CHAPTER FOUR

George was up around 7:00 AM. She’d already be dressed and on her way to work if this were a normal Thursday morning. But there was nothing normal about this one, and as much as she willed herself to stay in bed and pull the covers over her head, she found herself pulling on jeans and a T-shirt, tying her curls into a low ponytail and walking down the stairs and to the kitchen.

She knew her father was awake. Daniel had been up since 5:00 AM. His routine unchanged in decades: dressed, out the door before the sun, running a route that by now was pure muscle memory. He returned hours before the rest of the house stirred.

He was settled in his chair at the breakfast nook, his iPad propped up, scrolling something without really reading it, as she entered the kitchen. His own mug sat by his elbow, already half gone. Two more waited by the coffee maker, side by side. She crossed the kitchen, filled one, and left the second one exactly where it sat, once again leaning against the counter.

“Thankfully it hasn’t made it to Reddit or the local news yet,” Daniel said, like he was reporting the weather. “I’ve got calls from Peter at the publishers. They’ll want a statement from the family.”

George stopped with the mug halfway to her mouth. In the myriad of things George had thought about since her mother died, making a public statement was not one of them.

Daniel looked back at the screen. “Your mother mostly wrote it. We redid all our directives a few years back,” Daniel said, to the table. “Wishes, arrangements, all of it. She got real into those Swedish death cleaning videos online. Said she’d seen too many families go sideways over paperwork nobody bothered to sort out ahead of time. Wasn’t going to let that happen to us.”

George turned the coffee cup slowly between her hands, listening.

“So once she’s released, it’s mostly just—” He gestured vaguely. “Plug and play.”

“Have you eaten?” George asked.

Daniel shook his head. “Not hungry.”

She already had the seeded bread pulled out and was finding the peanut butter before he answered. She placed two slices in front of Daniel.

“Thank you.” He took one bite before standing up. “I’ve got some emails to send.” He kissed her on the forehead and left a slight peanut butter smear as he moved toward the stairs. She watched as he paused at the bottom, then turned and went up them without looking back at the floor in the front hall.

George sat alone at the table with his half-eaten toast for a while before she pulled on her coat and grabbed the spare keys to her mother’s Subaru from their hook in the mudroom.

George made a few turns out of the historic district before pulling onto the old highway. Her parents bought their house in the late 1980s when most of the big stately coastal houses were run down, and the new money had gone into building beach estates. Once the town became known as a real-life Cabot Cove, thanks to Daniel’s books, the town took an interest in revitalizing its old homes. This was the quaint postcard side of Popham Harbor with its narrow cobblestoned streets, tourist shops, farmers’ market and the harbor for which Popham was named. A picture painted in Daniel’s first books and what came to anyone’s mind when Popham was mentioned.

She signaled left, to change lanes allowing traffic to come onto the highway from the exit she’d take to get to Callie and Nate’s apartment. They lived in the part of the town Popham Harbor relied on to function. Houses, apartment buildings, and stores here dated from the late 1950s to the early 2000s. It had the town’s only Market Basket for years, until they built the new. Same with the Dunkin. It was unremarkable, and could have been the core of countless cities in America.

She was driving her mother’s car. She’d taken Vivian’s instead of her father’s without really deciding to, she knew where the keys were from muscle memory. A stray reading-glasses case sat wedged in the cupholder, next to a half-roll of antacids and a parking garage receipt from months ago that Vivian had apparently never gotten around to throwing away. A grocery list, half-finished, sat tucked into the visor—coffee, the good bread, ask Callie about— and then nothing. The whole car smelled faintly of spilled coffee that had never quite been cleaned up, and the faint floral smell of her mother.

After a few miles, George slid back into the right lane and signaled to take the next exit. Everything here was half finished. The “New” Dunkin’s concrete gleamed in the morning sun, with a drive-thru line of cars wrapped around the building. There were more McMansion-style houses going up every day with big signs along the road saying “lots for sale” and “coming soon: Popham Heights.”

