And then she folded.

  I caught her before she hit the floor, and we did a staggering two-person dip until I could lay her down.

  “September?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  She was still breathing, and her eyes were half open, and she even made a sleepy sound of awareness.

  The idea flashed into my head.

  Sometimes, I decided, I wasn’t a very good person. A very good person would have called 911 right then.

  But she was breathing. And she seemed like she was okay, albeit knocked out.

  I spent another ten seconds trying to decide if I really was a good person.

  And then I turned on the flashlight on my phone and started to search. There were two things that were still missing: the murder weapon (although if the killer was smart, they would have thrown it into the bay by now), and Channelle’s necklace.

  It was a quick and easy search. The camper had a lot of nooks and crannies for storage—trying to maximize the use of every inch of available space—but, since JT had moved September’s belongings into storage, there wasn’t anything in them. I went as quickly as I could, checking September every few seconds, making sure she was still awake and breathing.

  And then, in the tiny bathroom, I popped off the cover of the exhaust fan, and cash came tumbling down.

  My phone buzzed with a call from Bobby as I gathered up the bills.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Where are you?”

  “September’s camper.” I filled him in and said, “I think Foster tried to kill her. Remember how I told you about that super weird thing with the pill the last time I was here?”

  “Dash—”

  “He obviously had something going with Channelle. Maybe she was giving him a cut. There’s got to be five hundred dollars here. I mean, the jackass didn’t have a job, so where did he get this much money?”

  “Dash—”

  “And then Channelle threatened to cut him off, or maybe he knew something about the murder and tried to blackmail her, and it all went wrong, so he ran her down with his car.”

  (That last part was a little foggy since I wasn’t sure Foster had a car.)

  “Dash!”

  “What?”

  “Foster didn’t poison her.”

  “I know it’s only a theory until we can talk to September—”

  “No, he didn’t poison her. Salk and Dahlberg picked him up a couple of hours ago. September was fine when they left. Foster’s been here ever since. He’s sitting in a cell right now, waiting for his lawyer.”

  “Wait,” I said, trying to get my thoughts to settle.

  “I’m sending an ambulance over there right now.”

  I heard the words, but I said, “They arrested Foster?”

  “He had Channelle’s necklace.” Something twisted in Bobby’s voice. “It was in a box on the table when Salk and Dahlberg interviewed them about the eviction. He was going to give it to September as a present.”

  I opened my mouth to—what? Argue? But why did I want to argue? I’d had the same thought, hadn’t I? I’d seen the photo of Channelle and Foster. As soon as I’d seen September, I’d jumped to the conclusion that Foster had done this to her. And now that Bobby told me he’d been arrested, I could see how the other pieces fit: Foster was a mooch, using his boyish good looks to live off the women he met, like September or Channelle. Foster was our only eyewitness to the events of the night JT had been murdered, which meant he could have told us whatever he wanted, made up any story he wanted. Like Keme getting into a fight with JT. He would have known that Keme’s clothes were in JT’s garage, and he would have known which clothes were Keme’s so he could use them to frame him. He had Channelle’s necklace. I had known, the first time I’d met him, that there was something dangerous under the pretty surface—a darkness that rippled when he lost control.

  So, why was my first, automatic reaction to tell Bobby that they had it all wrong?

  I didn’t know, so I didn’t say anything.

  After several seconds, Bobby said into my silence, “Try to keep her awake, Dash. The ambulance is on its way.”

  Chapter 15

  The paramedics came. Then the deputies—Tripple and Bobby. A crowd gathered, mostly middle-aged, mostly White, men and women who emerged from their RVs with careful steps, drawn by the scent of blood in the water. Tripple kept them back; he was about as good at that part of his job as he was at everything else, meaning he snapped at people, barked orders, shouted, and generally acted like the rear end of a particularly stupid donkey. He was the perfect example of a guy who had let the tiniest amount of power go to his head, and watching him bully a woman on the other side of the caution tape, I couldn’t help but feel like Tripple was genuinely angry. Probably because he took any challenge to his authority personally. I felt numb in the aftermath of finding September and learning Foster had been arrested, but watching Tripple in action still made me simultaneously sick and tired.

