Again with feeling, p.1
Again with Feeling, page 1
part #6 of The Last Picks Series
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Again with Feeling
Copyright © 2024 Gregory Ashe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests and all other inquiries, contact: contact@hodgkinandblount.com
Published by Hodgkin & Blount
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contact@hodgkinandblount.com
Published 2024
Printed in the United States of America
Version 1.05
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63621-100-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-63621-099-5
Chapter 1
“You’re leaving?” I straightened in my seat so fast that my knee jarred the table. “You can’t abandon me!”
“I’m not abandoning you,” Bobby said as he collected his trash.
Up until that moment, it had been a beautiful day. It was June, and the sun was shining. Don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t warm by any stretch of the imagination. But a year into my time in Hastings Rock, I’d finally figured out that jeans and a hoodie were de rigueur (I learned that word from an Ian Fleming novel about a gala!). The sky was a deep blue, empty of clouds, and from where we sat on the pier at our table in the Fishermen’s Market, the glittering, restless waves seemed to go on forever. Mixed in with the smell of the ocean was the delicious fragrance of fried food—people didn’t come to Fishermen’s Market to go on a diet.
“But we’ve got to practice,” I said, looking from Bobby to Fox, then to Millie, then to Indira, and even (God help me) to Keme for backup. “The sandcastle building contest is—”
I cut off because my phone buzzed. The message was from Hugo—most of my messages these days were from Hugo. Ever since we’d reconnected a few weeks before—purely from a professional standpoint—we’d been messaging a lot. About a project, if you need to know. A novel we were planning on coauthoring. Like I said, purely professional.
All his text said was Midpoint twist: he’s been dead the whole time.
I messaged back, You want to use that one every time.
Because it’s the best possible twist.
The intense silence, more than anything, reminded me where I was, and I was surprised to catch myself grinning.
When I looked up, Bobby asked, in a tone that could have meant anything, “How’s Hugo?”
“Fine, I guess.” There was no reason for my face to feel hot, but it did. “He just had an idea for the book—” I took a breath. “The sandcastle building contest is this weekend, Bobby. That’s the whole point of coming out here today, to practice.”
“Oh,” Bobby said, “I meant to tell you. Kiefer asked me to enter the contest with him.” If you didn’t know Bobby, you would have thought the lack of eye contact was just an accident—that he really was too busy picking up his trash to glance over at me. “That’s okay, right?”
I stared at him, unable to summon words. He still wouldn’t look at me.
“It’ll be fine, Bobby,” Indira said. She looked particularly lovely today, that white lock of witch hair blowing in the wind, wearing a smart jumper and jeans that she insisted she didn’t mind getting sandy.
Fox nodded agreement so enthusiastically that their derby hat almost slid off their head. They’d pinned a little dragon on a spring to the front, and now the dragon wobbled wildly on its perch. “Dash can be on our team.”
Finally, I managed to ask, “Who?”
“Or he can be on OUR TEAM!” Millie said. In her leggings and Hastings Rock sweatshirt, and sitting as close to Keme as she was, it would have been easy to mistake them for the same age—and for a couple. Which, I’m sure, would have made Keme die from happiness.
Right then, though, the boy was scowling at me from inside his ancient hoodie (so old that the Ketling Beach Surf Shop logo had flaked away into near illegibility). He was the only one of us not wearing pants—his board shorts looked as old as his hoodie, and I didn’t have to see his flip-flops to know they were cracked and splitting. He had his long, dark hair up in a bun, which had the disturbing effect of making him look almost like an adult. “No,” he said, giving me a warning look. “He can’t.”
Millie laughed like Keme had made a joke.
“Kiefer,” Bobby said, and now his eyes did come up. His tone suggested he was prompting me. “I’ve told you about him. He’s the guy I’ve been going out with.”
I almost said, Which one?
Fortunately, with the Last Picks around, I didn’t have to.
“Is he the one with the squint?” Fox said.
Indira shook her head. “He’s the one who owns a go-kart.”
“It wasn’t a go-kart,” Millie said. “It was a dune buggy. But I thought Kiefer was the one who had all the tattoos.”
“He has TATTOOS?” My volume verged on Millie levels for a moment.
“He’s an artist,” Keme said.
Bobby gave him a grateful look. “Yeah—”
“Oh,” Fox said, “the one who works on the boardwalk. He does those cute little caricatures.”
I’ve never had any romantical feelings toward Fox. Ever. But right then, I wanted to kiss them.
“That’s just a gig,” Bobby said, “until he gets into art school.”
“God, don’t let him go to art school,” Fox said. “He’ll have a mountain of debt and end up becoming a deep-fryer jockey.”
“What is a deep-fryer jockey?” Indira asked.
“It’s like a regular jockey,” Millie said, “but the deep fryer is the HORSE! Wait, does Kiefer have a horse?”
Bobby checked his watch. “I’ve got to run.”
“Oh my God, are you going on a date RIGHT NOW?”
