure.

I was quickly running out of places to check. There were some spots the surfers liked to hang out—I had the vague thought he might be at the surf shop. Or maybe he was blowing off steam by playing laser tag, although it seemed a little early for that. It was still early enough that, if this were a normal school day, and if I were responding to yet another call from the school about Keme playing hooky, I would have driven straight to Chipper, where I would have inevitably found him hanging out with Millie while Tessa, the owner, pretended not to notice.

So, I drove to Chipper.

When I’d first moved to Hastings Rock, I’d thought (based on a brief search on my phone) that Chipper was the only coffee shop in the town. Not true! Hastings Rock had tons of great places to get coffee. Chipper, however, happened to be the only one located in, well, a building. The rest were the drive-up kind, and they were peppered all over the place. Chipper also had the advantage of being located on Main Street, right in the picturesque heart of town, amidst all the artisan glassblowing and saltwater taffy pulling and local artists’ galleries and, duh, souvenir shops. (Let’s not forget Fishermen’s Market, which had—hands down—the best fish and chips available on dry land.)

True to its name, Chipper was painted a cheery yellow, and inside, customers had free rein to draw on the walls with crayons and markers. For the most part, the designs consisted of smiley faces and suns, and occasionally, a pair of names encased by a heart. (One of them said Bobby and Dash. Please don’t judge me; I’d had about sixteen of Tessa’s scones and a gallon of grasshopper latte by that point.) Oh, and God help you if you were a teenager and decided this would be a fantastic canvas for your burgeoning artistic genius and you wrote fart on the wall. We didn’t put up with that kind of thing in this town. One time, I’d seen Cyd Wofford (who did his daily Marx study at Chipper) march this scrawny tourist kid right up to the wall with one of those magic eraser thingies, and the whole time he’d been giving him a lecture on how the bourgeoisie control the proletariat with, well, coffee.

With the morning rush long since passed, Chipper had settled into what had to be my favorite time of day. A few patrons were scattered around the coffee shop—Aric Akhtar was reading on his tablet (it could be anything from Us Weekly to The Economist ), and an older woman in a beachcomber hat was picking jalapenos out of her jalapeno-and-cheddar bagel. Tessa was restocking the cream and sugar, while Millie, behind the counter, cleaned one of the espresso machines. On the speakers mounted overhead, someone was crooning along to a guitar; I wanted to say it was Snow Patrol.

“Morning, Dash,” Tessa said. For someone who literally had unlimited caffeine at her disposal, Tessa had a weary-eyed look that I suspected was emotional more than physical. She also had a warm smile and a listening ear, which was probably why—even with plenty of competitors around—Chipper remained busy even after tourist season died down. “You’re up early.”

“Bobby,” I said by way of explanation

Her smile grew, but all she said was “I’m going to keep going on this, but Millie can help you. Let me know if you need anything.”

When I got to the counter, though, Millie didn’t seem to notice me. I say seem because she was bent over, looking at the espresso machine upside down like she was about two inches away from climbing inside it. She was wiping down the steam nozzle thingy (yes, it probably has a real name; no, I don’t know it), and she was doing such a focused, industrious job of it, that she looked like she was about to rip it off.

I probably would have bought the act if she hadn’t kept sneaking looks at me.

I waited about a minute, to see if she’d give up. Then I said, “Hey, Millie.”

She twisted herself around a little more.

“Millie.”

She pushed something on the espresso machine, and it began to rattle and grind and grumble.

I rapped on the counter and sang out, “Hello.”

“Millie,” Tessa called. “You’ve got a customer.”

It took a couple of seconds, but Millie slowly poked her head out from behind (well, kind of under) the espresso machine. Her eyes were red as though she’d been crying. And she had a pink stripe in her hair that most definitely had not been there the night before. She stared at me like she was considering bursting into a fresh bout of tears. And then she said, “Oh. Hi, Dash,” in the absolute least convincing way possible.

“Hi,” I said.

“I can’t talk right now. We’re so busy.”

I glanced around the mostly empty coffee shop. “Yeah, I can see—”

“Tessa, can you take Dash’s order? I’m REALLY BUSY!”

You might think the volume would drive patrons off. But honestly, when Chipper was hopping—with the espresso machines going full steam and voices echoing off the concrete floor and the music filling in every gap—it was actually kind of nice. You always heard your name called. And usually Millie added something sweet to go with it. She always complimented JaDonna Powers on her hair, for example.

