Page 7 of Again with Feeling

“I’m hanging up in five seconds.”

“You told me that if I was going to do something stupid, I should have told you because you’re my friend.”

His silence had the quality of alotof teeth-grinding.

“Well,” I said in a small voice, “I’m about to do something stupid.”

Chapter 3

The drive up the coast wasn’t exactly comfortable. The Jeep isn’t the smoothest of rides, plus it’s surprisingly noisy inside, and there was also the little issue of Bobby’s ferocious silence as he rode shotgun.

About every five miles, I said, “Thank you again for coming.”

And every five miles, Bobby said nothing.

That kind of thing can make a relatively easy drive feel a lot longer.

Vivienne’s attorney had provided addresses for the house where her brother had lived at the time of his disappearance, as well as for Vivienne’s father’s home. The numbers were only different by a digit, so I figured they were neighbors. The homes were located in a neighborhood outside Astoria. On a normal day—when I wasn’t stuck inside the time-warping effects of my best friend’s silent anger—the drive would have taken an hour, tops. Today, though, it felt like it took about a month to get halfway there, and trust me: no matter how beautiful the coast is, or the spruce and pine forests, or the restless prism of the ocean, nobody wants to spend a month with Bobby’s extremely loud silence.

So, it was a relief when Bobby picked up his phone, scrolled, tapped, scrolled, tapped, and held it to his ear. When he spoke, his voice had his usual crisp, no-nonsense tone. “This is Deputy Mai from the Ridge County Sheriff's Office. I’m calling because—yep, you got it. Thanks.” What followed was a one-sided conversation in which Bobby didn’t actually have to do a lot of talking. In fact, once he had identified himself again, he mostly listened.

When he put down the phone, he stared out the windshield and said, “A woman walking her dog found the body on June 3.”

Spend enough time at the dinner table with my parents, and fun conversation topics like decomp rates come up. I’d done plenty of research of my own, too, and I had an idea of the condition Richard Lundgren’s body would have been in. “Yikes.”

Bobby nodded. “They identified the body from dental records, like Vivienne told you. And, like she told you, Richard Lundgren went missing thirty-three years ago on June 21, 1985.”

“Was that the police department?”

“Yes.”

“And they just told you that stuff?”

“They gave me that information because the Ridge County Sheriff’s Office has a vested interest in any investigations related to Vivienne Carver.”

“Oh.”

“And because Sheriff Acosta called them earlier to tell them I’d be calling.”

“Uh. Oh.” Which meant Bobby had called the sheriff after I’d pitched this little outing to him. “Was she mad?”

“She wasn’t happy. For heaven’s sake, Dash, Vivienne killed two people. She almost killed you. She framed an innocent woman for murder and let her spend her life in prison. And that’s just the stuff we know about. How do you think the sheriff is going to feel when she finds out you’re on a mission to prove Vivienne’s innocence?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m on a mission—”

“The sheriff also told me,” Bobby said over me, “that I don’t have any legal authority in this investigation. And she told me if we get ourselves in a jam, we’re on our own because this isn’t my job, and it’s not part of the deal she worked out with you.”

“And just to be clear—” I braced myself. “—areyoumad?”

“You’re the detective,” he said, still staring out the window. “Figure it out.”

That was a veryun-Bobby-like thing to say.

“Bobby, it’s not about proving Vivienne’s innocence. It’s about the fact that if she didn’t kill her brother, someone else did—and that person shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. And I know what you’re going to say—”

He turned in his seat abruptly and said, “Do you?”

I swallowed. “Uh—”

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