He made a noise that was neither agreement nor disagreement or, really, anything except acknowledgment. And he kept searching.

  I wondered what the policy was on screaming during a B&E. Somehow, though, I managed to keep myself at a strangled whisper: “What is happening?”

  “You’re being a smart aleck,” he said as he opened another drawer, “and I’m driving you crazy.”

  I decided now was a good time to search somewhere else before there was murdering (see above).

  Since Deputy Bobby hadn’t offered to share his disposable gloves (where had he gotten them? and how? and when? and, most importantly, how?), I went to the kitchen first and checked under the sink. I found a few cleaning supplies, but no gloves. I had better luck in the pantry—a brand new box of nitrile gloves. I snapped on a pair and went to work.

  I started in the bedroom. Unlike the rest of the house, this room actually looked lived in: a half-empty (yes, that’s the kind of person I am) glass of water on the nightstand; a jumble of charging cables; a box of tissues that I hoped were for allergies; even a leather tray that held jewelry. It wasn’t anything expensive, and honestly, it all looked like it was from the Trying Too Hard to Look Young school of fashion—leather bracelets, a silver chain, even an honest-to-God puka shell necklace.

  It took me about zero-point-five seconds to find something interesting: on the unmade bed, half-covered by a pillow, was a laptop.

  I picked it up and opened it, expecting a password prompt, but instead, I found myself staring at the computer’s desktop. Maybe it hadn’t shut all the way. Maybe he’d turned off the auto-lock feature. Maybe Gerry had disabled the password in general. Whatever the reason, it felt like a real don’t-look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth situation, and I took the laptop to sit at the kitchen island.

  I started with Gerry’s emails, but there wasn’t anything interesting there—it all appeared to be about work. I paused to examine some of the emails about the Hastings Rock development, but they were all about permits and contractors and designs and plans. If there was something nefarious in there, it was buried deep enough that I didn’t recognize it.

  Since his email had been a dead end, I tried his browser next. The thing about people who don’t bother locking their computers? They also, apparently, don’t bother erasing their search histories. Surprise, surprise, a lot of Gerry’s searches had been about work. It looked like he’d been researching Hastings Rock’s municipal codes—although surely he had someone he paid to do things like that.

  Other items in the search history were clearly more personal—in keeping with the tray of Yes-I-Have-Gray-Chest-Hairs-But-I’m-Still-Cool jewelry. For example, he’d apparently been interested in branching out and trying some new hair dyes. (Perhaps something, this time, that didn’t look like someone might have used it to paint a mule’s tail.) Facial creams. Retinols. Retinoids. Somatotropin (that was a new one for me, and I had to look it up). So many—so, so many—pages about Botox.

  And then, in the midst of the list of Ways to Stay Young, there was a single search for Oregon truancy laws. Below that were two more entries—Oregon statutes on luring a minor and solicitation of a minor.

  I grabbed the laptop and headed to the office.

  Deputy Bobby was still working on the desk, and he glanced up as I stepped inside.

  “So, Gerry liked young guys, right?” I said.

  “You’re not that young.”

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  Deputy Bobby stopped his search. “Uh.”

  “I must have misheard you.”

  “You did. You misheard me. I was saying—”

  “No, just stop before you make it worse.” I showed him the search results. “Look at what he’s been reading about. I mean, I know Jen said he likes young guys, but I didn’t think she meant, you know, this.”

  With a frown, Deputy Bobby shook his head.

  “Does this change things?” I asked. “Do we need to try to figure out who he’s been seeing? Maybe this is revenge.”

  “Maybe,” Deputy Bobby said. He left the desk and started removing photos from the wall, checking behind them before he replaced them again. With his back to me, he said, “You know Damian has an arrest record.”

  “What?”

  “Damian.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “For what? Did he go to jail?”

  “His record doesn’t show a conviction.”

