“That’s all? Man, do you know how hard that was? I busted my hump making it happen. Ruined my reputation in town, too. Half the people around here think I was getting kickbacks from Gerry, and the other half think I’m out of my mind.”
“That must be hard,” I said. “But once you got him the permits, what did Gerry start squeezing you for?”
“Nothing. I already told you.”
“Then why did you attack him at the surfing competition?”
A hint of color rose in Nate’s cheeks. “He told me he’d let me invest in the development. After I’d fixed everything, though, he told me he already had a partner, and he wasn’t interested in adding someone else. I tried to let it go, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I just kept thinking and thinking. And then I saw him at that stupid competition, and—I didn’t even know what I was doing. It was like somebody else was doing it, you know?”
I wasn’t sure I believed all of that, but I believed part of it. Somebody as desperate for validation as Nate would have to work himself up to that level of aggression; it would take a lot to force him out of the patterns of placating and pleading I’d seen from him today. The real question, though, was what had happened after the surf challenge. Had that attack at the beach been an isolated incident? Or had Nate whipped himself into a frenzy again after his public humiliation?
“How long has Gerry been blackmailing you?”
“I don’t know. A year. A little more. He showed up here one day. He introduced himself, told me he had an eye on some land, wanted to talk to me about a business opportunity. I told him no way—getting on the bad side of the Confederated Tribes is a sure way to piss off pretty much everybody in town. I thought that was the end of it. The next time I saw him, he was at my front door showing me—”
“Showing you what?”
“You know. Papers.”
I nodded. “Where were you during the Halloween party?”
“I don’t know, man. I had some drinks. Moved around. I wasn’t exactly invited.”
“That’s the best you can do?”
“What do you want me to say? I was right there.”
A question struck me. “Why were you there?”
Nate grimaced. “One of the surfers. She and I—I mean, it’s a small town. And when it’s not tourist season, we don’t get a lot of new faces.”
“Any chance she can tell me where you were?”
“No.” He sounded even more miserable than when he’d been confessing. “She said she didn’t like gingers.” Then his gaze came toward me, and his voice sharpened, “You know who you should be talking to? That protester. The crazy one.”
He meant Ali Rivas, I was pretty sure. I asked, “Why’s that?”
“Because she’s crazy! She’ll do anything. She breaks into the construction site. She smashes the windows, and they have to replace them. She puts sugar in the gas tanks of the heavy equipment. She was costing Gerry a fortune, you know? They hated each other.”
“She wasn’t at the party that night.”
“Man, she goes wherever she wants, whenever she wants. Hey, wait! She was there—I heard about it. She broke the windows at the surf camp that night.”
Now that he said it, I did remember something about broken windows from my visit to the surf camp the next day—my chat with Damian, Jen’s anger, the clean-up effort.
“And that’s not all,” Nate said, excitement making him speak faster. “Gerry had something on her. He got something. Like he did, you know, with me. I heard him talking about her at the party. About how she wasn’t going to be a problem any longer.”
“That’s kind of a convenient thing to remember when you’re the prime candidate for a murder.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I heard him say it, and I remember feeling sorry for her—once Gerry set his sights on somebody, he’d find something to use against them.”
He certainly had with me, although I wasn’t going to share that with Nate. “There’s kind of a problem with that, though. Aside from how it’s a little too neat. I saw Gerry’s files, remember? And he didn’t have anything on Ali Rivas.”
The look Nate gave me verged on pitying. “Yeah, man. Duh. Whoever killed him took their file.”
Chapter 11
Here’s the good news: I didn’t get a ticket for parking next to the service garage.
As I drove away from Hampton Automotive, though, I wasn’t happy. I considered what Nate had said. I should have considered the possibility that whoever had killed Gerry had managed to access the safe and remove anything incriminating. After all, it had been easy for me and Bobby to get into the safe—the key had been right there. But if the file had been taken, then anybody could be Gerry’s killer.
I knew two things, though. First, I didn’t trust Nate. I needed to try to verify his alibi (if you could call it that) for the time when Gerry was killed, but I didn’t have high hopes. And second, although I wasn’t sure I believed Nate’s story, I needed to talk to Ali Rivas. Even if the blackmail story wasn’t true, she had her own reasons to want Gerry Webb to disappear, and I was curious to hear her side of things.