With a question on her face for me, Tessa abandoned the sugar and creamer. I shrugged, and Tessa came around to the register. Millie, meanwhile, had retreated to the far side of the room, and in another burst of enthusiastic cleaning, it looked like she was trying to crawl inside a microwave.

“Any idea what’s going on?” Tessa said.

“I was going to ask you the same thing. Has she been like this all morning?”

“She’s been…subdued.” Something in Tessa’s voice softened. “She’s been crying in the back on and off, as a matter of fact.”

I frowned. “Millie?” I projected my voice so it would carry. “Can I talk to you?”

From inside the microwave came “Sorry, Dash, we’re SUPER busy!”

“I can tell her to take her break,” Tessa offered.

I shook my head. I’d never seen Millie avoid a conversation—for that matter, I’d never seen Millie not initiate a conversation. But I also knew that, in her own way, Millie could be surprisingly stubborn, and when she made her decision and dug in her heels, there wasn’t any changing her mind. (Unless your name was Keme Collson.) Still keeping my volume a bit louder than it needed to be, I said, “That’s all right. I’ll have the pumpkin pie latte and—” I simultaneously loved and hated saying it. “—the Dash special. Oh, does the pumpkin pie latte still come in a two-liter?”

“You don’t have to order something,” Tessa said in a low voice. “If you just want to wait, I mean.”

“Trust me, I need the caffeine. I wasn’t joking about the two-liter.”

One of the nice things about Tessa is you don’t get any judgy statements from her like “Dash, no human being should ‘snack’ on a pound of bacon” or “Dash, you’re not supposed to frost your waffles” or “Dash, I think your blood sugar is dangerously high.” Tessa is open-minded. Tessa has an eye to the future. Tessa let me invent this month’s latte: pumpkin pie. Not pumpkin spice. Pumpkin pie. (Although she did nix my idea about blending an entire slice of pumpkin pie with two shots of espresso. There was some concern about customers finding the bits of pie crust disturbing; I tried to explain that was the best part.)

So, a few minutes later, I was seated at the counter, enjoying a goblet-sized pumpkin pie latte, with a sampling plate of the daily breakfast sandwiches. (That was the Dash special—mostly because everyone had finally gotten sick of me holding up the line while I tried to decide.)

“Do you want me to…” Tessa asked quietly, letting the question trail off into a suggestive look at Millie, who was now wiping down each bottle of flavored syrup with excruciating attention to detail.

I shook my head. I took a sip of my latte. (It tasted like genius in liquid form. And like pumpkin pie.) And then, my voice still set to carry, I said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I was wondering if you’d be willing to cater the brunch for the day after the wedding.”

Let me tell you: across the room, Millie pricked. her. ears.

(Also, I’m not sure if we’re allowed to say that word.)

Tessa’s eyes widened, and her face glowed with a smile. “Dash, that’s—” Then she must have figured it out because she gave me a surprisingly annoyed look and finished sourly, “—wonderful. Yes, of course we could help you with that.”

“That would be great. I mean, it’s a little early to start planning. We don’t have a date yet.”

“Maybe that’s because you haven’t asked him yet,” Tessa said. “Have you?”

“Not yet,” I admitted.

By this point, Millie was listening so hard she was quivering.

“I don’t know how to ask him, actually,” I said. “I don’t even have any ideas—”

“OH MY GOD, DASH!” Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Millie practically floated toward us. “YOU HAVE TO ASK HIM IN A BALLOON!”

You know how in Jurassic Park , the water in the cup ripples because of the vibrations from the T. rex ’s steps. (Or something like that—I’m not a scientist.) Anyway, I know you’re not going to believe me, but my coffee sloshed .

“No,” Millie said, still levitating toward us. “You have to ask him on a picnic. NO! You have to ask him at the top of the Eiffel Tower! Or in an ice hotel. Or under a waterfall. OR WHILE YOU’RE SCUBA DIVING!”

Aric Akhtar put in his earbuds.

“But what if he says no?” I ask. “And we’re underwater? And he cuts the air, um, hose, or whatever it’s called? And then he ties me to some…I want to say coral and leaves me to drown.”

Tessa was looking at me.

The old woman in the beachcomber hat had paused, mid-excavation of yet another piece of jalapeno, to look at me.

“Okay,” I said, “I know that sounded weirdly specific—”

“He won’t,” Millie said, “BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU!”

“Thanks, Millie,” I said. “Since you’re here and not avoiding me anymore, now let’s talk about Keme.”

Outrage flashed across her face. Then hurt. Then a flush. And then an expression I wasn’t sure I’d seen on her before—a kind of tamped-down, sullen anger.

