Pat. Pat. Pat.

  Gently, Sergey said, “You no idiot. You number one boy.”

  “No. I’m not number one boy. I’m number one dummy.”

  “No,” Sergey corrected—a little forcefully. So forcefully, in fact, that if there had been less head patting, I might have thought we were getting into an argument. “You no dummy. You bear.”

  I wiped my eyes and tried to get a fix on him. “Uh, not really. I mean, I’m not very hairy. Or big. Or snuggly. I’m not really into the whole tribe thing, but I guess if I had to pick, I’d be more of a—”

  “No,” Sergey said. “Some men like cock.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, you could have heard a pin drop. (Okay, not really, on account of the trucks and generators and seagulls.)

  “What is happening with everyone’s language?” I asked. “First Fox, now you. And yes, I mean, some men prefer, um, dudes, and other men prefer, uh, dudettes.” Great. Now I was living inside a movie from the 1990s. (Why couldn’t I think of one movie from the ’90s off the top of my head? Point Break! But I wasn’t sure they said dudettes in Point Break—)

  I couldn’t finish that line of thought because LaLeesha stepped out of the truck at that moment. LaLeesha is about half a foot taller than me, has the best skin I’ve ever seen, and spends a lot of time and money on her braids. She’s a certified taco genius, and at that moment, she looked like a goddess descending to earth with a compostable takeout container in her hands. Inside the takeout container were three tacos. I swear I heard angels singing hallelujah.

  “He means a rooster,” explained LaLeesha. As she handed me the tacos, she continued, “And he’s talking about traits. Some people are like roosters.”

  Sergey nodded as though this had all been rather obvious. “Some men like cock.”

  I still feel like I wasn’t crazy for jumping to conclusions.

  “You no like cock,” Sergey told me.

  LaLeesha’s mouth twitched, and I sent her a dark look—which was, admittedly difficult when I was sinking my teeth into—

  “Oh my God,” I moaned around the taco. “Is that pineapple-mango al pastor?”

  “You bear,” Sergey told me. And he put his hand over my heart. (Which did kind of get in the way of my taco-eating.) “You heart of bear.”

  I paused mid-taco—mostly for air, but also to politely say, “Thank you, but I don’t feel like I—”

  “And you brain of mouse.”

  “Uh, because mice are resilient, I hope—”

  LaLeesha didn’t even try not to laugh.

  Sergey was nodding, but it didn’t seem to be about my rather optimistic interpretation. It seemed, instead, to be about something that had occurred to him. He was sitting back on his heels, considering me with a new look in his eyes. “And you body of hedgehog.”

  “Okay, but—seriously, Sergey? Body of hedgehog? What about body of, I don’t know, deer? Deer are graceful. Or even, um, body of fox, I guess.” Now I was getting into it. “Or body of meerkat!”

  “Body of hedgehog,” Sergey said, mostly as though in confirmation to himself.

  “I liked heart of bear better.”

  “You heart of bear.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “You heart of bear.”

  There it was again—that tone like I’d better get on board, or things were going to get ugly.

  “I guess I’m heart of bear.”

  He said more forcefully, “You heart of bear.”

  “I’m heart of bear.”

  More loudly again, “You heart of bear.”

  “I’m heart of bear!” I shouted (but not until I’d started in on the second taco, which—wait for it—was deep-fried Baja fish).

  “Yes. And you number one boy.”

  “I am number one boy!”

  (Number one at eating tacos, anyway.)

  Sergey nodded. He patted my head again. And then he reached behind his back and pulled out an enormous knife and said, “Now, you tell Sergey: who do this?”

  “Okay,” LaLeesha said, “are we done here? Because I need my cook to stay out of prison.”

  “Uh, yeah. Thank you, Sergey. That was—you didn’t have to do that.”

  He nodded, murmured, “Number one boy,” apparently in approval, and let LaLeesha lead him back into the truck.

