Page 21 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

The drive back to Portland was long and quiet.

Bobby’s bravado (bravura?) in the hospital room culminated in a complete and total refusal to leave the hospital in a wheelchair, in spite of every effort by the doctor and nurses to explain, persuade, and encourage.

It made perfect sense, then, that once they left us alone, he’d barely been strong enough to make it to the Pilot—which, to my infinite gratitude, Salk and Dahlberg had dropped off at the hospital for us.

On the walk to the elevator, Bobby did all right.

But as we rode down, he started to tremble, like his legs were about to fold under him.

I had to help him the rest of the way, and by the time we got to the SUV, the back of his hoodie was soaked with sweat.

I got him in the passenger seat; he didn’t even try to argue.

Then I shut the door. The wind ran a cold, damp hand through my hair, and I shivered.

Clouds were rolling in, and the bright February day was dropping into shadow.

He fell asleep before we were on the highway, collapsed in his seat, his head lolling with the movement of the SUV.

For the first few miles, I was fixated on his breathing: did it sound right?

too shallow? too high? But eventually I decided it sounded the way it always did when he slept, and I turned my attention to the narrow, winding road beneath the spruce and pine and cedar.

The shadows were deep under the trees, and the air that filtered into the Pilot smelled like balsam and wet wood.

Even with the heat cranked up, I was cold.

Sparkie Sanchez was dead. Someone had tried to kill me. Worse, someone had almost killed Bobby.

Who?

I ran through the same arguments I’d made to the sheriff: Larry, Talmage, Jethro.

Talmage had told us that Larry and Mal had argued shortly before Mal’s death.

Was there a motive there? But even if Larry had then tried to poison me to keep me from discovering the truth, how had he done it?

The sheriff wasn’t wrong about the kitchen staff; if Larry had gone into the kitchen, someone would have seen him.

Talmage certainly had reason to get rid of Mal; he’d been blackmailing her, and if my guess was right, he’d found a way to cheat her out of her restaurant, the same way he’d cheated so many people before her.

I was fairly sure that Mal’s next move would have been to divorce Talmage on his own terms and leave her with nothing—as he had tried to do with Indira.

Talmage had also had the best opportunity to poison me (or Sparkie, as it turned out).

But with Talmage, there was another problem: how could she have killed Mal?

There’s no way she could have stepped out into the alley, shot Mal, and returned without her staff noticing.

I liked the other options even less. The sheriff’s theory that the killings were unrelated seemed impossible to my writerly brain—writers usually like everything to tie up neatly.

And while Jethro was a good suspect in theory—there was definitely something hinky about his relationship with Mal, and his alibis for the shooting and the poisoning weren’t exactly rock solid—I had a hard time imagining Jethro swatting a fly, much less killing a human being.

Nalini?

Jeez, I hated that idea. For Indira’s sake—what it might mean for her niece—on the one hand.

And, on the other, because of the sheriff’s suggestion that Nalini might be helping Indira cover up the killing.

I had a hard time reconciling Nalini’s overly flirtatious behavior with a cold-blooded killer, but the fact was that people killed all the time, for all sorts of reasons.

Maybe Mal had gotten a little too aggressive.

Maybe Nalini was just as trigger-happy as her aunt, and all it had taken was for Mal to push her too far.

If she’d been trying to poison me, she’d done a terrible job at it, but maybe I hadn’t been the target.

And it didn’t help that Nalini’s alibi for the night of Mal’s shooting was even weaker than Jethro’s.

As you can tell, it was a very productive drive back to Portland. But I made one decision: I was going to talk to Larry. I hadn’t talked to him yet, and more importantly, I wanted to know what he and Sparkie had been arguing about.

When we got to the Mais’ neighborhood, dark had settled over the city.

We drove past quaint homes and under the branches of old trees, streetlights humming around us and shedding their pale glow across dormant lawns.

The windows of the Mais’ house were dark, and the Range Rover was absent from the driveway, so I pulled in and parked.

Bobby was still doing that soft, fuzzy breathing.

The engine ticked as it cooled. Up and down the street, everything was quiet, frozen into place on a February night.

Bobby made a noise and raised his head.