“Sit down,” Tessa said, patting Millie’s shoulder. “He’s your friend, and you need to talk about it with someone.”

With one last look at me to make sure we were okay, Tessa moved back to the sugar-and-creamer station. Millie shifted her weight and twisted a towel between her hands, but after a few seconds, she sank down onto the stool next to me.

“You’re probably not even going to marry Bobby,” she said with surprising venom.

“Well, I actually hadn’t thought about it very much until right now, but I’m definitely going to marry him. I mean, if he’s dumb enough to say yes, it’s his own fault. Also, that scuba diving thing definitely tapped into something, and I feel like I need to do some work on that.”

With a trace of despair, Millie said, “You two are so cute.”

“Actually, that’s kind of an example of how not cute—”

“I don’t want to talk about Keme.”

To buy myself time, I took a sip of my latte. “Okay, well—”

“He’s a JERK!”

“What did he—”

“And he—he’s STUPID!”

“Well, he’s a boy, so—”

“And he won’t even let me say ONE THING that I really need to tell him!” She twisted the towel some more, her body tightening. More words burst out of her. “I don’t have to feel bad for dating Louis. I like Louis. Louis is funny and smart and everybody loves him.”

I wasn’t sure about everybody ; I thought Louis might be wise to stay out of dark alleys and away from Fox and their switchblade comb. But I tried to focus on the more important part of the conversation. “Did Keme say—”

“And Louis LIKES me. Do you know the last time a guy asked me out? I shouldn’t have to feel bad because—because—because—”

And then she started to cry.

I patted her arm and gave the coffee shop a quick scan. Tessa had stopped even pretending to stock the sugar packets. Aric Akhtar lowered his e-reader. The woman in the beachcomber hat, the little jalapeno pieces forgotten, glared at me.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. I switched from patting her arm to rubbing it. “Millie, don’t cry. It’s okay. You don’t need to feel bad—”

She grabbed a handful of napkins and pressed them to her eyes. “I DON’T!”

(In case you were wondering, they did absolutely nothing to diminish the volume.)

“Right, well, good. You shouldn’t. And whatever Keme said—”

“Keme doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know Louis. He doesn’t know ANYTHING.” She lowered the napkins to give me a red-eyed stare. “He’s just a DUMB. BOY. It’s none of his business what I do with my hair.”

Maybe it was the choking sensation of having so many sets of eyes fixed on me. Maybe it was the prickling flush climbing my body, like I’d eaten a bad enchirito. Maybe it was simply that I didn’t want her to cry again. Whatever the reason, I grabbed onto that last line like a spar in the conversational shipwreck. “Keme doesn’t like your hair?”

From behind me came Tessa’s muttered (and despairing) “My God, Dash.”

“Uh, I like your hair. Actually, I love it. The pink part is so—” It took me about five seconds to come up with “—pink.”

(I’m a writer, ladies and gentlemen.)

Millie sniffed, although it was impossible to tell whether this was at my descriptive abilities or merely a result of her crying. She ran her fingers through the length of pink hair and said, “Louis said it would look good. He said he likes when girls dye their hair. Louis’s got lots of great ideas.”

Louis, I decided, needed to kiss a wood chipper.

“Oh,” I said. (I was channeling a particularly straight part of myself that day, apparently.) “Okay.”

Millie didn’t seem to hear me, though. She was still finger-combing that section of hair, her expression distant. When she spoke, her anger had collapsed like a burned-out fire, leaving her voice small and brittle, and it sounded like she wasn’t even talking to me. “Dash,” she asked, “am I loud?”

I did another of those rapid scans of the room.

Tessa made a motion for me to say something.

Aric took off his glasses like he was getting ready to fight me.

The woman in the beachcomber hat literally shook her fist at me.

And because sometimes the universe is cruel, the music overhead changed to a jazzy, coffee house rendition of the song “Say Something.”

I thought a few words in my head that the lady in the beachcomber hat would not have liked. And then, with a quick prayer that the patron saint of little gay boys would understand my stretching the truth, I said, “Millie, you’re not loud. Well, I mean, sometimes you are. Like that time you wanted to show me something outside, and I was trying to read, and I’d already told you, like, eight times—”

A sugar packet hit me in the side of the head.

As though speaking to someone particularly dense, Millie said, “Keme and I found a four-leaf clover, and I wanted to show you.”