  I sat on the parking stop and finished my tacos. (The third one was street corn chicken, which was incredible.) I felt…better. I mean, it was hard not to take the body of hedgehog thing personally, but I was going to assume it had been meant in the same spirit as the rest of Sergey’s comments. Like, maybe I was good at protecting myself? (Hold your laughter, please.) Plus it was hard not to have your spirits lifted after having people take care of you—the yelling call-and-response thing had been weirdly rousing, and the tacos hadn’t hurt either. I didn’t let myself think about Bobby and Kiefer. I just sat there, enjoying the warmth of the sun, the sounds of the waves and happy voices, and this private haven that gave me a few minutes of peace away from all the peopling.

  Two Girls and a Scoop (hands down, the best ice cream truck in Hastings Rock) was starting to call my name when my phone vibrated. Which, I guess, was someone literally calling me.

  I didn’t recognize the number, but I thought I had an idea this time what to expect.

  “This call is originating at the Oregon State Penitentiary from,” said a prerecorded voice. And then Vivienne said her name.

  I accepted the call and said hello.

  “I’d like an update,” Vivienne said. “How is the investigation progressing?”

  “Not well.”

  Her silence only lasted a beat. “What does that mean?”

  “It means—” I stood and started down the boardwalk, moving away from the crowds and the rumbling generators. “—it’s hard to conduct an effective investigation when the client lies to me.”

  “What in the world are you talking about? When did I lie to you?”

  “Withholding information, Vivienne. That’s lying by omission.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “No, you explain yourself. I’ve spent the last few days trying to put together a story that’s thirty years old, Vivienne, and being uncomfortably aware that everyone in your family seems to have a reason to lie to me. You didn’t bother telling me that your ex-husband is still very much a part of the family. You didn’t bother mentioning your little group of friends. You didn’t tell me your ex had married Richard’s widow, or that Jane was having an affair, or that nobody can account for Candy’s whereabouts that night. You didn’t tell me that someone would try to kill me, and let me tell you, I’m sick and tired—”

  “What do you mean, someone tried to kill you? What happened?”

  “Someone ran me off the road and then tried to finish the job with a gun.”

  “Are you all right?”

  I ignored the question. “So, why don’t we try this again: is there anything you want to tell me about Richard’s disappearance? Anything you think I should know?”

  The quality of the call wasn’t great; in the background, the connection crackled, and static flared.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

  “I don’t know, Vivienne.” I glanced around, cupped my hand around the phone, and whispered furiously, “How about, ‘Yes, Jane was cheating on Richard, and it was with me.’”

  Nothing. Into the silence of our conversation came the sounds of a city still busily alive: a family emerged from a shop down the street, the little girl talking excitedly about the kite she’d just gotten; Cyd Wofford zipped by on his bike and rang the bell in greeting; Althea Wilson roared around the corner in a boat of a Cadillac and nearly took out a newspaper box. (They were part of the tourist schtick, not real newspapers, although it was fun to see what Jemitha Green came up with every week.)

  And then Vivienne made a faint sound.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Is it true?”

  “All this time,” she said, “someone knew.” She gave a strange laugh. “Who?”

  “So, it is true.”

  Her voice gained strength. “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t think that was important?”

  “No, Dashiell—Dash. No, I didn’t. Because it wasn’t important. Jane wouldn’t have killed Richard. She loved Richard.”

  “But she was sleeping with you.”

  “Yes.”

  But she didn’t say anything else.

  “Do you know what I should have asked you when you got me started on this idiotic search?” I said.

  “Where was I the night Richard died?”

  “That’s right. What’s your alibi, Vivienne? Because I’ve got to admit, Candy doesn’t make a particularly compelling case—the nonsense about the money, about you leaving for Portland, your arguments with Richard. But when she told me about you and Jane, well, things started to take on a different light.”

  “I never would have hurt my brother.”

  “Everyone keeps telling me how much they loved Richard. Jane loved him, but she was sleeping with you. You loved him, but you were sleeping with his wife. Neil was his best friend, but now Neil’s wearing Richard’s jewelry and living in Richard’s house and has basically taken over Richard’s life. Hell, everyone tells me Neil is the son Arlen never had. Even Candy claims she loved Richard, but then it turns out she thinks he ruined her life. So, the problem, Vivienne, is that I’m not sure anyone loved Richard. He sounded like an unhappy, troubled man, who in the last year of his life was causing a lot of problems for the people around him. It’s easy to talk about how much you love someone when he hasn’t been around for the last thirty years to make your life more difficult.”

