Page 8

On my drive across town, I called Lyda Hayashi, defense attorney extraordinaire. Lyda worked out of Portland (believe it or not, Hastings Rock didn’t have an established criminal defense lawyer, which seemed like a real missed opportunity). She’d helped me and Hugo when we’d been suspects in murder investigations, and when I explained the situation with Keme, she agreed to see what she could do. I asked if there was a punch card or a loyalty rewards system. (Buy two murders, get one free. Actually, it would be ‘Buy two murder defenses’—you get the point.) She laughed, and somehow, when she disconnected, the sound was very expensive.

Then I turned my mind to the task ahead of me. What I’d told Bobby was true—I needed to talk to Millie. I wanted to know why she’d tried to give Keme such an easily disproven alibi. And I wanted to know what Millie could tell me without Louis around, which I was starting to suspect would be more difficult than I’d realized. The idea of establishing a timeline for JT’s murder was a good one, and I needed to do that too.

But every murder investigation is ultimately about the nexus of people surrounding the victim. And there was one person who should have automatically been at the top of the suspect list: JT’s wife, Channelle. In the first place, because the spouse was always the most likely suspect. And in the second, because Channelle and JT had argued the same night JT was killed. They had a history of domestic disputes, as a matter of fact. And if JT really had been killed in anger—if someone had grabbed something in the garage and hit him with it, as the sheriff had suggested—then the pieces fit. It wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened: Channelle had gone back to the house that night, and they’d resumed their argument. Things had gotten out of hand, and boom—no more JT.

It was certainly more convincing than the theory that an eighteen-year-old boy, who was kind of my brother and kind of my foster son and kind of my seventh-grade bully, had murdered JT for no apparent reason. And even though I knew that any modern law enforcement officer would say that evidence and opportunity were the deciding factors, I still believed motive was important. Call me old-fashioned.

By the time I got to the Bay Bridge Suites, night had settled fully over Hastings Rock. The motel was a two-story cinder-block building in a courtyard design. It was painted a creamy white, and light splashed against the walls from decorative floods. Cute little ’50s-ish wall sconces with ribbed-glass jar shades provided additional touches of light. Along the exterior corridors, the doors alternated in pops of red and blue. The sign was red too, the fat, mid-century letters pushing back the dark with their neon glow. It looked like it could have been in a Hopper painting, albeit one with a splash of Andy Warhol. There was even a pool, and if this had been a noir movie, it would have been a great place to find a body floating in it. Instead, a stocky little black duck was squawking in outrage at an abandoned pool noodle.

I parked across the street in front of a darkened real estate office, and I sat and watched. A light was on in the motel’s office, and more lights shone in the curtained windows of the rooms, but my overall impression was that this was a sleepy space. We were past the peak of tourist season, and although the town still had a fair number of visitors through October and into November, it was obvious that the Bay Bridge Suites had rooms to spare. The first and most important question was: which one was Channelle’s? If this were a mystery novel—and if I were Will Gower—I’d have been able to determine where she was staying through a combination of common sense and reasoning. For example, Will Gower might realize that with the motel mostly empty, Channelle would likely be staying where it was easy for the staff to clean her room—near the office. In real life, there was probably something to that, but my brain didn’t exactly work that way. My brain was more inclined to spout every single possibility, no matter how unlikely, and assume they were all equally valid. For example, what if she’d asked for a room on the end because she wanted privacy? What if she’d wanted a view of the bridge? What if she’d hurt her leg committing murder, and she didn’t want to use the stairs? Maybe, I decided, I should count the windows that had lights in them, and then, by process of elimination—

Someone rapped on the Pilot’s window.

I swear to God: I shot out of my shorts.

(I also said some words that never made it into the Bay Bridge Suites’ promotional materials.)

Brow furrowed, Indira gave me a slightly disapproving look through the glass. It was made more effective by the enormous pistol she held in one hand.

“What are you—” I buzzed down the window. “What are you doing? And put that away.”

On anyone else, I would have called Indira’s expression haughty as she slid the gun into her purse. “The same thing you’re doing, I imagine. Trying to talk to Channelle Haskins.”

I imagined how Bobby—not to mention the sheriff—would take this latest development. I wasn’t sure the town could handle another amateur snoop. I mean, sleuth.

So, I said, “No, I’m not.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

That one stumped me, but then genius struck. “Buying a beach house.”

It’s kind of amazing how good Indira is at the mom look—you know, the one that says she knows you’re full of horse plop.