“We’re home,” I said quietly. “I mean, we’re at your parents’ place.”

He wiped his mouth.

“If you want to rest, though, we can stay out here—”

He shook his head and reached for the door.

I hurried around and helped him down from the SUV. Then, together, we made our way inside. The foyer-front room was dark, with only a weak yellow light slanting in from the kitchen.

If you’ve never helped someone down a spiral staircase, let me tell you: it’s an experience.

I wasn’t even sure how much I was helping; about ninety percent of it felt like just plain old being in the way.

But in spite of the grim resolve on his face, Bobby still moved at a fraction of his usual pace, and he gripped the rail tightly as he lowered himself down each step.

When we reached the bottom, he was sweating again, and his color was bad.

“We should have stayed upstairs,” I said. “You could have slept on the couch—”

He put a hand on the wall and started toward the bedroom.

And all I could do was flutter around him in case he fell.

Somehow, tonight, the room felt even starker: the empty dresser, the stacks of plastic storage bins, the closet full of a dead woman’s extra clothes. Bobby lowered himself onto the mattress. He sat there for a moment, exhaustion swimming in his face.

“Lie down,” I said.

And when I touched his shoulder, he let me press him onto the bed. He closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths.

I sat next to him. I rubbed his stomach.

That was what I liked when my stomach hurt.

And then nausea roiled up inside me, and a wave of heat followed.

Because Bobby didn’t have an upset tummy; he’d been poisoned.

Accidentally, sure. But poisoned nonetheless.

The doctor had said we’d been lucky. The doctor said it could have been so much worse.

When I forced myself to speak, my voice was thick. “Let’s get you out of those clothes.”

He didn’t respond, so I shucked his sneakers.

His joggers came off easily—beneath them were the boringest, boy-est boxers you can imagine.

(Blue. That’s it. He liked to buy the twelve-pack that had only three colors: blue, black, and gray.) A little prodding and nudging got him to shift enough that I could strip him out of his hoodie.

His skin pebbled; the basement was cool bordering on cold, which I hadn’t noticed until then.

“Under the covers.”

It took some more cajoling; he must have been exhausted, because it took him a couple of squirms up the mattress before his legs weren’t hanging off the end.

I undressed quickly, slid in next to him, and pulled the covers over us.

Usually, Bobby was like a mini space heater, but not tonight.

Resisting the urge to wrap myself around him octopus-style, I fluffed pillows and wiggled around until I was stretched out against him so I could rub his stomach again.

He made a soft, pleased sound. His lids were closed, but his eyes moved.

In the restaurant, it had all seemed so clear: Bobby had a hard time verbalizing his feelings, and so the obvious thing to do was to meet Bobby where he was at, with touches and proximity and spending time together—all patented Bobby Mai ways for communicating.

Now, lying in a bed that wasn’t his, in a bedroom that was no longer his, in a house that wasn’t really his, it felt like so little.

Even pressed up against him, touching in as many places as I could manage, it felt like nothing. I couldn’t even tell if he was awake.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I was so scared. And I’m so happy you’re okay.”

His chest rose and fell with his even breaths.

“I want to say this because I know—I know it’s not always easy for us to talk to each other. I know it hurts right now, Bobby. I wish I could make it better for you. I wish—” My throat closed. “I’m here. If you want to talk about it. If there’s anything I could do.”

I waited for—

I don’t know.

I waited, just in case, I guess.

But he was asleep, so, of course, there was nothing. My hand stopped moving on his stomach. And, after a while, I rolled onto my back.

For a while, I lay there, staring up at the ceiling.

This will be impossible to believe, I’m sure, but I wasn’t ready to go to sleep.

It was barely six o’clock, for one thing, but even if it had been two in the morning, I don’t think I could have closed my eyes.

There was a lot happening inside me, stuff I couldn’t even put a name to, and it made me think of when they hot-wire a car in movies—the crackle of electricity, again and again as they cross the wires.

I got up and turned off the lamps. Back in bed, I propped myself up with pillows. Bobby was still sleeping soundly, so I got my phone. I hadn’t checked Crime Cats in over twenty-four hours, but I told myself no—I hadn’t done any writing that day, and there was no reason for me not to do it now.