The cursor still blinks over TIPS – VERIFIED? when the volcano explodes.
“Mom!” Theo yelps. “It’s going everywhere!”
I yank my hand off the mouse and pivot back to the kitchen table. Red-tinted foam gurgles out of the papier-mâché cone we’ve spent all weekend building, oozing into the grooves of the faux-wood laminate. Vinegar burns my nose; baking soda crunches under my wrist.
“That’s the point,” I say, grabbing a wad of paper towels. “Mount Doom is very committed to its role.”
Theo snorts, delighted, which makes the mess worth it. He leans in, dark curls falling over his forehead, eyes bright in the late afternoon light that filters through our grimy window. Below us, the laundromat drones and a faint chemical tang threads through the apartment—detergent, hot metal, a whisper of damp socks.
On my screen, the waveform of the distorted voicemail still glows, a jagged blue reminder.
I mop up foam with one hand and reach for my mic stand with the other, straightening it. “Okay,” I say. “Version three. You finish sculpting the crater, I record ten minutes, then we’ll paint the labels. Deal?”
“Deal. But I get to name the hypothalamus.”
“The volcano does not have a hypothalamus,” I say.
“Then how does it think?” He grins wide, fully aware he’s poking me.
Somebody bangs on the ceiling from below, probably Sick-of-My-Kid Neighbor, objecting to our scientific joy. I’m about to yell an apology when a sharper knock lands at our door.
Three precise raps, knuckles on cheap wood.
Theo freezes. “Did Nana say she was coming over?”
“Nope.” My pulse stutters. For a second my brain runs through every possible consequence of a true-crime podcast: angry alum, lawsuit-happy parent, ghost. Then I hear a faint crackle of a radio from the hallway and my gut lands on a different answer.
Police.
I wipe my hands on a dish towel, leaving pink streaks, and cross the living room. Through the peephole I see a woman in jeans and a dark blazer, hair pulled into a low bun. No uniform, but there’s a badge at her belt, next to a holstered gun.
I take a breath, open the door halfway, and brace my shoulder against it, an instinctive wedge.
“Hi,” I say. “We’re not buying anything except maybe more baking soda.”
The woman’s mouth quirks. Her eyes flick past me, taking in the volcano, the laptop, the microphone. “Mara Lane?”
“Depends who’s asking.”
She flips the badge up with two fingers. “Detective Luz Navarro, Crescent Bay PD.”
The badge glints. That little disk carries years of things done and not done in this town. I feel my shoulders creep toward my ears.
“Is this about parking?” I ask. “Because technically the white Corolla belongs to the laundromat lady, not me.”
“No parking crimes,” she says. Her voice is low, even, with a tired thread running through it. “And I’m not here for an interrogation. Just a courtesy check-in.”
Theo appears at my elbow, streak of dried paint on his cheek. “Mom, did you get arrested?” he whispers, loudly.
“Not yet,” I say.
Detective Navarro’s mouth twitches again, that not-quite-smile. “You must be Theo. Big science project?”
He brightens. “Volcano. It’s going to erupt in front of the whole class. We’re adding smoke.”
“Ambitious,” she says. “I’m just here to talk to your mom for a few minutes, okay? Official boring stuff.”
Theo glances between us, weighing potential drama against the allure of molten foam. “Are you going to, like, take her downtown?”
“No taking anyone downtown,” she says. “Kitchen table will do.”
That lands weirdly accurate. I step back from the door, out of her way, even as my muscles argue with the choice.
“You can come in,” I say. “Try not to judge the crime scene.”
She steps past me and the room shrinks. She’s taller than I am, not towering but solid, the kind of person who notices exits and windows automatically. She does a quick visual sweep: the secondhand couch, the chipped mug on the windowsill, Theo’s soccer cleats kicked under a chair, the prom photo leaned against my laptop.
Her gaze snags on the mic.
“So this is Glass Roses Headquarters,” she says.
“You’re looking at the empire,” I reply. “Second floor, premier views of detergent fumes and liquor-store neon.”
