Fenway walked to the HR department at City Hall as soon as she arrived at work on Friday morning. She’d said a tearful goodbye with McVie as he’d driven off in his Highlander to the storage facility to get a few boxes of his essentials, including an air mattress and bare-bones kitchen items. He’d have a long way to go before stopping in Las Vegas for the night.
Her head was awash with memories of their last kiss, with the lingering smell of his cologne on her skin, with the sun reflecting sometimes painfully off the wet streets. Sixth Street was no longer flooded. The power was still out in a few areas, but the emergency was over. And fortunately, no casualties—at least, not in Dominguez County.
Entering Suite 130, she spied Debbie Farzan at her desk and caught her eye. Debbie smiled, rose halfway out of her seat, and motioned Fenway over.
“Hi, Debbie,” Fenway began. “I wondered—”
“I heard about the close call last night.” Debbie’s voice brimmed with excitement.
“What?”
“The big oak tree falling on the police car!” Debbie’s hands fluttered. “You were so lucky you weren’t inside! You could have been killed.”
“Oh—” Fenway hadn’t given it a second thought. Nor, apparently, a first thought. “I guess it didn’t seem so dangerous at the time.”
“Still,” Debbie said, “I’m not sure I could do what you and Sergeant Roubideaux do.”
“I appreciate that,” Fenway said, taking a seat in a guest chair in front of Debbie’s desk. “Now, let’s talk about replacing Sergeant Trevino.”
Debbie smiled. “I don’t know what you said to Sheriff Donnelly, but she removed the insubordination write-up on Deputy Salvador.”
“So, what do I need to do to get Celeste an offer letter?” Fenway asked.
“I was able to import the interview notes from the three candidates.” Debbie arched an eyebrow at Fenway. “Good questions, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Fenway shook her head. “I guess I’m not sure what I need to do next.”
Debbie turned back to the screen. “I got your email address corrected in the system, and I sent you the hiring system login credentials. You have thirty-one external candidates to evaluate based on their applications and résumés, but if you don’t like a candidate, simply reject their application. If you reject all but Deputy Salvador, we could have an offer letter out to her by Monday.” Debbie winked. “Maybe this afternoon, if you hurry.”
She grinned. This was the best news about the hiring process she’d heard all week. “With my latest investigation closed,” Fenway said, “I can give this top priority.”
“I get notified when applications get approved and denied,” Debbie said. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”
Fenway stood. “You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.”
“Couldn’t have done it without the sheriff removing her write-up,” Debbie said, “so I think you should thank yourself.”
Fenway nodded, her insides roiling. What had she done? Or more importantly, perhaps, what had Sheriff Donnelly thought she had done?
She exited Suite 130 and walked down the corridor in a daze. She stood for a moment in the City Hall lobby.
Did she want to know?
Let sleeping dogs lie, right?
Fenway paced in a circle. She should go back to her office, go onto the online application tool, approve Deputy Salvador for the position, and be done with it.
But there was still a foul taste in her mouth.
She shook her head, walked out of City Hall, and turned toward the sheriff’s office.
“Coroner Stevenson!” Sheriff Donnelly said, pushing herself up from her desk.
Fenway stood in her open doorway. “I heard you rescinded your insubordination write-up on Deputy Salvador.”
“I did, I did,” Donnelly said. “It seemed silly when we don’t have an issue with overtime anymore. And like you said, it was a win-win situation.”
Fenway nodded, hesitated, then stepped into Donnelly’s office and closed the door.
“What’s going on?” Donnelly said.
“You said yesterday that you needed something from me,” Fenway said. “And I had no idea what that was.”
Donnelly smiled, but her eyes turned down at the corners with suspicion. “You know the pressure we’re all under to keep the county safe. You got my text?”
“I did.”
“Great. Then it’s all settled.”
“I just—” Fenway began. How should she continue this conversation? “I wanted to understand what—” She almost said what settled it. But that might put the sheriff on the defensive.
Donnelly chuckled and sat back down. “I was happy to see that you made an arrest in the murder investigations.”
“Sure,” Fenway said.
