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“Sure. I’ll send the files as soon as I get back to the station.”
Kelly brought two steaming mugs and a dewy glass, asked if they needed anything else, and left. They stopped talking. Jeremy added a sugar packet and stirred his iced tea. Jen sipped her coffee and closed her eyes. “Mmm. Perfect.”
That inspired Mason to taste his own. It was so good he knew he was going to bring Rachel back. Nobody appreciated a great cup of coffee quite the way his future bride did.
“Was that it? That’s all you wanted to talk to me about?” Detective Scott was fitting a lid onto her to-go cup.
“Other than…” Mason lowered his voice. “You were the detective in charge of the case. Who did you like for the crime?”
“Shit, we didn’t have a crime. No body, at least.” She took a deep breath. “This is the one that gets to me. I knew Eva, you know?”
“I didn’t know that, no.”
“Yeah.” She sipped coffee, set the mug back down. “I’m the one who introduced her to Paul.” A woman walked by on the street with a dustmop dog on a leash, and while the little dog took eight steps to every one of the woman’s, they were still in sync, somehow. “We were in high school together. Not really friends then, but later we were the only two locals at Skidmore, so we hung out.” She shook her head slowly, her eyes fixed on the cup. “I should’ve got him by now.”
“Him,” Mason repeated, not like a question.
She shrugged one shoulder. “The husband,” she said. “Alibi that’s hard to beat, though. He was at an art expo, on camera. He uh, makes metal art. Birds with flapping wings, that kind of thing.”
“Got you.”
She shrugged and got to her feet. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind a fresh set of eyes on this thing, though. Especially now that it’s all been stirred up again.” She took another big sip. “And with that, I’m out. This was supposed to be my weekend off. I’m going to the beach.” She gave a deep nod. “Gentlemen.” And then she left.
* * *
JEN SCOTT
Jen Scott carried her cooler in one hand, her portable beach chair in the other, and her towel around her neck as she waded out into the surf, around the tip of the boulder, and then back in again on the other side. This was her secret beach within a horseshoe of rocks, only a hundred and fifty feet from the road.
She wondered if anyone else knew it was there. They must, right? She’d never seen anyone else there, though. Eva had known about it. She was the one who’d told Jen about it. It seemed a good place to be, right then. With the anniversary. Ten years. God.
Life was good. Lonely, but good. Her two girls were grown, and not too far away for weekend visits. Her ex was on the west coast trying to become a movie star— his version of a midlife crisis. And she was here, doing her job and watching the waves roll in from a little boulder cove.
It was like a hiding place from the world. Within the boulders, the stress of being a cop in a tourist town where every decision must be weighed against its economic impact, and where every citizen had been recently reminded of the case she’d never solved.
None of this was how she’d have preferred it, but Saratoga Springs was where she wanted to be. She loved it there. She’d never leave.
There were no houses near this spot. The road curved very close, but the boulders blocked its noise.
She sloshed inland once she got past the boulder, then set up her chair while her eyes adjusted, and wrinkled her nose. A fish must’ve washed up. She unfolded the little beach chair and set it in the sand that was still mostly busted-up seashells if you walked much farther in, and she didn’t generally do that, barefoot.
She sat in the chair. It had a little back support, which she appreciated. She didn’t remember having backaches every night in her thirties.
Damn, that smell was worse.
She took her towel from around her neck and dried her feet and legs. Today, her feet felt cold. She’d have to start bringing socks.
She looked toward the left side of the half circle of rocks now that her eyes had adjusted to the dimness and saw in the surf a fish tail the size of a dolphin’s and… blue.
She started walking toward it, a chill uncoiling from the base of her spine. Shells stabbed her cold feet. Her gaze followed the tail up onto the shore as its blue grew lighter by degrees until it became a human torso, with human breasts, and shoulders, and neck, and a face she knew, even though its skin was mottled and purplish. Other than that, though, she looked perfect. Dead, but perfect. Some of her long, dark curls, entangled with dead fish and crustaceans, had even started to dry.
Jenn whispered. “Eva.”
* * *
CHRISTY
No thirty-three-year-old-male should ever be a billionaire. That was the conclusion Christy reached, once she closed her jaw and realized who the three assholes who’d just walked into the locker room had to be. The owners. The bad boys.
