Then Bobby slowed and turned down a drive marked PRIVATE. We drove a few hundred yards, following a winding course through the trees, and then we reached an open expanse of short-cropped grass that spread out toward an enormous house.
My first thought was that it was like Hemlock House. Not in style, but in its remote location from the city, and in its dramatically commanding view of the ocean from the sea cliffs. A quick glance in either direction showed me more open ground, which suggested the mayor owned quite a bit of land. Hemlock House was situated on its own good-sized lot (I mean, good Lord, we had a hedge maze), but that was different—mostly because I hadn’tboughtHemlock House. I’d inherited it. Kind of. And I was having trouble right then making sense of how a small-town mayor could afford a place like this.
But the resemblance to Hemlock House ended there. Hemlock House was a beautiful monstrosity (said in the most loving way possible) of a lumber baron’s fever-dream imaginings. It was a Georgian-Victorian behemoth with a million chimneys, a slate roof, and way too many secret passages. The mayor’s house, in contrast, looked like a coastal cottage blown up on steroids—clapboard siding and picture windows and a deck that looked sun-bleached even in the moonlight. It wasn’t a coastal cottage, though. It looked like it slept sixteen instead of six. And—
“Is that a helipad?” I asked.
“She doesn’t have a helicopter,” Bobby said. “The last owner put that in.”
“Uh, not really the point.”
The lights were off inside the mayor’s house, and the windows glittered and looked like ice where they caught the night’s ambient glow. I looked for any sign that someone might still be awake—the flicker of a television, maybe—but I didn’t see anything. No cars sat out front, so if the mayor was here, she’d parked in the garage.
As Bobby rolled to a stop in front of the house, I said, “I’ll be right back.”
His hand—which had oh-so-adorably been resting on my knee—tightened now. “Excuse me?”
“You’re going to wait here. I’m going to go ask the mayor if she’s a thief.”
He didn’t let go of my knee. I wondered if it was freaky that he had such a strong grip. Were there exercises to make your fingers stronger? (Probably. I imagined tiny dumbbells.) Should I, as a writer, who crafted his words with his hands, be doing those exercises? (Also probably, but I definitely would not.)
“How did you decide that?” Bobby asked. It was the same voice he’d used after I’d fallen off the sofa while trying to do a backflip. (We’d put a mattress on the floor, so it was totally safe. Plus, Keme had dared me.)
“Well, you were right. This is asking a lot, and it’s not based on much.”
“I already said I believe you.”
“But you’re in the same position as Salk—if you go up there with me, you’re my, uh, accomplice? And you’d be aiding and abetting a known, um, mayor-slanderer.”
Bobby looked like he was silently counting to ten. Then he reached for his door handle.
“I don’t want you to get fired,” I said.
“I’m not going to get fired. I’m also not letting you do this by yourself.”
“Bobby, nothing is going to—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—happen.”
He must have been counting to ten again. Then he let out a slow breath and said, “Okay. Here we go.”
Which was how we both ended up on the mayor’s doorstep as I knocked. Then we waited. Seconds ticked past. In the deeper shadows of the mayor’s house, the air felt colder, and the wind off the ocean sliced through my hoodie. I shivered. I knocked again.
Nothing.
“She’s probably asleep,” I said through another shiver.
Bobby started unbuttoning his much more sensible jacket.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
He kept unbuttoning it.
“Bobby, really—”
And then, when the wind died, I heard something. Bobby must have heard it too, because his fingers froze on the next button.