  I waited for the reaction—the denial, the insistence, maybe even the shouting. Instead, I thought I heard Vivienne swallow, and then she asked, “He’s wearing Richard’s jewelry?”

  The question caught me off guard. “A bracelet,” I said. “I saw it in the photo you sent me. Neil was wearing it the other day.”

  “I see.” But her voice sounded numb.

  I found myself suddenly adrift in the conversation—without the friction of her resistance to give it direction. After another silent moment, I tried to soften my voice. “Vivienne, I understand that you grew up in a different time. I know things weren’t the same. But the world is different now, and whatever happened between you and Jane, it was a long time ago. You trusted me to try to find whoever killed your brother. For heaven’s sake, I’m gay. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

  “You’re right.” She cleared her throat, and a trace of her usual briskness came back into the words—but it was still only a pale imitation. “You’re right, Dash. I should have told you. I apologize. I think—I think I’ve wasted your time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I understand that you aren’t willing to take their claims at face value,” she said. “I understand that it’s your role to be suspicious. But I promise you, neither Neil nor Jane killed Richard. Certainly not so that, years later, they could get married, and Neil could, as you put it, take over Richard’s life. That’s simply not what happened.”

  “With all due respect, Vivienne, I don’t think there’s any way you can know that.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Well.” And then she cleared her throat again. “I apologize again for not revealing the full extent of my relationship with Jane.”

  The pain in her voice, more than anything else, gave me pause. And there was something else too, a note I’d heard before, like she wasn’t ready to stop talking.

  So, I asked, “What happened?”

  It was a broad question, and I meant—well, I wasn’t sure exactly what I meant. Why did you both decide to marry men? Why did you have an affair? Why did it end?

  Maybe Vivienne heard all of them. Maybe, after all those years of hiding, she simply wanted to talk.

  “It was a different time,” she said, and that familiar matter-of-factness I knew from watching her on television was blended now with something more human. “We knew about homosexuals, but not in any personal way. On top of that, there was far less discussion, shall we say, about how women were supposed to feel in a relationship. I loved Neil. And Jane loved Richard. They were both smart, athletic, handsome, and charming. It all seemed straightforward—we’d get married, Neil and Richard would get jobs, and we’d go on living the way we had been, as best friends.”

  I didn’t say anything. The distant voices from the sandcastle competition competed with the crash of the surf.

  “And then I actually did marry Neil, and…well, not to put too fine a point on it, but we discovered there was a long distance between a polite kiss on my father’s porch and, well, the act itself. Neil did his best, of course, but I knew from that first night it wasn’t going to work. We waited a respectable time, or what felt like a respectable time—we were children, so any time at all seemed like an eternity—and we divorced. My mother and father were furious, of course.” She stopped. “Have you met my father?”

  “In passing. Would it surprise you that he didn’t want to talk?”

  “Not particularly.” Her hesitation suggested a silent struggle, and then she asked, “How is he?”

  I thought about that. “Ornery. He threatened me with a shotgun the first time he saw me.”

  A bright, almost childlike laugh burst out of Vivienne. “That sounds like my father.”

  “Candy says Neil is more his son than Richard.”

  “By now, I imagine that’s true. He took to Neil from the first time they met; Neil came over to study, and my father recognized him from the basketball team. They were a match made in heaven.”

  “Why was your father’s relationship with Richard so strained?”

  She laughed again, but it was colder this time. “No, Dash, I’m sorry. My father didn’t kill my brother.”

  “Everyone talks about how charming Richard was. Why didn’t it work on your father?”

