The Last Place You Look

by Kristen Lepionka

  It was the exact same thing I promised her father. Shelby finally looked at me. Her eyes, blue-green and bloodshot, were wide with anxiety. “Thank you for helping me.”

  I wanted to tell her not to thank me yet, but there didn’t seem to be a point. “Hang tight for a bit,” I said instead.

  Back in the car, I felt around in the glove box for a bottle of aspirin but couldn’t find it. “Dammit,” I said out loud. I looked up at the Wexford house; nothing was happening yet, but Meeks’s cruiser was still parked out front. I took the lid off my now-cold tea and grabbed the Crown Royal bottle from the floor. Then I changed my mind and shoved it under the passenger seat, preferring to pretend that I hadn’t just contemplated having a drink at nine in the morning.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Brayfields’ housekeeper buzzed me through the gate, and once I was in the house, she pointed me toward the TV room we’d been in for most of last night. Kenny was lounging on the couch in a blue bathrobe, another pond-scum smoothie his hand. “Hey, it’s you,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. He sat up, pausing the animated show he was watching. He didn’t look too happy. “What’s up? Did you forget something last night?”

  I had thought about what I wanted to say to him on the drive over, but seeing him here with his stupid robe and his cartoons made me feel crazy and I blew it right away. “What’s up,” I said, “is there’s another girl who didn’t come home last night, Kenny.”

  “What are you talking about?” He put the smoothie down, palming the scratchy stubble on his jaw.

  “Mallory,” I said. “Sarah. Colleen. Now Veronica.”

  “Who’s Veronica?”

  “Where did you go last night?”

  “What?”

  “Stop it. Tell me where you went last night.”

  “Kenny, is everything okay in here?”

  His father paused in the doorway, eyes narrowed. Once again, he didn’t look at me.

  “Fine, Dad,” Kenny said. “We’re just talking.”

  Mr. Brayfield walked away, but I had a weird feeling I hadn’t seen the last of him.

  “Last night, you missed half your own damn party,” I said. “Where were you?”

  “I—look, what’s it to you? I had some work I needed to do. I own a business—I’m always working.”

  I took a few steps into the room. “Where did you go?”

  Kenny sat up, holding the front of his robe closed. “Jesus, what is your problem? I told you, I had some work to do. I was checking on a display. I’m, like, really busy.”

  “Busy,” I repeated. I wanted to throttle him. “Why aren’t you at work now, then? What are you doing home?”

  “Because I feel like shit,” he snapped, “for reasons I’m pretty sure you follow. And anyway, I don’t see how that’s your business.”

  “Kenny, I was in your house,” I said, regretting that I hadn’t taken a few minutes to calm down before coming here. I was too fired up. “Did you bring her here?”

  Now he jumped to his feet. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I resisted the urge to back up and changed tactics. “Why’d you lie when I asked you about Mallory Evans on Saturday?”

  “What? I didn’t.”

  “You did, Kenny. You conveniently failed to tell me that you used to date her.”

  “You didn’t ask about that!”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, I’m not finding this funny at all,” Kenny said.

  “Me either. But on Saturday when I asked you about her, you acted like you barely knew her. That’s a lie.”

  “Okay, fine, I knew her.”

  “So why’d you lie about it?”

  “Because I don’t like talking about her, okay?” He paced the length of the room, his hands clasped behind his head.

  “No, it’s not okay. Give me a real answer.”

  He stopped pacing and turned to me. His eyes were flat and hard. Without the jovial, slightly daft smile, his face was angular and tough. “I’m not giving you anything.”

  “Where’s Veronica?” I tried again.

  “I don’t know any Veronica.”

  “Is she here?” I scanned the room, catching a glimpse of the two-story deck through the windows. “Outside, maybe?” I remembered the small shed I noticed last night, the sauna.

  “I think you should probably leave,” he said.

  “I’m not leaving,” I said, just as I heard heavy footsteps in the kitchen behind me.

  “You’re leaving now,” Jake Lassiter said.

  I spun around and took in the police chief standing there with Mr. Brayfield. They looked ready to physically remove me from the house. I’d been there for only a few minutes, so this was a new record in terms of the Belmont cops intercepting me.