The hint of color that rose under the olive-gold of his complexion was answer enough, but he managed to say, “Uh, yeah, Millie. I am.”
“What kind of tattoos?” I asked. “Where? Are we talking flowers and mermaids? Or skulls and chains and barbed wire?”
Bobby stared at me as though I were speaking a foreign language. For that matter, so did everybody else.
“Joking,” I said. “That was a joke.”
Then, to seal the deal, I made myself laugh.
Everyone’s eyes got huge.
A seagull screamed, did a startled take-off, and swerved at the last moment to avoid one of the piles.
At the next table, a baby started to cry.
“Okay,” Bobby said slowly. “I’ll see you all later.” He reached out like he might squeeze my shoulder or scruff my hair, but he let his hand drop to his side again, and he left. He didn’t look back.
“What is wrong with you?” Fox whispered furiously at me.
“What is wrong with me—” I tried.
“We’re so sorry,” Millie said to the tourist family at the next table, who were glaring at us. Well, at me. They were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, and the gentleman wore a sun visor that said CORNHUSKERS. “He’s not usually like this,” Millie continued, “but he has this friend, well, they’re more than friends—”
“He actually is usually like this,” Keme said over her, “because he’s a donkey.”
“Keme,” Indira said.
The boy subsided back into his seat, but only to settle a glare on me. “Fix this,” he said. “Now.”
“Fix what?” I said. “Did you hear him? He’s going to enter the sandcastle contest with—with whatever his name is, even though they just met, even though he and I have been planning our design for weeks. I mean, we’re definitely going to win—it’s Hogwarts after the Death Star crashes into it. How can that lose?”
“Because no one has any idea what it means,” Fox snapped. “And Keme is right: you need to fix this. I think we’ve all been very patient, and yes, at the beginning, it was cute to see you two pussyfooting around—”
“I really don’t think you can say that,” I whispered. “There are children here.”
“—but we’re all sick and tired of it.”
“Sick and tired of what?”
Indira gave me a disappointed look. Keme’s glare got, somehow, even darker.
Millie, though, just burbled, “You know, you and Bobby.”
“What—”
“That you LIKE each other.”
“Well—”
“But you can’t ever get the timing right—”
“Or you’re a donkey,” Keme put in.
“—and everyone knows you’d be perfect together,” Millie said, “if you’d just KISS!”
The word echoed through the market. At the next table, the Cornhusker dad covered the baby’s ears. And remember that poor seagull that almost hit a piling? It was perched on a hawser at that moment, and I kid you not: it. fell. off. Just rocked backward and disappeared.
Working a finger in my ear, I said, “Okay, I appreciate the concern, but Bobby and I are just friends, and we both know what’s best for us—”
“No,” Fox said, “you don’t.”
“You clearly don’t, dear,” Indira said.
“Definitely not,” the mom at the next table said. She snorted.
“Bobby is going through a really tough time,” I said, sparing a dark look for Nebraska Mom. “He’s still working through his breakup with West. I mean, they were engaged. And that was a big deal for him. He’s grieving. He’s processing. He’s healing.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Cornhusker Dad.
“You know,” I said, “this is a private—”
“Really?” Fox asked over me. “Is he grieving, processing, and healing by slee—” They cut off and gave an embarrassed sidelong look at the family next to us. “By courting every eligible young man within driving distance?”
Keme still hadn’t said anything, but he was still staring at me, and his look was approaching murderous levels.
“This is what he needs right now—” I started.
“No, Dashiell,” Indira said. “It’s not.”
“Definitely not,” Nebraska Mom said again, this time with a definite ’tude.
“Okay, well, I think it is.” I was surprised by the sharpness of my tone, and to judge by the looks on everyone else’s face, so were they. “I know you all want what’s best for me and Bobby, but you’re not part of our—our relationship, for lack of a better word. So, you don’t understand.”
As soon as I heard myself, I wanted to wince. It was such a stereotypically teenager defense that I actually thought I could feel the ghost of sixteen-year-old Dash breathing down my neck.
“Tell us,” Fox said in a dangerously even voice. “What don’t we understand?”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell them I was done discussing this. But I’d dug myself a hole, and now all I could do—it seemed—was try to dig myself out of it. “Have you ever heard of a rebound relationship?”
It was Keme who spoke this time: slowly, clearly, and dark as a bottomless pit. “You are an idiot.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to any of you,” I said, getting out of my seat. “Bobby just needs to get this out of his system, and then things will go back to normal, and—”
But my phone buzzed again, and I checked it—a Pavlovian response.
It wasn’t a message from Hugo, though. It was an incoming call.
I answered, and a prerecorded voice said, “This call is originating at the Oregon State Penitentiary from,” and then another, familiar voice broke in and said two words. A name. “Vivienne Carver.”
Chapter 2
“To accept this collect call, press one—” the prerecorded message continued.
My face must have shown something of what I was feeling because Indira said, “What’s wrong?”
Cornhusker Dad asked—with misguided enthusiasm—“Is it Kiefer?”
“Dash?” Fox asked.
