Jake looked at me. “I have no idea what to do here.”

I looked at the girls. “Did you take anything yet?”

They both shook their heads.

“I wanted a shirt,” Mary said. “He smelled amazing.”

“That's what I wanted, too,” Carrie said. “Or his toothbrush.”

I made a face. “His toothbrush?”

Carrie shrugged.

“Didn't you both tell me he'd broken up with you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Carrie said.

“Then why would you want anything to remember him by?”

“We miss him,” Mary said, her lower lip quivering a little.

“Yeah,” Carrie agreed. “We miss him.”

Jake just gave me a look like we had wandered into Lunatic Land and I was in charge.

“You broke the window,” I said, pointing to the pile of shattered glass on the deck. “That's going to need to be fixed and paid for.”

“But no one lives here,” Mary said. “And we don't have a key.” She held up the hammer. “That's why I used this.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I said. Their logic was unbelievable. “But it's not your home and it doesn't matter that he doesn't live here anymore. You can't just go breaking into places that aren't yours to steal T-shirts.”

“Or toothbrushes,” Carrie said.

“Or those,” I continued. “So here's the deal. You're going to tell Delilah what you did.”

Mary's eyes widened. “She hates us.”

“Too bad,” I said. I folded my arms across my chest. “You need to tell her what you did and then pay whatever she tells you to pay to replace it. Otherwise, we can call the police and let them handle it and whatever happens, happens.”

“Delilah really hates us,” Carrie said. “And we hate her.”

“Can we just call the sheriff?” Jake interrupted. “This is ridiculous.”

I held up a finger in his direction, then looked at Carrie. “Why do you hate her?”

She looked at her sister.

“Because of Harvey,” Mary finally said.

I thought back to what Copper had said about Delilah and Harvey but I wanted to hear the girls' version of things. “What does she have to do with Harvey?”

She snorted. “Because Harvey broke up with me to be with her.”

Carrie snorted. “And he broke up with me to be with her, too.”

I looked at both of them. “He broke up with both of you to be with her?” My voice squeaked with disbelief. “That's what you're telling me?”

They both looked at each other, then nodded.

“So you saw them together?” I pressed. “In that way? Like, together together?”

They exchanged glances and I could almost see the non-verbal communication between them.

“Well, I don't know that we saw it,” Carrie said slowly. She picked up a lock of hair and twirled it around her finger and her sister mirrored her action. “Because they were totally secretive on account of Delilah being so old and all.”

“Yeah,” Mary said. “Ancient.”

My head was spinning. I still found it hard to believe that Delilah and Harvey had been a couple, but I certainly believed he would've tried to ditch these two nutjobs.

Copper's words replayed in my mind. I looked at the twins. I didn't exactly consider them trustworthy news sources, either.

“Look, I don't think I care about Harvey and you and Delilah,” I told them. “All I care about is the fact that you guys are running around, vandalizing other people's property. You have your choices. We call the police or you go talk to Delilah. Now.”

They both stared at me with sour expressions, like I'd just forced them to swallow lemons.

“We'll go to Delilah,” Carrie said, pouting. “Just don't call the police.”

“Yeah,” her sister echoed. “Don't call the police.”

They were both very anxious to avoid the police, which I understood because no one liked dealing with the police, especially when they were guilty of doing something wrong. Still, I couldn't help but wonder if there was another reason they were looking to avoid the law.

“Did you see Harvey?” I asked. Jake gave me a warning look but I pressed on. “I mean, before he died?”

“Well, duh,” Mary said. “We saw him a lot.”

It was an uncomfortable thing to be mocked by someone I was beginning to think of as a not-so-bright psychopath. “I meant right before he died.”

“Oh,” Mary said, then looked at her sister. “I don't know. Did we?”

Carrie glanced at the sky, like she was trying to remember. “Yeah, we saw him. He was always around. And we saw him with that creepy dude. Hacker-whatever.”

“Wayne Hackerman?” I asked.

“The guy with the big black bus,” Mary said. “And the really mean kids.”

“Those kids spit at us,” Carrie told me. Her green eyes narrowed into slits. “I hate them.”

“And the boy ran over my foot on his bike,” Mary said. “Yeah, I hate that kid.”

“But you saw Harvey with Hackerman?” Jake said, trying to get them back on task.

Carrie nodded. “Yeah, that guy. They were arguing or something. And Harvey never argued.”

“By the laundry room?” I asked. “That's where they were arguing?”

“Yeah,” Carrie said. She leaned up against the sliding glass door. “Were you there?”

I shook my head. “No. Just heard about it. You didn't ask him about it? About the fight?”

“No, because Harvey told me if I came near him again, he was going to ban me from Windy Vista,” Carrie said.

“Me, too,” Mary said.

“But I overheard him,” Carrie said, a small smile appearing on her lips.

“You did?”

She nodded.

“What were they fighting about?”

Carrie's smile widened. “They were fighting about the medallion.”

TWENTY FOUR

“So you really don't think those two dimwits did anything to him?”

Jake and I were sitting at the table on our deck the next morning. We'd followed the girls to Delilah's place, made sure she answered the door, then let her deal with them and headed back to our cabin. We'd spent the rest of the evening parked on the couch. Jake had started a movie on Netflix and I knew the reason why: so I wouldn't hound him incessantly with my suspicions and theories. Even with a million thoughts swirling through my head, I'd managed to fall asleep with my feet propped in Jake's lap. Somehow, he'd persuaded me into my pajamas and into bed. But I didn't remember either.

Jake shook his head and shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth. I'd made bacon and eggs and toast. “No.”

“That's it? That's all you have to say?”

We were sitting out on the deck, the morning breeze rustling the trees, the sunlight filtering through the canopy of leaves.

“What else do you want me to say?”

“I don't know.” I bit into a piece of toast. “Discuss it with me?”

“Discuss or investigate?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

I smiled innocently. “Discuss.”

He scooped eggs on to his slice of toast and took a bite. “Fine. Discuss.”

“Why do you think they didn't kill Harvey?”

“Because they liked him.”

I took a sip of my coffee. “Well, duh. But people sometimes do stupid, irrational things when they're in love. Crimes of passion.”

“Those two are definitely stupid,” Jake commented.

I gave him a look and he sighed.

“Okay,” he said. He swallowed a mouthful of orange juice. “A couple of reasons. One, they seemed genuinely afraid he would ban them, so whatever he said to get them to stay away from him worked. And, two, I'm not sure those two would have been smart enough to hide his body if they'd been the ones that killed him. They probably would've propped him up on their couch and pretended he was still alive.” He shook his head again. “Because, as we both know, those two aren't all there.”

“No kidding,” I said, breaking my piece of bacon in half. “But they also give me kind of a Fatal Attraction vibe. Like they might try to take Harvey out so no one else could have him.”

He frowned. “Maybe, but I didn't get much of that from them. They're more troublesome than dangerous, I think.”

He was probably right, but when I felt like we still hadn't heard much about who might've killed Harvey, I was looking for anything that might help out Delilah.