  Lassiter said, “Ken, you were right to call me. Miss Weary here has been stirring up trouble in town for the last week or so, despite quite a few warnings from my department. I apologize on her behalf for the inconvenience. She’ll be on her way now.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Lassiter’s expression made me close it again.

  “Let’s go, Miss Weary.”

  I took a step, Lassiter nodding at me like I was a good girl. But I turned back to Kenny with my phone out, snapping a quick picture of him. “What the—” Kenny said.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Lassiter said. He grabbed my upper arm and dragged me into the kitchen. To Kenny’s father, he said, “You’re not going to have a problem again. I’m very sorry, sir.”

  But Mr. Brayfield was looking at his son with a combination of disdain and dread. “What is she talking about now?” he said.

  “Nothing, Jesus, Dad.” Whatever he said next was lost to me as Lassiter yanked me by the arm out through the foyer and down the steps of the porch.

  “Let go of me,” I snapped, pulling my arm out of his grip.

  He took a step closer to me, a pointed finger in my face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I brushed past him, trying for my car. But he stepped back into my path, grabbing my bicep again.

  “Get your hands off me. You told me to leave, and I’m leaving.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Which is it?” I exclaimed, my breath visible in the cold air. “You want me to leave or you want me to talk?”

  “You can’t just barge into a house like this, with your questions—”

  “No one barged anywhere.”

  “Stop arguing with me,” Lassiter said. He hadn’t let go of my arm yet. He had eight inches and a hundred pounds on me, not to mention the legal authority to throw me in a cell for the rest of the day. I had to concede the moment to him. I spread my hands in surrender and he released his grip on me. “Now, why are you here?”

  I rubbed my arm. I could feel a hand-shaped bruise forming already. “Veronica Cruz didn’t come home last night.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “I’m worried that whoever buried Mallory Evans and Colleen Grantham in the woods is the reason why,” I said, “and I believe that person is Kenny Brayfield.”

  He laughed at me like I’d just told the world’s worst joke.

  Not caring if he liked what I had to say, I ticked off the reasons for my theory. “The woods backs up to the Brayfield property. He used to date Mallory. He was friends with Sarah’s boyfriend. He works with Colleen’s father—”

  “Belmont’s a small town,” he said. “Everyone is connected to everyone else.”

  “And Kenny lied when I asked him about Mallory the other day, he was unaccounted for last night when Veronica went missing, and they were awfully quick to call you just now when I started asking questions about it—”

  He took another step toward me. “The Brayfield family is entitled to police protection from nosy outsiders, just like anyone else in this town.”

  I shook my head. The man had a singular way of responding to exactly the wrong thing. “Not just any police protection, though,” I sai
d. “You. Did he call you directly so you could rush over?”

  “Listen to me,” he said, waving a hand as if to silence me. He was back to just wanting me to leave. “I know you probably think you’re helping, but we don’t want or need your help here. We’ll figure out where she went, we will leverage all of our resources to solve Colleen’s murder, and we will deal with the other dozens of small police matters that pop up each week in Belmont, and we’ll do all of that without your involvement. This connection you’re clutching at just doesn’t exist.”

  “You’re not even listening,” I said.

  “Go back to the city,” Lassiter finished. “You don’t belong here.”

  I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t a matter of belonging, but maybe it was. And in that case, I was glad I didn’t belong in Belmont. I went around him and got into the car. If I was right, there’d be some way to prove it. Finding out the truth about what happened to Sarah Cook and her parents and the other women might be impossible after so much time, but I’d just seen Veronica yesterday. I might not have a paying client who expected answers from me anymore. But after what I’d stirred up down here, I needed to get those answers all the same.

  * * *

  Insomnia was a cozy little space with navy-blue walls, yellow area rugs over a scuffed wooden floor, and eclectic-chic mismatched furniture. I could see why Veronica, what with her experimental outfits, probably liked it here. Metric’s “Poster of a Girl” was playing over the speakers at a volume that seemed a little loud for the suburbs and the hour—eleven in the morning now—but the smattering of patrons didn’t seem to mind. While I stood at the counter waiting for someone to notice me, I looked at the baked goods in the glass case: lots of muffins and cupcakes, some with a little card in front identifying them as vegan. I had to resist the urge to lean on the case with my head in my arms. It was the right height.

