Page 101 of Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder

“I told you I can’t explain it,” she says, sounding frustrated. “Not fully. It’s just—I guess it’s intuition. Have you ever heard the theory that gut feelings are really just your subconscious brain noticing obscure details and making connections?”

“I have,” I admit.

“All I can—” But she breaks off, her eyes widening, her mouth forming a little circle. “Oh,” she breathes. “That’s it.That’swhat I’ve been missing.”

I blink. “Sorry?”

“In my book,” she says, turning to me excitedly. “It’s all been feeling very mechanical and neat and just too—too—something. But it’s the human element! That’s what I’ve been missing. The humanity.”

“I…don’t follow,” I say.

She sighs. “I need more right brain in a book that so far has been very left brain,” she says. “I need intuition and instinct and feelings. Not just facts and observations and proof. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” I say. “When you explain it like that, it does. But what does this have to do with Rocco and Sandra?”

“Oh,” she says, looking startled. “Sorry. I got distracted. But it goes back to the instinct thing.” She sighs again. “All I can really boil it down to is that Sandy did cross country, and Rocco is the coach. The whole cross country team wears shirts in that same fuchsia color. I saw that couple in that car the day I arrived in town, and barely any time later Sandy got in touch with me. A lot of the people in Autumn Grove didn’t know who I was or that I had moved here by the time Sandy was asking to meet with me. Plus…” She trails off, glancing over at me before looking back to the road. “Rocco knew my mom. He looks like his brother, and his brother as a child looked too much like me for there not to besomerelation. We all have the same eyes.”

I swallow as something sick and nauseating slithers into my gut. “Rocco keeps chickens,” I say, staring blankly out the window as my mind works furiously.

“He does,” Juniper says, in a way that tells me she’s already thought about that too. “And he wanted us to stay away from all of this. He was very insistent.”

I shake my head, pushing one hand through my hair. “But that doesn’t make sense. Rocco never hung around with them—your mom and her friends.”

“Aiden,” she says, her voice patient. “Who told us that? Who gave us that history?”

Crap. I’m an idiot. “Rocco,” I breathe as my stomach churns more violently still.

“Yes.”

All right. I understand what she means. There are no huge clues, no neon signs pointing to Rocco proclaiming him as the killer, but there are lots of little things—too many to be coincidence. He fits in a way no one else has so far.

“So how well do you know him?” she asks again.

“I mean,” I say, running my hand through my hair once more, “obviously not well enough to guarantee he’s not secretly a psychopath. I don’t know much about his past, and I’m not sure I could trust the things he has told me.”

We fall into silence, and I’m sure her mind is spinning the same way mine is. I jump when her phone begins to ring, vibrating and blaring loudly from the cupholder in the center console. I pick it up and press it wordlessly into her outstretched hand. After she looks at it, though, she puts it back in the cupholder.

“It’s Matilda,” she says. “I’ll call her back later.”

We’re quiet for the rest of the drive, and I’m so lost in my thoughts that when the car comes to a stop, it takes a full thirty seconds for me to realize we aren’t at home.

“What are we doing here?” I say, blinking up at the entrance to Forester’s.

“Getting groceries,” she says.

I blink again. “Right—right now?”

She shrugs. “Dish soap doesn’t magically appear just because you think you’ve figured out who the bad guy is. Plus,” she adds lightly, “I need chips and guac.” As nonchalant as her voice is, though, her face is paler than normal, and that’s the detail that convinces me to play along.

“This is true. All right.” I hesitate before saying, “But you should know, Gale Forester and I don’t get along.”

“I know,” she says with a little smirk. “He’s mentioned it to me before. He always grumbles about you when he sees me, ever since he found out we were roommates. He loves me, though.”

I sigh, unbuckling. “Of course he does.” Then I get out of the car, closing the door gently behind me so that it doesn’t fall off or something. That always feels like a possibility with Juniper’s car. She does the same on her side, and then we head toward the entrance.

“It’s because I’m delightful,” she says, walking backward toward Forester’s and grinning at me.

“Of course you are.”

---