Keme sat up and glanced around, as though the threat he sensed might be physical.
“It’s Vivienne,” I said. “She’s calling collect.” And then, perhaps unnecessarily, I added, “From prison.”
“Don’t answer!” Millie shouted and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Indira and Fox traded a look.
In my ear, the message was repeating itself now. I was distantly aware of a rushing sound in my head. Sweat had broken out across my back and under my arms. It took me a moment to recognize the bubble in my chest as panic, making it impossible for me to draw a full breath.
“I’m not sure it would be wise—” Indira began.
Definitely not wise, I thought. I’d moved to Hastings Rock to take a job with Vivienne; she’d been one of the best-selling mystery writers in the world, and on top of that, she’d solved a number of real-life murders. All of that, though, had been before she faked her own death and then tried to kill me.
So, why was she calling me now?
I wanted to know. And competing with the panic in my chest was an ember of anger, growing brighter and hotter as my shock faded. Before I could second-guess myself, I pressed one, and the call clicked as it connected.
I was proud of myself, by the way. My voice came out rock steady. “Hello?”
There was the slightest pause. The connection, maybe. Or perhaps Vivienne had been surprised I’d accepted the call. “Good afternoon, Dashiell.”
“Just Dash,” I said. “What do you want?”
She laughed. “What a way to talk, Dashiell. No longer playing the part of the wide-eyed naïf, are we?”
“What do you want, Vivienne?”
“How are you liking Hemlock House?”
“It’s wonderful. It’s big and beautiful and full of complicated people and fraught relationships. It’s just like home. What do you want?”
“I want you to solve a murder.”
I burst out laughing. Fox’s eyes widened. Indira frowned. Keme looked at Millie, and Millie still had one hand over her mouth.
Until a moment later when she stage-whispered, “What does she want?”
Nebraska Mom, who was now busily wiping the baby’s face and hands, said, “Yeah, the rest of us can’t hear her.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said into the phone. “I don’t know what kind of trick you’re trying to pull, but I’m not interested. Goodbye—”
“No, please!”
The words were sharp, and they had a breathy, punched-out quality, as though they’d been wrenched from her against her will.
I told myself to disconnect.
Instead, I said, “Hold on.”
With a quick wave for the Last Picks, I made my way out of Fishermen’s Market. The pier was busy with families and buskers and vendors—Hastings Rock was at the height of its tourist season. Mrs. Palakiko, in her enormous sunglasses, was doing steady business at her shave ice stand, and it looked like Mr. Li had set up his vendor tent on the pier today instead of the boardwalk. A pair of blond ladies with matching headbands were holding up one of his bestselling tees—ROCK ON – HASTINGS ROCK—and seemed to be considering purchasing multiples in various colors. The breeze was steady, and farther down the pier, Mr. Tate was helping a little Black girl get her kite up.
I headed in their direction—not because I wanted to help with the kite, but because the crowd was thinner at the end of the pier, and the press of people was making my anxiety tick into the red. As I walked, I said, “Okay, what’s the punch line?”
“It’s not a joke, Dashiell—Dash. I’m quite serious. I’ve been wrongly accused, and I believe you’re the perfect person to prove I’m innocent.”
Another laugh escaped me. “This keeps getting better and better. All right. Who are you supposed to have murdered? Besides Mr. Huggins and Sheriff Jakes?”
“My brother.”
I kept walking. My steps rang out on the creaky old boards. The little girl with the kite was laughing. A pair of teenage boys were trying to feed french fries to a seagull and screaming every time it came close to them.
“Okay,” I finally said.
“Needless to say—well, I suppose it’s not needless, is it?” Vivienne took a breath. “I didn’t kill him. I loved my brother. Deeply. I want you to prove I didn’t do this; I will not be known as a kin slayer and a fratricide. And more importantly, I want you to find out who did kill him.”
“Vivienne—” I struggled for a moment with what to say. “I’m sorry for your loss. But I don’t think I’m the right person—”
“You are, though. That’s why I called you. I’ve been keeping my eye on you, Dash, and you’ve outdone yourself. It’s a shame things worked out the way they did because I think you and I might be kindred spirits.”
If you’ve never had a homicidal maniac call you a kindred spirit, let me tell you, it takes the shine off your day. And I didn’t love that part about keeping an eye on you either. But all I said was “I’ve helped with a few investigations, but only because—”
“It’s always ‘only because,’” Vivienne said, and it took me a moment to recognize the note in her voice as amusement. Wry amusement. As though she knew all too well. “It’s a friend, or a friend of a friend, or a long-lost nephew.”
My throat was strangely dry, but I managed to say, “No nephews.”
“Let me tell you why you must be the one to investigate my brother’s death. The first reason is because you’re good at it. You won’t settle for superficial answers. You won’t accept the story that those bumbling police will embrace. Because you want to know the truth, Dashiell.” Again, her tone changed—taking on an intensity that surprised me. “That’s always our charge, isn’t it? To see truly, to know truly, so that we may write truly. That’s what carries us into the dark.”
