A Deadly Cliche (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

from her clothes.
    She stood in that puddle of salt and water and felt as insignificant and alone as she had as a little girl, the healed scars within her heart pulling apart.

Chapter 14

    The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it.
    —SYLVIA PLATH

    O livia dropped her drenched clothes in the washing machine, showered, and dressed in black yoga pants and a loose, russet-colored cotton shirt. She escorted Haviland to the Range Rover, buckled him into his canine seat belt, and then sped inland toward New Bern.
    At the first red light, Olivia examined the blue vein lying just beneath the skin in the crook of her right arm. Her eyes traveled over the freckles on her forearm to her long, graceful hands. They were her mother’s hands. Though several inches taller than her mother, Olivia favored the Limoges line. The women were all naturally thin and graceful. Most had eyes the color of Delft blue pottery, but Olivia and her grandmother’s were of a darker shade and tended to change hue like the shifting colors of the ocean. Olivia looked nothing like her father. The only attributes she’d inherited from him were a strong jaw and a forceful will.
    She pondered her parentage on the drive to New Bern, which took far longer than usual. Obstacles seemed to appear from nowhere and Olivia was forced to plod forward below the speed limit for the majority of the trip. On the two-lane highway leading out of town, she got stuck behind a logging truck. When it finally turned off, a line of school buses from the neighboring county got onto the road in front of the Range Rover while Olivia sat helpless beneath the unyielding glare of a red traffic light. She cursed and struck the steering wheel.
    Despite maintaining a distance of several car lengths behind the last bus in the row of electric yellow vehicles dispensing clouds of black smoke from their exhaust pipes, Olivia had nowhere else to look but at the children pulling faces at her through the rear windows. They poked out their tongues, stretched their eyes into slits, and wiggled their fingers behind their ears. Taking clear enjoyment in their antics, Haviland bobbed excitedly in his seat. He’d stick his head out of his window, his tongue flapping in the breeze as he smiled at the children, and then he’d come back inside and start the whole routine again.
    This comical exchange reminded Olivia of the thieves and the possibility that something about their appearance marked them as being obviously different. She then recalled overhearing one of the chief’s men mention the name Pampticoe High toward the end of her phone conversation with Rawlings yesterday.
    Her mind began to churn. Had the victims attended Pampticoe High? Had the thieves? She pictured the school, a squat, worn brick building surrounded by scraggly bushes and sandy parking lots. Out front was a rusty flagpole flying Old Glory and the flag of North Carolina. There was also a set of park benches facing a magnificent bronze sculpture of a Pampticoe Indian paddling a dugout canoe. Olivia knew the county had been using the funds from its coffers—fuller than in the past as a result of several resoundingly successful tourist seasons—to improve roads, the business district, and the public beach areas, but the school was in dire need of attention.
    “That building requires refurbishment,” Olivia told Haviland. “It hasn’t been updated at all while I was away. The town needs to look after its youth, create a sense of pride of place or they’ll all move away.” Making a mental note to raise the issue at the next Board of Education meeting, another thought occurred to her. Laurel had gone to Pampticoe High. She must have several yearbooks sitting around. Perhaps one of the thieves was even a classmate.
    “Unlikely,” she mused. “But it’s worth a look.”
    Once in New Bern, Olivia drove to an off-leash dog area and allowed Haviland a few minutes of freedom. She tried not to be too impatient as he greeted other dogs and sniffed the base of every tree and garbage can. Finally, she called him to get back in the car and promised to return to the park as soon as she was through at the lab.
    She pulled the Range Rover beneath the shade of a massive oak tree, put the windows down, and poured Haviland some water. Then, because she wasn’t sure how long she’d be inside, she gave him a large bone.
    “Be back soon, Captain,” she promised, but the poodle was too interested in his treat to so much