Page 14 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

Mizzenmast was open before noon, which surprised me a little. Even more surprising—and also, annoying—the lot was full.

“There’s a spot,” I said helpfully.

“Hydrant,” Bobby said as he took the Pilot around the corner again.

“Oh! Right there!”

“Red curb.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Bingo! Jackpot! Straight ahead!”

“The one that says, ‘Expectant Mothers’?”

“Isn’t that more of a suggestion?”

Bobby stopped at a stop sign.

He looked at me.

“Just to be clear,” I said—a trifle nervously—“I would never—”

“Dash.”

“Oh my God, I wouldn’t!”

(On the other hand, I didn’t always read the signs. There were so many. And sometimes they felt very judgy.)

We ended up parking a couple of blocks away in one of the town’s visitor parking lots.

Fortunately, February wasn’t exactly a busy tourist season for Hastings Rock.

Bobby and I hurried back toward the restaurant, the wind shrieking in my ears and propelling us along and occasionally threatening to tear off my glasses.

Bobby, on the other hand, only acquired a tousled look that, along with the stubble, made him look even more like a snack.

On the outside, nothing indicated that the restaurant had recently been the site of a murder.

In fact, aside from where a dog had been digging in the landscaping, it looked picture perfect.

When we stepped inside, Mizzenmast felt like a different place.

Sunlight flooded in through the plate-glass windows, making the space warm and mellow and open.

The same light turned the reclaimed wood silver and ran a prismatic band along the wineglasses hanging over the bar.

People crowded the bar, and almost every table was full; more people waited in the small vestibule.

Raised voices competed with the pop of a cork, the clink of glasses and cutlery, and the high, whinnying laughter of a thin, White thoroughbred of a woman who looked like the definition of ladies who lunch .

It smelled like garlic and lemon and the slightest hint of fish (but in a good way), and between the sunlight and the crush of bodies and the gas fireplace, it was sweltering—all of which, I have to add, spiked my anxiety into the red.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, trying to make myself smaller in the crowd. “What are all these people doing here?”

“Trying to get lunch,” Mr. Ratcliff said. In the scrum, Hastings Rock’s nosiest neighbor was standing at my elbow. His beady eyes glittered. “I hear you found Indira after she shot that man.”

“Indira didn’t kill anyone,” I said.

“Is it true he was her ex-husband?”

“How did—”

“Is it true she shot him so many times he looked like hamburger, and they had to use the kitchen spatulas to get him off the ground and then the spatulas broke so they had to use the snow shovels—”

Listen, I’ve read—and written—some pretty gruesome stuff. But my jaw dropped .

“Excuse us, Oscar,” Bobby said. His hand was already at the small of my back, steering me into the wall of bodies. “If you have questions about an ongoing investigation, you should direct them to the sheriff’s office.”

“—and when you saw him you passed out?” Mr. Ratcliff called after us.

“I did not pass—” I twisted around—or tried to—but Bobby kept steering me forward. “I did not pass out,” I told Bobby.

“I know.”

“Even if she had shot him into hamburger and they had to get the snow shovels to scrape up all the blood and guts.”

A woman who must have been from out of town gaped at me.

“Indoor voices,” Bobby murmured and went back to pushing me ahead of him like an icebreaker.

When we finally reached the hostess stand (er, attendant stand), guess who was there?

Nalini’s eyes got huge. And then, clutching a stack of menus in her arms, she scuttled toward the kitchen.

I went after her, but she was fast, and she passed through the swinging doors to the kitchen a moment before I caught her.

I followed. On the other side of the doors, the chatter of the restaurant patrons died away and was replaced by shouts in English and Spanish, the sound of metal on metal, the hiss of hot oil.

Sous chefs and line cooks and prep boys (I made that last one up) danced a frenzied ballet, often narrowly missing each other, saved at the last minute by someone barking a warning.

One little guy who couldn’t have been older than twenty was so locked in on the celery he was slicing, he looked like an island in all the chaos.

“—don’t care! Get back out there and do your job!” Talmage shouted at Nalini. The head chef—and now full owner—of Mizzenmast was pink-cheeked from the heat, and her honey-blond hair was damp with sweat. Then Talmage caught sight of us. “Hey! You! Stop bothering my staff and get out of my kitchen!”

Nalini darted past us, trying to hide behind the menus as she ran.

“Mrs., uh, Malick?” I tried. “We were hoping to talk to you—”

The chef surged toward us. “What didn’t you understand about get out of my kitchen?”

