Page 35 of Script Swap (The Last Picks #11)

Spoiler alert: something did happen.

Not that I’m going to go into it.

Not that I’m a prude.

Not that it’s any of your business.

But it was, to use a word that should be banned from romance novels, magical .

(Is it too much information to tell you that I gave him a high five after, you know, it ?)

(Seriously, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?)

Anyway, fade to black.

The next morning, I woke in Bobby’s bed, with Bobby wrapped around me. His breathing told me he was awake, but in that slow, resting way. The aroma of coffee mingled with something sweet and—I wanted to say, streusel-y?

“You’re here,” I said through a mouthful of sleep.

Bobby kissed my ear. “I brought you coffee and muffins.”

Listen, if there’s anything that beats having a magical, uh, high five, it’s waking up to coffee and Indira’s World’s Best Huckleberry Muffins?.

While I got myself upright, Bobby brought over a tray with the coffee and the muffins.

At least, I thought it was coffee and muffins. Everything was a bit blurry.

“Incoming,” Bobby said as he settled my glasses on my nose. He gave me an appraising look, tweaked my ear, and said, “Much better.”

“I think the contacts might be a bust.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“My eyes are too, um, bouncy. Or it might be the shape. Or maybe my eyelids are too strong.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he said.

“You’re too polite to tell me you think I should wear glasses.”

“I think you should wear whatever you want to wear.”

“I’m going to wear glasses.”

“Thank God,” he said and handed me my coffee.

It was nice to have a slow start to our morning.

Even before I’d started running and going to the gym at the crack of dawn (okay, eight o’clock), breakfast in bed wasn’t usually part of the routine, so it was doubly pleasant to lounge in bed together, eating muffins that had almost a full inch of brown sugar crumble on top (the only way to neutralize the poison in the huckleberries), and drinking coffee that was appropriately creamed and sugared (that is to say, within an inch of its life).

After I’d murdered two muffins and three mugs of coffee, Bobby moved the tray to the nightstand.

“Okay,” I said, “I guess we’re done.”

“You haven’t had processed sugar in six weeks, Dash. I’m afraid you’re going to go into a diabetic coma.”

That was highly unlikely, since my body is basically a well-oiled machine that runs on caffeine and high-fructose corn syrup, but maybe Indira hadn’t added quite enough streusel to cancel out the huckleberries because I felt simultaneously jittery and exhausted, and I ended up dozing on Bobby’s shoulder while he read on his phone.

I stirred when he kissed the side of my head and said, “I’ve got to get ready for work.”

Let me tell you: that woke me up. I turned onto my side so I could watch him as he padded around the room naked. (Hard work, but somebody’s got to do it.) “Does the sheriff know Jonni didn’t kill any of those people?”

“The sheriff is still investigating,” Bobby said. With some reluctance, he added, “But she wouldn’t have arrested her without evidence.”

“But Jonni didn’t do it. She’s being framed or—or something. I mean, it couldn’t have been Jonni.”

“Why not?” Bobby asked as he pulled on boxers. (Blue cabana stripe was about as wild as Bobby got in the underwear department. Not that I was complaining.)

“Because she didn’t kill them.”

The khaki trousers went up next. “You understand how that might not convince the sheriff?”

“I know.” I eyed one of the muffins—maybe I needed another to soothe myself. Plus, I hadn’t had sugar in six weeks, and God only knew the kind of damage that could do to, um, I wanted to say the joints? “But I know Nora did it.”

“How?”

“Because she did. She staged that whole production for the sheriff’s benefit.”

“How is that any different from what you do?”

I squawked.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Bobby said as he pulled on the khaki shirt. His fingers did up the buttons deftly. “But accusing her of being guilty because she solved the case isn’t exactly a strong argument, especially coming from you.”

“You’re supposed to be petty and use air quotes. Like ‘solved’ and ‘case’ and ‘coming from you.’”

Bobby wrinkled his nose, kissed me, and stole some of my coffee.

“I know we need evidence,” I said, “but I don’t know where to find it. She did everything perfectly. If there were any physical evidence, the sheriff would have found it by now. She doesn’t have an obvious motive. Heck, she’s even got an alibi. Hang on a second.”

Dropping onto the bed, socks and boots in hand, Bobby said, “Please do not confront Betty and try to extort a confession out of her.”