Sheriff Donnelly stared at Fenway for a moment. Fenway stared back, discomfort creeping up her spine, then broke eye contact with the sheriff. Donnelly put her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers. “I thought you’d be happy I removed all the obstacles for you hiring Celeste. We’ll be sad to lose her, of course, but it’s clear that she’s too motivated to stay at the rank of deputy.”
Fenway blinked. Donnelly wouldn’t give her any clue about what it might be. Fenway had been silly to expect an explanation, right? But she didn’t think that McVie’s handpicked successor would be involved with anything shady.
She couldn’t let it show on her face.
Fenway smiled. “Thanks for your time, Sheriff. Glad it all worked out.”
“Take care,” Donnelly said as Fenway opened the door.
A polite farewell—or a warning?
As Fenway walked back across the rain-slicked street and through the plaza, she racked her brain. What was Sheriff Donnelly hiding?
What made Donnelly so happy? The arrest that Fenway had made? Or the exculpatory evidence Fenway had found that had freed Miranda Duchy?
Hmm—maybe that was it. Perhaps Gretchen Donnelly and Miranda Duchy were friends. Were they former sorority sisters or business partners? Fenway would need to look into that.
She rubbed her forehead. But maybe she’d get Piper to investigate a possible connection between Duchy and Donnelly. Something outside the walls of the county government where Donnelly couldn’t track the searches that were made.
The knot in her stomach returned. Mistrusting Sheriff Donnelly felt terrible.
She entered the coroner’s suite.
“Congratulations, Fenway!” Sarah said from behind her counter.
Fenway managed a smile. “Thanks.”
“My mother would be worried sick to hear about you speeding on that scooter in the middle of a tropical storm.”
“Tropical depression,” Fenway said, grinning. “Don’t make it sound cooler than it was.”
“It was pretty cool.”
Dez stood. “Everything okay, Fenway?”
“Great.”
“So—about Mark’s role—”
“On it right now,” Fenway said. “Just worked all the kinks out with HR. We’ll have an offer letter this afternoon if I can get everything done.”
“About time.”
“I agree.” Fenway walked into her office, shut the door, and took a deep breath. She sat in front of her keyboard, signed into her computer, and launched the hiring manager app on the intranet.
Her phone dinged. A text from McVie.
Fenway texted back.
She found the login information that Debbie had emailed her, and she spent the next two hours going through all the applications. She approved Deputy Salvador’s first. Some applicants were terrible, but she read a couple of decent applications: one from San Miguelito and one from San Diego. Not as good as Deputy Salvador, though. She reread the application of Brian Callahan and confirmed that he wasn’t right for the job either.
Fenway finally hit Submit on the last application.
She glanced at the clock in the bottom right corner of her screen. 11:15. She had plenty of time to find Deputy Salvador and tell her the good news.
“You what?” Fenway said.
Deputy Salvador folded her arms and leaned back in her desk chair. “I tried to tell you, Coroner.”
“Bureaucracy doesn’t move that fast.” HR didn’t have the right email, and Fenway hadn’t even known about the second hiring system. But her stomach dropped. She should have been more on top of things.
“I understand,” Salvador said through gritted teeth. “So when I got that write-up, I thought it killed my chances in Estancia.” She rested her elbows on her desk. “I was waiting to respond to my other job offer until I found out whether I’d get Sergeant Trevino’s job. After that? Called and accepted. They emailed the offer letter, and I signed it electronically.”
Fenway closed her eyes. “You don’t know what I had to do to get the insubordination report removed from your record.” The whole truth: Fenway herself had no idea what she had to do. But she knew whatever it was, she had done it.
Or wait a second: maybe she hadn’t.
“When did you give your resignation letter to Sheriff Donnelly?” Fenway asked.
“About thirty minutes ago.”
“Two weeks’ notice?”
Salvador shrugged and pointed to the box on her desk. “Donnelly wants today to be my last day.”
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t tell her where I’m going.”
“Where are you going?”
Salvador shook her head. “I’m sorry, Coroner, but I’m not saying. That insubordination write-up put a bad taste in my mouth. If I say anything, I’m afraid it’ll get back to Donnelly and she’ll poison the well at my new job.”
Fenway closed her eyes. Anger coursed through her veins. But anger at herself more than anyone else.
