I nodded. “Unh-hunh. Middle drawer of the dresser.”
“Thanks, you’re the best.”
She was still in her robe, but her hair and makeup were done.
It was almost time to go to school.
I started to turn again to the window.
“And…”
I shot back into place, faking a smile while choking back coffee hopefully appearing to do it casually as Celeste returned.
“Do you think I can use that purse you use when you wear it? You know. The Chloe one,” she asked.
“Of course, lovely,” I replied. “Do you know where it is?”
“Closet.”
“Yes.”
“You really should just move in with Dad. He’s got tons more closet space,” she said.
This was momentous, her saying this.
I didn’t glory in the momentum.
“I’ll take that up with him.”
She gave me a saucy grin and took off.
I waited, listened, waited more, listened more, waited.
Then I turned back to the window.
Jess and Jace were now there.
Jace was bent, hands to knees, staring in the water over the far side of the pier.
Jess was in a squat at the pier’s edge, doing the same.
Bohannan was also doing the same, standing with his phone to his ear.
They weren’t close enough for me to read their expressions.
But their body language said it all.
I turned and raced up the stairs to help Celeste.
And to get dressed.
Because I had a feeling I needed to be ready.
Thirty-One
Black Hole Sun
The boys and I performed a minor miracle in getting Celeste off to school without letting on Black Hole Sun was upon us again.
After she was gone, I had just enough time to get a fresh pot of coffee brewing before the first sheriff cruiser pulled up.
They kept coming, and I handed out coffee and made two tubes of cinnamon rolls that Celeste had thrown into the cart the last time we were at the grocery store.
I then began a steady process of intermittently pouring mugs of coffee and scooping rolls onto paper plates, in between watching outside, noting how the game was being played, even desperately evaluating it, so I wouldn’t have to pay attention to why they were playing it.
There was hard-faced, yet handsome, Harry Moran and his deputies, who seemed to be in a détente with officious Leland Dern and his deputies.
They were playing nice.
And I suspected they were, because after some people did some things at the end of the pier and a lot of pictures were taken, a body wrapped in clear tarp was fished out of the water and put on the pier.
As it was, cold coated my skin like I, too, was wrapped in plastic tarp, just fished out of a lake.
I felt something and shifted my gaze to see Bohannan’s head turned, his eyes on me.
I wanted to go out and hug him.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to vomit.
There was a very big difference from seeing this kind of thing on dozens of television shows, and seeing it happen at the foot of the pier on which you’d spent a romantic night sitting beside the man you were falling in love with just a month before.
I didn’t know who was in that tarp.
I just knew whoever had been put in there had been put there for Bohannan.
Things seemed to be going okay between the different sides, and I’d stepped back so Bohannan couldn’t see me watching, but I could still watch.
Things stopped going okay when Polly Pickler showed up in a silver Toyota Camry.
In fact, she’d barely been out of her car and talking with Bohannan and Moran for a minute, before things devolved spectacularly to the point I had to race out of the house, seeing as a brawl was forming, Moran’s men against Dern’s men.
And if I’d read things right, Jess and Moran were the ones who started it.
By the time I got out there, Bohannan and Dickerson, the deputy I’d met at the station (he was on Moran’s team) were holding back Moran, with some difficulty, and Jace and a couple of other deputies were holding back Jess, with even more difficulty.
Dern was blustering while his guys formed a shield around him.
Polly looked like I felt, except a hundred times worse. Like she didn’t know whether to cry, shout or throw up.
Though, there was shouting going on, back and forth between the two camps.
I didn’t get close, but I got close enough to say, “Jesse.”
Like magic, instantly he stopped fighting to get to Dern.
Moran wasn’t ready to let it go.
But Bohannan pushed him off, he flew back five feet, set his body to charge again, and Bohannan barked, “This won’t help.”
Moran wasn’t thrilled about having to pull himself together, but he started doing it.
So at least whatever that was, was sorted.
Except I was wrong.
In the melee, I hadn’t noticed how pissed Bohannan was.
And he…
Was…
Pissed.
He turned, flicked two irate fingers at Dern and declared, “You’re done. Get off my land.”
“This is a crime scene,” Dern snapped. “And I’m the sheriff.”
“If you don’t go back to your office and resign, I’m making a phone call. In an hour, there’ll be an emergency session of the county commissioners, and you’ll be facing recall, but in the meantime, they’ll suspend you from duty.”
Dern assumed an arrogant expression. “The commission would never do that.”
He had friends there.
Bohannan’s other arm came out, and he pointed at the pier.
“You don’t think so?”
Dern tried to stare him down, but there was a flicker of uncertainty.
“She’s on you,” Bohannan said low.
“Fuck you, Cade,” Dern bit.
Bohannan gave up on him and addressed the crowd. “We need everything we can get from this. Every…fucking…thing. Or one of your daughters might wash up next. Get your fucking shit tight. This isn’t about politics. This is about girls.”
This was about girls.
Oh God.
Some on Dern’s side looked chastened, others continued to look combative.
But Bohannan was done with them.
He walked to Polly.
“You give him that, you’re not only fired, I’ll bring you up on charges for theft and obstruction,” Dern threatened.
“Arrest me,” she snapped. “See how that’ll play at the polls.”
And she handed a brown folder to Bohannan.
“We got a girl lying on that goddamned dock whose parents don’t know where she is and don’t know yet she’s not coming home,” Moran declared in an imposing, but pleasantly deep voice. “Let’s get this shit done and her out of here.”
Men moved.
Bohannan flicked his eyes at me, to Polly and back to me.
I went to Polly.
“Come up for a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll,” I urged.
She was staring at the pier.
“That’s Malorie,” she whispered.
I turned to the pier to see the tarp had been pulled away from her face.
She’d had blonde hair.
My jaw set with a tingling ache, a precursor to getting sick.