At that moment, the text from Alexis came in. Vivi was dead. The police were questioning Cruz. An officer had seen Cruz run a stop sign and go speeding down Surfside Road.
Oh my God, Marissa thought.
Marissa drove her Jeep straight into the Bathtub, then sacrificed her phone to the icky, squelchy bottom, waded out, and walked, soaking wet, over the dunes to Eel Point to find help.
The Chief
The traffic homicide investigator arrives from the Cape. Her name is Lisa Hitt; she’s fifty or so and what some people might call a dynamo. She has long brunette hair, lots of energy, and always a big smile, even in the gravest of circumstances.
As the Chief is driving her to the scene, he tells her what he knows. When he says the name of the deceased—Vivian Howe—Lisa cries out.
“No!” She slaps the dashboard in front of her. “No, no, no! She’s my favorite author. This is going to sound so stupid, but I follow her on Instagram. I’ve seen pictures of her kids. I’ve watched videos of her home improvements. In fact, when I heard I was needed over here, I booked a room at the Nantucket Hotel because that’s the hotel Vivi mentions in her books—she calls it the Castle—and I made a reservation at Nautilus because that’s Vivi’s favorite restaurant.” Lisa pauses. “I can’t believe Vivian Howe is dead. I think I’m going to cry.”
There’s no crying in forensics, the Chief thinks. “We’re here,” he says. He pulls over just shy of the turnoff to Kingsley. Smith has replaced Falco and is directing traffic around the cordoned-off area. The Chief sees that bouquets are already piling up on the corner. He hasn’t yet told Andrea that Vivian Howe is dead, but she might know by now. It’s a small island.
The Nantucket forensics van pulls in right behind them, and Lisa Hitt gets to work （they call her Lisa Hitt-and-Run, the Chief remembers now） taking photographs, measuring what tracks she can find in the road, collecting samples of Vivian Howe’s blood from the sand and dirt.
“It looks like the person backed up here,” Lisa says, pointing to a section of tracks. “But there aren’t any skid marks, and there’s more than one set of tires here. It’s impossible to know if these are from the vehicle that hit the victim, the vehicle of the person who found her, or someone else entirely.” She stands up. “You have one vehicle impounded?”
The Chief nods. Cruz’s Jeep.
“And we’ll get her clothes from the ME? The body is being sent to the mainland for an autopsy?”
“Yes.” The Chief has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hates what Falco said about Cruz running a stop sign and then taking off like a bat out of hell down Surfside. Falco should have pulled him over! That’s why police stop speeding cars, so something like this doesn’t happen. Why hadn’t Falco just done his job?
“Vivi was—what? Five three? And weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet? If she got hit head-on by a car going twenty-five or so, there might not even be a dent in the fender.”
“But there might be,” the Chief says.
“But there might be,” Lisa agrees. “You recall the words of Edmond Locard, right, Chief?”
The Chief hasn’t the foggiest.
“‘Every contact leaves a trace,’” Lisa says.
Ed feels sick. He has arrested friends before, even assisted in FBI stings of friends. But he has never experienced the conflicting emotions that he feels now.
“Let me look at the car you have,” Lisa says. “You know the driver?”
“I do. Ms. Howe knew him well. He’s friends with her son.”
Lisa gasps. “I hope you aren’t talking about Cruz? Vivi posted pictures of Cruz all the time. She called him her fourth child.”
The Chief nods.
Lisa sighs. “This is all very life-imitating-art here, Chief. I feel like I’m living in one of Vivian Howe’s novels.” She smiles wistfully. “They usually have happy endings.”
“Not today,” the Chief says. Falco seeing Cruz run the stop sign isn’t the only thing bothering the Chief. The other is Cruz claiming he was driving to the Howe residence from his house, which is nowhere near Hooper Farm. So one of them is either mistaken or lying. The Chief doesn’t like this one bit.
And, of course, no matter who did it, a woman is still dead. And three children are left without a mother.
Vivi
The green door opens and Martha enters Vivi’s boho-chic paradise with a different Hermès scarf wound through her hair and knotted at her neck in a way you couldn’t possibly get right unless you worked for Hermès or were the editor of French Vogue.