George proceeded to take a left at the stoplight into the new Popham Harbor Civic Center. For years her mother had worked out of the old town’s morgue in a squat mid-1950s building near where Callie and Nate lived. Popham Harbor had bought the land when it sold, and beat the developers for prime real estate. Now there stood a three-story modern architecture building covered in glass windows. It was surrounded by a parking lot, a drainage pond with a fountain, soccer fields and baseball diamonds, a playground, and a venue for outdoor concerts. Everything an upper-middle-class Popham family could need. While the Civic Center and its grounds were finished, the area around it was still undeveloped. The stoplight being more for anticipated future use than current need. Across the road sat the “New” Market Basket recently opened. It shared development space with the usual commercial zone businesses: a Michael’s with coming soon signs, a half-finished Kohl’s, and what looked to be the rough outline of a fast food place.

Just inside the doors sat a metal detector. There was no wait, as a single bored guard waved her through. The building had gone up during the worst of COVID. There was no receptionist on the ground floor. Just a bank of elevators and a wall-mounted screen listing departments by floor. The Medical Examiner’s office wasn’t listed there at all; a smaller sign near a side corridor pointed toward a separate wing, ground level, its own set of doors set slightly apart from the main lobby.

She found the door marked Medical Examiner at the end of the corridor and stood in front of it a second before she made herself go in. She’d been here a handful of times over the past few years to visit her mother at work. Usually to bring a quick lunch, or run something Vivian had forgotten from home. Though Vivian tried hard not to work when George visited. She was used to seeing her mother behind these doors, but not like this. She inhaled and pulled the door’s handle towards her.

The main office was small with a reception counter, a wall of filing cabinets that looked older than the building itself, and a woman behind the desk, who had mostly rounded the desk before George had even fully cleared the doorway.

“Oh, hell.” Lisa was already standing, coming around the desk. Fifty-something, silver threaded through dark hair pulled back loose, a small line of piercings up one ear, a faded tattoo peeking out from under a rolled cardigan sleeve. “George. Oh, honey.”

“Hi, Lisa.”

“I am so sorry.” Lisa pulled back, held her by both arms, looked at her, then hugged her again.

George noticed a younger woman had appeared from the back hallway, hovering a little uncertainly near the hallway to the offices and autopsy suite. She was in her twenties, slight, dark hair in a low ponytail, a lanyard with a UMaine ID clipped to her scrub top.

“George, this is Jiwoo,” Lisa said, waving her over. “She’s been with us since the spring. Training program through Augusta.”

George put her hand out. Jiwoo shook it, a beat of recognition arriving a half-second late. “Wait.” She said it almost to herself. “You’re George MacDougal.”

George blinked at her, genuinely thrown for a second. The past few days had made her daily life feel like a distant memory.

“I follow you on Instagram and I’ve seen your most recent panel on YouTube,” Jiwoo went on. “The one from the forensic science conference last spring, on toxicology reporting in mixed-substance cases?”

“Oh,” George heard herself say. “Right. Thank you.”

“Sorry.” Jiwoo winced, hearing herself now. “This is really not the moment. I just didn’t put it together that you were ‘the George MacDougal,’ that your mom mentioned when she spoke about George, even though she was Dr. MacDougal as well, until just now, and—sorry.”

Lisa’s hand found George’s arm again, gentler this time. “She’s here, honey. Just down the hall. I’ve been keeping an eye on her myself, all morning. Jiwoo too. Nobody’s gone near her or touched anything they shouldn’t have.”

George nodded, throat tight, she could feel the tears in the corners of her eyes. For the first time in her life a medical examiner’s office felt foreign.

“I know you want to see her,” Lisa said. “But you’re going to need to talk to Ryan first. That’s not me being difficult, that’s just—well, you of all people know how this works.” She rubbed George’s arm for reassurance.

“I know.”

“He’s upstairs. Second floor.”

George glanced once more down the hallway, then back at Lisa. “Thank you. For taking care of her.”

“My honor.” Lisa’s composure slipped for just a second before she visibly put it back in place. “If you go now you might catch him before the office gets busy.”

George made her way back down the corridor and into the lobby with its banks of elevators and wall-mounted screen listing departments. The shiny marble tiles squeaked under her shoes. The sheriff’s office was on the second floor. She pressed the button and rode the elevator up.

