When we got to the house, Deputy Bobby made a straight line to the front porch. I trailed after him. The breeze off the ocean stirred the hedges, and the rustle of leaves swallowed the sound of our steps. I glanced left and right, but I couldn’t make out anything on the other side of the boxwood. I hoped it worked the other way as well—we were exposed to the street, but I was more worried about a nosy neighbor spotting us and wondering why we were, uh, ingressing.

Deputy Bobby stood on the porch, considering the door. Off in the distance, wind chimes rang softly. The windows of the house were dark, and in the day’s half-tone light, it was impossible to see inside beyond a few feet—I glimpsed an uncomfortable-looking bench, the edge of a glass coffee table, and a lamp that looked like someone had made it by using tin snips on a can of tuna.

“We should try the garage,” I said. “I watched a YouTube video about how to use a plastic water bottle and—wait, do you have a pair of tin snips?”

Deputy Bobby said, “Hmm,” the way I sometimes did to Millie.

“Are we going to pick the lock?”

Deputy Bobby said, “Maybe,” in a way that I’d definitely said to Millie before.

“I could try to pick it,” I said, “but we’d have to go back to Hemlock House for my picks. Also, I’m not very good. Also, I know you’re going to think I’m making this up to get rid of you, but I have to admit I’d feel a certain amount of, er, performance anxiety if you were just standing there watching me, and—what are you doing?”

Without answering, Deputy Bobby crossed the porch to a decorative ceramic bird that perched on a three-legged table. He lifted the bird, turned it over to expose a hole in the base, and gave the bird a few experimental shakes. Something metallic rattled inside, and a moment later, a key tumbled out. Deputy Bobby caught it, set the ceramic bird back in its place, and gave me a look.

“You knew that was there,” I said.

He might have been smiling.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “That couldn’t have just been a guess.”

With a tiny shrug, he turned to the door.

The key went in smoothly, of course, and a moment later, we stepped into the house.

Inside, the décor appeared to be farmhouse meets industrial chic meets zebra. Lots of earth tones. Lots of monochromatic “warmth.” Matte black finishes on exposed metal. A zigzagging geometric pattern on one wall. On another, just to keep things interesting, a Tommy Bahama-inspired tropical wallpaper. The whole thing suggested that an interior designer had been given free rein and a blank check. It also suggested, quite possibly, that the interior designer had been working with his or her eyes closed.

We stood in an entry hall with a door on our left and a flight of stairs on our right. Ahead of us, the entry hall flowed into a great room, at the far end of which a wall of windows looked out on the ocean. The great room was combined, in true open-concept fashion, with a big, beautiful kitchen.

Deputy Bobby called out, “Hello?”

I jumped out of my skin.

No one answered, and Deputy Bobby might—might—have been smiling again. “Just checking.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“What?”

“Can you just not be so—so Deputy Bobby for, like, five seconds?”

He was definitely smiling. I just couldn’t quite see it.

Before I had to murder him—and then get dragged into the tiresome process of disposing of the body, cleaning up the crime scene, and then continuing an already frustrating investigation—I moved over to the stairs and went up to the first landing. From there, I could see that the stairs continued into a large, open loft with—

“What kind of idiot puts a grand piano in a loft?” I asked.

“One with plenty of money,” Deputy Bobby said.

When I got back to the entry hall, the door across from me was open, and Deputy Bobby stood inside what appeared to be Gerry’s office, where the theme was urban cowboy: a big, masculine desk; nifty pens in a mug that said WORLD’S BEST DADDY (which I hoped to God was a joke); lots of aerial photography on the walls that, after a moment, I took to be some of Gerry’s development projects. A cowhide rug covered the floor. A steer skull hung above the desk. He even had a taxidermy vulture (a little on the nose, maybe) that would have fit in perfectly at Hemlock House. Large windows looked out on the lawn and the street—which, I was relieved to note, appeared to be as sleepy as it had seemed.

Deputy Bobby already had on a pair of disposable gloves, and he began opening desk drawers.

“How do you have gloves?” I asked. “Are you always prepared for potential burgling?”

“Yes.”

I stared at him. It’s an interesting sensation, when you can literally feel your blood pressure rising.

“No,” I said. “You’re not.”

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.”