Page 35 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

The Rock On Inn was Hastings Rock’s best-known (and, according to Travelocity, highest-rated) accommodation in the hotel, motel, and bed-and-breakfast category.

(I wrote bread-and-butter first, but only because I haven’t eaten in hours.) (Also, if there was a bread-and-butter category on Travelocity, I would be all about that.)

In any case.

The inn was located near the town’s touristy area, close to the waterfront and screened by boxwood hedges.

The building itself had gone up in stages as the town had grown and the tourist industry had gone from charming to booming : the original building was pseudo-Victorian, with clapboard siding and decorative gables and a single arched window of stained glass in the tower.

(Yes, it has a tower.) Behind that structure, though, a more modern addition turned the inn from quaint to functional, offering the kind of space that families—and, more importantly, families with the money to stay in one of the town’s most desirable locations—were looking for.

I parked the Malibu in the Rock On’s parking lot.

This was a novelty for me; the parking lot was full of signs that warned anyone who wasn’t a guest of the inn from trying to use it.

(This was a real temptation, believe it or not; Hastings Rock was a small town, and during the tourist season, finding a parking spot was a small miracle—as evidenced by the number of tickets Bobby had given me during my first year.) I gave the VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED sign a second glance and decided that, since this was an emergency—it was practically life-or-death! —Cheri-Ann would understand.

Bobby parked on the street.

Look, I love him. He’s basically the best human being in existence. And I totally get it—rules exist for a reason, law and order, the bedrock of civilization, yada-yada.

But once—just once —I want him to get a library fine. Something. Anything .

Indira had given us Jethro’s room number, so we headed into the inn and marched past the front desk.

(Bobby marched; I trailed along in his wake.) Cheri-Ann, who ran the Rock On Inn, who was an absolute ace at internet gambling, and who was single-handedly the biggest gossip in Hastings Rock, actually fluttered her hands in the air when she saw us and said, “Oh my God!”

It was how people act when they win the jackpot.

“Can’t talk,” I called as I hurried after Bobby. “Good to see you!”

“No, Dash, come back—”

Fortunately, Bobby steamrolled ahead. We hurried up the stairs, our steps muffled by the thick old carpet.

A cloud of Old English furniture polish and lavender sachets—an abundance of lavender sachets—thickened around us the higher we went.

It got to the point where Bobby stopped.

Looked around. And sneezed. (I, on the other hand, was quickly on my way to a killer headache.)

Jethro had one of the seafront rooms, which told me something; the last time I’d been here on official business—you can call it official business if you’re the town’s resident snoop— that investigation had also involved a wealthy, difficult man and his much younger assistant.

In that case, though, the assistant had been put in one of the rooms facing inland.

And while Hastings Rock was scenic and cozy and charming and whatever else you wanted to say to describe a town that was basically like a gingerbread house for adults in retirement, it simply wasn’t the same as having a room that looked out over the water.

And while the oceanfront rooms weren’t outrageously more expensive (at least, not during the off season), they were still a significant upgrade.

The fact that Jethro was staying here meant that either Mal had been more generous with him than other people had expected, or Jethro might have been taking the initiative.

Possibly, in more ways than one.

By the way, I caught Cheri-Ann looking up the stairwell after us.

As soon as she saw that I’d noticed her, she darted away, and music swelled from the reception area—Peggy Lee.

It took me a couple of bars to recognize “Is That All There Is?” I had the sneaking suspicion the volume was to cover the sound of Cheri-Ann sneaking after us.

Bobby knocked and motioned for me to stand to one side of the door.

Nothing.

He knocked again, and this time, he called, “Jethro, we know you’re in there.”

“What if he’s not in there?” I whispered.

“In theory, it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t know you tried it,” Bobby said. And then, with that same unruffled tone: “It works better if your partner isn’t undermining you.”

The outrage .

Fortunately, at that point the sounds of movement filtered out to us from the hotel room.

Hurried steps. A door closing. All the unmistakable signs of someone in a hurry to hide something.

(I know because I had once been a teenager.

More recently, I knew because one time, Fox had been smoking a, uh, certain substance, and Indira had come home unexpectedly, and they’d run into the bathroom and clonked their head on a towel rack.)

“Jethro,” Bobby called. More hammering on the door. Below us, Peggy Lee was carrying on and on. “Open up!”

The lock rattled, and the door opened.

Now that Indira had pointed it out to me, it was easier to see the resemblance between Jethro and Mal.

