The Last Place You Look

by Kristen Lepionka

“Crown Royal, if it’s not too low-class for this joint,” I said.

  She grinned at me. “I got this,” she said. She nosed around the bottles until she found my whiskey. She was wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt with a lace panel in the back that showed off her shoulder blades, as well as the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She handed me a glass and poured herself some of the gold-flake vodka.

  “Thanks,” I said. I knew I needed to ease into the topic of her friend—and her boss—being a killer, so I started out friendly. “So what’s it like, working for Kenny?”

  Marisa shrugged. “Kenny’s, well, he’s just Kenny. I’m a travel agent, or was. But I needed a job, I have two kids. So he’s doing me a favor. I don’t know shit about bartending.”

  “You could have fooled me,” I said, and she smiled. “A job’s a big favor, you know him for a long time?”

  “God, since kindergarten, I guess. He’s a sweetheart, underneath the big pimpin’ routine.” She sipped at her drink. “Have you tried this stuff?”

  “What is it?” I said. “I mean, what does it taste like?”

  “Cinnamon,” she said. “It’s good. Here, try it.”

  “Did I stumble into some kind of multilevel marketing sales party?” I said as she splashed some into a cup for me.

  She laughed. She had a good laugh. “Not that I know of,” she said, “but the manufacturer is basically supporting Kenny’s entire business and, thusly, me, so I hope you’re willing to pay up if it comes to that.”

  I drank the vodka. It tasted like a cinnamon lip gloss I had in middle school, sticky and faintly caustic under the atomic sweetness. But it went down very, very smooth. “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “At the office, they apparently drink this all day,” Marisa said. “I’m not sure how anything gets done.”

  “I think I know someone else who works with Kenny,” I said by way of actual openers. “Curtis Grantham?”

  Her eyes narrowed for a second, like she’d had a flash of something ugly. “Yeah, Curt. Finance guy.”

  “Did you hear about his daughter?”

  “Yes, dear God,” she said. “It’s awful. It’s absolutely awful. I didn’t even know he had a missing daughter, but then to hear how they found her.” She shuddered and looked over my shoulder at something.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. It’s not polite party conversation.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be a downer,” I said, although I did.

  “No, it’s not you. It’s just crazy, because years ago someone I knew was found in that same part of town, the woods over there.”

  “Really.”

  “Really,” she said.

  “A friend of yours?”

  She held up a hand and tilted it back and forth: So-so. “Growing up, yeah,” she said. “Then in high school, she dropped out and things got weird.” She tilted her head to one side. “What are you really doing here, though?” she said. “I can tell you didn’t come for the vodka, or the game.”

  I liked her and I didn’t want to keep lying to her. Or at least not entirely. “Busted,” I said. “Listen. I wasn’t entirely honest a minute ago. I’m trying to get some information about Mallory Evans. I’m a private investigator and I’m looking into what’s been going on in Belmont. That’s why I’m here.”

  Marisa raised her eyebrows. “Why didn’t you open with that? I would have just told you.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Force of habit. In my line of work, people rarely want to talk to me.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said, in a way that made it sound like she wouldn’t mind if we stood here talking for a while longer, even if I was a dishonest downer. “So what do you want to know about Mallory?”

  I threw out an easy question first. “How come you stopped being close?”

  “Oh, it was a lot of things,” she said. “When she got pregnant, she quit school and got married. The guy, her husband, he was just this big dumb loser—God, that sounds bitchy. He was a pretty nice guy, the few times I met him, but just not the kind of person you want to tie yourself to when you’re seventeen. She was miserable, and she got kind of hard to be around.”

  “Do you know if she was seeing anyone? Other than her husband.”

  Now Marisa’s mouth twisted at the corner. “Well, yeah,” she said.

  I waited.

  “Oh,” she said. “He didn’t tell you.”

  “Kenny and Mallory,” I said. I had been starting to suspect as much, but the confirmation gave me a slight head rush. My cup was empty, but I was feeling warm and loose and the conversation was getting interesting. I was distinctly glad I had come here.