“Excuse me—” Bobby began.

“Get out!” It was a full-throated scream. In its wake, the kitchen fell silent—no one moved, and the only sound came from the gas burners. Face reddening, she screamed again, “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

Bobby tilted his head, and I headed through the swinging doors. A hush gripped the dining room; dozens of eyes fixed on us, and a cold, sweaty prickle climbed my chest. Behind us, Talmage’s screams continued to ring out, now directed at the staff.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bobby muttered.

Every gaze in the room followed us as we made our way to the door. Mr. Ratcliff’s nose was practically quivering.

Running footsteps and a low-pitched “Hey” made me turn. A young man in a kitchen uniform jogged toward us, waving to flag me down.

When he reached us, he offered an uncertain smile. “Sorry about that. Chef wanted to know if you could wait.”

Bobby’s eyebrows went up. “That’s what she said?”

The young guy’s ears pinkened. “Well, she said, ‘Make them come back.’” He gave a nervous chuckle. “I can get you a table. You can have something to eat. On the house.”

“Did she say that?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, she did. She’s actually not like that; you just caught her at a bad time.”

Bobby looked at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yes. Sure.” And then, because you have to ask the hard-hitting questions: “Does that include dessert?”

The young man laughed. Bobby did not.

We ended up at a small table near the kitchen, and yes, we got a lot of dirty looks from the people who were still waiting.

Slowly, the dining room returned to its clamor of voices and cutlery.

The noise and heat from the kitchen filtered out from the swinging doors; things had returned to normal there, too, and the sounds of people working in tandem, along with the smell of good food, were unexpectedly comforting.

After a few minutes, Bobby took out his phone and glanced at it.

“We don’t have to stay,” I said.

“We have to talk to her sometime.”

“But if we don’t have time, I mean. If there’s something else we need to do.”

He shook his head, but I got the impression that it had more to do with what he was reading on his phone than with me. He began tapping out something—a message, a search, I couldn’t tell what.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

He made a sound of agreement.

“Bobby?”

“Huh?”

“Did something happen?”

“Everything’s fine,” he said vaguely and went back to his phone.

At that moment, Nalini approached the table. She handed each of us a menu and started to squeak, “I’ll be right back—”

I cut her off with, “We’re ready to order. Bobby will have an iced tea. I want a Coke. Oh, and can we get some bread?”

“Yes, let me just—”

“Bobby, what do you want?”

He had the phone pressed to his ear now, and he shook his head.

“You have to eat something,” I said.

Tilting the phone away from his mouth, he whispered, “Not hungry.”

Of course he wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything in over twenty-four hours; why would he be hungry?

“A hamburger,” I said, “with fries. And the fish and chips.”

“Uh, okay,” Nalini said, sidling away from the table.

“And where were you last night when Mal got shot?”

Under other circumstances, the look on Nalini’s face would have been comical. Her jaw sagged. Her long, thick eyelashes batted furiously. I had a horrifying moment when I realized her default defensive maneuver was to flirt, and now she was going to try it on me .

But then she recovered herself and stammered, “Th-the bathroom.”

“Do you want to try that again?”

“I went to the bathroom. I didn’t even know—” For a moment, emotion swamped her, and her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t know. When I came back, everything had gone wrong.”

“What do you mean, gone wrong?”

She blinked to clear the tears from her eyes, but some of the emotion still made her voice raspy as she said, “Mal. I don’t know why someone would—” Her shoulders slumped. “He was so nice .”

“Was he?” Nalini was too busy trying not to cry, though, and I wasn’t sure the question mattered. I gave her another second and asked, “What about after?”

Sniffles.

“After everything that happened?” I said. “You didn’t come back to Hemlock House.”

“Yes, I did, but I was extra quiet because it was late—”

“Nalini, don’t lie to me. You spent all night checking in with Keme to make sure Indira wasn’t home yet. Where were you?”

“I was upset,” she said. “I don’t know. I went for a walk.”

“The whole night?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Yes, I went for a walk. All night.” She glanced around, wiped her eyes, and said, “I have to get back to work.”

She disappeared into the kitchen, and I leaned back with a grunt. “That was a load of horse plop.”

(You get the general idea.)

“Fine,” Bobby said, although his tone conveyed the impression that it was anything but fine. He disconnected his call and tapped the screen of his phone again.

“Nalini lied to us about where she was last night,” I said. “And she said something uber suspicious.”