The Last Word (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

face is pinched like she hasn’t eaten for days, and her eyes, they’re so . . .” She trailed off, searching for the perfect adjective.
    “Haunted,” Olivia completed the thought.
    Dixie swallowed hard. “That’s it. That poor girl is haunted.”

Chapter 9
    A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.
    —MARGARET ATWOOD

    O livia stopped by both of her eateries before going home to prepare for the meeting of the Bayside Book Writers. She collected the printouts of the deeds for Harris’s house and pages of background check documents on the residents. Like Millay, she’d found nothing unusual about them, but her picture of the White family was incomplete. One of the genealogy sites she’d used to search for more information on Evelyn White and her parents indicated that the forms she’d requested would be e-mailed to her as a PDF file by the end of the day on Monday at the earliest. Until then, she’d have to wait.
    This was frustrating because she’d been hoping to have a tangible lead to share with her fellow writers. Now, she not only had nothing of interest to impart, but she’d found herself absorbed in another and even more obscure mystery than Nick Plumley’s murder: the story behind the beautiful and troubled Miss White.
    Laurel and Millay hadn’t come across any useful data either. Facing a deadline and a visit from her in-laws, Laurel had turned the assignment over to Millay. She’d spent hours searching through book after book of bound newspapers, but the Gazette archives revealed no other photographs of the house or its occupants other than the images from the relocation and the impromptu church service held when the tractor-trailer broke down on Main Street.
    As Millay adeptly decanted the bottle of wine on the cottage’s countertop, she declared that someone owed her a hot stone massage. She then poured a glass for Laurel, knowing that Olivia would see to her own cocktail.
    “I hope Harris has had more luck,” Laurel said with a weary sigh.
    Millay handed her the glass of wine. “Take a slug of this and relax. You look wrecked.”
    “I am,” Laurel confessed. “I thought the energy I’d need to be a mom and a career woman would be my biggest challenge, but it turns out that I can handle that just fine. What I can’t handle is that Steve and his parents make me feel like a stranger in my own house.”
    Olivia fixed herself a drink and then took a seat across from Laurel. “Steve still doesn’t support your decision to be a journalist?”
    Laurel shrugged. “In front of company he does, but if it’s just us, and he finds so much as a dirty dish in the sink, he points out that our family was in better shape before I decided to go all ‘Clark Kent.’ ” She drank half of the fruity zinfandel blend in one gulp.
    Millay frowned in disapproval. “I know his hands are delicate instruments and all, but come on. Make him do the dishes.”
    “I doubt that would solve the problem,” Olivia remarked as Millay pulled a bottle of beer from the fridge. “Is it possible he’s jealous of you, Laurel?”
    “ That would be a first,” Laurel replied wryly.
    Using the shark-shaped opener that hung from her keychain, Millay popped the cap off the Heineken bottle and tossed it in the trash can in one fluid motion. “Olivia might be onto something. Your man has always been the Big Cheese at home. Mr. Breadwinner. Mr. Head of the Family. Then you go and land your dream job, instantly becoming a local celeb. Stevie Boy probably doesn’t feel as macho as he did before.” She sank gratefully onto the sofa and pointed at Laurel with her beer. “He needs a testosterone jumpstart.”
    “Maybe you’re right.” Laurel sipped at her wine, her gaze fixed on the glasslike ocean beyond the windows of the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. “He’s been keeping really long hours at the office. He probably feels like we’re in some kind of competition.” She blinked and her face seemed to regain a fraction of its customary brightness. “At least having a double income means that our piggy bank is getting nice and fat.”
    “Those are two words I’ve never heard a woman use together before,” Harris stated as he entered the room. He headed straight for the refrigerator and helped himself to a beer. Flopping onto the sofa next to Millay, he spread out his long arms and let his head sink into the cushions. “What . . . a . . . week.”
    Millay prodded him with