  “Yeah.” A faint blush spread across her cheeks. “Well, whatever, it’s not like it matters anymore. But yeah, Kenny and Mallory were together. He used to be the guy you call if you wanted, you know, to buy weed or pills or whatever. He always knew a guy who knew a guy. Mal was way into that, so they were always kind of on the same page.”

  “Even after she got married?”

  Marisa nodded. “That didn’t really faze her much.”

  “Do you remember what happened when she went missing?”

  “Well, I hadn’t heard from her in a couple weeks,” she said. “But I don’t even think I realized I hadn’t heard from her. But then Joshua—that’s the guy, her husband—called me asking if I’d seen her and I was like, No, sorry. I thought it was him being overbearing, Mallory always acted like that’s how he was. Then I didn’t think much of it, till Kenny told me he hadn’t seen her either.”

  “Was he worried?”

  “I guess so. But it was like, they were seeing each other in secret, so he kind of had to respect it if she wanted to lay low. It’s not like it was the love story of the century, they just got fucked up together.”

  I thought it was an interesting way to put it, that Kenny had to respect Mallory’s wish to lay low. That made me think that no, he hadn’t appeared all that worried. Because he knew Mallory was beyond being worried about? I let Marisa pour more of the vodka into my cup. “Did you ever hear any rumors?” I said. “About what might have happened?”

  “I was away at school, at Kent State, when they found her. So I didn’t get any general gossip from the town, but Kenny and I talked about it sometimes. He was so upset. He thought she went up to Clover Point with the wrong person. It made him crazy.”

  “He tell the police about that theory?”

  “I’m sure,” Marisa said, although I had my doubts about that. “You should really ask him about Mallory, though, he’ll be able to tell you so much more than I can. He always does this, invites people over and then disappears.”

  “Oh, I’ll ask him,” I said. “Anyone else here who knew her? Carrie, maybe?”

  “Carrie,” Marisa said slowly. “She hasn’t been back in a long time. And no, I’m Kenny’s only friend left from the bad old days. Why,” she added, narrowing her eyes at me playfully. “Tired of talking to me already?”

  “Hardly,” I said. I sipped the gold-flake vodka. It no longer tasted like liquor or cinnamon, just pure liquid warmth. I promised myself I was going to slow down. The fact that Kenny had been involved with Mallory Evans but claimed only to know her from around seemed pretty fucking incriminating to me.

  I needed to talk to him and I needed to remember it.

  * * *

  When Kenny finally returned, Marisa and I were sitting close together on the leather sofa with the Tinder guy—Todd—and the high-heeled snob from the Next Level office, Beckett. “Aw, you guys look like the best friends ever,” Kenny said.

  We were not the best of friends, but we were deep into a new bottle of the gold-flake vodka, so that didn’t matter much. It was somewhere after ten. Kenny had taken his time in getting back to the house.

  “Does anyone want to go down to the pool?” he said.

  “Oh my God yes,” Beckett shrieked. “I have been so bored waiting to go to the pool.” She stood up and took off h
er jeans, revealing a string bikini underneath. She was as unbearable as I would have guessed the other day, though she certainly did come prepared.

  “I gotta go home, man,” Todd said. He appeared on the verge of falling asleep or passing out.

  I looked at Marisa, who shrugged and said, “I have my swimsuit in my bag.”

  “Am I the only one who’s going to miss out?” I said.

  “Trust me,” Kenny said, “it is not a problem if you want to swim anyway.”

  The pool overlooked a dense, dark thicket of woods in the back of the house. One wall was a glass garage-style door that opened onto a wooden two-story deck, great for entertaining during the summer months, Kenny told me. In the November darkness, the room was illuminated only by the ashy glow of a skylight, pale and grey.

  Beckett and Marisa jumped in the water right away while Kenny gave me a tour-guide spiel. “It’s heated to eighty-five degrees. The floor is made from genuine Italian marble tiles.”