  “I suppose precisely because he was our father; parents tend to know us in a way no one else does. Richard and my father…they were like oil and water. Once Richard became a teenager, they couldn’t agree on anything. I’m sure you know how it is. Part of that was simply the son asserting himself, trying to establish his own identity. Rebellion against the authority figure of the father and all that. But part of it was personality; at some point, I believe, Richard decided to push back, and once Richard decided something, there was no changing his mind.” Something about that tugged at the back of my mind—something about Richard, how he’d been fighting with everyone before he disappeared. But before I could try to follow up on the question, Vivienne continued, “Of course, it didn’t help that our mother loved Richard so much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Richard was the favorite. He could do no wrong. I’m barely a year younger, but you’d think I’d come from another family. Everything was Richard. It drove my father crazy, especially once he and Richard started fighting.” Vivienne stopped, and then she broke her own silence unexpectedly. “The only time she ever fought with Richard was when he married Jane. I honestly thought my mother would rather kill him herself than see him in the hands of another woman. She never liked Jane; she thought Jane was putting on airs, which, if you know Jane, is the last thing Jane would do. It only got worse after the wedding. When Richard…went missing, my mother was already sick. She stopped speaking to Jane the moment she heard Richard had disappeared, and she never spoke to her again.”

  There was so much to follow up on, and I scrambled to pick the best question. “I heard Jane got cold feet before the wedding.”

  Vivienne measured breaths came across the call. “And you want to know if we were already involved.”

  “I don’t know what I want to know. I’m just trying to understand. If she and Richard were already fighting, or if he did something—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She inhaled sharply, as though trying to rein in her temper. “No, Dash. Nothing happened. And no, we hadn’t begun our…our affair, which simply sounds too tawdry. It began later. Neil and I were already divorced. One night, Jane came over. She was upset. Neil and Richard had been fighting.” I could hear her struggling to master herself, trying to summon up that Matron of Murder matter-of-factness, but her voice quavered. “Had been brawling like teenagers, as a matter of fact. By that point, Richard was fighting with everyone, but it was most upsetting when it was with Neil, of course. She didn’t want to go home. And I didn’t want her to go home.” For a moment, it was like Vivienne didn’t remember she was speaking to me. “She had rain in her hair, and she smelled like camellias.”

  In the silence that came after, the sound of her painful, dry swallow came clearly across the phone’s tiny speaker.

  “Did Richard know?” I asked.

  Waves slapped the sand. The afternoon sun laid a golden filigree over the surface of the water.

  “Of course,” she finally said.

  Neither of us said anything for a while.

  Something must have roused Vivienne, because she said in a poor attempt at briskness, “My time is up. I believe I’ve changed my mind. I no longer require your services, and I expect you to end your investigation immediately.”

  “What? Vivienne, they’re going to hang this murder on you. Candy’s story isn’t all that great, but there’s no alternative. Actually, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. When I asked her where she was that night, she lost her mind—”

  “As I said, I no longer require your services.” Vivienne continued in a gentler tone. “But since you are so hungry for alibis, allow me to put your mind at rest. I was with Candy the night my brother disappeared. She’d gotten herself into trouble. There was a man—”

  “Zane Potthof?”

  For a moment, Vivienne’s surprise was audible in her pause. “Well done, Dash. Yes. Candy was infatuated with him. He was, among other things, a wastrel, a gambler, and a batterer of women. Richard had run him off once, to Candy’s dismay. Father hated him—I mean, my God, can you imagine?” Her voice turned mocking. “Arlen Lundgren, exalted leader of the Fraternal Order of the Sons of Sweden, Astoria Chapter, and his daughter is hooking up, I believe you’d say, with a man who was arrested the month before for public indecency. Candy went looking for Zane after Richard scared him away, of course; she’s always been unhappy, and she’s always been convinced that a man will solve her problems. She also, inconveniently, has terrible taste in men and doesn’t have the common sense God gave a pair of shoes. I remember after the divorce watching her prance around Neil; I could have told her that wasn’t going to work. Anyway, she’d gone after Zane, and he’d decided to soothe his wounded pride by taking his anger out on her, rather than facing Richard again. She called me from a pool hall across the state line, and I spent the night with her at a hospital. I had to go get her because if I didn’t, Father would have tracked her down and killed her himself.”