Page 61 of Always Murder

When I flipped it over, it said PIRATE’S COVE in big, pirate-y letters.I’d seen these before.Keme had used one the other day—that’s how he’d paid for our laser tag passes.The modern version of the arcade.You didn’t carry around a bucket of tokens anymore.No more trying to get a tired five-dollar bill into a change machine.You loaded money onto one of these cards, and you were ready to go.

At the bottom of the card, it said PAUL NAUGHT.

My first, clearest thought was: why hadn’t I worn gloves?

And my second wasn’t even words.It was just that sensation of your stomach plummeting.

With my non-bleeding hand, I worked my phone out of my pocket and called Bobby.He answered on the first ring.

“Mr.Intuition,” he said.

It was a strange response.And his voice was strange, too.But those details only registered peripherally, and I said, “Bobby, I—”

“I don’t know how you found out.I probably don’t want to know.But yes, we caught him.I was about to call you.”

For what felt like a long half second, my brain tried to catch up.“You caught him?”

“The porch pirate, Elliott.We impounded his car because it was illegally parked, and when we did the inventory search, we found a Santa suit and several recently stolen packages.The sheriff just arrested him.”

Chapter 19

I waited until Deputy Dahlberg showed up to take Three’s statement.I gave her Paul’s Pirate’s Cove card, and I told her where I’d found it.She said thanks, and she wrote everything down.She’s a professional like that.

Then I was free to go, so I went home.

I called Millie on the drive.

“Dash, now’s not really—Mom, no!”

The sounds of a scuffle followed, and then Christine, breathing a bit more heavily than usual, came on the phone.Her words, though, sounded like they were directed at Millie instead of me.“Yes, Iamgoing to talk to him, Millicent.Because this is his fault as much as it is yours.”

“Hold on,” I said, “how is this my fault?For that matter, how is it Millie’s—”

“The two of you couldn’t leave well enough alone.You had to be a pair of—of nosey parkers!I hope you’re happy.I think it would be best for everyone if you removed yourself from the nativity pageant.”She dragged in a ragged breath.“YouruinedChristmas!”

The call disconnected.

I didn’t try again, and Millie didn’t call back.

When I got to Hemlock House, the flat-iron sky was low, and in spite of the clouds, the day’s light made me squint.I went inside.The house was empty, and it had the wan cheer that Christmas decorations always do in the middle of the day.I wandered through the kitchen, picked at a piece of some sort of torte Indira had left, and stared out the window.The ocean was rumpled and frothy and looked like somebody had stirred it up with a fork.I left the half-finished piece of torte and decided I should try to write.

The problem was that I’d been so busy trying to solve a—I’d almost said a murder.A string of package thefts.A brutal assault.I’d been so busy trying to figure out who had hurt Paul and tried to frame him that I hadn’t actually done any thinking about my manuscript.

Maybe I neededmoremurders.My gaze wandered to the window again.No snow.No ice.Only the evergreen of the Sitka spruce forest.Maybe that was why itstilldidn’t feel like Christmas.

More murders could be good.Sometimes, that was the best way to keep a story hopping.And it was fiction, so you could have bodies dropping every other page.Nowthatwas interesting.That was so much more compelling than trying to track down somebody’s stolen LED face mask.(I mean, do the lights evendoanything?) Maybe Will Gower needed a serial killer!Of course, that didn’t go with the whole cozy noir thing I was trying to do.

The idea had tickled something at the back of my head, though.More bodies wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.Maybe peopleweredying…quite a few people, actually.And nobody knew why.Poisoned pills, like that Tylenol thing.Or a bad batch of whatever people take for their cholesterol.(I ought to know what it’s called—Bobby was always threatening me with it.) And someone saw their chance to get rid of someone, and they took it.

A little thrill ran through me.That wasn’t half bad.In fact, that could tie in rather nicely to cozy noir.Cozy noir was going to be all about the human aspect of justice.Maybe the killer was desperate.Maybe they thought this was their only way out.A string of inexplicable deaths…what’s one more?Nobody would think twice about it.

Except Will Gower, of course.My fictional detective would immediately notice something that was slightly different from the other deaths.Something that didn’t add up.Something like…

Well, I’d come up with it later.

The important part was that I’d solved—more or less—my problem of when to introduce the first murder.Kind of.

Having figured that out, I decided I should probably write some of it down, at least make a note of it.Instead, though, I alternated between brooding at my laptop screen and brooding out the window.I wanted one of those big ice storms that occasionally rolled in.Barring that, I would have settled for lots and lots of rain.Something dramatic, elemental, cataclysmic.

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