  I wished that he had returned two or three drinks ago, because now I felt like the evening was getting away from me. I eyed the vodka bottle he was drinking from, wondering how long it would take for him to get drunk enough to tell me everything. “You should have been a real-estate agent,” I said mildly.

  “That would be sick,” he said. “But, you know, event promotion is a good living, it really is.”

  I pressed my palms against the fogged-up window. It was cold and wet. Then I peered through the swatch of clean glass my hand had made. “What’s that little hut thing on the deck?”

  “Sauna.”

  I laughed. “Seriously, your house has a sauna?”

  “Whatever, it’s the fucking bomb. I’d show you, but we can’t use it in the winter.”

  “Some host.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I can’t see anything past the deck,” I said. “This is like the end of the earth.”

  “Basically. Just trees,” Kenny said. “Deer. They’re going to put apartments back there though.”

  I straightened up. With the subdivisions and their big, empty yards, I hadn’t realized the Brayfield property backed up to Clover Point. “Isn’t that where they found the body yesterday?”

  “Yeah. Kinda fucked up.”

  He gave no indication that he knew any more about that, including the identity of the victim. That seemed to be common knowledge at this point, though, since even Marisa knew. I watched him. His eyes, grey and shallow, were like the rocks I’d moved away from the grave yesterday afternoon. He was curiously still, one of those people who didn’t twitch or fidget.

  Two bodies, basically in Kenny’s backyard. Now this really felt like something. I said, “They found your old girlfriend back there too, didn’t they?”

  Kenny said nothing for a few seconds. But the alcohol had loosened him up too much for him to remember he was trying to keep secrets from me. “Like a million years ago.”

  “Dude, right behind your house. That’s kinda fucked up.”

  Kenny shook his head so slowly he may not have realized he was doing it. “It’s like she was mocking me,” he slurred.

  The problem was, the alcohol had also loosened me up too much as well. I wasn’t used to drinking flavored vodka and it had snuck up on me. “What do you know?” I said clumsily.

  He stood up. “So what do you say, want to swim?”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know I’m going to start wondering why you came if you don’t get in the pool.”

  That seemed like an unreliable test of motivation. “I told you, I don’t have a swimsuit.”

  “And I told you, it doesn’t matter.” He pulled off his hoodie and dropped it onto the tiles, one cuff trailing into the water. He was on the skinny side but still well built. He dropped his pants next and stood there in boxer briefs, leveling a gaze at me that felt like a challenge. It hung in the air between us, an unresolved chord.

  I shook my head. I was working, I had to remind myself, and things had gotten out of hand enough already. “I’m going to take off,” I said. I needed a cup of tea and a minute to think about my next move. I steadied myself against the window. I needed a minute, period. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marisa getting out of the pool.

  Then suddenly she was beside me, dressed again and holding on to my arm, her long hair dripping on my jacket. Time had gotten slippery.

  Kenny took a long swallow from the bottle, his eyes cold on me. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.

  “Oh, I do,” I said, or thought I said. Or thought I knew.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I woke up hard, like a fall from a significant height had jolted me into alertness. The room was small and bright and unfamiliar and my skull had been replaced with razor blades in an experimental test procedure I didn’t remember signing up for. I sat up on one elbow and swallowed, waiting for my vision to level out.

  I was in a living room, I saw now, on a futon with a grey microsuede mattress. Still clothed. My leather jacket dangled from one arm, twisted beneath my torso. Outside, it was raining. I cleared my throat. Then I heard a door opening down the hall, followed by quiet footsteps.

  “Hi,” Marisa said. She was wearing a Next Level Promotions T-shirt and plaid flannel pants.

  “Um,” I said. I rolled onto my back and covered my eyes with my hand. “What time is it?” I said, hoarse.

  “Seven. Do you want some coffee?”

  The thought of coffee made my stomach hurt. “Could I have a glass of water?”

