Page 23 of Script Swap (The Last Picks #11)

Spoiler alert: everything was not good.

But, I mean, I didn’t want to tell Bobby that. Especially not after that marriage-carriage debacle.

Once we got in bed, Bobby fell asleep quickly.

I did not. I should have fallen asleep quickly.

I wanted to fall asleep quickly. I was so tired, physically and mentally, that I kept dropping to the edge of sleep.

But every time I did, I felt like I was falling, and I’d snap awake again.

When I finally did sleep, it was like I only skimmed the surface, and it made the hours impossibly long and, at the same time, too short.

Bobby’s alarm went off at six. Usually, I fell right back asleep; instead, I drifted in and out, moving with the quiet, regular sounds of his morning routine.

When I woke up for real, it was half past noon, and my head was pounding.

Normally, a lie-in (as the Brits like to say) was one of my favorite things to do.

(Wait, is that what the Brits say?) In fact, a lie-in was pretty much my default way for starting my day.

Nothing good happened before eleven, as I was fond of saying, and nothing great happened before noon.

Ben Franklin never included that bit of wisdom in Poor Richard’s Almanack , probably because he was too busy electrocuting himself.

(Who— who —honestly says with a straight face that early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise ?

Early to rise is the absolute worst! The health effects are catastrophic, as my soon-to-be-released one-man scientific study, titled, “Why Twelve Hours of Sleep Isn’t Enough: A Case for the Eight-Hour Waking Day,” will inevitably prove.)

(What is wrong with me?)

Today’s lie-in, though, was accompanied by the aforementioned headache, not to mention general body pings and pangs and aches and bruises.

I did a lot of groaning and moaning and whimpering until I remembered Nurse Millie’s liberal ministrations with the iodine, and after that, I settled for sulking in a hot bath until I felt halfway human again.

When I finally made it downstairs, the house was empty.

I texted Fox to see how Terrence was doing and got no reply.

I tried Indira next, who responded right away.

Terrence had pulled through the surgery and was in critical but stable condition, and Fox had gone home to get some rest—and, I suspected, figure out what to do about their upcoming show—while Indira stayed at the hospital.

Keme and Millie had apparently been drafted into delivering some of Indira’s orders.

With Bobby at work, that meant I had the house to myself.

Awesome. Excellent. Perfect. This couldn’t get any better.

This was exactly what I needed so that I could buckle down and make some serious headway with my revisions.

Bobby was right, even though I hadn’t been able to say as much last night.

I’d been faffing around. (Is that the expression?

Or is it faffing off ? Although that sounds like something boys don’t start doing until middle schoole.

I wrote schoole with an e because that’s the British spelling.)

(Have I been watching too much of The Great British Baking Show ? God, please don’t ask Bobby because he might say yes. He claims I moaned pavlova at an inappropriate moment, which I totally did not .)

(AGAIN: WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?)

I let myself out of Hemlock House. It was one of those dramatically beautiful August days: the sun warm, a strong wind cutting in against the heat, the stiff saltiness of the sea, and puffy white clouds tumbling overhead.

So, this was it. My perfect opportunity. I was going to close the door, sit in the den, turn off my Wi-Fi (to prevent any Crime Cats -related distractions), and get to work. I was going to revise until my eyes bled. (Or, less gruesome: until I finished this dang book.)

The coach house smelled like motor oil and cold concrete and grass clippings.

I hoisted myself up into Bobby’s Pilot, which he was still letting me use until I got a car of my own.

At my current rate, I’d be able to afford one by the time I got my first Social Security check.

The garage door rattled up, and I backed out onto the drive.

Yep. Today was the day I was going to get to work.

But, since I was already in the Pilot, it made sense for me to do a few other things first.

At the top of my list: figure out who had tried to kill Terrence.

One text to Millie got me Terrence’s address—along with seventeen other texts.

Some of these messages were endearing (I HOPE YOU’RE FEELING BETTER TODAY!