“Indira,” I said, “you can’t.”

“Why not? You can. Is it because I’m a woman? Is it because of my age?”

The sky was totally clear, and it had been an absolutely perfect day (in terms of weather, not in terms of having your friend framed for murder). But I’m not joking: I heard thunder.

“Uh, no,” I said. “It’s because—” Feet don’t fail me now, I thought. “—you’re an upstanding citizen, and Keme needs you not to get yourself thrown in jail.”

“I’m not going to get myself thrown in jail,” Indira said. But she shifted her purse, and her gaze slid away from mine. Her voice tightened. “Keme is—is sitting in a cell right now, Dashiell. He’s alone.” She stopped, and several seconds passed before she spoke again, her voice thinner and higher as she forced the words out. “And I have to do something. If you’re not going to help me, I’ll talk to her myself. She’s in room two-oh-six; I called and asked.”

“And they told you?”

Indira ignored me. “I’m perfectly capable of handling this on my own.”

And then she stood there, clutching her purse with both hands, staring at that stocky little duck as it screamed at the pool noodle.

Several things clicked. She’d been here, waiting. She hadn’t gone up to the room, even though she knew which one it was. And when I’d arrived, she’d tapped on my window. And now she was just standing there. Plus the fact—of which I was occasionally reminded by people who loved me and wanted the best for me—that normal people like Indira didn’t regularly do things like interview strangers about the murders of their husbands. (The implication was: unlike me .)

I sent a silent apology to Bobby and the sheriff and professional law enforcement everywhere. And then I said, “Maybe we should talk to her together.”

The stiffness in her voice almost hid the relief. “Whatever you think is best, dear. You’re the detective.”

“I’m more of a snoop,” I said as I got out of the Pilot. “I mean, if you ask anyone else.”

“I’m sure you are, dear.”

“No, I meant—” I tried not to sigh. “Here we go.”

Room 206 was on the second floor, so we climbed the stairs together. We still hadn’t seen anyone. Tourists in October and November tended to be retirees, and I was starting to suspect that everyone staying at the Bay Bridge Suites had gone to bed with the sun. We made our way past darkened windows and stopped in front of room 206. This window was dark too. I had a hard time believing Channelle had called it a night after the blue plate special, but anything was possible. I knocked, and the door shifted in its frame.

“Try again,” Indira whispered.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Knock on the door, Dashiell.”

I knocked again. The door shifted again. That kind of thing happened in old buildings as they settled and the frames went out of true. But it didn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence in the Bay Bridge Suites.

“She’s not there,” Indira whispered.

“Guess not. We can try tomorrow. I also think we need to talk to Millie—”

“Don’t be silly. This is a perfect opportunity.” She opened her purse and began to rummage around. “I know I have a bobby pin in here somewhere.”

“A what?”

“A bobby pin.” With a cry of triumph, she produced one and held it out to me. “Go on, dear.”

“And do what?”

“Pick the lock, of course.”

Of course.

I stared at the bobby pin. “I have no idea how to open a lock with this. Maybe if I had my picks, but they’re back at the house. Also, remember how we talked about not getting thrown in jail?”

With a slightly miffed noise, Indira lowered herself to examine the lock. It wasn’t exactly high security—it was set into the doorknob, and I guessed that the real security, if you could call it that, consisted of one of those swing bars or a chain, something you set from the inside. Indira considered the lock for a moment, set one hand on the door, and frowned.

The door popped open.

(The bobby pin never went into the lock, by the way. It never even came close.)

Chills washed over me. The sound of traffic from the bridge, which until then had been steady, dropped away.

Here’s the thing. Indira is awesome. She’s kind. She’s wise. She’s an incredible chef and even better baker. But she does have that witchy-white lock of hair, and sometimes she has this energy, like if you and Keme don’t stop wrestling right. now. you’re going to get zapped. And I know magic isn’t real. But also, sometimes when I’m around Indira, it’s kind of hard to remember that’s a fact and not, you know, more of a guideline.

Indira looked up at me. Her eyes were lost in shadow.

“Oh my God.” My whisper was barely more than a breath. “Did you do that?”

“Of course not,” she said. “The jamb is broken. Look.”

I’m not going to lie: it was super disappointing. (Also, kind of a relief.)

I crouched by the door. Indira was right: the wood around the strike plate was splintered, with several larger pieces of wood lying on the floor. I covered my hand with my shirt to avoid leaving prints and pulled the door closed. The latch caught, but only barely. When I pressed on the door near the broken section of jamb, the door popped free again.