“Mom’s podcast is about a murdered prom queen,” Theo tells her. “But I’m not allowed to listen to the bloody parts.”
“We’re working on age-appropriate edits,” I say.
Luz’s attention returns to me. “Do you have a minute to talk, Ms. Lane?”
I don’t love how she says Ms. Lane. It sounds like a witness statement already. But rent is due, and Crescent Bay PD could make my life very annoying using only parking tickets and “random” check-ins with my ex.
“Sure,” I say. “Theo, kitchen, volcano. No vinegar floods onto the power strip, or the only thing erupting will be my brain.”
“Can I listen?” he asks.
“You have to paint magma,” I say. “That’s the rule.”
He groans but shuffles back to the table, humming under his breath. I lead Luz into the kitchenette and gesture at the rickety chairs.
“Coffee?” I ask. “It’s… honest.”
“Honest sounds good,” she says, sitting with her back to the wall, facing the door. Of course.
I pull two mismatched mugs from the cabinet, the ceramic still warm from their last use. The coffee pot on the counter has been sitting long enough to develop a film. I brew a fresh half pot, the cheap beans filling the air with a burnt, nutty smell that mixes with vinegar and whatever floral aerosol the laundromat sprayed earlier.
“So,” I say, over the drip. “Courtesy call. What’s the official line?”
“Official line,” she repeats. “You made some noise.”
“That’s the idea. Podcasts that whisper die.”
“This town hears very well,” she says. “Especially when you bring up a case half of them wanted erased and the other half wanted solved twenty-five years ago.”
I pour coffee, shove sugar and a chipped creamer toward her. She takes it black. The steam fogs her glasses for a second; she removes them, wipes them clean with the edge of a napkin, buys herself a breath.
“I listened to your first episode,” she says.
My stomach tightens. “Should I send you an autograph, or…?”
“You’re a good storyteller,” she says without softness. “You know how to make people care.”
Heat flickers in my chest at the compliment, even wrapped in neutral tone. I stir my coffee too long, spoon clinking against ceramic.
“That worries some people,” she adds.
“Which ones?” I ask. “The ones who wrote ‘case closed’ twenty-five years ago, or the ones who still think Juliet tripped over her own heels?”
She meets my eyes, steady. “Some officers in my department think you’re stirring up old gossip. They’d be happy if you found a new topic. Preferably one in another zip code.”
My back goes rigid against the chair. “I love that for them.”
“I’m not here as their messenger,” she says. “I drew the short straw as ‘community relations’ for cold cases. And I’ve read the Juliet Reeves file. It’s…” She exhales through her nose. “A mess.”
The word lands with more weight than if she’d said corrupt. Mess means carelessness, lost things, stories dropped between the cracks.
“A mess how?” I ask, keeping my voice casual. Casual to the extent caffeine can fake.
“Disorganized,” she says. “Missing tape logs, a couple of interview summaries that reference witness statements I can’t locate. A chain-of-custody form that jumps two days for no documented reason.” Her jaw tightens. “Not my favorite reading.”
Foam pops on Theo’s volcano behind us, a tiny fizz in the quiet.
“So your colleagues gave themselves an incomplete,” I say. “And now they want me to stop doing extra credit.”
“My colleagues don’t love civilian investigations,” she says. “Especially not ones with national reach.”
“National might be generous,” I say, but my heart thumps at the word. “We’re more… moderately scattered.”
Luz takes a sip of coffee, grimaces, drinks anyway. “Point is, you have listeners. You also have people calling you.”
The air thickens. I know exactly which voicemail she means. I’m suddenly hyper-aware of the laptop a few feet away, of the folder labeled TIPS – VERIFIED? open on my desktop, of Juliet’s photo leaning against the mic.
“Listeners call in,” I say. “That’s the feature.”
“One of them rang our admin line this morning,” she says. “Wanted to know if the police were going to ‘fix the gym timeline now that the podcast lady broke the case.’”
My spoon stops moving. “That’s… specific.”