  “Sure, yeah,” Marisa said. She got up and went to the sink. A few seconds later, she handed me a glass of water and sat down on the edge of the futon next to me.

  I drank some of the water and set the glass on the floor. What, exactly, had happened last night? There was a gaping black void in my memory of the evening. I remembered deciding I wasn’t going to drink too much since I was working, but that hadn’t exactly worked out. I remembered the vodka, the pool. Then, nothing. I felt like an idiot.

  “This is the world’s most uncomfortable futon,” she said. “I should know—I normally sleep on it every night. My kids have the bedroom.”

  “Your kids,” I said, lowering my voice. “Shit, sorry, I can get out of here—”

  “No, it’s okay, they’re with their father this week, I told you all of this last night.”

  I looked at her.

  Embarrassment flickered through her face. “But you don’t remember any of it.” She gave a halfhearted laugh. “You’re probably like, What the hell am I even doing here.”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. I set my hand on her arm. But then I didn’t know what else to say.

  After a minute, she took pity on me. “I asked you for a ride home,” she said, “since I don’t have a car right now. But then when I wanted to leave it was pretty clear that you couldn’t, you know, there was no way you could drive anywhere. So I drove us. And I let you crash here. On the futon, alone.”

  I drank the rest of the water. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  She shrugged. “I’m kind of the worst at this though. Picking up on the signals. It’s still new to me, in practice. With guys it’s just so obvious where you stand.”

  I looked over at her. “You got the signals right,” I said. “Maybe we can try again sometime.”

  She watched me for a second, then pulled her knees to her chest. “You’re leaving?”

  “I have some things to take care of,” I said. I sat up too and took a deep breath. Everything hurt. But I’d already wasted more time than I cared to think about. I untangled my jacket from around myself and slipped the loose sleeve on and left her a card with my number.

  Outside, the heavy grey clouds were throbbing like an open wound. I dropped into my car and shoved a pair of sunglasses onto my face. “Jesus Christ,” I said to no one. I thought again of my father: Did he ever accidentally drink too much cinnamon-flavored vodka while at a serial killer’s pool party? Although he
certainly had his flaws, I doubted that was among them. I noticed that the whiskey bottle I bought at the liquor store last week was still wedged between the passenger seat and the gear shift. I slapped it to the floor. I never wanted to think about liquor again. Then I sat there with my hands over my eyes for a while, unable to do anything else.

  I decided to go home and recover for a minute, hoping my head would eventually clear to reveal a solid next move. I drove out of Marisa’s apartment complex and onto Clover Road, where I went through a drive-through for a greasy sandwich and a cup of tea, neither of which sounded good but hopefully both of which would help. I was about to join the regular people of the city on the rush-hour-dense freeway toward downtown when my phone rang. I almost didn’t take it out of my pocket. The unknown number had made me distrustful of my own phone. But I got stuck at a red light and curiosity got the better of me. I checked the screen, saw that it was a known number, just one I didn’t recognize.

  “This is Roxane,” I said, clearing my throat.

  A beat of silence, and then a small, worried voice. “Hi, um. This is Shelby. Evans.”

  What the hell?

  Something about her tone stabbed straight through the fog in my head. I put my tea in the cup holder and tried to sound normal. “Shelby, hey. What’s up?”

  “It’s Veronica,” she said, and then she began to cry. “I don’t know where she is and I don’t know what to do.”

  * * *

  “She always answers her phone when I call,” Shelby was saying. “Always. We have a pact. She would never not answer. Something’s wrong.” She was pacing back and forth in the small living room of her house, still wearing her green army coat and a heavy-looking messenger bag slung across her back. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Okay. Shelby. Shelby? Is your dad here?” I said.

  She shook her head. “He’s at work and he isn’t allowed to have his phone on so I called there, at the desk, and they haven’t turned off the overnight greeting yet and then I saw your business card on the fridge and I, I don’t know, I’m sorry if it seems like I’m being stupid but something is really, really wrong—”

  “Shelby.”