Page 12 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

“How long ago did you come to Hastings Rock?” Bobby asked. “Before I did, I know that much.”

“Only by a few months. Close to six years now.”

“Because of the job with Vivienne?”

A laugh—a real one—spilled out of Indira. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’d loved her books, and as you know, she can be quite charming when she wants to. I might have been having a mid-life crisis.”

“How very White middle-aged man of you,” Fox said.

Indira laughed again and squeezed their hand.

“It didn’t take long for me to realize Vivienne was nothing like her public persona, but she was relatively undemanding as an employer, and I liked the work.

To be honest, I liked the privacy. The seclusion too.

And then I began to make friends.” She smiled at Fox, who rolled their eyes before squeezing her hand.

“Who knew you were moving here?” I asked.

The question seemed to take Indira by surprise.

“I don’t know. My social circle in Portland was limited, but I told a few people.

My parents died young. My brothers knew, but by then, they’d given up trying to tell me what to do, and our relationship wasn’t good.

Nalini’s visit is as much a peace overture as anything else. ”

“Nobody else?” I asked. “Nobody from your old life? Nobody from Mal’s life?”

“It had been more than fifteen years by that point. I wasn’t in contact with anyone from Seattle. I hadn’t talked to Mal since the divorce.”

Fox frowned. “You think someone planned this? You think they knew Indira was here and—what? Decided she’d be the perfect person to frame for Mal’s murder?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Bobby said, “It’s a possibility.”

“If they wanted to frame me,” Indira said, “they didn’t do a very good job. The only reason I was in that alley was because I’d changed my mind and was coming back; I didn’t want to let Mal run me off again.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Fox said. “What was their plan?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but—”

A knock at the door interrupted me.

We all traded looks.

“Keme,” Indira said doubtfully as she rose.

But when she opened the door, it wasn’t Keme. It was Deputy Dahlberg. And standing one step below her, Salk.

“Hi, Indira,” Deputy Dahlberg said. She held out a sheaf of papers. “I’ve got a warrant here to search your flat.”

“What?” I said.

“I’m going to need all of you to step outside.”

Indira’s back was to me. Tension tightened her shoulders, but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “Yes, Deputy Dahlberg. I can grab my coat, I assume?”

A bit shamefacedly, Dahlberg patted down the coat and turned out the pockets before letting Indira slip it on.

“What do you mean a warrant?” I asked. “On what grounds?”

“You can take a look at it yourself,” Salk said, and there was no hiding the note of misery in his voice. “But you need to leave the flat right now.”

“Bobby!”

“Let’s take a look at it,” Bobby said, his hand on my back, urging me to my feet. “Fox, your coat?”

Fox grabbed a padded engineer’s jacket, and the four of us made our way down the stairs. We clustered on the empty concrete pad of the coach house’s ground floor.

The warrant was four pages long, and it included the affidavit that Sheriff Acosta had written in order to receive authorization to conduct the search.

It listed Indira’s flat as the location to be searched.

The items to be seized and examined were listed as any firearms .

The affiant’s qualifications—meaning, the sheriff’s qualifications—were listed in the next section, which was fairly straightforward as well.

Then we got to the section dealing with probable cause.

In a few short paragraphs, the sheriff outlined the basis for the search: she had received an anonymous phone call from an eyewitness.

The writer in me suggested that this was: a) bunk, and b) hokum.

No judge worth their salt would authorize a search based on an anonymous tip.

But as I read on, I saw why the sheriff—and the judge—had been willing to gamble on this one.

The caller had known details about the shooting in the alley that no one would have known except an eyewitness.

They described Indira’s return to the alley and watching her fire her gun in a warning shot.

That was when the story changed.

The witness stated they saw Indira hide the real murder weapon in the dumpster before Bobby and I emerged from the restaurant.

Then, claiming, quote, “an intimate knowledge of the suspect’s residence,” the witness suggested Indira might have returned to the alley, recovered the gun, and hidden it more securely at her flat.

Bunk was the politest word I could come up with for it. The fact that the sheriff had written out an affidavit suggested either additional knowledge—some reason to believe this ridiculous story, something I didn’t know—or desperation.

And who had intimate knowledge of the suspect’s residence ? Fox? But obviously Fox wouldn’t have made that anonymous call. The only other person I could think of was Nalini.

Above us, the quality of Salk’s and Dahlberg’s voices changed—the words were indistinct, but the next exchange had a tension that was almost excitement.

I couldn’t help myself; I crept toward the stairs.

“Dash,” Bobby said.

I waved for him to be quiet.

Instead, he said more firmly, “Dash.”

Ignoring him, I darted up the steps, praying no one would hear the creak of the ancient treads.

Dahlberg and Salk didn’t seem to notice my approach; their backs were to me as they looked down into a drawer set into the coffee table, and they were talking quietly to each other. Dahlberg was using a digital camera to take pictures.

“You can’t interfere with a legitimate search,” Bobby said behind me. I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs. He took me by the arm and started to turn me.

And Salk, now wearing a pair of disposable gloves, reached into the drawer and lifted out a gun—one that was definitely not Indira’s.