  The sheriff came, and I gave my statement—not that there was much to give.

  “Go home,” the sheriff said when we’d finished. “Get some rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

  I hadn’t, not really, but I said, “Are you sure he did it?”

  “The investigation is ongoing, Dash.” But she was a good sheriff—good in so many ways. So, she let out a breath and said in a lower voice, “He admits they argued. His version is that she gave him the necklace as a way of buying him off.”

  “But she kept the other pieces? The ring and the earrings?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “It’s just one of the places his story seems wobbly. Seems to me it’s more likely he took the necklace off her after he killed her, but it might be true. We can place him in her motel room; his fingerprints are a match.”

  Something about that theory bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Okay, but whoever killed Channelle hit her with a car. Does Foster have a car?”

  “We’re working on that.” More dryly, she added, “If you happen to spot a white sedan with some fresh scuffs, I’d be interested to hear about it.”

  “The car was white?”

  Realization of her mistake tightened her mouth. “Don’t even think about it, Dash. You’re going straight home. Among other reasons, because I don’t need one of my deputies angry that I sent his boyfriend out to chase down leads.”

  “Bobby—”

  The sheriff held up one finger. “Straight. Home. Do you hear me?”

  I nodded.

  Bobby drove me home; I told him he didn’t have to, but he did anyway. He got me settled in the billiard room with coffee and a slice of Indira’s red velvet cake (in the spirit of the season, she’d made it look extra bloody, and we were legally obligated to call it dead velvet cake). He put a blanket over my lap. He fussed with Netflix, trying to find something he thought I’d like, until he finally settled on Real Rob.

  “I can call in,” he said.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He crouched, brushed my hair back, and twitched my glasses into place. “You’re not fine. Nobody would be fine after that.”

  “I know. But I’m fine, you know? I mean, I don’t need you to stay. I’ll be all right.”

  Unhappiness drew at the corners of his eyes.

  “Go,” I said with a tiny laugh. “I’ll call you if I need anything.”

  “Do you mind if I take the Pilot? Otherwise I have to wait for Tripple to pick me up.”

  “It’s your car, Bobby. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  He studied me.

  “And Real Rob?” I said. “Some weird show about Rob Schneider’s life? That’s the kind of TV you think I want to watch?”

  “You like reality TV.”

  “I like bad reality TV. And there’s bad reality TV and bad reality TV.”

  “You watched four hours of Ultimate Beastmaster yesterday. You told me it was, quote, ‘Ninja Warrior meets Sylvester Stallone’s abominable brainchild.’”

  “Bobby, that’s a competition. It’s—it’s a demonstration of ability. There are feats of strength.”

  “And there’s that guy whose shorts always slip and you can see his Hollister underwear.”

  Ladies and gentlemen: I gasped.

  “Okay,” Bobby said, “I’m going to work now.”

  “That is—I can’t—how dare you?”

  “Feel free to change it to Ultimate Beastmaster after I leave.”

  And he left before I could offer my stinging rebuttal (that I was still working on).

  Also, for the record, I did not change it to Ultimate Beastmaster after he left.

  (And in my defense, the guy with the Hollister underwear was swinging on a rope, for frick’s sake. I’m not made of stone.)

  I tried to get into Real Rob. I really did. I ate cake. I drank coffee. I did my best to slip into the semi-hypnotized, dissociated state that junk TV usually induces. (It’s the cure for what ails ya.)

  But I couldn’t. In part, because my brain kept looping back to September in that tiny camper, and the smell of vomit, and how pale she’d been. How hard she’d been trying to reach Foster. The same woman who hadn’t gone to the sheriff’s station when Keme, her own son, had been arrested because she’d been afraid it would look bad.

