The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)(47)

“Is it her, or is it the time of year?” Duane asked. “We all go a little crazy around Katie’s birthday.”

“It’s probably both,” Frost admitted.

“You know what Katie would say about that? She’d say you’re being an ass.”

“True.”

“What does Shack think of Lucy?”

“Oh, it’s love at first sight between them,” Frost said.

“See? For you, that sounds serious.”

“It is, but not in a romantic way. I just like hanging out with her. She doesn’t pretend to be anyone she’s not. Katie was the same way.”

“Have you told her that?” Duane asked.

“No.”

“Well, you probably should.”

Frost didn’t disagree. He finished his beer and went to the kitchen to get another. The house had a briny seafood smell. Duane had made crab mac and cheese from scratch, which included dunking two live Dungeness crabs in boiling water. Shack got fresh-cooked claw meat as a treat, which he enjoyed so much that when the plate was empty, he licked it from one side of the kitchen to the other.

Frost opened his third beer. He didn’t usually drink this much, but it was a special occasion.

He returned to the living room and stretched out in the window seat again. Duane was flipping through a thousand-page biography of Harry Truman that Frost had left there. When he was alone at home, Frost liked to sit in the bay window and read. Just him, Shack, the past, and San Francisco.

“So why do you like history?” Duane asked.

“I know how it ends.”

“That’s funny.”

“Actually, historians and detectives have a lot in common. We both love details, but it’s easy to lose sight of which are important and which aren’t.”

Duane turned to Frost’s bookmark in the biography. “So you’re at the part where Harry dropped the bomb?”

“Yes.”

“You think we’ll see another nuke go off in our lifetime?”

“Yes.”

“Spoken like a pessimist,” Duane said.

“Spoken like a cop,” Frost replied.

Duane’s mouth was pinched in a frown. “Think about all those people who woke up that day and didn’t know they’d be dead before it was over.”

Frost nodded. “It happens that way a lot.”

They didn’t speak for a while. Frost knew what Duane was thinking, and his brother knew that Frost was thinking the same thing, but neither one of them said it out loud. Katie didn’t know. She woke up that awful day, and it should have been one day of many more to come. But it wasn’t. It was the last. By midnight, she’d be in the backseat of her Malibu near Ocean Beach, which was where Frost would find her.

Katie would have been thirty-one years old today.

“You call Mom and Dad?” Duane asked.

“Yeah.”

“They sound okay?”

“Mom more than Dad,” Frost said. “It hits him hard. But Tucson has been good for them.”

Duane sipped his carrot juice and didn’t say anything. His eyes shined with tears, and he stared out at the bay. Shack, who had an uncanny way of knowing when people were upset, climbed up Duane’s chest and began to lick his face. His brother couldn’t help but laugh. He kissed Shack’s head and put the cat down on the window seat next to him.

“I better get some sleep,” he said. “I’ve got to be back at the food truck at four. Mind if I crash here?”

“Take the master bed,” Frost told him.

Duane stood up from the window seat and drained the last of the juice from his wine glass. “Any reason you don’t sleep there?”

Frost shrugged. “I don’t know why. I prefer the sofa. It’s mine.”

“Well, it’s your house.”

“Oh, no. It’s Shack’s house. I’m just a guest.”

Duane smiled. “Right. I forgot.”

“Thanks for dinner,” Frost said.

“Any time.” Duane clinked his empty wine glass against Frost’s beer bottle. “Happy birthday to Katie.”

“Yeah. Happy birthday.”

Frost waited until Duane disappeared into the bedroom, and then he drank his beer and said to the stars outside the window, “Blow out the candles, kiddo, wherever you are.”



He woke up in the middle of the night and wasn’t sure why. One of the windows was cracked open, and the house was cold and dark. Shack was missing. He got up from the sofa and rubbed his palm over his beard, and his fingers pushed back his brown hair. His eyes adjusted to the darkness.

“Shack?” he called.

Usually, hearing his name, the cat came running, as if he thought he were a dog. But not now. Frost climbed the stairs to the master bedroom, where the door was ajar. He peered inside and could make out the shape of his brother, asleep on top of the covers. Shack wasn’t with him. Duane always slept hard, and Frost sometimes had to wake him up to turn off his alarm.

He went back downstairs. He checked the kitchen, which still smelled of crab. He was thirsty, and his mouth had a metallic taste, so he grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator and drank most of it. He kept the bottle in his hand as he returned to the living room.