  “So, you think he did this?” I did remember—vaguely, because at the time, my focus had been elsewhere—catching a glimpse of Damian’s face when Gerry had been trying to grope me. Angry; in fact, he looked like he’d been furious.

  Before I could share that memory, though, Deputy Bobby said, “No. I just thought you should know.”

  I opened my mouth to ask why he thought I needed to know that, at some point in his life, Damian had been arrested. And then it landed.

  “Are you trying to tell me to stay away from him?”

  I meant for it to sound light, joking. It didn’t.

  Deputy Bobby’s shoulders tightened as he moved to the next photo.

  “How did you even find that out?” I asked. My tone was still off, but I couldn’t seem to get it back on track. “You’re on leave.”

  “I just thought—”

  “How?”

  His hands fell to his sides. He stood very still. “Salk.”

  “You talked to another deputy about my—my romantic life?” I tried to stop there, but more words burst out of me. “I didn’t even go out with him. He flirted with me. He seems sweet.”

  “Yeah, he seems sweet, and he’s got an arrest record. That’s important information, considering—”

  He stopped himself, but not fast enough.

  “Considering what?” I asked.

  “Considering—”

  I cut him off. “Considering I have terrible judgment when it comes to men? Considering I’m a complete idiot about relationships? Considering I don’t know how to take care of myself?”

  “I just want you to be safe.” He still wasn’t looking at me. I wanted to see his face; his voice sounded like someone trying desperately to stay calm. “And I was only checking—I didn’t say any of those things.”

  “But you thought them, didn’t you? I don’t need you to be my chaperone, Bobby. Or my big brother. Or whatever you think this is.”

  “I think I’m your friend.”

  “Yeah, you’re my friend, but God, Bobby, that is so invasive. How do you not see that?”

  Whatever control he’d had must have slipped; the raw edge of his anger surfaced the way it had in the lifeguard tower. He moved to the next photo, his movements jerky and uncoordinated as he reached to take it down. “It was for sexual assault.” He yanked the photo from the wall. “In case it matters.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but then I saw what had been hidden behind the photo: a wall safe.

  Deputy Bobby stared at it too. Then, slowly, he set down the photo. He inspected the lock and said, “It takes a key, not a combination.”

  I wanted to—well, to my surprise, I wanted to fight some more. But somehow, I managed to make my voice sound semi-sane as I said, “Maybe it’s on Gerry’s keyring. The sheriff could get it from the medical examiner, I guess, but first we’d have to convince her that, you know, Gerry was murdered.”

  Deputy Bobby nodded. He still hadn’t looked at me.

  “We could try to pick it,” I said. “Do some research on this model and see if it’s pickable, anyway. Or drill it out—I bet we could rent whatever we need. Heck, we could probably cut the door off with a torch.”

  After another moment of studying the safe door, Deputy Bobby moved over to the desk. He opened the central drawer and drew out a handful of loose keys. The first one he tried opened the safe, of course.

  I couldn’t help it: I said, “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Deputy Bobby glanced at me, and there was something so…hurt in his face that I had a hard time recapturing my anger.

  I dredged up a small smile. “It was bad enough with the bird.”

  After a moment, Deputy Bobby smiled back. A tiny one. Microscopic, even. Maybe not even a smile, not really, but—but a question that was like a smile. My smile got a little bigger in answer, and his shoulders relaxed. And then he had to be perfectly, quintessentially Deputy Bobby, and he shrugged.

  Even though that moment seemed to have defused the tension between us, neither of us spoke as Deputy Bobby withdrew a stack of files from the safe. He set them on the desk where we could both see them, and then we began to examine each one. Most of the documents were financial papers—things that you’d expect to find. Gerry’s will (I took pictures of that), brokerage reports, account statements, even a few deeds.

  Near the bottom of the stack, though, were folders. Lots of folders. And on each folder, there was a name. I took photos of everything, as quickly as I could,

  Then I stopped. Because the name on the next folder was mine.

  “Dash—” Deputy Bobby tried.