I still didn’t believe the four-leaf clover part, but the rest was definitely on brand—on separate occasions, I’d been dragged away from perfectly good naps, video games, and cupcakes to see, respectively, a rainbow that had conveniently disappeared by the time I got outside, and Millie’s favorite rock (she’d forgotten which one it was by the time we got out there), and the, quote, “cutest cricket.”

But I managed to say, “What I meant was, you’re enthusiastic. You get excited about things. And everyone who knows you loves that about you. We all love that about you.”

Millie didn’t say anything, but her expression remained clouded, and she touched the pink stripe of hair.

I thought I had a good idea of who had told her she was loud, and a wood chipper wasn’t good enough for him.

Finally, she seemed to rouse herself from her thoughts. She gave me a small, unhappy smile that was so un-Millie-like that the need to cry surged up inside me for a moment, and I had to take a deep breath. Then she said, “You didn’t come here to listen to me complain. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Millie, if Louis is making you feel—”

She shook her head, and in a definitive end to the subject, said, “What’s up, Dash?”

I considered the best way to ask my question. Then I said, “Do you know where Keme is?”

Millie shook her head.

“Do you have any ideas?” I asked.

This time, she hesitated.

“Because I need to find him—”

“I don’t know. He won’t answer any of my messages. And I don’t think—I don’t think he wants me to tell people about the places he goes sometimes.” In that strangely forlorn voice, she said, “He’s mad enough at me already.”

I opened my mouth to jump on that, but some smarter part of me made me stop. Millie had been avoiding me when I’d come in. But, from what I could tell, it didn’t have anything to do with her new hair color, because she’d been more than happy to talk to me about that. She’d even answered my question about Keme, even if I would have appreciated her, well, telling me where Keme might have been hiding. So, the question remained: why had Millie been so determined not to talk to me when I’d shown up at Chipper?

“Millie,” I said, “what happened Sunday night?”

She froze in the act of brushing her hair back. Then she slid toward the edge of her seat. “It was nice chatting, Dash, but Tessa really needs me to—”

“No, she doesn’t. What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Then her face lit up with wary optimism. “I mean, it doesn’t even matter anymore, does it? Because Keme’s innocent, and the sheriff knows he’s innocent, and she let him go.”

“It might matter,” I said, “considering someone might be trying to kill Keme.”

I filled her in on the events of the night before.

When I’d finished, Millie’s eyes were huge, and she said, “Dash, you have to HELP HIM!”

“Hey, I might have been the intended victim too. Did you miss that part? What about me?”

“Do you think that’s why he’s not answering my messages?” She looked on the brink of tears again. “Do you think he got hurt?”

A sugar packet hit me in the back of the head again.

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I need your help. If someone is trying to hurt Keme, it’s because he knows something or saw something—or the killer thinks he did. That’s why you’re going to tell me what happened Sunday night.”

“But nothing happened!”

One thing I’d learned from Bobby—when it came to questions like What did you do this afternoon? and How was your writing today? and Did you eat that entire cake? —was that sometimes, wait time worked wonders.

(The alliteration on that was chef’s kiss.)

“It—it wasn’t a big deal,” Millie said. “It was a misunderstanding.”

I kept waiting. I even folded my arms until I realized it made me look like a disappointed dad.

(Nailed it on the alliteration again.)

Millie seemed to deflate as she sighed. “Louis and I went to this party. He knew some of the guys.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. A frat house near the college.”

That helped. Kind of. Arcadia College wasn’t anywhere close to the Gull’s Nest, and I had a hard time imagining that the killer was a college-aged kid who had a heretofore unknown connection to JT and Channelle.

OMG.

What if Louis was the killer?

Although that actually made zero sense, and I immediately regretted thinking it.

“And what happened?” I asked.

“Nothing happened,” Millie said.

“You told the sheriff Keme was at the party.”

“He was.”

“But not all night.”

“No, he left.”

A question occurred to me. “ How did Keme end up at that party?”

Blushing, Millie said, “I told him about it. I mean, he’s eighteen. He can go to a party if he wants to.”

Sure, I thought. But he wasn’t twenty-one, and if Indira smelled alcohol on him—well, you want to talk about zapping.

“Louis said he wasn’t there very long,” I said.

Millie nodded unhappily.

“Why’d he leave?”

The delay seemed longer this time. “He didn’t want to hang out with Louis; Louis teases him too much. I tried to tell Keme he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

I was fairly sure Louis did mean something by it. Guys like Louis tended to be unforgivably perceptive when it came to spotting potential threats—and potential victims. I wasn’t sure which one he’d pegged Keme for. Possibly both.