“Someone broke into her room,” Indira said.

I nodded.

“But who?” she asked. “And why?”

“Good questions.”

“Wouldn’t it have made a lot of noise to break down the door? Someone had to have heard it.”

Shaking my head, I pointed to scuff marks on the jamb. “They used a pry bar or a tire iron or something. You can see where they put it in. The jamb might have made a cracking noise when the wood split, but it’s not like they took this thing off its hinges with a battering ram. Even if you were in the next room, I doubt you’d have heard it, and it doesn’t seem like there’s enough foot traffic to worry about someone seeing you.”

Indira’s mouth hardened into a grim line. She reached into her purse, and instead of the bobby pin, this time she drew out the gun.

Waving Indira to the side, I inched open the door, bracing myself for—well, I don’t know. A knife-wielding maniac to come charging out of the dark. Or the muzzle flash of a gun. Heck, maybe Michael Myers. (It was Halloween, after all.)

Instead, darkness floated out to us, scented with something velvety and floral. A woman’s perfume. I wasn’t an expert, but I was willing to bet it wasn’t the drugstore variety.

After a few more seconds, I stepped inside and turned on the flashlight on my phone. Indira followed me, shutting the door behind her. She produced an actual flashlight from her purse, and between the two of us, we got a decent look at the room.

It had been torn to pieces. The double beds were overturned. A mirror that must have hung on the wall at one point was propped against the wall. The chair cushions had been slashed, and a vanity lay toppled on its side. Clothes lay everywhere, and the suitcases linings had been sliced to ribbons as well.

“Someone was looking for something,” Indira said.

As far as I knew, this was her first breaking-and-entering-slash-murder-investigation, so I decided to cut her some slack on the narration. But I nodded my agreement.

Before the destruction, it would have been a cute, albeit dated, room. The walls were knotty-pine paneling, and they would have been hung with the local watercolors that now lay on the floor, their glass shattered. The chair and the vanity looked like mid-century pieces. And like the rest of the motel, whoever had designed the place had loved color: teal carpet, mustard-colored bedding, and tangerine upholstery. Now it was a disaster zone.

I picked a path across the room toward a doorway on the far side. It connected to a bathroom, and I wanted to get there first, before Indira. I had an idea of what I might find.

But when I reached the doorway, there was no crumpled body on the shower floor. No shower curtain ripped from its rings. No—wait, was I just thinking of Psycho ? No killer monkey! (That’s from Poe.) Instead, the bathroom was small, with checkerboard tile running across the floor and three-quarters of the way up the walls, complete with a mirrored medicine cabinet, chrome towel rods, and an unopened bar of soap so tiny it wouldn’t even get the job half done. The bathroom, too, had been searched, with Channelle’s toiletry case dumped out on the floor, the medicine cabinet’s door ajar, and the cabinet itself ransacked.

“Dash,” Indira said from the other room.

When I found her, she was crouched next to the vanity, picking through pieces of something that clinked against each other. She lifted something, and in the gloom, it took me a moment to recognize it. “Roses.”

The roses had been trampled—the stems bent and broken, the flowers flattened, petals mixed in among the broken pieces of the vase. I was surprised I hadn’t smelled them, and then it made sense—the scent of the perfume was overpowering, and I guessed that like a lot of store-bought roses, these didn’t have much fragrance.

“Who buys roses after their husband is beaten to death?” I asked.

“Who sends roses?” Indira corrected softly.

A man, I thought. And then: more clearly, the other man. Because if nothing else, the motel room was evidence that there was another man.

In the wake of the question, the stillness of the motel bore down on me.

“Let’s be quick,” I said.

We resumed our inspection of the room. While Indira examined the overturned vanity, I moved over to the suitcases. As I began to pick through the clothes strewn across the floor, another thought occurred to me.

“Fingerprints,” I whispered to Indira.

She gave me a look that could politely be translated as Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs . (Fox had said it to me once, and it stuck.) And then she went back to work.

I was picking through more of the clothes when something rustled. I plucked away a couple more sweaters—cashmere, by the feel of them—and saw what had been hidden underneath: paperwork. Pages and pages of paperwork lay on the floor, fanned out across the teal carpet as though someone had thrown them down. Whoever it was must not have thought the papers were important—or must not have found whatever they’d been looking for—because when they’d turned their attention to the suitcases, they’d thrown the clothes on top of the paperwork.