There was no one at the front desk; it was too early, she guessed, leaving the whole department quiet in that particular pre-nine-a.m. way, half-lit, half-populated, just the low hum of overhead lights. The sheriff was crossing from the coffee maker back toward his office, mug halfway to his mouth, when the elevator doors opened.

He froze mid-sip at the sight of her, coffee still tipped toward his mouth, clearly caught somewhere between who is this and a gut instinct that he already knew.

“Can I— help you?”

“I’m George MacDougal.”

He lowered the mug slowly, like the coffee itself had suddenly become a liability. “Right.” Recognition landing hard. “Sheriff Ryan Patel. You want to step into my office?”

He was younger than George. Not by much, but somewhere in between her and Callie in school. His parents, like hers, had come to Popham Harbor in the mid-1980s when the town was growing and needed civic employment. His father being a surgeon at the hospital. After college he’d gone on to join the Maine State Police and done various task-force-related jobs. When Popham Harbor’s long-tenured sheriff decided to retire a few years ago, Patel ran unopposed for the position. According to a campaign flyer George had seen at her parents’ house during the election cycle, he wanted to move back to Popham with his wife to raise his twins, who had to be toddlers by now. Some considered him young for the job, but he’d proved an adept civil servant. The town had relied on Daniel and Vivian’s partnership in solving murders for years, so the role of sheriff mostly consisted of paperwork and regulatory enforcement. While a change from their decades-long relationship with Sheriff Smith, both her parents only ever spoke glowingly about their work with Sheriff Patel.

He waved her toward the chair across from his desk and dropped into his own, still visibly recalibrating. He took a pull of the coffee too fast, winced, and set his down.

“Sorry. Still hot.” He cleared his throat, gestured vaguely at the mug. “You want one? There’s a pot going.”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Right.” He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands now that the coffee wasn’t in them. “I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, obviously I knew you were coming up from the city, I just—” He stopped, started over. “I figured I’d call your father sometime today. Once I had more to actually tell him.”

George didn’t wait for him to find his footing. “What can you tell me?”

Ryan leaned back slightly in his chair. “Not much yet, honestly. We’re waiting on Augusta to send someone out to examine her. Should be later today. We’ll have more conclusive answers once an autopsy is performed. Is there anything in particular we should know about? Do you know if she had any kind of medical condition that would lead to a collapse? She seemed healthy when I spoke to her Tuesday morning during a briefing. A little distracted, but that’s Vivian.”

George shook her head. “Not that I’m aware. I talked to my dad last night. He couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary.”

Ryan hesitated.

“Dr. MacDougal. I’ve got to be careful here. This is currently an active case.”

“I’m aware,” George said, unsure of what Ryan was trying to convey.

“And as such, Daniel was the only person at home with Vivian when it happened. I’m not saying it was anything more than natural causes, but I do have to be cautious in what I say. This is Popham after all, murders happen all the time.”

“You don’t think—” George couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Daniel did it?” Ryan laughed uncomfortably at the suggestion. “Sometimes these things just happen. But until we get the ME’s report back, I have to hold it as an open active case.”

“You’ll let me know when the medical examiner gets here?” George could only ask. “I’d like to be in the building when it happens.”

“I doubt they’ll let you in the autopsy, not because you’re not a good medical examiner yourself, chain of custody rules being what they are. But if you want to sit with Lisa, that’s fine by me. I’ll call you when they arrive,” Ryan promised.

She made herself walk out at a normal pace into the elevator, through the lobby, past the metal detector and out into the parking lot.

She got in the car, shut the door, and made it all of four seconds before she came apart.

George screamed into the empty car, and then let out a raw, loud, ugly, both-hands-gripping-the-wheel, cry. She couldn’t tell how long she sat in that parking lot, until the tears ran out. She proceeded to wipe her face in the visor mirror, pulling out of the lot with no real destination in mind. She ended up in the Dunkin’ drive-through line a few minutes later, not because she particularly wanted coffee, but everyone else in this line was doing something ordinary, and some part of her needed to be doing something normal too.