Claire Dewitt And The Bohemian Highway: A Mystery (Claire DeWitt Novels Book 2)

by Sara Gran

When you love something so much, the thought of doing it but not doing it well hurts almost more than never trying. Almost. You wouldn’t know until you tried it that failing is actually better.

Paul deserved so much better. He deserved a grand theft, a jewel heist, murder by a crazed fan. Paul deserved to die in a duel, to tumble down the Himalayas, to be mauled by wildcats on the Serengeti. Instead, some asshole wanted his guitars, shot Paul, and took them. He should have been killed in a high-speed chase in a Lamborghini, poisoned by a duchess, taken out with the candlestick in the conservatory. Or he could have just lived.

Men had all kinds of desires, and if you let them, they would take that desire and put it squarely on your back, making it yours to carry. They would hand it all right over to you, this giant mess you could never hope to contain or control. It would take you over, if you let it. And I knew their desire was not always in a straight line, that sometimes it could fold back on itself, eat itself alive. It wasn’t enough for them to want some of you; they needed you to want some of them, to care enough to hurt them, or let them hurt you.

Mike was sarcastic in a way that he thought hid his battered heart but that actually laid it bare. “Claire,” he said. He looked semi-amused whenever he saw me, as if my existence was a smirk-worthy joke. Which maybe it was.

“Well, back when I knew her—in the eighties and nineties—she fucked rock stars. And rich guys.” Men always said that about girls like Lydia, as if they had the right to fuck them, and the girl had wrongly allowed someone else in.

“But?” I said. There’s always a but. If there wasn’t we’d all be perfect and no one would ever kill anyone and we wouldn’t need detectives.

“People think love is, you know, this spiritual thing,” the lama said. “This feeling. But that’s not my thing. In my book, love is a physical act. Love is not ethereal. Love is sticking by someone when they’re in the nuthouse. Love is when you keep calling someone even when they don’t call you back. Love is dirty and solid. Love is, you know, earth and shit and blood and hair.”

Chloe was behind that door. I knew it. I felt the cord that bound us, detective and missing girl, hum with tension. There was no turning back, no undoing the cord or untying the knot. For lifetimes, I knew, Chloe and I were bound, whether I found her this time, or the last time, or the next time. She would always be the missing girl and I would always be the detective. And I would be missing and she, the detective, would find me. We were bound together, but we had choices; we could live in heaven together or in hell. Either way we’d be stuck with each other, and the ripples from our choices would change every last word ever said.

That left the other guitar player. He was likely just under thirty. He played a black imitation Les Paul. He had that thing girls liked in guitar players—concentration, absorption, dedication. I didn’t know if women liked it because it implied the man could pay that same attention to her, or because it meant the man was capable of ignoring her so completely that she could believe the worst about herself.

There are no coincidences. Only doors you didn’t have the courage to walk through. Only blind spots you weren’t brave enough to see. Only tones you refused to admit you could hear.