In the mess of clothes, I found a pair of stretchy fabric gloves and pulled them on. I did a quick wipe-down of everything we’d already touched, and then I started going through the papers.

They appeared to be paperwork for the RV park. A lot of utility bills, which were all up to date. And then account statements for the park’s various tenants. A few of these were marked overdue. Channelle only appeared to have brought the most recent ones—a quick scan showed me they only went back to August.

It was easy to tell right away that something was wrong. The statements were covered with writing in pen: blocky letters that—to me, anyway—suggested a man. There were dates and dollar signs and numbers, and on the printed statements, several of the balances were crossed out and rewritten. I wasn’t a financial genius, but it wasn’t hard to see that someone, most likely JT, had discovered discrepancies in the accounts—and equally obvious that Channelle hadn’t wanted anyone else to see the evidence of JT’s attempt to unravel the mess.

Then an Idea (yes, capital I) occurred to me, and I began flipping through the statements.

In August, the statement for September Collson showed she’d been overdue by almost six months’ rent. And the September statement (that’s kind of confusing—the statement for the month of September) had a red stamp on it that said EVICTED and below it, the words ACCOUNT CLOSED.

I called Indira over and showed her.

“But she’s still living there,” Indira said. “You went into the camper.”

“Yeah, but maybe she’s not supposed to be living there. I saw something taped to the door when I got there. It was just a sign that said Collson, but now that I think about it, it might have been taped over something, you know? Like maybe she taped over the eviction notice.”

“To what end? Mr. Haskins would have called the deputies, and the deputies would have removed them.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they were planning a legal battle. But there’s no way this isn’t connected to Keme talking to his mom, getting—” I almost said getting in a fight with Foster , but since I technically didn’t have any proof of that, I settled for: “—getting upset, and then arguing with JT.”

Indira’s face was unreadable in the weak light. She reached out to point to a paperclip and said, “What’s this?”

A second page was clipped to the back of the statement. It looked like some sort of record JT must have used at the park to track the eviction process. A quick glance showed me that JT had posted the eviction notice in September. The next entry showed that JT had moved the tenant’s possessions into storage and had the camper cleaned for a new renter.

“He skipped several steps,” Indira said.

“What?”

“Well, if September was going to stay and fight the eviction—which it seems like she wants to, since she’s still staying in the camper—then he should have filed a complaint with the court. Legally, JT couldn’t take their belongings until the court had issued a writ allowing him to evict them, and even then they would have had time to take their belongings with them. Something about this doesn’t make sense.”

“How do you know so much about evictions?”

Indira’s slight hesitation, and an unfamiliar note in her voice, surprised me. “I wasn’t sure what you’d do after you became owner of Hemlock House.”

“Indira, by that point, I’d already tasted your chocolate cake. I’m not that stupid.” I gave the paper another glance. And then —yep, you guessed it: an Idea sprang out at me. “If JT put all of September’s belongings in storage, could that have included some of Keme’s stuff too?”

“It would have been everything inside the camper,” Indira said slowly.

“Like a T-shirt and shorts and slides.”

“Oh my God,” Indira said. Her hand fastened on my arm. “You have to tell Bobby.”

“Uh, well, yes, I should, but maybe with certain, um, details omitted? Not that I want to lie to Bobby because trust is the bedrock of a good relationship, but I’m not sure he’d be thrilled to know I was, um—”

“Breaking and entering?”

“I was going to say sleuthing.”

“I’ll call him, dear. I’ll say Millie told me.”

“Thank you.”

As Indira placed the call, I resumed my search. After the tenant statements, the paperwork changed to JT’s personal finances: bank account statements, credit card statements, a checkbook. I had a hard time imagining JT had parted with any of this stuff willingly, which meant Channelle must have taken it after she found JT dead. Or after she killed him, a part of me suggested.

When I flipped the next page, I stopped. A driver’s license had been buried in the mix, and I caught it as it slid across the stack of pages. It was from California, not Oregon, and it showed a woman I didn’t recognize. She was what Will Gower would have called a bottle blond, with perfect makeup that had somehow resisted the DMV camera’s magical ability to make everyone look like they were having their mug shot taken. In the photo, she wore a sweatshirt that looked oversized—on her, the effect was cute—and there was a hint of rhinestones and what I thought might be a Western-style fringe. It was hard to say from a single DMV photo, but I thought it was even odds that she’d been, uh, enhanced.

