“She will be.” Bruce nodded. “Julie is keeping an eye on her. I thought you’d need a hand processing the scene.”
“You would be correct.” Tessa gestured to the house.
“You’re helping too, Logan?” Bruce asked.
Logan said, “Tessa and I were having lunch when the call came in.”
And Logan would not let her respond to a possible explosion without backup.
“Let’s get busy.” Tessa led the way back into the house.
For the next eight hours, they bagged and tagged evidence. It was nine o’clock by the time they’d finished, and twilight had settled over the street.
“No one lives here, so there’s no need to release the scene just yet.” Tessa sealed the back of the house by stretching crime scene tape over the back door and in front of the porch steps. Except for the basement and the small makeshift camp in the living room, they hadn’t found any evidence that seemed relevant to the murder. But they loaded what they did find in the back of Tessa’s SUV.
“Call me if you need help in the morning.” Bruce headed for his vehicle. He was scheduled to be on patrol until midnight. He wouldn’t report to the station until late afternoon, unless Tessa called him in.
“Don’t forget to get some sleep.” Tessa waved, then glanced at the sky, her mouth tight.
“You should get home to your mom,” Logan said, opening the door of her SUV. “It’s dark.”
“I know,” she said as she slid behind the wheel. Logan rode shotgun. She drove back to the station, where Logan’s Range Rover waited. “Your grandmother is at my house. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“She is pretty awesome.” Logan’s grandmother had raised him and his sister.
Jane knew everything that happened on the island. She ran the Widow’s Knitting and Activist group, an organization that did far more than knit. They kept tabs on the whole community. Since Tessa’s mom had grown ill, the members had taken turns staying with her while Tessa worked.
Tessa and Logan unloaded the evidence and logged it in. Tessa stored it in a locked cabinet in the back of the station. Of all the items they’d removed from the house, only the backpack and sleeping bag seemed directly related to the case, but better to have too much evidence than too little.
“I’m available tonight,” Logan said. “If you need help. I could bring a pizza.”
She shook her head. “Thanks, but if Mom is quiet tonight, I’m going right to bed.” Her small smile was sad. Her mother suffered from dementia. Nights could be bad, and Tessa shouldered all the responsibility.
He kissed her goodbye, then drove back to his cabin at the edge of the state park. He stripped on the front porch and left his foul-smelling clothes outside before heading immediately into the shower. He scrubbed down three times.
He wished he could be there to help her. Tessa was stubbornly independent, but despite the fact that she lived with her mother and teenage sister, when she was at home, emotionally, she was alone.
3
Pushing the murder out of her mind, Tessa drove home, parked, and stepped out of her vehicle. All she wanted was a shower. Maybe two showers and an extra shampoo. A few clucks drew her to the side yard, where her mother’s chickens roamed their wire enclosure.
She sighed. Her teenage half sister, Patience, was supposed to lock up the animals before dark. Raccoons, foxes, and loose dogs were all threats to the chickens.
Tessa crossed the grass in the side yard. Carefully, she opened the wood-and-wire door and stepped inside. A small body rushed at her, wings flapping.
Damn.
Killer Hen.
Tessa rose onto the balls of her feet, ready to dodge the attack. “If my mother didn’t love you, I would change your name to Sunday Dinner.”
The chicken was not impressed, but she stopped a few feet short of her target. The hen turned, ruffled her feathers, and ran into the coop.
Tessa grimaced. “I smell too bad for a chicken.”
She locked up the chickens and went in the side door of the house. She’d texted her sister earlier, and Patience had put Tessa’s robe in the mudroom. Tessa left her shoes outside on the stoop, undressed, and tossed her clothes immediately into the washing machine and started it. She might have to wash everything twice to get the smell out. Wearing her robe, she carried her duty belt and badge into the house.
She’d expected to find Logan’s grandmother in her house. Instead, his sister, Cate, sat in the living room, reading a book. Cate and Tessa had been friends since childhood.
Cate said, “I sent my grandmother home.”
“Thanks. I hate to keep her out so late.”
“It’s not a problem. We all pitch in.” Cate closed her book. “I’m sorry you had to deal with another dead body today.”
“We do seem to be knee deep in them.” Tessa had investigated several murders in the past year.
Cate stood and stretched. “My grandmother left a plate of food in the fridge. I’ll leave you to your evening.”
“Thanks again, Cate.”
“We’re all here for you.” Cate let herself out. Tessa locked the front door before going into her bathroom. After a long hot shower, she dressed in an old T-shirt and cotton pajama bottoms. Barefoot, she went into the kitchen. Her sister sat at the table, eating a bowl of ice cream.
Patience pointed to the microwave. “I warmed up your dinner.”
Tessa swallowed the reprimand for not closing up the chicken coop for the night. Patience did her best.
“Thanks.” She carried the plate to the table and sat with her sister. “How was your day?”
“Not great but better than yours,” Patience said.
Tessa scooped mashed potatoes and peas onto her fork. “What wasn’t great about it?”
“Mom was talking to her aunt Bea again.”
Aunt Bea had been dead for twenty years.
Tessa ate a bite of fried chicken and chewed it thoughtfully. “I’m sorry about Mom. I know it’s hard on you. It’s hard on everyone.”
Patience sighed. “Sometimes I wish she wasn’t living here, and then I feel really bad. It’s wrong to think that, isn’t it?”
Tessa lowered her fork, her appetite waning. “There are times when I think it too. The truth is we won’t be able to keep her here forever. At some point, she’s going to be more than we can handle. We’ll have to move her into a facility.”
Patience frowned. At sixteen, she’d been forced to grow up fast. “Savannah’s grandmother is in a nursing home. It sounds really horrible.”
Tessa pushed back her plate and lowered her voice. “There are no good choices for people with dementia.”
Patience swiped a finger under her eye. “I know. But it sucks.”
“It really does,” Tessa agreed.
“I’m going to bed.” Patience rinsed her bowl and put it in the dishwasher. “Night.”
“Good night.” Tessa forced herself to finish her dinner; then she went to bed. Exhausted, she fell asleep a minute after closing her eyes.
Tessa woke in the dark, her heart racing. A digital bell dinged, signaling that one of the exterior doors had been opened. When her mother had started wandering, Logan had installed alarms on Tessa’s doors. She leaped from her bed and ran from her room.