Pidge read it back. “Sic erat in fatis, man. It is fated. Get the kit-cat and let’s go.”
Hawk bent over, said, “Sorry, dude. Mrs. Dude.” He took the sock out of Jablonsky’s mouth. “Say good-bye to Peggy.”
Henry Jablonsky’s mind scrambled. What? What was happening? And then he realized. He could speak! He screamed “Pegg-yyyyy” as the Christmas tree bloomed with a bright yellow glare, then went up in a great exhalation of flame.
VOOOOOOM .
Heat rose and the skin on Henry Jablonsky’s cheeks dried like paper. Smoke unfurled in fat plumes and flattened against the ceiling before curling over and soaking up the light.
“Don’t leave us!”
He saw the flames climbing the curtains, heard his dear love’s muffled screams as the front door slammed shut.
Part One. BLUE MOON
Chapter 1
WE SAT IN A CIRCLE around the fire pit behind our rental cottage near the spectacular Point Reyes National Seashore, an hour north of San Francisco.
“Lindsay, hold out your glass,” Cindy said.
I tasted the margarita – it was good. Yuki stirred the oysters on the grill. My border collie, Sweet Martha, sighed and crossed her paws in front of her, and firelight made flickering patterns on our faces as the sun set over the Pacific.
“It was one of my first cases in the ME’s office,” Claire was saying. “And so I was ‘it.’ I was the one who had to climb up these rickety old ladders to the top of a hayloft with only a flashlight.”
Yuki coughed as the tequila went down her windpipe, gasping for breath as Cindy and I yelled at her in unison, “Sip it!”
Claire thumped Yuki’s back and continued.
“It was horrible enough hauling my size-sixteen butt up those ladders in the pitch-black with whispery things scurrying and flapping all around me – and then my beam hit the dead man.