“Clyde, I can’t believe they’re doing this.” She turned toward me and gripped my arms. “Can you talk to Mac? Convince him he has the wrong person. Dylan could never have done what they’re saying.”
Mac and I thought we were being very discreet, but I wondered yet again whether Diana knew we were together. She seemed to always know what was going on in my life, whether I told her or not.
I led her to the living room and sat next to her on the couch. “What are they saying?”
“Charla said she’s arresting him for Rafe’s murder.” Her voice broke and tears overflowed. She took a shaky breath. “I don’t believe it.”
I patted her back and reached for a box of tissues sitting on the coffee table. “Okay, let’s go down to the station and be sure he gets a lawyer. Do you feel up to this?”
She nodded and clutched the tissue box to her chest.
13
Diana and I tailed the cruiser down the hill and into town. It pulled up in front of the police station, which was tucked between a bookstore and a palm reader. We found a parking spot not far away—impossible during the tourist season but there were only a few die-hard visitors between the fall festival and Thanksgiving. Even without the siren, a small crowd of locals had formed to watch Dylan walk into the station, his hands cuffed behind his back. It would be about ten minutes before all of Crystal Haven knew Dylan had been arrested.
We followed Charla down the hall toward the one cell, which was more like a low-priced hotel room than any prison I had ever seen. The walls were clean and graffiti-free, and I knew the food came from Alex’s place. Ann Arbor had been a much bigger city with a more active and noisy prison facility.
She turned and held her hand up. “You two can wait in the lobby or come back later. We have to get him in the system and finish the paperwork. It could be a couple of hours.”
Diana released a sob when Charla said “in the system.” I took her hand and led her back out to the front. Dylan had not said a word the entire time. Maybe he would be okay if he just kept his mouth shut.
“We need to find a lawyer, Diana. Do you want to go over to Rupert Worthington’s office and see if he can take the case or recommend someone?”
Her eyes were glazed but she nodded. I knew she’d been keeping herself in check until the festival was over. She had said she was going home from the ceremony the evening before to have a bath and a good cry. She’d need more than that to get through this ordeal.
*
We sat on a bench outside the police station to let Diana adjust to the circumstances. When she was no longer crying in earnest, we walked down the street in the direction of Rupert Worthington’s office. He’d been the one to tell me about my inheritance last summer. It was this bequest that had allowed me to give up my job as a dog walker and prompted me to abandon my plans to return to Ann Arbor and my old job as a police officer. He’d informed me I had inherited a house and cash but I had to live in Crystal Haven for a year in order to accept the inheritance—an unusual requirement of the will, and after some thought and prodding from my family, I had accepted. Of course, the money wouldn’t last forever and my future career was a nagging concern.
I doubted Mr. Worthington took criminal cases but hoped he could put us in touch with someone who did. His office was near the marina, empty now and quiet. I loved the clanging of the boat riggings and the squeals of seagulls in the summer. A few leaves skittered across our path on the nearly deserted street.
The air had turned significantly cooler in the last couple of days and I was glad to step inside the law office. Diana shivered, from cold or shock I couldn’t tell. We entered the office to the tinkling of a bell over the door.
“May I help you young ladies?” Rupert’s rumpled look was particularly bad that day. His shirt was partly untucked, his hair stood up in small spikes around his head, and he had loosened his tie to the point that he should have just removed it.
Diana glanced quickly at me, concern in her eyes.
“Mr. Worthington, perhaps you remember me from the summer?”
He took off his reading glasses and examined me. “Oh yes. Clytemnestra Fortune. How are you enjoying your new house?” He stepped forward to shake my hand.
I took his hand. “Please call me Clyde. Everyone does.” Only a few people from my childhood still called me Clytemnestra and now that I had moved back, I was systematically working to stamp out all use of that name. It had been my mother’s misguided attempt at giving her daughters unique and meaningful names. Her name was Rose; her favorite roses were orange. Both Clytemnestra and Grace are orange roses. Dad must have lobbied on my sister’s behalf. She got the normal name. Nine years later, he gave in and I have to live with it.