Useless Bay(30)

There was no space for Dad, Mere, Sammy, and me, so we took the regular trail that led to their front yard.

We were halfway up the drive when I heard the shot.

Oh no . . . Pixie!

I sprinted faster.

I was the first in the front door.

“What’s happened?” I said. “Is Pixie all right?”

Pix was sitting on the sofa, with Mrs. Gray draped around her. “We’ve had a shock, Henry.”

Dad came in, out of breath. “Where’s Grant?”

Mrs. Gray looked confused, as though there were only so much she could process, and right now it was all about her youngest, her only girl.

“I don’t think this is about Grant, Dad,” I said, although I still wasn’t quite sure myself.

Pixie’s giant brothers were standing shell-shocked around the living room.

Dean finally said, “It was your guard. He was in Pixie’s room. He had a gun. The police took him down. It was so fast . . . Jesus, it was fast.”

Mere was standing next to me, and her shoulders began to heave. She seemed to understand what had happened before the rest of us did. “Yuri’s been shot? But he didn’t deserve it! He wasn’t a threat. He was just a sad, old guy.”

Her cries became torrential. Sammy put an arm around her shoulder. He did it gingerly, as though he were breaking a taboo. “You don’t need to be here for this, Mere. Mr. Shepherd, why don’t I take her home?”

Dad nodded, looking vacant. “I thought they’d found my son.”

Mrs. Gray, with her arm still around Pixie’s shoulder, said, “I’m sorry, Rupe. I’ll make us some coffee. It’s going to be another long night.”

She ran a hand through her daughter’s hair, gave her a soft look that Pix didn’t catch, then got up and went to the kitchen.

I’d never seen Mrs. Gray look so grateful. It occurred to me that she might, just might, have a favorite child.

Or maybe she’d be this relieved if any of them had survived being held at gunpoint.

Dad didn’t stay long, but I did—mostly hanging back, hoping nobody would kick me out before I heard Pix explain what had happened with Yuri. I owed Yuri that much.

Agent Armstrong sat on the love seat in the living room and drank cup after cup of coffee as he asked Pixie questions.

His face was a thunderclap. Yuri had been shot too soon—before there was any chance for him to be interrogated. And now the investigation had been bungled. He was trying not to show his disappointment to Pixie, but I guessed that later someone was going to get his ass handed to him.

“He said he didn’t know where Grant was,” Pixie was saying. “He said that somebody had hidden him and that it was for the best.”

“Can you remember anything else he said? Anything at all?”

“Yes. I don’t think he took Grant or killed Lyudmila. He called me silly. He said he had been ‘outspied.’”

“Outspied?”

“Yes. That was his word.”

As they wheeled Yuri’s body out on a stretcher, Mrs. Gray handed out peach cobbler to anyone who wanted it.

“Can you think of any reason why Mr. Bulgakov would come to you for help?” he said.

“Yes,” Pix said, shivering beneath her blanket. “He helped me train my dog.”

“The bloodhound? The one that was killed with his weapon?”

“That’s the one. We spent a lot of time together training Patience. She needed a lot of work. The guy who was originally supposed to train her half-assed the job. Yuri helped me fix her.”

There seemed to be something going on with Pixie’s eyes, because she wouldn’t look at agent Armstrong straight on. She kept looking at the floor. Maybe she was just tired.

“So you think maybe Mr. Bulgakov came to explain why he killed your dog?”

“I think he came to explain that he didn’t kill Patience, and he wanted to tell me who did. I don’t think he killed Mrs. Shepherd, either. I think he wanted to set me straight on that. But he didn’t have the chance.”

Agent Armstrong glared at Sheriff Lundquist, whose expression didn’t change.

So we all knew who had been quick on the trigger. And now, thanks to the good sheriff, we were no closer to the truth or to finding my little brother. The information had stopped.

I wanted to blame him, but if I had found someone threatening Pixie, I might’ve done the same thing.

Agent Armstrong was still talking. “And Mr. Bulgakov gave no indication who this person might be. The one who outspied him.”

Pixie shook her head. “None whatsoever.”

Agent Armstrong asked Pixie more questions about what had happened the day before, and she answered them. But something was stuck in my mind after Pixie had said the word outspied.

The CCTV had been stuck on a loop showing the Breakers, but why in the garage, too? What had been going on there? Had Grant gone to the nest of blankets before he went to the gate? What had happened in the garage that he’d known about that someone would want covered up?

We were down to a short list of people who had the capability to find Lyudmila in the Breakers when Dad was away: There were the Grays, and our family. And then there was our travel team: Hannah, our cook; Edgar, who stayed above the garage; Joyce, who thought she was so important she was always just a step behind Dad; and Yuri, who was dead. One of us was a killer.