For one last heartbeat, I got that other smile, the one I’d never seen before. The one with promises. And then Deputy Bobby released my jacket, stepped back, and said, “That would be a waste.”
I could still feel him, though. The echo of him.
He turned for the door and said, “Let’s go.”
“Oh,” I managed to say. “You’re going with me now?”
“If you’re going to be a smart aleck about this,” he said as he stepped outside, “I’ll lend Fox and Keme my handcuffs.”
Chapter 6
Deputy Bobby insisted we wait until dark before breaking into Gerry Webb’s beach house, but he also didn’t trust me not to go without him, which meant we had to kill time together. We got lunch at the Otter Slide. And then we stopped by the library to pick up some books (for me). And then Deputy Bobby needed one of those special TV boxes to pack up his TV. As we ran errands, I tried to do some light cyberstalking of Gerry, but I didn’t get far. Deputy Bobby kept saying interesting things. And I kept saying funny things. (At least, I thought they were funny; Deputy Bobby just got that little furrow between his eyebrows and stared at me earnestly, waiting for clarification.) And it was all so…good.
Faster than I expected, dark settled over Hastings Rock. Gerry Webb’s beach house was just on the north side of the bay—not far from the beach where the surfing competition had been held. It was hard to believe that had only been the day before; it felt like years. The house was set back on the lot, with privacy hedges on either side to screen out the neighbors, and the lawn and flower beds had a tidy look that suggested professional landscaping at the end of the season. The design of the house itself seemed to be based on a farmhouse aesthetic, built long and low with a gable roof. But some diagnosable whack-a-doodle had added their own twist on things—a sharp peak to the roofline above the entryway, for example, or the garages (yes, two), which had been built skinny and tall, the way a little kid might draw them. The general effect, I decided, was as if a six-year-old had tried to build a barn out of Legos.
The street—worn-down asphalt crumbling at the shoulders—didn’t look like it got much traffic, but Deputy Bobby made me drive to the end of the block. I parked, and Deputy Bobby said, “Hang here for a minute while I check it out.”
“Nice try.”
He gave me his professional-grade deputy stare, but maybe being on leave made it less effective. I unbuckled my seat belt and slid out of the Jeep.
As I made my way down the street, Deputy Bobby’s steps crunched the broken asphalt behind me. When he caught up, he had a little furrow between his eyebrows. “It might not be safe.”
“It’s cute, Deputy Bobby.” There was that word again. “And I appreciate it. But I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to search the whole house while I sit in the Jeep playing Wizard Princess on my phone—”
“What is Wizard Princess?”
“How are you a person? What do you do all day—lift heavy things, catch bad guys, and surf? Don’t you ever just scroll Instagram until your eyes fall out of your face and play games that make lots of awesome sounds and you have to tap the screen really fast?”
He seemed to give this serious—and in my opinion, undue—consideration. Finally he said, “I like Scrabble.”
“Scrabble is literally the worst game ever! Do you know what it’s like to have writer’s block and play Scrabble?”
“I know this is my first time breaking and entering, but honestly, I thought it would involve significantly less yelling.”
I refused to acknowledge that statement.
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?”
