“What? Why?”
All I got in answer was a patented Bobby Mai shrug.
“Well, I’ll see if I can pin her down. If Keme was at that party, maybe I can figure out where he went next. Put together a timeline, you know? All we have to do is establish an alibi for JT’s time of death.”
“And you might suggest that next time, Millie not lie to the sheriff. That kind of thing only makes this worse for Keme.”
I sat up straight. “Oh, I had a brain, um, flash.”
Bobby did not look suitably impressed.
“What if we framed Louis for JT’s murder? Hear me out! That’s two birds with one stone. We get rid of Louis, and we save Keme.”
Bobby considered me for a long time. Then he said, “I know you’re joking, but just in case: absolutely not.”
“He called me Dan! And he said Fox’s ‘costume’ looked nice! And he said mysteries are likedessert, and that’s an insult to mystery novels and to dessert.”
Leaning in, Bobby kissed me and said, “Please be safe.”
“He’s aphilosophymajor.”
Bobby didn’t look back, but he gave me a little wave over his shoulder as he headed into the sheriff’s station.
I waited until he was inside, and then I gave him an extra minute, just to be safe. I wanted to make sure Bobby didn’t come back to ask a follow-up question, or tell me he’d changed his mind and was on board with my plan to frame Louis, or kiss me again. (I definitely wouldn’t have minded the last one.)
I had to wait. Because Bobby would have known, as soon as I turned the Pilot out of the lot, that I wasn’t going to Millie’s. I turned the other way and drove toward the Bay Bridge Suites.
Chapter 8
On my drive across town, I called Lyda Hayashi, defense attorney extraordinaire. Lyda worked out of Portland (believe it or not, Hastings Rock didn’t have an established criminal defense lawyer, which seemed like a real missed opportunity). She’d helped me and Hugo when we’d been suspects in murder investigations, and when I explained the situation with Keme, she agreed to see what she could do. I asked if there was a punch card or a loyalty rewards system. (Buy two murders, get one free. Actually, it would be ‘Buy two murder defenses’—you get the point.) She laughed, and somehow, when she disconnected, the sound wasveryexpensive.
Then I turned my mind to the task ahead of me. What I’d told Bobby was true—I needed to talk to Millie. I wanted to know why she’d tried to give Keme such an easily disproven alibi. And I wanted to know what Millie could tell me without Louis around, which I was starting to suspect would be more difficult than I’d realized. The idea of establishing a timeline for JT’s murder was a good one, and I needed to do that too.
But every murder investigation is ultimately about the nexus of people surrounding the victim. And there was one person who should have automatically been at the top of the suspect list: JT’s wife, Channelle. In the first place, because the spouse was always the most likely suspect. And in the second, because Channelle and JT had argued the same night JT was killed. They had a history of domestic disputes, as a matter of fact. And if JT really had been killed in anger—if someone had grabbed something in the garage and hit him with it, as the sheriff had suggested—then the pieces fit. It wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened:Channelle had gone back to the house that night, and they’d resumed their argument. Things had gotten out of hand, and boom—no more JT.
It was certainly more convincing than the theory that an eighteen-year-old boy, who was kind of my brother and kind of my foster son and kind of my seventh-grade bully, had murdered JT for no apparent reason. And even though I knew that any modern law enforcement officer would say that evidence and opportunity were the deciding factors, I still believed motive was important. Call me old-fashioned.
By the time I got to the Bay Bridge Suites, night had settled fully over Hastings Rock. The motel was a two-story cinder-block building in a courtyard design. It was painted a creamy white, and light splashed against the walls from decorative floods. Cute little ’50s-ish wall sconces with ribbed-glass jar shades provided additional touches of light. Along the exterior corridors, the doors alternated in pops of red and blue. The sign was red too, the fat, mid-century letters pushing back the dark with their neon glow. It looked like it could have been in a Hopper painting, albeit one with a splash of Andy Warhol. There was even a pool, and if this had been a noir movie, it would have been a great place to find a body floating in it. Instead, a stocky little black duck was squawking in outrage at an abandoned pool noodle.
I parked across the street in front of a darkened real estate office, and I sat and watched. A light was on in the motel’s office, and more lights shone in the curtained windows of the rooms, but my overall impression was that this was a sleepy space. We were past the peak of tourist season, and although the town still had a fair number of visitors through October and into November, it was obvious that the Bay Bridge Suites had rooms to spare. The first and most important question was: which one was Channelle’s? If this were a mystery novel—and if I were WillGower—I’d have been able to determine where she was staying through a combination of common sense and reasoning. For example, Will Gower might realize that with the motel mostly empty, Channelle would likely be staying where it was easy for the staff to clean her room—near the office. In real life, there was probably something to that, but my brain didn’t exactly work that way. My brain was more inclined to spout every single possibility, no matter how unlikely, and assume they were all equally valid. For example, what if she’d asked for a room on the end because she wanted privacy? What if she’d wanted a view of the bridge? What if she’d hurt her leg committing murder, and she didn’t want to use the stairs? Maybe, I decided, I should count the windows that had lights in them, and then, by process of elimination—
Someone rapped on the Pilot’s window.
I swear to God: I shot out of my shorts.
(I also said some words that never made it into the Bay Bridge Suites’ promotional materials.)
Brow furrowed, Indira gave me a slightly disapproving look through the glass. It was made more effective by the enormous pistol she held in one hand.
“What are you—” I buzzed down the window. “What are you doing? And put that away.”
On anyone else, I would have called Indira’s expression haughty as she slid the gun into her purse. “The same thing you’re doing, I imagine. Trying to talk to Channelle Haskins.”
I imagined how Bobby—not to mention the sheriff—would take this latest development. I wasn’t sure the town could handle another amateur snoop. I mean, sleuth.
So, I said, “No, I’m not.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