  I flipped open the folder. Inside were photos. Photos of Hemlock House. Photos of me—taken through the open windows, when I’d been inside Hemlock House, unaware that anyone might be photographing me. Photos of Keme, too. Keme, with his long dark hair tucked behind his ears, in nothing but swim trunks. Keme and I on the sofa, sitting close together because we were playing Xbox. Keme and I—for a moment, I didn’t understand the photo. We were on the floor, tangled together. My arms were wrapped around Keme’s bare back.

  I took several deep breaths. They didn’t help.

  Deputy Bobby was still looking at the photos.

  “We went swimming,” I said. “And then we came back and played video games. And I beat him, and he tackled me—it was silly.” I thought back to those search results on Gerry’s computer: truancy, luring a minor, solicitation of a minor. And then these photos of me and Keme, making it look like—I had to put my hand on the desk because I felt like I was starting to tip over. Somehow I managed to say, “We were wrestling.”

  Deputy Bobby threw me a quick look, and he must have known the right thing to say because he said, “I know, Dash. I know. It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t okay. Gerry—or someone Gerry had hired—had taken those pictures. Gerry had kept those pictures. Gerry had—

  “Shoot,” Deputy Bobby said. (But the four-letter version.)

  The tension in his voice broke through the cloud of my thoughts, and I followed his gaze. On the sleepy street that never had any traffic, a sheriff’s office cruiser had just pulled up in front of the house.

  “Come on,” Deputy Bobby said.

  I grabbed my folder.

  “Dash—”

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  Frustration twisted Deputy Bobby’s features, but he nodded and took me by the arm. I wanted to tell him I didn’t need it, but the truth was, it was nice; my whole body felt strangely bloodless, and I had the impression that if Deputy Bobby let go of me, I’d just puddle to the floor.

  He hustled me down the length of the house. As we cut through the kitchen toward the back door, a heavy knock came from the front of the house. Deputy Bobby said a few choice words under his breath, but he didn’t slow down. He threw the deadbolt back, opened the door, and shoved me ahead of him out onto the deck. The day still had that perilous half-light, and the hedges, the dune grass, even the ocean all looked cast in lead. The smell of salt water and the stiff breeze helped, though; my head cleared a little, and I felt like I was waking up.

  Deputy Bobby was stripping off his disposable gloves. He shoved them into my front pocket, turned me by the shoulders, and said, “Down to the beach, then run. There are stairs that lead back up to the street by the Jeep. Get out of here and go home.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  He shoved me, and I either had to stumble into a jog or fall flat on my face. I stopped at the steep flight of stairs that led down to the beach, and Deputy Bobby made a furious gesture. I managed a few of the steps and looked back again. Deputy Bobby was facing the house now, hands out and open at his sides, in a voice meant to carry, he called, “I’m back here. It’s just me.”

  That galvanized me into movement, and I ran.

  Chapter 7

  I wasn’t really sure how I made it home. It must have been a fugue state; I remembered bits and pieces of my flight down the stairs—missing steps, catching myself on an old iron rail pitted with rust—and then struggling up the beach, the sand sucking at my steps. I had a vague impression of reaching the Jeep. Of that sense of enervation—as though something vital had been drained out of me, and what had been left behind was marshmallow fluff. And after that, nothing—a big blank until I found myself in the relative darkness of the coach house, still clutching that stupid folder, my face puffy and hot as I listened to the sound of my shallow, rapid breaths in the stillness.

  I dragged myself in through the back door. The servants’ dining room was warm, and it smelled like freshly baked bread and hot oil and onions that had been cooked just right. I made it to the table, dropped into a seat, and couldn’t go any farther.

  The sound of my arrival must have been loud enough to reach the kitchen because a moment later, Indira emerged. She was dressed in a wine-colored blouse and patterned trousers, and she looked a hundred percent put together the way she always did, and her witch-white streak of hair stood out like a blaze. Emotions flitted across her face in succession before, in a surprisingly controlled voice, she asked, “Are you all right? What happened?”