He had his father’s dark hair. And the same troublesome acne that must have driven Mal crazy.

The shape of his face was the same. The most obvious features—Mal’s eyes—he hadn’t inherited, which was probably why the similarities hadn’t struck me. Or, I suspected, most people.

Right then, those eyes were wide with fresh panic.

“We need to talk,” Bobby said and charged forward.

“Oh, um, no—” Jethro tried.

But Bobby kept moving, and Jethro stumbled back.

Like the other rooms I’d seen in the Rock On Inn, the aesthetic was something like “historically elegant” without anyone getting too nitty-gritty about exactly when, historically speaking.

A large bed with a rumpled quilt; a needlepoint chair; a lamp with a tasseled shade; a footstool with more tassels; tasseled drapes pulled tight, in spite of the magnificent view the windows must have offered.

Light fell from a pair of bedside lamps, leaving most of the room in shadow.

Opposite the bed, a heavy-looking wooden door, part of the original structure, was closed—the bathroom, most likely.

“Uh, I was actually about to go out and get a late lunch—” Jethro said.

“No, you weren’t,” I said. “Bobby, get out your truncheon.” (Nope, that sounded way too, um, adult.) “Uh, nightstick.” (Even worse.) I snapped my fingers. “Billy club!”

Bobby gave me a look that wasn’t quite a nonverbal sigh. “Sit down.”

“Yes, God,” I said, dropping onto the needlepoint chair. “Thank you. I’m exhausted.”

The look was longer this time before he said, “Jethro.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t know—” Jethro began.

“Sit down,” Bobby said.

No yelling. No arm-waving. Not even the tiniest threat of physical violence.

Jethro sat on the bed.

“Were you flushing your coke?” I asked.

Color rose in Jethro’s cheeks. “What? No!”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He seemed to remember something and said, “You can’t come in here.”

“It’s a little late for that,” I said.

“We want to talk to you about Mal’s murder,” Bobby said.

Jethro shifted on the bed. “What about it? I thought they caught the lady who did it. His ex-wife. Her fingerprints were on the gun and everything.”

“Really?” I said. “Do you seriously want to play it that way?”

“I’m not playing anything!”

“You were pretty eager to be the boy detective earlier.”

( The boy detective was my nickname in college. Actually, it wasn’t. I tried to start the nickname Dash-Man, but it didn’t take off.)

“But there’s nothing to investigate,” Jethro said. “That woman did it.”

“That woman is our friend,” Bobby said. “She didn’t kill Mal. I want to know if you did.”

Jethro gaped at him. (He clearly wasn’t used to the Bobby Mai school of earnest directness.) He made a series of incoherent sounds.

He waved his hands. I tried to settle back in the needlepoint chair, but it wasn’t actually all that comfortable.

Probably because it had been designed when sitting was still in its early stages; we hadn’t really perfected the art as a species, I mean. (Pre-La-Z-Boy).

“I didn’t kill Mal. Why would I kill him? He was my boss. I don’t have a job anymore.”

“Well, he was a jerk,” I said.

“No, he wasn’t.”

“And a thief.”

“He was not.”

“And he abandoned people who needed him.”

“No, he didn’t! He didn’t do any of that stuff you’re talking about. People didn’t understand him because—” Jethro managed to stop himself. His color was high, and he gulped air as he got to his feet.

“Because he wasn’t their dad?” I asked.

For a moment, it looked like he might try to deny it. His brows contracted. His lips parted. Then, rubbing his face, he sank back down onto the bed.

“He was your dad,” Bobby asked. “Wasn’t he?”

Jethro nodded. Head still in his hands, he asked, “How’d you find out?”

“The resemblance,” I said. (No need to explain that someone had to point it out.)

The boy nodded again. “My mom used to say I looked like him. Other people didn’t seem to see it, though. She’s White. I think that’s why; they look at Mal, and they see he’s half-Japanese, and they think his son is going to look half-Japanese too.”

“Mal didn’t raise you, did he?”

Jethro shook his head.

“But you knew he was your dad?”

“I always knew. It’s not like it was a secret.

He sent money, but he didn’t have any contact with us.

Mom always said that was better. She wasn’t bitter or anything; she just liked that it was the two of us.

A couple of times, she said he wasn’t a kind person, and she didn’t want me to have to deal with that. ”

Was , I thought. Not is .

“How long ago did your mom pass?”