“The operator passed the caller to me,” she continues. “They hung up. But before that, they mentioned a distorted voice, Cardigans lyrics, and something about the gym lights at two a.m.”
My grip tightens around the mug. Heat bites into my palm.
“So you came to tell me to hand over my toys,” I say.
“I came to tell you you’re walking into evidence territory,” she replies. “If you air unverified tips from anonymous voices, especially ones that contradict the record, you could hurt any chance of reopening this case formally. Defense attorneys love podcasts that speculate.”
“They should at least subscribe if they’re going to hate-listen,” I say.
She doesn’t smile this time. “I’m serious, Ms. Lane. If we can’t show where information originated and who had access to it when, it gives people room to claim contamination, coaching, fabrication.”
“And right now you can’t show a lot of things,” I say. “Like where your missing witness statements went.”
Her eyes flick away just long enough for guilt to surface, then she reins it back. “Like I said. Mess.”
Theo pads into the doorway, volcano cradled in his hands, red foam dried in crusty drips down the sides.
“Mom, I need to know where the tectonic plates go,” he says, then notices Luz’s expression and falters. “Did I interrupt police stuff?”
“Volcanoes wait for no institution,” I say. “Quick break, Detective?”
Luz nods. “Sure.”
I crouch in front of Theo, taking the volcano so he doesn’t drop it on my toes. “Plates go under everything,” I say. “Shifting all the time. You just can’t see it until something cracks.”
His eyes widen. “That’s creepy. Cool. Creepy.”
“Welcome to geology. Finish the labels. We’ll add the cracks after dinner.”
He trots back to the table, muttering about magma. I set the volcano on the counter for now, wiping dried foam off my fingers.
Luz watches all of this with that same level gaze. There’s something considering in it now, something that doesn’t feel like a report box.
“How old is he?” she asks.
“Eleven,” I say. “Going on forty when he wants to explain YouTube to me.”
“He knows what you’re working on?” she asks.
“He knows Juliet died,” I say. “He doesn’t know how much of Crescent Bay worked to pretend it was tidy.”
Her mouth presses into a line. “People can get agitated when their tidy stories unravel.”
“That’s the job description,” I reply.
“And my job,” she says, “is to prevent people from lighting themselves on fire to keep everyone else warm.”
I blink. “Is that on the recruitment poster?”
“That’s the internal memo,” she says. “Look. I’m not saying ‘stop.’ I’m saying: if you get messages that touch the actual timeline, call me before you broadcast. Let me document them, trace what I can. We might be able to use them. But not if they’re cut into a montage under moody piano.”
There’s a little sting there; she listened closely enough to clock my scoring choices.
“You think your bosses will love that plan?” I ask. “Partnering with the podcast lady you all hate-listen to?”
“Some of them already blame you for stirring up ‘crazies,’” she says, air-quoting with one hand. “They’d be happier if I told you to shut it down. Officially, I’m here to warn you about obstruction, defamation, the whole menu.”
“And unofficially?” I press.
She looks at Juliet’s photo again, then at the old gym banner I snagged from a yard sale that hangs crooked over the stove, the one advertising Crescent Bay High Regatta Fundraiser in peeling school colors. Outside, faint bass thuds from a waterfront party—someone’s yacht pregame, the soundtrack to another charity ball I won’t be invited to.
“Unofficially,” she says, choosing each word, “I don’t like cases that read like this one. Especially not when the victim’s name shows up on my mom’s old PTA minutes and the same three surnames run through the police roster and the school board and the donor wall at the yacht club.”
My pulse kicks up. She feels it too—the way this town wraps itself in the same last names, the same glossy fundraisers, the same Prom Throwback photos of adults in 90s dresses playing pretend under rented lights.
“So you’re… what, the good cop?” I ask. “The one who quietly cheers on the podcast from the sidelines?”
“I’m the cop who wants usable information,” she says. “And who doesn’t want a grieving family dragged through Reddit theories based on half a lyric. That includes Juliet’s, and that includes yours.”
