The Sixes

laptop, reading the news online.

“Hey there,” he said when he spotted her, “how’s the patient?”

“On the mend,” she said, smiling.

“Sorry about being so late,” he said. “I had an unexpected issue with a student.”

She crossed the room to meet him. His hair looked a little wilder than usual, obviously ruffled by the wind. He was carrying a bag of groceries, and he set it down in order to shrug off his coat. When she reached him, he took her into his arms and kissed her.

“You look a little better,” he said. “Your black eye is more yellow now than purple. That’s a good sign.”

“And a more flattering color for me, I think,” she said.

“I want to hear all about your day,” he said. “But first let me make a dent with dinner. I’ve got two great steaks I’m going to grill.”

She returned to the sofa and to her laptop. As she read, she could hear Duncan moving between the kitchen area and the deck off the back of the house. After so many nights alone in her little house on Hunter Street, it felt both good and odd not to be all by herself.

“So Glenda called this morning,” Phoebe said when they sat down at the table. “I hope you don’t mind, but we’re busted. She’d gone by my house, and I didn’t feel comfortable lying to her.”

Duncan smiled. “I don’t mind. I mean, there’s no policy against it. And people are going to start seeing us in public. Hell, we may become a fixture at Tony’s.”

So he was thinking of them as a couple, she realized.

“Well, there’s one person who may not like seeing us in public. Val Porter dropped by to see you after you left today. I wouldn’t have answered the door, but she saw me through the window.”

Duncan smirked. “That’s a woman who doesn’t like to take no for an answer. Was she surprised to find you here?”

“Yes—and she even made a snide remark.” Phoebe decided she was too curious not to bring it up.

“About?”

“About how nice it was that your wife left you plenty of money so you could buy this house.”

He shook his head in disgust. “Val kind of redefines the word feminist, doesn’t she?” he said. “Though she wasn’t lying. I did end up with a nice nest egg.”

“That doesn’t seem like anyone’s business but yours,” Phoebe replied. She said it nonchalantly, but she knew she wanted him to elaborate.

“True, but I’m happy to explain it so you know the facts. Allison had a small trust fund from a grandparent. Nothing major, but decent enough. To my surprise she left it to me.”

“How does Val even know about the money?”

“There was probably talk behind my back after Allison died. I’ve taken some trips; I’ve gutted this house.” He smiled tightly. “But enough about Val. Any more news about Hutch?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“We should take a look at the notes. You brought them, right?”

“Yes, we can look at them after dinner. I did have one interesting insight, though not related to the notes.”

Duncan smiled. “I thought you promised not to keep this stuff to yourself.”

“It just occurred to me a little while ago. I had a terrible nightmare when I was taking a nap. In the dream I was at Hutch’s house, and this time the murderer was right there in the room with me. And it was Dr. Parr.”

“Wait,” Duncan said. He pulled his head back in surprise and then smiled. “Are you saying Parr is the murderer?”

“No, no, of course not,” Phoebe said. “But I think what my subconscious was saying was that it’s someone Hutch was familiar with. If I buy into the idea that he was killed by someone who he contacted after reading the notes, that would explain how he could find the person so quickly. He knew him. I’d already considered that the killer was a local person, but it could even be someone on campus.”

“That’s alarming,” Duncan said. “Any thoughts who it might be?”

“I know so few people here yet, besides the students in my classes, of course. Does anyone jump to mind for you—anyone who’s ever struck you as, I don’t know, strange?”

“Off the top of my head, no, but as we know from history, killers so often wear the mask of sanity. They can seem perfectly ordinary by day. They sometimes even have wives and kids.”

“Maybe something will occur to you when you see the notes.”

Duncan insisted on doing the dishes, and Phoebe repositioned herself on the couch as he worked. A phone rang, and she realized after a second that it was hers. She upended her purse and grabbed it, seeing from the caller ID that it was Glenda.

“Hi there,” Phoebe said.

“Are you sitting down?” Glenda asked.

“Yes, why?” Phoebe’s whole body tensed, and in the kitchen area Duncan stopped in mid-action, sensing something from her tone.

“I’ve got news.”

“What is it?” Phoebe demanded.

“The police have made two arrests in Hutch’s death. Blair Usher and Gwen Gallogly.”

25

“FEE?” GLENDA ASKED.

“Yes, sorry—I’m just in a state of shock,” Phoebe said. So it had been them, she thought. Her breath felt stuck in her chest. “How—how do they know?”

“Typically, Michelson is giving nothing up.”

As she’d been speaking to Glenda, Phoebe had watched Duncan drop his dish towel and move toward the living area. He was standing directly in front of her now. He flipped his hands over, palm sides up, and let his mouth fall open. His whole body was asking, What the hell is going on?

Phoebe raised a finger, asking him to give her another minute. She was anxious to share the news with him, but she wanted to make sure she’d heard everything.

“Are they implicating them in Lily’s death, too? And Trevor’s?”

“I don’t know if they’ve managed to do that, but I assume they’re trying. The only motive I can think of for them killing Hutch is that he linked them to the drownings.”

“How will you handle this?”

“I’ve scheduled a meeting with my staff in five minutes to figure out what kind of damage control we need to do. Word is out about the Sixes. We’ll probably use the old there’s-always-a-few-bad-apples-in-the-bunch approach. But listen, Fee, thank you for all your help on this. If you hadn’t started this ball rolling—”

“—then Hutch would not be dead.”

“You can’t think like that,” Glenda said. “We had no idea they were that dangerous. There’s the doorbell. Everyone’s coming to the house for the meeting, so I better scoot. Let’s catch up tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” Phoebe disconnected her phone and looked up at Duncan. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. She relayed the news.

“Wow,” he said, plopping down onto the couch beside her. “And so it must have been one of them following you through the woods.”

“I guess so,” Phoebe said. She hadn’t been certain if her pursuer had been male or female, but she was having a hard time connecting either Blair or Gwen to the form that had stalked her. She wondered what evidence