Page 69 of The Game Is Afoot

“Um, okay, well, I think I’m going to go for, just, a little casual jog—”

“I know because the police talked to me, too. Of course they talked to me, too! Probably before even your husband.”

“Ex-husband.”Because, yeah, it’s important to argue semantics with a possible murderer right now, Mavis.

“It’s common knowledge that I hated Cole. They came and asked me all kinds of questions, and told me about the sodium nitrite on the juice box. Detective De La Rosa and Detective Berry. But I was cleared. I had nothing to do with that man’s death.”

“You were cleared?”

“Yes. I didn’t go anywhere near his drink that day. And it’s pretty well-documented in all the videos from angry parents whose kids’ games I interrupted.” He crosses his arms and narrows his eyes at me. “They came to talk to mebeforeI saw you on my security camera—which is damn lucky for you, because I could have shown them the footage then. I still could.Youare the one who broke a law here, ma’am.”

Okay, rude, but I guess he has a right to be a tiny bit irritated with me. I invaded his personal space, went through his things, and for what? I’mbehindthe detectives. Am I even finding out anything new, with all this time I’m wasting? What am I doing?

“I’m sorry,” I mumble, and—to my horror—my eyes get a little scratchy and slightly moist, all of my feelings fighting to come to the surface in the most embarrassing way possible. Dom’s hard expression falters, and instead he seems freaked out. Maybe I should just tell him I’m on my period and run away, too, be done with it. But I’m already here now, possibly making a fool of myself, so I might as well get all my loose ends tied up.

“There’s one thing I still don’t get. Why were you so angry about capture the flag?”

“Well, first of all,” he says, jabbing a finger into his palm, “capture the flag doesn’t get the respect it deserves in the athletic community. It’s a complex game that requires strategy, agility,speed—” I must be giving him that tenth-grade-chem glazed look again because he pauses and then smiles sheepishly. His face turns softer, and those aggressive eyebrows look almost…cuddly, like Jellycat plushies. “It’s like you were saying before, Beachwood is changing a lot. People are moving in, making it what they want, and not giving any thought to what was here before. I’m trying to preserve my little corner. I grew up hanging out at Brady with my friends. Some of my best memories are here. Why should Cole get to walk in and claim almost the whole place every Saturday—and charge people for it?”

“You’refrom Beachwood?”

“Yeah, born and raised, right here in this neighborhood. I went to Knoll, Williams Middle—graduated from Beachwood High.”

The same schools as me, but I don’t recognize him. “What year did you graduate?”

“Two thousand five.”

“Okay, so we didn’t overlap. But you probably know Ebony then? Ebony Jemison?”

“Yes, I know Ebony! Her mom, Ms. Bernadette, used to keep me some nights in elementary school because my mom worked third shift at the hospital.”

“We must have run into each other at some point then. Did you go to her Labor Day block parties?”

“Every year! Including the one where she did the Cha-Cha Slide right into the Johnsons’ kiddy pool.”

We both crack up at the same time, remembering the “take it back now y’all” that’ll live in infamy, and it’s like I’ve blinked and there’s a whole new person standing here in front of me. His weirdly aggressive love for capture the flag seems a little less weird now that I know the context. Because it’s made me angry, too, how much our neighborhood is changing. It makes sensethat he would be angry at Cole for laying claim to Brady Park, another person coming to our city and using their money to gobble up what used to belong to us.

Could that anger be enough to kill someone, though? I don’t think so, but I can never rule anyone out completely, right? Not until I know for sure…I need to be smart here. I got so laser focused on Trisha last time and ended up missing what was right in front of my face. Am I doing that now? Just because he’s from Beachwood and loves it here like me doesn’t mean he’s not capable of lying to me—of hurting someone in a misguided expression of that love.

But the detectives cleared him. Well, hesaysthey cleared him. He could be lying to me. And it’s not like I can just call Detective De La Rosa and ask for a quick fact-check, with how terribly that last call went. All I’ve got is my own read on him, and I feel pretty sure, in my gut, that he’s telling the truth. Maybe I can throw one more thing out there, though, to see how it lands…

“What about the tetra…tetrahi…tetrahello…”

“Are you okay? Should I call someone?”

“The Visine?!What do you know about the Visine?”

He tilts his head to the side at that, and his Jack McCoy / Jellycat eyebrows furrow. “I’m not following.” There’s also a little bit of wariness there…of me? Which I guess makes sense, considering I broke into his office, blabbered on about my murder-solving hobby, and now just yelled the name of some eye drops at him.

But what I don’t see is recognition. At all. He doesn’t seem to know there was a second poison that killed Cole. And if he’s lying to me—well, he’s good.

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. Okay, well, I’m going togo. Sorry about the whole breaking and entering thing. I promise it won’t happen again. Um, so, bye—”

“Listen,” he says, holding his hands up. “You don’t gotta trust me. I get it.” I’m not sure how we got tometrustinghim, because, again, the whole breaking and entering thing—but I’ll take it. “There’s something else I didn’t tell the detectives, though.”

My stomach drops. Where’s the glittery Crocs guy? Is he still in eyesight?

“I know, I know. I should have,” Dom rushes to explain. “It’s just that Coach Cole was an asshole, and he probably deserved this lady yelling at him. I didn’t want to bring trouble her way for somethingheprobably started.”

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