“Did they get in a fight?”

“What? No!”

“Are you sure? Because Keme looks pretty bad.”

“They didn’t even see each other. Keme showed up while Louis was getting us drinks. We talked. He left. That’s it. That’s all that happened.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Millie.”

“I’M SURE!”

But she squirmed on her stool and wouldn’t look me in the eye.

I decided to change tack. “What did you want to talk to him about?”

“What?”

“Keme. When I showed up, you said he wouldn’t talk to you even though you had something important to tell him.”

The blush intensified in Millie’s face until it was almost neon. Finally, she stammered, “Wh-what I said earlier. About how he’s dumb.”

I gave it some wait time, but even though Millie shifted and wriggled and crossed and uncrossed her arms, that was all I got. Finally, I said, “Yeah. Sure. Listen, Millie, I think there’s something you’re not telling me, and I think that’s a mistake because Keme—or, and I can’t emphasize this enough, I—might be in real danger. So, I’m going to ask you one more time: is there anything else you want to tell me?”

Staring at the floor, she shook her head.

“If you see him,” I said, “or if you talk to him, will you please tell him to come home? It’s not safe for him to be out there by himself.”

Millie nodded, but her voice had a strangely unguarded optimism as she said, “But you’re going to make sure he’s okay. You’re going to figure out who the killer is, and Bobby will arrest him, and then Keme will be safe.”

“Or I will be safe,” I said. And then I sighed. “And it’s kind of hard to solve a murder when most of your suspects are either dead or missing. The deputies are all over the RV park, which means I can’t talk to Foster and September about how they conveniently forgot to tell me they’d been evicted and are now squatting, or whatever the legal term is. And Channelle managed to get herself run over, which—not to be insensitive—put a real damper on my theory that she’d killed her husband to get rich. And this guy from Orange County could be anywhere—”

“Woody?” Millie said. “Woody Vance? He drives a car that says Orange County Sheriff’s Department on it?”

The best word for my silence was stupefied. Finally, I managed to say, “You know his name?”

“Oh sure! He came in here for coffee—you know all the tourists do. I saw it on his credit card.”

“I honestly can’t bring myself to ask the next question, Mildred.”

She made a face. “Stop calling me that. You know how Mrs. Knight owns her dad’s place now, and she says it’s a rental, but, like, nobody wants to stay there because it’s so far out of town and because the lot is so overgrown? Well, when Woody came in—”

“You’re on a first-name basis?”

“—I said, ‘Boy, somebody looks like he could use a coffee,’ and he said, ‘More like a shot,’ and I said, ‘Make it a double,’ and he laughed because it was so funny—”

No offense to Millie’s potential career as a standup comedian (comedienne?), but I guessed Woody Vance of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department had laughed because she was young and vibrant and beautiful.

“Let’s skip to the important part.”

Millie frowned at me. “And I said ‘Rough night?’ And he said, ‘Long night. Rough morning.’ And I said—”

“Millie.”

“Remember he said he liked your hair,” Aric chimed in.

I turned around to glare at him. Cheeks reddening, he sank behind his e-reader.

Millie, however, was not to be sidetracked. “And I said, ‘Nothing like a hot shower and good coffee after a bad night,’ and he said—”

I couldn’t help it. I groaned.

“—‘Don’t talk to me about a hot shower. The place I’m staying only has cold water. How’s that after I hacked my way through a jungle to get to the front door?’”

“That’s it?” I said.

“And then I laughed because that was so funny—”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“—and I asked him if he was staying at Mrs. Knight’s dad’s place, and he said yes.”

I opened my mouth—potentially to scream something like And you didn’t think it was important to tell anyone? , even though I knew it was unfair; there was no way Millie could have known I was trying to find this guy. Well, trying to find makes it sound like I’d made an effort—I hadn’t had a chance, with the nonstop rush of the last couple of days.

Before I could verbalize any of this, though, I remembered where I’d heard the name Vance before. Or, more precisely, seen it: on the California driver’s license in Channelle’s motel room.

“Send me the address for Mrs. Knight’s rental,” I said as I lurched off my stool. “And call Bobby. Tell him what you told me.”

“And tell him about Woody?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Should I tell him about the party too?”

“Tell him everything.

“Even about my hair?” With an undisguised note of pride, Millie added, “The color is called Virgin Pink.”

I hesitated, hand on the door.

And then, because I’m a very bad person, I said, “You should definitely tell him that. Describe the process to him. Send him pictures.”

I dodged one last sugar packet from Tessa and darted out the door.