Luke jumps in. “But from horrific beginnings can come beautiful things. Inspired by Caroline Quinn’s 1970 murder, Seaview’s beloved writer Maura Weston made sure her classmate’s legacy did not go forgotten.”

The crowd claps enthusiastically; a few people whoop. Then Luke zeroes in on me.

“And we have a very special guest with us on the tour today!”

Oh no. I shake my head vigorously, but Luke either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“Maura Weston’s very own granddaughter, Cecelia!”

There’s a delighted gasp from a lanky midthirties East Asian man sporting a peach-colored sweater, part of a throng of Maura fans, occupying the front row. They all turn to stare, including a tall fortysomething woman in a stunning red vintage swing dress, whose assessing gaze lasers through me. I give a half-hearted wave and attempt to hide inside my jacket.

Ben mouths at me, Sorry. Then he gets back to work.

“So, first, you’ll recognize this as the setting for the thriller chase scene in the Killer Queen movie, which they’ll be screening right here on the green tomorrow night. A town tradition.”

“Sponsored by Rinaldi Wines!” Luke pipes up, pointing across the street to a storefront bearing his family name. “At the end of the tour, you’ll get a coupon for twenty percent off any bottle of Rinaldi’s signature red, redeemable at our tasting room or the winery itself.”

We make our way through town. Luke’s the showman, quick with dramatic stories and jokes, while Ben provides sobering context, with a funny Maura fact or two that delights the fans. Mostly it’s fandom bullshit—scenes where they filmed the Killer Queen movie, Easter eggs from Maura’s books, and schticks that cause such violent secondhand embarrassment I almost leave the tour more than once.

“She got one hell of a paper cut!” Luke quips of the college junior found with her throat slashed in the library stacks in the seventies. She’s part of a trend: the dead and missing of Seaview. It’s a longer list than I’d expected for such a small, remote town. The family annihilator in the nineties who stashed his wife’s and kids’ bodies in a freezer. The Coffee Clutch barista who simply…vanished a few years ago. (“Talk about a to-go order,” Luke tastelessly joked at that one.) House fires and fatal flu strains, and weed grows turned deadly.

We come to a stop in front of an old-timey diner, and I can tell from the excited gasps around me I’m in for something ghastly.

“You may recognize this place behind me. Is it…Coulson’s?” Luke dials the ham up to eleven. “Close! This is Quinn’s diner, the inspiration for Coulson’s, where Hazel works in the Hazel Minty Mysteries series! Wait, is that her?”