Maybe Kennedy’s telling the truth. Maybe she’s not. But she just might have given me the key to cracking this whole thing wide open.
CHAPTER 17
The big day is finally here! Fourth of July has arrived in all its red, white, and blue glory, and if I have to see one more inflatable Uncle Sam, I might defect to Canada.
Main Street is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists and locals, the air thick with the smell of funnel cake frying in oil, hot dogs on grills, and approximately three gallons of sunscreen per square foot.
It’s eighty-seven degrees and climbing, the kind of heat that makes asphalt shimmer and popsicles melt faster than kids can eat them.
The parade has been going for twenty minutes—Mackenzie’s shortened version, one hour sharp—and I’m standing curbside with Jasper and Ella, who’s wearing a tiny stars-and-stripes romper and has a red bow pinned in her dark hair that keeps sliding sideways. She looks like a patriotic cherub, if cherubs clapped at fire trucks and tried to grab everything within arm’s reach.
The Cider Cove High School marching band passes byplaying “Stars and Stripes Forever” with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
Huxley and Mackenzie are standing next to us—Hux in a polo shirt already sweating through it, and Mackenzie in white linen that looks so pristine I’m half-afraid to look at it. Gwyneth and Dad have little Mack somewhere in this crowd, probably bribing him with cotton candy to stay still for five consecutive minutes.
A float rolls past advertising Lather and Light, and Macy’s perched on top waving like she’s in the Rose Parade. She’s got a giant rendition of her stink bomb candle displayed front and center—three feet tall, labeledSEASIDE SERENITYin glittering letters—and people are actually cheering for it.
Leave it to my sister to figure out how to capitalize off a disaster.
She spots me and blows a kiss. And, of course, Ella claps like mad for auntie.
“She’s going to be insufferable about this for weeks,” I tell Jasper.
“Your sister or your daughter?”
“Both.”
We share a warm laugh.
Fish, Sherlock, and Biscuit Gravy come barreling through the crowd, weaving between legs and strollers with the determination of small furry race cars with no brakes. Ella leans down and waves at them with pure delight. They wave back—or at least Sherlock does something with his paw that’s close enough.
That float has a giant eagle on it,Biscuit Gravy yelps as the garden club float passes by.
I could take that eagle,Sherlock says, eyeing it like it stole a bone from him.
That’s because it’s made out of paper,Fish points out with a chittering laugh.
Still counts,Sherlock counters with a bark.
Huxley turns to Mackenzie, and his expression shifts to something serious that makes my investigative senses perk up.
“Tell them,” he says.
Mackenzie goes very still. “Tell them what?”
“About the text. Show them the text.”
“Hux, I don’t think?—”
“Show them or I will.”
The temperature seems to drop five degrees despite the brutal sun. I shift Ella to my other hip and she grabs a fistful of my hair.
“What text?” I ask.
Mackenzie sighs—long, defeated, the sound of someone who knows they’ve been caught. She pulls out her phone, scrolls through messages with her thumb, then hands it to me without looking at it.
The text is from Tamsin. Timestamp: 12:47 AM the day she was killed.
