No. No. No.
I jumped and spun around.
Behind me stood Rhonda Cooke and another police officer I didn’t recognize.
My mug clunked to the wooden planks of the porch floor. For a second there, I thought I was about to put my hands up, but I caught myself.
“Rhonda, I—” I fumbled around for words, but I couldn’t seem to find any that fit. I settled on, “Could we have just one more minute here? Alone?”
“Sure. Sure,” she said with a nod, backing away.
The other officer cleared his throat.
Rhonda turned to look at him.
He raised his eyebrows.
“What’s the matter with you?” she muttered.
He raised them even higher.
“What—oh,” Rhonda said, straightening. Then she pointed a finger at him. “Wait, you don’t get to scold me. You’re the one who uploaded Shelley’s booking photo to Hot Jugs and Mugs.”
“She made me!” the young officer said, cheeks going red. “She said she’d tell her father not to serve me at the Dawg anymore if I didn’t do it. Where else am I going to eat? Besides … she was really scary that day.”
“You’re a cop, Amos!” Rhonda said, huffing a breath. “Now, Grady’s all professional this and professional tha—” She looked over her shoulder as though she had just remembered we were still there. “Right,” she said, hiking her gun belt. “Sorry, Erica. He’s right. This isn’t a social call. We don’t want to do this.” I closed my eyes as she climbed the porch steps. “Twyla Williams, you’re going to have to come with us.”
“You arresting me?”
My eyes flew open to see the junior officer stepping forward with cuffs.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shouted. “Put those away!”
Rhonda waved him down as she moved to help Tweety get out of her chair. “Nobody’s getting arrested … yet.”
“I want to come with her,” Kit Kat said.
“Me too,” I added.
“You can come, Kit Kat,” Rhonda said. “But Erica, I’m sorry. You need to stay here. Grady specifically said…”
“What specifically did Grady say, Rhonda?”
“Do not bring Erica back here,” she said in a mock-Grady voice. “He just radioed that in.” She looked to the other officer for backup. He nodded.
I shook my head.
“But you know we could always meet up for beers later at the Dawg. The high school reunion is—” She stopped herself when she caught my expression. “Maybe now’s not the time.” She looked at me and pinched her lips together, making her cheeks dimple before adding, “We’ll take good care of her, Erica.”
I felt Kit Kat move up beside me. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said, patting me halfheartedly on the back. “I think both Tweety and I always knew it would come to this.”
I felt my jaw drop. I wanted to shout, What the hell does that mean? but I somehow managed to keep my mouth shut.
She turned from me to follow the others down the stairs.
I stood there for a moment in shock before finally managing to pull out my phone. I pressed a number and brought it to my ear. After six rings, someone answered.
“You need to get over here right now.”
The voice on the other end prattled back at me.
“Freddie, I really don’t care what you do with your cotton candy. Get over here. Now.” I exhaled a shaky breath. “It’s an emergency.”
* * *
I stood waiting on the dock for Freddie, gripping my insulated windbreaker tightly around my body. The cold was coming in. It was a damp cold too. Rain was on its way. Lots of it. Not that any of that really mattered …
Grady had brought Tweety in. Tweety!
But then again, given the conversation I’d had with the twins … maybe it was the right move.
No. No. Tweety was not a murderer. I didn’t know why the twins had said what they had, but that didn’t change what I knew to be true. Tweety was not a murderer.
I rubbed my arms. Where the hell was Freddie?
Then I heard it. Music. Actually, not even music. Bass. The kind of bass that could make the lake ripple. Wow, somebody had spent a pretty penny on that sound system.
Then in the distance, I saw a blur—a neon-yellow blur—tearing around the bend of land.
Holy crap.
I squinted my eyes to get a better view, but it was moving fast. Impossibly fast. My God, I wouldn’t have been surprised if that sucker could break the sound barrier.
Just then the boat swung course … bearing down on the island.
“Freddie!” I screamed, holding out my hands. “Slow down!”
There was no way he could hear me. But he didn’t need to. He was already turning in a wide loop in front of my dock. I took a few steps back, afraid that the wake might take me out.
The loud roar of the engine cut out, and I could finally hear the music from the booming sound system. Yup, figured. It was the theme song from Miami Vice.
I sighed.
Freddie pulled up as close as he could to my dock in neutral without grounding himself. He smiled at me from underneath his aviator sunglasses.
“Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”
I looked at the long, sleek rod of a boat, shaking my head. I blew air out from my lips.
“I call her Lightning.”
“Seems fitting.”
He sighed happily then dropped the smile. “Is there something you’d like to say to me?”
I shook my head. We so didn’t have time for this.
“I think it starts with an I’m and ends with a sorry,” he called out across the water. “But I’ll also accept a you were right and I was wrong.”
A cold drop of rain hit my nose. “Grady brought Tweety in for questioning. I think they might even be planning on … arresting her.”
He leaned closer to the edge of his boat and cocked his ear in my direction. “What? I can’t hear you. My boat’s really loud, and my ears are still buzzing.”
I inhaled deeply and shouted, “Grady took Tweety in!”
Freddie did an almost comical double take. “What the—”
“I know.”
“He can’t seriously think that Tweety killed Mr. Masterson?”
I threw my hands in the air.
“I swear, Erica, he may look good in the uniform, but sometimes … bag of hammers. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Freddie,” I said with as much warning as I could. “Not now.”
He put his hands up in submission. “Seriously, though, Tweety a murderer? I mean, a brawler? Okay. A thug? Most definitely. But a murderer?”
More icy drops hit my cheeks. We both always knew it would come to this. I shook my head, trying to shake the words away … forever.
Freddie paused a moment then said, “So, we doing this thing?” He had his hands planted on his hips, but his face was turned to the treetops as though he was seriously considering the implications of what were we about to do. He held the pose just a moment before he had to grip the boat’s edge for balance.
“We’re doing this thing.”
“Then let’s go.”
I stared at him a moment.
“Get in the boat,” he prodded.
“How?” I shouted. “Fly? Freddie, that thing’s a monster. Can you beam me over or something?”
“Hater.”