  And in part because something was still nagging at me about Foster. I knew he was a bad guy. I knew he used women. I even believed, after seeing him with September, that he wasn’t above hurting a woman. But that he’d killed JT, and then Channelle, for money?

  I mean, yes. It was possible. It was even believable.

  So why didn’t I believe it?

  Eventually, I gave up on TV and dragged myself into the den. I got myself settled at the computer. I did a quick check of Crime Cats (there was a stunning exposé on this little gray kitten that was “illegally smol,” and let me tell you: it was Pulitzer-worthy stuff), and then, somehow, it was forty-five minutes later, and I told myself I had to write.

  The only problem was that I didn’t know what.

  I had my plot. Ish. Will Gower was looking for his—well, whatever it was. And he was going to find it. Or not. And something bad was going to happen. Or something good. I basically had it locked down. I was definitely thinking Vancouver. Unless I was missing a real opportunity with Portland so close to me.

  The real problem was the relationship side of the story. I knew I wanted something complex, something like Hammett, a tangle of desire and love, selfishness and selflessness. But I didn’t want it to be exactly like Hammett. I guess I could have just gayed up The Maltese Falcon. Brigid could become, um, Bridger (see? this is why they pay me the big bucks). And he could be beautiful and seductive, a master manipulator of men, only to fall in love with Will Gower and then, um, betray him? I guess.

  But as I said, I didn’t want exactly that. What I wanted was that same tangled messiness, but with my own spin on it.

  Twisty—and twisted—relationships were a hallmark of the mystery genre. The Golden Age mysteries, for all their supposedly stout, staid reserve, were actually full of them. Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles was a good example. (Spoilers incoming.) The murder victim, Emily Inglethorp, is married to a much younger man, who appears to be a gold digger. (Apparently, a gold digger used to be called a fortune hunter.) She has stepsons from her first marriage who are also hoping to inherit her fortune. And she has a companion (which is apparently what single ladies did back then—good work if you can get it) named Evelyn, who supposedly hates Alfred, and who does her best to convince Poirot and the others that Alfred killed Emily. The supposedly probably gives it away, but it turns out that Evelyn and Alfred are secretly in love, and they conspired together to kill Emily.

  Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca was another good example. (More spoilers!) For a good portion of the book, the protagonist—and the reader—are convinced that Mr. de Winter (the unnamed protagonist’s husband) is still desperately in love with his deceased first wife, Rebecca. It turns out, though, that he hated Rebecca. (Frankly, with good cause—she was unfaithful, cruel, and a bit of a psychopath.)

  Noir fiction had its own share of it too. Raymond Chandler’s most intricately plotted book, Farewell, My Lovely, revolves around two obsessive relationships. (Spoilers!!!) The book opens with poor Philip Marlowe getting dragged along as ex-felon Moose Malloy goes on a (literal) rampage looking for the girl he left behind when he went to prison, Velma Valento. Then Marlowe gets involved in a separate, and seemingly unrelated, case involving the beautiful (and promiscuous) Mrs. Grayle, who is being blackmailed. (Also, she’s a blonde, which is a thing for Chandler.) It turns out—big surprise—that Mrs. Grayle is Velma Valento. She’s also unfaithful, treacherous, and a bit of a psychopath herself.

  Boiled down like that, all the plots seem superficial and obvious and lackluster. But that’s not doing them justice. When you read them, when you were living out the story word by word along with the protagonist, they were engrossing, almost claustrophobically enveloping, placing you in the center of the web of lies and half-truths that the protagonists were struggling to unravel. More than anything, when you read them, you felt the power of those messy emotions: people who loved and hated deeply, passionately, secretly, in ways that weren’t neat and nice and proper. Maybe that, more than anything, was at the heart of crime fiction: the belief that the human heart was wild, untamable, always burning. That love, as the ancients thought of it, was a disease.

  What I really liked about these stories though? In all of them, a character you thought was good (or the victim)—Brigid, Emily, Rebecca, even Mrs. Grayle—turned out to be much more complicated. And their relationships, with each other and with the protagonist, were never what they seemed.

