I drove through town, crossed the Little River bridge into Northside, and cruised along Shoreline Drive while the sun was setting, coloring the lake’s horizon a pleasant ombré of magenta and orange. After a few miles, I turned around and headed back across the river, turning away from the Harbor District, with the silhouette of the Devil’s Revenge looming against the sky, and instead headed down Main Street into our downtown area.
Restaurant patios were filling up and music thumped from cruising cars. Downtown was nice in the summer, a less sanitized area of town than the harbor. When I was a teen, I spent a lot of time walking the wide sidewalks that ran up and down the three short blocks containing most of the downtown businesses. Shops. Bars. Cafés. And a two-story brick building on the corner that was beloved by everyone in town.
Bean’s.
Short for Bean’s Trading Post.
Back when Michigan was just swampland, this was one of the first buildings in what would later become Haven Beach, where French Canadian fur traders and members of various Chippawa tribes stopped to do business. They used canoes on the Little River to reach it, much like the Wags had used it to reach our cave. At some point before I was born, the old store was bought by a man named Bean Dooley, who turned it into the greatest corner shopin western Michigan. Everyone who lived in Haven Beach had walked its aisles.
As the sun was setting, I snagged a nearby parking space. A faded sign—trading post—had been painted on the side of the brick during Wyrd Jack’s time and remained to this day. I walked past it and headed inside, into a long, cavernous shop that smelled of caramel corn and hot meat. Depending on how hungry you were, those scents could be magical or disgusting. Right now, I was leaning toward magic.
Massive wooden beams stretched over wide oak floorboards lined with aisles of goods. Being a general store, Bean’s carried just about anything you could want and a few things you didn’t. Needed milk and bread? They had it. Magazines from around the world? Yep. Discount ammo and stinky fish bait? That was at the back counter, near the clothing section—which was basically a lot of camo and weird novelty tees.
Dozens of patrons wandered the aisles while Prince played over loudspeakers. Navigating around all the chatting townspeople who were clogging up the aisles wasn’t easy. I spotted faces I vaguely knew—faces that once knew Nana—and had a moment of panic when one of them waved at me. I didn’t want to make polite conversation with everyone in town.Yes, I’ve been away at college. Yes, I’ve been managing all right since Nana died. No, I don’t need anything, but if you keep poking my wounds, I’m going to have a breakdown in the middle of the potato chip aisle, and no one wants to see that.
Head down, I avoided the stares and made a beeline for the hot-meat scent, which was wafting from a countertop glass food display case filled with three shelves of freshly baked goodness and a sign that read:hot dutch sausage rolls. Basically, puffpastry pies stuffed with sausage and half-melted cheese that would burn the roof of your mouth if you weren’t patient, the hallmark of any good food.
I stood in line, continuing to avoid people’s eyes, and purchased a kielbasa-and-cheddar sausage roll. It was wrapped in wax paper and smelled like heaven—if heaven smelled of home and memories, anyway—but was way too hot to eat. I browsed a nearby selection of imported candy and nearly dropped my sausage roll when a female voice squealed in my ear.
I swung around to find myself face-to-face with Benny’s girlfriend, Lulu.
“Hey, you!” she said cheerfully, pushing a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses up her nose and then running a finger along the front edges of her blond pixie cut to smooth it in place. She clutched a Saint Laurent handbag worth thousands that was popular on campus back at Harvard. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised; she was dating Benny the Rich Boy, after all.
“Small world, huh?” she said. “If you need the bathroom key, be prepared to wait. If it doesn’t open up soon, I’m going to have to drive over to McDonald’s and use theirs.”
“Good luck,” I said, and started to leave, but she wasn’t having it.
“How the heck are you? Ankle healed up?”
“Little sore but okay.”
She glanced around to see if anyone was listening before moving closer and whispering, “Any breakthroughs regarding the locket? Benny told me already. So exciting!”
Are you fucking kidding me? Benny, I’m going to beat your ass.
“Uh, no. Nothing. Might be a dead end,” I told her.
“You can’t give up that easily! Do you have it with you? I couldtake it back with me to the Moraleses’ house, and Benito and I could have a crack at it.”
Over my dead body. “I don’t have it on me, Lulu. And it’s probably safer to keep it in one spot.”
“At your beach cottage?”
NowIwas getting paranoid, glancing over my shoulder when a couple of high school boys ducked into the aisle. “It’s in a safe place,” I whispered.
The two boys squeezed past, hunting candy. When they did, I glanced down the aisle at the man striding toward us in jeans and big black boots.
My chest tightened. Pretty Paul Vanderburg.
He spotted me and did a double take, hesitating mid-step as he ran a hand over his blond buzz cut. For a long moment, it was as if neither one of us wanted to run into each other, but he finally dropped his eyes and continued walking toward me.
“Malone,” he said, lifting his chin in greeting.
I’d forgotten just how badly his face was scarred, looking at it up close and personal. It made him look more menacing than he already was. At least he was currently wearing a shirt—unlike the last time I’d seen him, at that bonfire with Seb. I gave him a tight smile and tried not to stare at his face. But then he asked me the most bizarre question.
“Hey. Is Jaz with you?”
Now I looked at his face again, puzzled. “Jaz... ? Jazmine Neely?” Why on earth would he be looking for her? They weren’t on speaking terms. Heck, if Seb was being honest about the current state of his relationship with Paul, thennoneof the Wags should be on speaking terms with Paul Vanderburg. Onprinciple, at the very least. He lured Seb away from us. He was the enemy.