“Extort is such an ugly word.”

“I’m serious, Dash. If Betty is willing to lie to provide Nora with an alibi, it means that she’s either an accomplice or a victim, and either way, you’d be putting yourself in danger trying to get her to confess.”

“But she’s lying!”

“I’ll talk to the sheriff. We’ll bring her in for questioning.”

“Bobby, that’s not going to work. Nora already won.”

Here’s the thing: another way Bobby can be communicative is when he yanks on his socks.

“What if I’m careful?” I said.

“Ha.”

“Rude!”

But that smoothed out the hard line of his mouth. “Please don’t go alone. Please be safe. Please talk to her in public.” He knotted the laces of his boots, leaned over, and kissed me. “I feel like I just got you back, and someone involved in this murder has already tried to kill you once.”

“What if I take Fox? And we do it at the theater?”

“Where you were almost killed by a falling wrench?”

“That was an accident.” But when I added, “Probably,” Bobby looked less pleased.

“With Fox,” he said firmly. “And you call me and let me know.”

“Obviously. Of course. Not a problem.”

For some reason, Bobby sighed as he stood.

“Did they get an ID on the body from the theater?”

“The one that had been hidden there for forty years,” Bobby asked dryly, “decomposing inside a roll of plastic?”

“Eww.”

“The dental is a match for Raymond Hatch.”

“So, Nora was right. He didn’t run away with the money from the box office.”

“He didn’t run far, anyway.”

“That means Nora took it. Maybe that’s how we can track her down—with the stolen money.”

Bobby buckled on his utility belt. “How, babe? It was decades ago. Nobody has any records.”

“What about serial numbers?”

“What about them?”

“Can’t you—” I made an elaborate hand gesture. “With a computer?”

“I thought you researched these things,” he said. “I thought this was dinner talk with your parents.”

“Well, tracing forty-year-old stolen cash never came up,” I snipped. “And it works on NCIS.”

“Really? I thought you watched that for the scenes where that mean guy runs on the beach.”

“He’s not—” I had to stop so Bobby could give me a goodbye kiss. “He’s not mean .”

“With Fox,” Bobby said even more firmly this time—apparently, lest I forget. “And you call me and let me know.”

As he headed for the door, I called after him, “He’s been wounded. He’s misunderstood.”

Bobby did not deign to reply.

I liked to think that Bobby had a deep and abiding trust in me, and that’s why we could have this kind of conversation—because he trusted me to do the right thing.

Which was why after I got dressed—in my clothes, a hoodie printed with the original NES controller, joggers, and my Mexico 66s, with GLASSES, not contacts, and my normal, boring hedgehog hair—I padded downstairs and ate some more of the muffins.

I had a plan. Kind of. I mean, talk to Betty was a plan. And get her to confess was a plan. But this plan—I thought around a mouthful of crumbly, buttery, brown sugary concoction—was lacking in key details. Number one: what was I going to say? And number two: how was I going to get her to confess?

Typically, detectives (real or fictional) elicited confessions from suspects by establishing a bond and gaining trust, on the one hand, and, on the other, using leverage—like physical evidence, an eyewitness testimony, or plain old fear.

In my case, plain old fear was the only option, and I didn’t think it would work. Betty didn’t have any reason to be afraid. Nora—and Betty—had already pulled it off.

But Nora had to have done it. There wasn’t any other way for her to have known about Ray’s body in that storage space. The evidence simply hadn’t been there. I mean, if it had, I would have found it.

Right?

I took out my phone and called Fox.

“What is it?” Fox asked. “I’m busy.”

“I need to talk to Betty.”

“Good luck. I’ve known Betty for as long as I’ve been alive, and I can barely get two words out of her unless we’re talking about the theater.”

“I was wondering if you’d go with me. Maybe, uh—”

“Keep you from getting murdered?”

“Not in so many words.”

Fox’s silence was drawn out. “I understand that you suspect Nora, and I hate to say that I think you might be on to something. But Betty wouldn’t hurt someone. She’s a good person.”

“Good people do bad things sometimes.”

When they answered, they sounded tired. “I can meet you there in half an hour; let me get rid of these doves.”

“What doves?” I asked.

But they’d already disconnected.