Carly seems to realize where his thoughts have strayed. They haven’t had the talk about Amber, and Carly seems curious about it, but in the end she changes the subject. Maybe she thinks it’s too painful a memory for him to discuss. And maybe it would be too painful, but he feels he can tell Carly anything. She won’t coddle him. She’ll be honest, whether he likes it or not. She always is.

And it’s nice. After Amber, everyone tiptoed around the subject. Gave him sympathetic looks and treated him like a porcelain version of himself. Fragile and breakable and dainty. Probably afraid he’d do what Amber did. He wished he’d had Carly back then. So she could punch him in the arm and say things like “Well, it’s not like you killed her.”

Even now, true to form, she maneuvers the conversation elsewhere. She doesn’t offer to talk about it with him. She doesn’t offer any excessive ridiculous condolences. She’s just Carly. “I’m not worried about heaven or hell really. I am worried about jail though. Jail doesn’t delight me.”

“We’re not going to jail. I mean, if we get caught, we might take a tour of the department and answer some questions and get cereal in a Styrofoam bowl and a cup of old coffee or whatever, but we’re not getting booked or charged or anything. Never happen in a million years.”

“How many times have you been caught?”

“Really caught? Like, red-handed? Once. And it was my friend’s fault. I mean, these local cops, they’re not stupid. But there’s this cop code remember? Especially when it comes to family members of other cops. Everything gets brushed under the rug.”

“Nice. So you’re going to get Lucky Charms in a Styrofoam bowl and I’m going to get a cell mate named Brutus.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They wouldn’t put you in with a guy. You’d be in the cell block with all the prostitutes.”

She grins. “So whose house are we going to put up for rent tonight? Not all Hammock Harbor residents, I hope?”

“I was thinking the mayor’s house should go up on the market. Unless you have something more scandalous in mind?”

“The mayor it is. Let’s list it on Craigslist too.”

“Excellent idea.”

*   *   *

Carly dons the hockey mask. Then she separates the fake yellow mustache into two pieces and sticks them to the outside of the mask where her eyebrows would normally be. “How do I look?”

Utterly adorable. “Fierce. And creepy.”

“Good.”

She opens the truck door, pulling the For Rent sign out with her. They decided to list the mayor’s plantation house for the exorbitant price of $500/month including utilities. The house is a veritable palace, with a pristinely manicured lawn and a man-made pond in the middle with a fancy water spout and giant goldfish guarding the perimeter.

Well worth the $500, in Arden’s humble opinion.

He watches as Carly steals across the street to the curb of the yard. She steadies the metal rods of the sign into the ground and tries to push down, but when it doesn’t budge, she’s forced to put her whole weight into it. The sign sinks into place and Carly is back in the truck within thirty seconds, giggling like a lunatic. It’s a nasally sound with the mask on.

They move on to Hammock Harbor, where Arden handpicks his first victim. “He brought it on himself,” he explains. “We have a landscape company that takes care of the public areas in here and Mr. Honaker treats them like his personal butler.”

“You little Robin Hood, you.”

He grins. “Does that make you Maid Marian?”

“I think I qualify more as Will Scarlet, don’t you?”

It was worth a shot. “A cute, high-strung Will Scarlet?”

“You mean like your mom?”

“Really? You told a mom joke?”

She pulls her hair around to one side and purses her lips. “Get on with this, Robin.”

When he gets back in the truck, he’s scrounged up enough courage to ask the unthinkable. “Since we’re already in the neighborhood, you want to come to my house?”

She gives him a suspicious look. “Why?”

“For one, I have to piss. For two, why not? And for three? I make the best sweet tea in the South.”

Seventeen

Sitting on Arden’s bed is not as intimate as I thought it would be given his reputation. I’m not sure what I thought I’d find, but a crisply made bed sporting a simple blue comforter with tightly tucked corners wasn’t in the mental picture. I guess I imagined a tousled king-size bed, with sheets twisted after a passionate one-night stand, possibly lipstick stains on a pillow or two. I just knew there would be walls lined with posters of half-naked women; any real estate left would of course be devoted to shelves of football trophies and other boyish things like model sports cars or something. I even expected to feel dirty here, knowing how many girls had to have been seduced in this very room, on this very bed by those green eyes and sensual lips.

But Arden’s bedroom is … boring. It’s sparsely furnished—a (twin) bed, a single nightstand with a wrought-iron lamp, an outdated wood desk, a worn red recliner facing out of the one window next to a telescope on a tripod. And it’s way neater than I’d figured. For some reason, I had pegged Arden for a slob, I guess because he seems unmotivated in every other aspect of life. But his room is clean, almost unlived in, with fresh vacuum tracks on the carpet by the bed and netted hamper with just a few articles of clothing in it. There are no posters or trophies or shelves on the walls, only a flat-screen TV hung out of the way.