The name on the license was Channelle Vance, and the address listed the city as Santa Ana. I wasn’t an expert on California (Will Gower wasn’t exactly a fun-in-the-sun kind of guy), but something told me that Santa Ana was either in Orange County, or close enough that the difference didn’t matter. It looked like the license had been issued two years ago and was still valid.

Indira was speaking quietly into her phone, explaining to Bobby our theory about the eviction and Keme’s clothes. I hissed to get her attention and showed her the license.

“And another thing,” Indira said. “Could you see if there’s anything on Channelle using a different last name? Like Vance?”

In the motel’s quiet, I could hear Bobby’s answer. “That sounded like Dash. Where are you?”

Indira wasn’t one to hem or haw or say um, uh, er, etc. But she did pause for a microsecond before saying, “I’ve got to go, dear.”

“I know that hiss—” Bobby began.

Fortunately, at that point, Indira disconnected. We traded a relieved look.

And then my phone buzzed.

Where are you?

Home? I texted back. Writing? Safe?

It’s more believable without the question marks. Where are you?

Bay Bridge Suites.

Call me. Now.

I answered with JAS—it stands for just a sec , which is way cooler than brB ( be right back ) or, believe it or not, AFK ( away from keyboard ).

Bobby did not wait just a sec. Bobby called me instead.

As my phone buzzed, I said to Indira, “We might be out of time.”

She nodded, but she said, “Look at this.”

A velvet box lay behind the vanity. It was open, and it held an incomplete jewelry set: a ring and a pair of earrings, all set with heart-shaped blue stones, and an empty spot where a necklace should have been.

“Roses,” I said. “Jewelry. Perfume.”

“And the clothes,” Indira said. “She has expensive tastes. But my point is that this couldn’t be a normal robbery, otherwise someone would have taken the jewelry.”

“Right. Okay, well—”

“And one more thing.” She indicated for me to look between the far bed and the wall.

In the narrow space between the wall and the bed, a shredder was plugged into an outlet. The top of the shredder had been removed from the little plastic receptacle it normally sat on and now leaned up against the wall. The little plastic receptacle was empty.

My first thought was that the paperwork in the room only went back to August. “She was shredding something,” I said. “But if that’s the case, why keep the California license?”

“Maybe she still needs it,” Indira said. “Maybe that’s her backup if she needs to run.”

That seemed like a possibility. Most people, after their husband got his head bashed in, probably weren’t thinking about shredding paperwork in their motel room.

“Do you think whoever broke in here took the shredded paperwork?” I asked. “Oh shoot!”

(I did not say shoot.)

“The liner in the bathroom trash can.”

I scooted around Indira to double-check, and I was right—the detail hadn’t really registered until I’d thought about it, but the liner for the bathroom trash can was missing.

“So,” Indira said, “she shredded something and threw it away. Tonight. And there’s no chance the garbage has been collected yet.”

We both stood there, thinking the same thing.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m only doing it because I’m a gentleman and you’re—” I almost said older . Indira’s face didn’t change, but I got that strong premonition again about a zap, so I changed it to “—a lady.”

She didn’t even sniff or anything.

We hurried out of the room and shut the door behind us. The latch caught—barely—and then we made our way down to the parking lot and around the back of the Bay Bridge Suites. Two large dumpsters had been rolled up against the rear wall of the motel, and next to them, three parking spaces had been spray-painted onto the concrete. Only one was occupied—a silver Chevy Cruze. Staff spots, I thought. Whoever was on the front desk tonight. The smell of garbage floated up, with the faint hint of burned rubber and a whiff of what my brain processed as deep fryers and hot breading, like we were downwind of a chicken shack. The shadows were deep enough that Indira turned on her flashlight again.

I was starting to do the mental calculus—would crawling around in a dumpster be worse than calling Bobby and telling him everything?—when Indira’s sharp intake of breath pulled me out of my thoughts.

And then I saw the woman on the ground. She wore a sequined V-neck top that looked like too little against the October chill. The same could be said about the short black skirt. She wore heels, but one of the shoes lay several feet away on the pavement. I recognized her from the license photo: blond, perfectly made up. Little details registered: the deep red of her lipstick; a rash of color on her cheek; her press-on nails. Her head was turned at an impossible angle, and the way the light caught her eyes turned them into blank white circles.

Channelle Haskins—or Vance, or whatever her real name was—was dead.

Hand shaking, I took out my phone and called Bobby.