Mystery Magnet by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin and Blount
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

A long night. A long, long, terrible night.

It went about like you’d expect. Deputies came. I was put in the back of a patrol car. More deputies came. A deputy took an initial statement. Even more deputies came. And then the sheriff came.

I kept my discovery of the bracelet to myself. I still wasn’t ready to think about what that meant.

Deputy Bobby didn’t come. In the intervals when I wasn’t being questioned, I told myself it was because he was off duty. He probably didn’t even know. And, of course, he wasn’t really my friend—he was someone I knew, one of the few people I knew, and he’d been kind enough to give me a ride home.

I had to give my statement multiple times, and the sheriff had a lot of questions. I answered them as best I could, giving an accounting of my day, everything from when I’d woken up to when I’d found Mr. Huggins. I had witnesses who could place me at the library and at the Otter Slide, but I wasn’t sure about the rest of the day. When the questioning became more intensive—when the sheriff wanted to take me to the station, when he wanted to talk about the inheritance—I asked if I was under arrest and said the magic word: lawyer. And then I did it again. And then again. And finally, after saying a lot of words you can’t say on TV, the sheriff told me to get out of there because I made him sick, etc.

I checked my room for secret passages, moved my impromptu barricades into place, and fell asleep as soon as I hit the mattress.

When I woke, sunlight was streaming in through the window, and for a moment, I thought I was back home. It would be another bright, beautiful (hot) summer day in Providence. Hugo would already be up. He’d already have exercised. He’d already have done his writing. He’d have coffee for me, and he’d want to talk while I ate a Pop-Tart (okay, two—sue me). For a moment, it was all real. And I thought maybe I’d been wrong. I thought maybe I’d been happy.

Then reality came back to me in the form of a massive, canopied bed and what I thought might be a Chippendale tallboy pushed up against the bathroom door. Vivienne’s murder. The scene with Pippi. That weird, ugly end to my conversation with Deputy Bobby. Poor Mr. Huggins. And then the hours of interrogation by the deputies and sheriff. A dull throbbing at the back of my head suggested I sleep for approximately another week, but somehow I got myself out of bed. I moved the furniture back into place. And then I got ready for the day.

After a shower and some vigorous toothbrushing (teethbrushing?), I felt marginally human again. I found a Fortnite tee with a provocative banana on it, and then—because Dashiell Dawson Dane eventually figures things out, no matter how stupid he may seem to the untrained eye—I checked the weather.

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