Followed immediately by KEME DOES TOO! Which was then followed by KEME SAID NOT TO TELL YOU THAT SO DON’T TELL HIM I TOLD YOU!) (God, so many capital letters.) Some of these messages, on the other hand, fell into the upsetting-and-potentially-war-crimes category (I SHOULD PROBABLY SEE HOW THOSE CUTS ARE HEALING.)

I could practically see her reaching for the iodine.

Just to be safe, I gave the Pilot a little extra gas as I drove north.

Terrence lived on the far side of Hastings Rock—across the bay and outside the city limits.

The old-growth stands of spruce and pine gave way to coastal prairie, which was a lovely name for the sandy, scrubby grasslands that weren’t all that lovely themselves.

My Maps app sent me down a narrow two-lane, where I eventually reached Terrence’s driveway: a mixture of gravel and crushed shells that crunched under the Pilot’s tires as I followed it toward the dunes.

The house was…very Terrence. It wasn’t a normal house.

It wasn’t a rectangular house. It was kind of a sphere, if you chopped off part of it.

And if you made another side of the sphere flat and angular.

And if you covered the sphere with wooden shingles and stuck not one, not two, but three chimneys on top.

I wasn’t sure if the term coastal modern applied (kind of like coastal prairie , it’s something of a euphemism), but my gut feeling was that the architect who designed it had not passed all their required courses.

Two vehicles were parked in front. One was Fox’s van, which was literally a Toyota Van (the most amazing name for a vehicle ever).

Here’s the thing about Fox’s van: it’s kind of like a roller coaster.

Riding in it is simultaneously exciting and terrifying.

It makes lots of noises that you’re fairly sure suggest mechanical problems that fall in the serious-to-life-threatening range.

And there are some weird smells from previous occupants.

(Also, one time it was full of mannequins, and Keme screamed when he got in.

It’s still one of the five happiest moments of my life.)

The other was a cute little coupe. Based on my expert knowledge of cars, I could tell that this car was: red, likely expensive, and fast. (I mean, it had to be fast: it was red.) It wasn’t a vehicle that belonged to any of the deputies, and it sure as heck didn’t belong to Sheriff Acosta.

I parked next to the coupe and headed up to the front door. Like the rest of the house, it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t even a rectangle. It was kind of like a star, but only if you stretched out the top bits. I had the feeling I was going to get tired of Terrence’s house pretty quickly.

When I knocked, no one answered.

Okay, I know I’ve probably leaned a little too heavily into the amateur sleuthing business.

I mean, I recognize the downsides: amateur sleuthing doesn’t pay the bills.

Amateur sleuthing stresses Bobby out. As a matter of fact, amateur sleuthing tends to drive Bobby bananas.

And the Dash 2.0 Iron Man Project, or whatever I was calling it, was all about proving to Bobby that I was a good and suitable partner and that he could rely on me and that no, he shouldn’t leave me, and yes, please let me trap you into spending the rest of your life with me.

(I immediately realized it sounded bad when I said trap .)

But here’s the other thing: sometimes I literally can’t help myself.

I gave the handle a try (it was a weird handle too—lots of pointy bits). It turned. The door inched open.

What if Fox had been hurt?

What if the red coupe belonged to the killer?

What if I had arrived in the nick of time to save the day?

(God help whoever was counting on me to save anybody. I tended to do my best work, er, after-the-fact, so to speak.)

Another nudge opened the door a few more inches, and I could see into the house.

You probably already figured this out for yourself, but no, it wasn’t a normal house on the inside either.

It was pretty, yes. The walls were pine, the floor was stone, and the general design principles seemed to be: nook, crannies, and crevices (in that order).

By which I mean: the house was hollow on the inside—there were no interior walls, like the ultimate open-concept floor plan.

Instead of something boring and old-fashioned like, you know, rooms, the space appeared to be divided up by function—the seating area, for example, consisted of a built-in bench that was way too narrow to be comfortable, and I mean, my God, nobody was ever going to be able to nap on it, and the “bedroom” (notice the scare quotes) was an angular little alcove with a custom mattress.

I said a little prayer to the patron saint of gay boys that Fox hadn’t grown up in this loony bin.