Page 13 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

After Salk and Dahlberg found the gun, it didn’t matter what I said—no combination of This is a setup, and Can’t you see she’s innocent?

and But this doesn’t make any sense had any effect.

Salk made a brief call to the sheriff, and then he asked Indira to go down to the station with him.

Dahlberg stayed to finish documenting their discovery of the gun and to secure Indira’s flat.

And that was it. The end.

It happened so quickly that, as I stood at the top of the drive and stared after Salk’s cruiser, all I could say was “Did he just arrest Indira?”

“He took her to the station for an interview,” Bobby said. “She’s not under arrest.”

He didn’t have to say yet.

“This is impossible,” I said. “How can this be happening?”

Bobby gave a grim shake of his head.

“I’ve got to call Lyda.” Lyda Hayashi was the best defense attorney in Portland—as far as I was concerned, anyway. And she had a great payment plan. “And someone needs to tell Indira not to say another word until she has a lawyer—”

Fox’s raised voice erupted from the coach house. Bobby and I traded looks and headed toward what sounded like an escalating argument.

Fox stood at the top of the stairs, where a grim-faced Dahlberg blocked their way into Indira’s flat. “—don’t understand why I can’t get her purse. It’s her purse. Now get out of my way you—you absolute fanny!”

“What’s going on here?” Bobby asked.

“Until I hear from the sheriff,” Dahlberg said, and her voice managed to be both professional and surprisingly compassionate at the same time, “nobody’s coming in here. I’m sorry, Fox. I understand—”

“You don’t understand,” Fox cut in, but the words wobbled with the sound of tears, and they wiped their face.

Bobby took the stairs two at a time. “What do you need from Indira’s purse? Or what does Indira need?”

“Her ID, her phone.” Fox ran their hands over their face again and gave a despairing laugh. “Money.”

“Her wallet and phone aren’t listed on the warrant,” Bobby said to Dahlberg.

Dahlberg’s expression softened. “Stay here.” A moment later, she was back, passing a small leather wallet and a phone to Fox. “What about medication?”

Fox sniffed, but they shook their head.

Dahlberg gave Bobby a look, and Bobby walked Fox down the stairs.

We went outside into the bright chilliness of the day.

It was disorienting. It was still morning, and the sky was clear, and the sun was high.

It felt like it should be night again—that endless dark full of broken lights, where Bobby and I had been the night before.

“We’ll drive you to the station—” Bobby began.

“No,” Fox said. Their face was drawn in the thin winter light. Their mascara had run. They adjusted their heavy jacket and looked around, as though trying to place themselves. “I’ll just—” They stopped, swallowed, and touched Bobby’s arm. “Thank you.”

And then they hurried toward their van.

“Do you want to call Lyda on the way?” Bobby asked. “Someone needs to tell Keme.”

“I’ll text Fox her information. I think Keme can wait, actually. You saw how he freaked out yesterday. Let’s find out what the sheriff intends to do; the last thing we need is Keme and Fox trying to mastermind a prison break before Indira even gets arrested.”

Bobby gave a grunt that was almost a laugh.

“It would obviously involve Fox trying to seduce the sheriff.”

“Good luck.”

“And there would be a file baked into a cake.”

His hand was warm on the back of my neck as he steered me toward the Pilot.

“And I want to say Keme would either be in a laundry cart or tunneling his way through concrete with a spoon.”

“You had a lot of alone time as a kid, didn’t you?”

“Bobby!”

“Watched a lot of cartoons?”

“This is the rudest of rude!”

His big, goofy grin splashed out—a bit dimmer than usual, but still so genuinely Bobby.

It was such an easy, normal moment that when I remembered his mom, it was like hitting a brick wall.

He must have seen it on my face because his own expression sobered. “It’s all right, Dash.”

I nodded. The wind picked up, raking my hair, and I shivered inside my jacket. Bobby gave my neck a little squeeze, and that helped. A little.

“I was thinking,” I said.

Bobby cocked a sideways look at me.

“Since you’re currently suspended—”

“On leave,” Bobby said and gave me a shake.

“—and since Fox is already going to the station, and since, um—”

“Someone is clearly trying to frame Indira?”

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it.”

Bobby sounded like a man running out of patience. “What, Dash?”

“Something about Indira’s story, about how Mal helped her start the restaurant and then took it away from her.”

“Yeah. He was a real jerk.”

( Jerk is my word, not Bobby’s.)

“Mal and Talmage got into an argument when we were at the restaurant last night. She said, ‘It’s my restaurant.’”

Bobby opened the Pilot’s door for me. You know how some guys can do that thing where they stand with one hand on the car door, and it does something to you ?

Like, in your tummy? It made it hard to focus on what Bobby was saying.

“You think Mal was trying to take Talmage’s restaurant away? But weren’t they married?”

“That didn’t stop him before. And the spouse is the most likely suspect.”

Bobby did some more of that manly hand-on-the-car thing. It’s like they grow extra muscles or something. (I’m a big fan.) “Do you want to talk to her?”

“I mean, if you think it’s a good idea.”

Bobby’s not really the eye-rolling type, but sometimes—like when he shut the passenger door—the same energy is there.