  I told her.

  Indira was silent as she stared at the photos. Then she closed the folder and looked into the middle distance, her expression blank—and terrible in its blankness.

  “We went swimming—” I began.

  “I know.” She pushed the folder toward me. “I thought this might happen.”

  “You thought this might happen?”

  Something in my voice must have roused her because she lifted her eyes to focus on me again. “Not with you, Dash. That’s not what I meant. I thought this might happen—to me, actually. Something like this. I’m old enough to know that people are eager to believe the worst. When Keme started spending more time here, I knew it could be a problem. It was a problem, in fact. Vivienne didn’t want him around. But then Vivienne left, and you and Keme got along so well—”

  I snorted.

  A smile lit up Indira’s face, and she continued, “And I hoped—well, I didn’t even hope. I let myself stop thinking about it.”

  Now that she reminded me, I remembered how, when I had first come to Hemlock House, she’d been quick to explain the situation with Keme. Because, just like she’d said, I’d been quick to assume the worst.

  “I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I’m happy he’s dead. Blackmail is an ugly, sordid thing.” She hesitated. “Had he contacted you? Did you know what he wanted?”

  “That’s the weird thing. He did talk to me about buying Hemlock House, but it’s not like—I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like he made a serious offer and I rejected it outright.”

  Indira made a small sound of acknowledgement. “But he might have been laying the groundwork for it. And if his plan was to force you to sell, probably at significantly less than what the property is worth, then it seems likely he’s done this before. You said there were other files.”

  “I know. I guess that’s the next step.” I frowned, trying to wrap my head around the investigation. “If this were a mystery novel, you know what would happen? It would all have to do with Halloween. Or it would look like it all had to do with Halloween. Like, the wrong person would be killed because they were wearing a costume. Or the killer would switch costumes. Or they’d dress the body up in a costume like Weekend at Bernie’s. But it’s not any of those things. We know who was at that party. And we know plenty of them didn’t like him.”

  “They disliked him enough to kill him?” Indira asked.

  “It’s hard to say. Maybe. Jen, the woman who runs the surf camp, argued with him about his plans for the camp, and she was seriously angry. You saw Nate Hampton attack him at the beach, and he was skulking around the party.” The image of Damian’s face floated into view. Reluctantly, I added, “There was a guy there, one of the surfers. I caught a glimpse of him when he was looking at Gerry, and he was definitely feeling…ragey. And those are just the ones I know. There are probably more—I mean, he didn’t seem like a lovable guy.”

  “Clearly.”

  “The problem, though, is that the only thing we have is motive. That’s the only way to approach this. Opportunity is out—we already know these people were at the party, and in the chaos after the fight, anybody could have snuck off and followed Gerry. And in terms of means—well, it doesn’t take anything special to shove somebody off a cliff.”

  “Which leaves the blackmail,” Indira said in a thoughtful voice.

  “Until we get something more solid. What I’d really like is a connection—something that puts someone out on that cliff with Gerry. Since I don’t think we’re going to get that, I’d settle for a lie. A nice, big whopper that tells me someone has something to hide.” I scratched one eyebrow. “This would be a pain in the patoot to write, you know. Unless you conveniently dropped some evidence later in the book, you’d basically have to engineer a confession.”

  Indira nodded, but that thoughtful look hadn’t left her face. In that same thoughtful voice, she asked, “Dash, are you sure it’ll be all right? With you and Keme, I mean.”

  I nodded. “Since Gerry’s dead, I don’t think we have much to worry about. It still—well, it freaked me out, I guess. That’s every gay guy’s nightmare.” I tried to inject some good humor into my voice as I added, “The truancy, on the other hand, is definitely a problem. Keme’s not going to graduate if he keeps this up.”

  Some of the strain in her face eased. “You try talking to him about it. I say one word, and he bites my head off. He disappeared for two days last time, and it’s getting too cold for him to be sleeping in the timber yard.”