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anything?”
    â€œYou are expecting my daughter to make sense, Detective. I expect that you’ve researched the deviant mind before. In fact, I’m sure you have.”
    â€œYes,” Kendall said. “I’ve taken some training.”
    â€œThought so. Then you should know there’s no way to understand a girl like my daughter. You have to watch her, hopefully from a distance, like a wild animal, with the assumption that if given the chance, she’d chew your arm off. Maybe your face.”
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    After Deirdre Holloway left, Kendall phoned Birdy, who immediately took charge of the conversation by telling Kendall the day was one of the worst ever.
    â€œHusband and wife died in a wreck over by Sunny-slope,” the forensic pathologist explained. “Baby in the other car hanging on by a thread at Harrison. Thank God the little one didn’t take the brunt of the hit. I can’t take another baby in the chiller.”
    â€œAlcohol?” Kendall asked.
    â€œOh yes,” Birdy said, letting out a sharp and pronounced sigh. “Off the charts.”
    â€œI have something else for you that’s a little off the charts,” Kendall said, thinking that her segue was not as facile as she’d thought just before it came out of her mouth. Birdy had a way of taking over a conversation and Kendall needed to say what she needed to say.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Birdy asked. “Was it a bomb dropped by Brenda’s mother?”
    â€œIndeed. Seems that Brenda is mad at us,” Kendall said. “Really mad at me, but your name came up too.”
    â€œMad at us, Kendall?” Birdy asked. “What’d we do?”
    Kendall looked down at some decidedly chicken-scratch notes she’d made while talking to Brenda’s mother, Deirdre.
    â€œInterviewing her about Missy Carlyle evidently cost her some privileges,” she said. “That ultimately cost her some TV gig she was hoping for.”
    â€œThat’s not entirely a bad thing. I hate the fact that TV puts those people on for entertainment practically every night of the week. The worst. I hate TV.”
    â€œMe too,” Kendall said. “Always have. Give me a book any day.”
    â€œA beer and a sunny day for me,” Birdy said. “Maybe some jazz playing on my stereo.”
    â€œThat sounds good too,” Kendall said. “Anyway, I don’t know that any of this truly matters. I do, however, find it interesting seeing how the special agents who interviewed me made no mention of it.”
    â€œNeither did my trio,” Birdy said. “Guess they held that back for some reason.”
    â€œGuess so,” Kendall said.

C HAPTER F IVE
    B irdy Waterman looked up from her stack of paperwork. She smiled at Kendall. Birdy was a Makah Indian with dark hair and eyes—the opposite of Kendall’s blond hair and blue eyes. And while they were nearly the same age, Birdy definitely had the edge when it came to hard-fought wisdom. She’d grown up very poor on the reservation at Neah Bay in the very western corner of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula.
    Birdy’s mother would be perfect fodder for any number of sleazy reality shows. She was cruel. She was jealous. She thought that there were limits on how much love to give and what should be given in return. She was everything that Birdy wasn’t. Birdy was single. Since her nephew Elan had had shown up in Port Orchard to get away from his mom—Birdy’s sister, Summer—she was doing her best to make a home for him.
    Kendall’s own parents were dead. Her sister lived in Portland. Her husband was presently in Sunnyvale, California, and she was raising an autistic son, Cody, temporarily on her own. So as different as they were, they found a connection that was deeper than finding out who’d killed whom.
    â€œIt’s official. I’m stuck doing that Spirit Hunters show,” Kendall