  So, I knew what I wanted. I just didn’t know how to do it.

  My mouse was sneaking down to open up Crime Cats again when the front door opened.

  “Oh, thank God,” I muttered.

  Footsteps raced toward the den, and Millie appeared in the doorway. Her usual manic, caffeinated energy seemed to have been compounded—in the sense that she also looked like she’d been struck by lightning. Her hair stood up in clumps. Her eyes had a shellshocked look to them. She was wearing a Hastings Rock sweatshirt, pumpkin-print pajama pants, and two—TWO—mismatched slippers that were meant to look like witches.

  “Millie, I’m in the middle of writing—” I said (mostly for form’s sake).

  “You have to stop him!” Her voice trembled, and she waved a piece of paper at me. “Dash, you have to STOP HIM!”

  “Stop who?” Setting the laptop aside, I started to get up, an idea already forming. “What’s—”

  “KEME IS LEAVING!”

  “What do you mean he’s—”

  She shoved the paper into my hands, turned, and ran toward the back of the house, screaming, “INDIRA!”

  I mean, I know she was upset, but I swear to God: the house shook.

  That only registered at a distance, though, because I was staring at the paper. I recognized Keme’s blunt little pen strokes, the stiff letters that were so angular and linear, with such complete disregard for lower-case letters, that they could have passed for runes. It was one word. And it was GOODBYE.

  “What’s going on?” Indira asked from the doorway. Her eyes were storm-dark, and she was holding Millie in her arms as Millie wept uncontrollably. “I can’t get a word out of her.”

  “Keme,” I said and handed Indira the note.

  She looked at it for longer than it took to read the word. She closed her eyes for several seconds, hugging Millie to her. When she opened her eyes, they glistened. Her voice lacked its usual briskness as she said, “I didn’t think…” But she trailed off and didn’t finish.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Goodbye? What does that mean? He can’t leave, can he? I mean, where would he go?”

  “He can’t go,” Millie said, pushing herself away from Indira and wiping her nose. “He CAN’T!”

  The sound of the front door came again, and Fox appeared in the hallway behind Indira and Millie. “What’s going on? Millie texted me 911—what’s wrong, dear?”

  “It’s Keme,” Millie managed before dissolving into another wail.

  Indira and I filled Fox in as best we could, but there wasn’t much to say, since none of us knew anything.

  “I’ll see if I can find him,” Fox said. “He’s hurting, and he’s not thinking clearly. He needs someone to talk some sense into him.”

  “I tried calling him,” Millie said through her sobs. “He won’t answer. I need to talk to him. I just need to talk to him, and then everything will be okay, but he won’t answer.”

  “Go with Fox,” Indira said to me. “I’ll stay with Millie in case he decides to come here.”

  “Um, why don’t you go with Fox?” I said. “The last couple times I’ve tried to talk to Keme, it hasn’t—well, it hasn’t exactly been a resounding success. I think he needs someone he actually, you know, likes.” I tried to make it sound like a flash of inspiration when I added, “Like you.”

  Indira looked at me.

  Fox arched both eyebrows.

  Millie raised her head and stared.

  “You know what?” I said. “We should call Bobby.”

  I pulled out my phone and placed the call. And then, because they were all still trying to incinerate me with their eyes, I turned my back on them.

  “Are you okay?” Bobby asked. “Hold on; I’ll be right there. I’ve got to tell Tripple I’m leaving.”

  “No, Bobby, I’m fine.” I had to stop, because in that moment I recognized that Keme had never known what it felt like to have someone drop everything before you could even open your mouth. It took me a second before I could say, “It’s Keme.”

  After I’d told Bobby everything we knew—still not much—he said, “That’s so weird. I just got a text from Ziggy.”

  (Listen: you, like me, can probably use your powers of deduction to figure out with a name like that, Ziggy was a surfer friend.)

 

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