And she’d just rejected the other applicants in the system.
“Okay,” Fenway said. She stuck out her hand. “Congratulations on making detective, and I wish you luck—wherever you’re going.”
Salvador stood and shook Fenway’s hand, staring her in the eye.
“If you don’t like it there,” Fenway continued, “give me a call.”
“Will do.” Salvador’s eyes told a different story. Maybe she didn’t want to be anywhere near a sheriff like Donnelly or a coroner who couldn’t figure out how to navigate the hiring system. It had taken almost six months to replace Rachel with Sarah, after all.
“I’m sorry I missed out on the opportunity to hire you,” Fenway said.
“Me too.”
Fenway turned and walked out of Salvador’s cubicle.
McVie was already seated at a high-top table when Fenway walked into Dos Milagros. Two drinks sat on the table.
“Hi, Craig.” She pulled him off his stool, to his feet, and embraced him in a hug.
“I’m sorry I’m leaving.”
“It’s not that.” Fenway squeezed him tighter. “Well, yes, it is that. But it’s also that I just found out Celeste accepted another job. She won’t be replacing Mark.”
“What? Where is she going?”
“She won’t tell me—and I don’t blame her.” Fenway broke from his embrace and sat on the other side of the high-top from McVie. “Donnelly tried to screw with her career, so she doesn’t want Donnelly calling her new job and, uh, ‘poisoning the well,’ is how she put it.”
McVie frowned. “Sounds like I really messed things up when I recommended Donnelly for sheriff.”
Fenway shrugged. “Not sure how you could have known.”
He shook his head. “She’s smart. Detail-oriented. Saw things during investigations no one else would see—you know, not just the evidence that was there, but the evidence that wasn’t. Know what I mean?”
Fenway furrowed her brow.
“For example, if she was investigating a robbery, she’d look for things that the suspects did—and also things that the suspects didn’t do. One suspect called his grandmother every morning at nine. The day after his grandmother’s house got burgled? No call. Gretchen jumped all over that.”
“Like the guard dog who doesn’t bark at the intruder.”
“Exactly.”
Fenway blinked. Had she really missed something so obvious? “Hang on.” She took out her phone and pulled up the phone location information. There was Hope’s phone—the one George used—at Miranda Duchy’s cabin on Monday night, when he’d confessed to driving the Corvette there.
But George’s phone pinged around Prospero Park on Tuesday night and Wednesday. Nothing near Miranda’s cabin—or near Mathis’s corpse.
She grimaced. George Pope had killed Seth Cahill. He hadn’t killed Mathis. But in order to keep his paternity of Scott Behrens a secret—and the fact that he’d cheated on Hope when he was sixteen—George Pope might plead guilty to a murder he hadn’t committed.
She tapped the screen and brought up her text messages and reread the strange text from the sheriff:
Odd thing to say. Not “solving the case” or “catching the killer,” but instead “solving the two murders.” Fenway felt a knot in her stomach.
Sheriff Donnelly knew George Pope hadn’t killed Mathis Jericho. And Fenway had enabled someone else to take the fall.
What was she going to do?
McVie cleared his throat, snapping Fenway back to the present. “I ordered for you. Two lengua tacos, large horchata.” He tapped the drink on Fenway’s side of the table. “We’re number fourteen.”
Fenway couldn’t tell McVie about her revelation—he was a civilian now. She forced a smile onto her face. “I’m glad I get to see you one more time before you leave.”
“Yeah, I had to grab something from my safe deposit box, and the bank didn’t open till ten. I put the last box in the Highlander about thirty minutes ago. I only have one more important thing to do before I leave. Figured we could have lunch before I do it.”
The woman behind the counter placed two baskets down. “Catorce.”
“That’s us.” Fenway hopped off her stool, walked to the counter, and grabbed the two baskets. Could she even eat with her stomach doing somersaults? Should she get back to the office immediately? She grabbed the tray and turned around.
McVie was in front of her.
Down on one knee.
Holding a diamond ring between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
Fenway blinked and took a half-step backward, almost spilling the baskets of food.
But McVie didn’t notice. “Fenway Stevenson, will you—”