The problem, though, was that I wasn’t really any further in the investigation. I had added a new suspect—Ali had been at the party, and she had her own reasons for wanting to get rid of Gerry. And I wanted to know how Ali kept getting into the camp, in spite of all that security. Did she have help? Was someone hoping that the vandalism would eventually make Gerry—what? Sell? Give up his share of the camp?
Adding a suspect, though, had only made the investigation more complicated. I had too many suspects. And too many motives. And not enough of anything else. What I needed was physical evidence, something irrefutable to tie the killer to Gerry’s murder. And, barring that, what I needed was something to maneuver the killer into confessing. The ideal thing to do (if this were a mystery novel) would be to manipulate the killer by claiming to have found a backup copy of the blackmail. The killer would then expose themselves by trying to recover it. But if Nate was correct, and if the killer had already recovered and destroyed their blackmail file from Gerry’s safe, then they might be feeling safe and secure. It would take more than an unsubstantiated claim to lure them out of hiding.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything, and nothing presented itself as I drove back to Hemlock House. I called Deputy Bobby on the way; I wanted to tell him—and the Last Picks—what I’d learned. Somebody might know more about Nate. Or about Ali. Or about something I hadn’t considered. Maybe Millie’s network of town gossip had picked up the perfect clue, and all I had to do was ask. Deputy Bobby didn’t answer, so I left him a message telling him I needed to talk. I tried one more time, but I got voicemail again, so I focused on driving.
My route took me south along the state highway. I passed through Hastings Rock. On a day like today, with the sky an intense, vast blue and the sun casting cut-glass shadows, the town looked like what it was supposed to be: a postcard destination, a perfect hodgepodge of dollhouse buildings rising from the bay to the bluffs. The oaks and maples were starting to turn, and scattered with the deep green of pine and spruce were flashes of gold and copper and red.
I was leaving town on the south side when I noticed the Jeep was handling differently. A little stiff. A little less responsive. I started up a small hill, and the engine seemed to hesitate, even when I fed it more gas. As I crested the hill and reached the tunnel of the spruce forest, I passed from the brilliance of a seaside day into the perpetual shadow under the canopy. That was when I noticed that the Jeep’s dash lights were flickering. A red warning light popped on—the battery.
At the exact same time, the Jeep shuddered. The steering wheel stiffened as the power steering went out. The hiss of air in the vents went silent. The Jeep gave another of those shudders, and it startled me out of my daze. I wrenched the wheel to the right, trying to wrestle it to the shoulder. The engine sputtered, the Jeep hitched, and then, with a final lurch, it died.
I had enough presence of mind to shift into neutral, and the last of the Jeep’s momentum was enough to let us trundle off the state highway and onto the side of the road. Adrenaline coursed through me too late: even though my brain knew I was safe now, my body couldn’t slow down the flood of hormones. My hands started to shake. My mouth tasted sour. I felt lightheaded, and I gripped the steering wheel to keep myself upright and steady.
After a few deep breaths, I felt a little better. I forced the shifter into park, set the emergency brake, and took out my phone. It hadn’t been that bad, I told myself. It had been the surprise more than anything. I was safe. I was fine. It was a quiet stretch of road, and I was lucky there hadn’t been any other cars around when it happened. When I glanced at my phone, though, I felt a little less lucky—like lots of spots up and down the coast, this was apparently a dead zone. Which meant I could either walk back to town, walk to Hemlock House, or wait and hope someone would stop.
Before I had to make a decision, movement in the rearview mirror caught my eye. A car came over the hill—a dark sedan. The driver must have seen me because they slowed and eased onto the side of the road. They must have been extra cautious because they stopped a long way back.
I opened the door and got out of the Jeep. Down the road, the driver was getting out of their car. I squinted, trying to make out details through the thick shade and the distance. Dark pants. Dark shirt. Dark…mask?
No, my brain said automatically. That couldn’t be right.
But it was. The driver was wearing a balaclava.
In October.
In Oregon.
On a beautifully bright, sunny day.
A fresh wave of adrenaline began to pump through me. That sick-sour churn of my stomach started again. My vision felt funny—off, somehow. Because, a detached voice inside me said, your eyes are dilating in response to the hormones. Not that I could process the words. I couldn’t think about anything. All I could hear was a drumbeat getting faster and faster inside my head.
The masked figure started up the shoulder toward me. They were carrying something in their hand—something small, something made of metal.