My jaw tightens at that last part. “My family gets dragged fine without help.”
She studies me over her coffee. “You grew up here?”
“South side,” I say. “My mom did hair for the prom girls. I watched Juliet practice her updo in our hall mirror.”
“Then you know what this place does when stories get too loud,” she says. “It either smothers them or puts them on a float in the regatta and calls it healing.”
I huff a laugh despite myself. “You’ve been here, what, five minutes?”
“Three years,” she says. “Long enough to know where the rock shelf is under the pretty view.”
The phrase lands between us, a quiet recognition. We both know the cliffs, the rope fence that doesn’t really keep anyone back, the memorial candles that still appear every anniversary: glass roses set at the overlook, catching the light like they’re frozen mid-shatter.
I glance at my laptop, at the folder with the anonymous voice buried inside. “If I send you the voicemail,” I say slowly, “do you promise not to lose it in that ‘mess’ of a file?”
“That’s why I’m here,” she says. “To stop more things from going missing.”
“Including me?” I ask. The joke comes out thinner than I planned.
She doesn’t flinch. “Including you. Because if this gets big, the people who like tidy stories will need someone to blame. Don’t give them an easy target.”
Her sincerity unnerves me more than a threat might have. Distrust prickles under my skin, but right behind it, in the same place the voicemail lodged last night, curiosity moves in.
I picture airing the caller in episode two without telling her. I picture cops shutting down my apartment “for investigation,” Theo sleeping on my mother’s pullout while Crescent Bay congratulates itself for containing the dangerous podcaster.
Luz reaches into her jacket and pulls out a card, sliding it across the table. “This number comes straight to me,” she says. “Not the front desk. If you get anything else—voicemails, emails, glass roses on your doorstep—call before you hit publish.”
“That’s a very specific floral example,” I say.
“You chose your cover art,” she replies. “You invited symbolism.”
I pick up her card. The edges dig into my fingers. DETECTIVE L. NAVARRO. A direct line.
“Do you want a quote on the record?” I ask. “For the listeners. Detective Navarro says…”
“No,” she says quickly, then softens it. “Not yet. I’d like to hear your next episode before I decide whether I want to share a feed with you.”
She stands, the chair scraping the tile. Theo peeks over from the table, hands stained red, watching her with unabashed fascination.
“Was this your volcano check?” he asks her. “Like a pop quiz?”
“Something like that,” she says. “Looks good, by the way. Just don’t make it blow near the edge of a cliff.”
He giggles. I don’t.
Luz steps toward the door, then pauses with her hand on the knob. “One more thing,” she says over her shoulder. “Not everyone at the department feels how I do. Some of them already labeled you a problem. A couple used the word ‘spectacle.’”
My throat tightens. “Charming.”
“Spectacles draw crowds,” she says. “Crowds do stupid things. If this podcast keeps growing, remember that you and your son live above a laundromat with a flimsy lock. You don’t get to control who listens.”
In her words, I hear both warning and reluctant respect. She’s essentially telling me I matter enough to be dangerous.
“So what do you want me to do?” I ask. “Be quiet?”
She shakes her head. “I want you to be careful. And I want you to remember that anonymous ghosts don’t have to live with the fallout. You do.”
Then she opens the door to the bright strip of hallway and the distant hiss of the bay beyond, and walks out, leaving the scent of cheap coffee and department-issue fabric softener in the air.
I close the door, slide the deadbolt, and lean my forehead against the wood for a moment. Below, bass from a waterfront party thrums faintly through the floorboards—another yacht pre-gaming for a regatta, another night of glass houses lit up over a rock shelf that never forgets.
Theo’s voice floats from the table. “Mom? Do tectonic plates ever stop moving?”
I lift my head and look at Luz’s card in my hand, then at the laptop where the anonymous voice waits in its folder.
“No,” I say. “They don’t.”
I sit back down at the table between the volcano and the mic, badge number in one hand, distorted voicemail a click away, and wonder which fault line I’m going to press first—the one in the police file, or the one in my own feed.