  “If you’re on the fence, definitely get the chocolate chip.” The barista emerged from the back room, wiping her hands on her apron. She had a shock of greenish-blue hair and a tattoo of swirling lines on her chest peeking out from behind her uniform apron. “They’re made in-house every day. Well, all of them are. But that one’s the best.”

  “Not today,” I said. Though my greasy breakfast sandwich had been abandoned when Shelby had called, I didn’t think I could eat. “Could I just have a peppermint tea?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She turned away, pouring hot water into a chipped mug.

  “Hey,” I said, “is Aaron working today?”

  “Yeah, but he’s doing an interview right now. He’s the manager on duty.”

  “Were you working last night?”

  The barista turned around and looked at me curiously. “I was.”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and navigated to the picture of Veronica. “Do you remember seeing this girl?”

  She squinted at the screen. “She comes in here all the time,” she said, “but I don’t know if she came last night. There were a ton of people, mostly, you know, girls like that. Aaron’s band has a bit of a following.”

  “So I gathered.” I was hoping she just had a bad memory, that Veronica had been here, had spent all night talking to Aaron in his car somewhere. That there was still going to be an easy resolution. “She didn’t come home last night, and I’m trying to find her.”

  The barista dropped a tea bag into the mug and pushed it across the counter toward me. “Shit.” Then, “Wait, are you her mom?”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. “God, no.” I was more accustomed to being mistaken for a cop than for someone’s mother. “Friend of her family. What about him, did you happen to see him?” I showed her the picture I’d taken of Kenny.

  The barista laughed. “Is he wearing a bathrobe?”

  I needed a better photo of him. “He wouldn’t have been wearing the robe last night.”

  “No, I’ve never seen him before.”

  A short line had formed behind me, so I stepped aside. “When Aaron’s interview is over, can you tell him I’d like to talk to him for a second?”

  The barista nodded. I took my mug of tea and sat down in a worn leather armchair, the kind manufactured in the era before furniture was filled with the cheapest synthetic materials possible. I used my phone to search online for Kenny Brayfield, hoping I could find a picture of him wearing anything but a bathrobe. Next Level’s Web site featured his photo, but he was wearing a blazer and looked like a different person. His Facebook profile pic showed his eyes only and the rest of his photos were private. I found a decent one on Next Level’s Instagram account though, of Kenny grinning in front of a tower of vodka bottles. I took a screenshot of it. He looked like a minor deviant to me, a harmless troublemaker. But maybe that was part of his thing. Maybe the women would go with him willingly, this mildly charming rich kid they’d known forever, offering a ride or a drink or whatever.

  The connection to Mallory and Sarah was solid—he knew them well. I wasn’t sure how well he might have known Colleen Grantham, if her father would have ever introduced his teenage daughter to his boss, or if Curtis had even worked for Next Level at the time. She was about ten years younger than Kenny was, though it sounded like they had converging interests—in Belmont’s drug trade. Veronica was the biggest question mark—how did Kenny know her? I wondered darkly if Kenny had kept an eye on Mallory’s daughter all these years, if he had seen Shelby and Veronica together. It all sounded crazy, even in my head. But there were too many connections here to write any of this off as a coincidence, not to mention the fact that Kenny’s father had Jake Lassiter on speed dial. Brad had told me that Kenny got out of a lot of trouble growing up because his family was loaded, and it seemed like nothing had changed.

  Nothing except the nature of his crimes.

  I drank some of my scalding hot tea, gasping a little when the liquid hit my throat just as a kid in an apron walked over and sat down across from me. He was probably nineteen, sleepy-eyed and with dyed black hair that looked like it had been styled with a sock. “Hey,” he said. “I’m Aaron. Maura said you wanted to talk to me.”

  I cleared my throat and sat up. “I’m a private investigator,” I said, holding out my phone. “I’m looking for this girl, she came to your show last night. Did you see her?”

  Aaron looked down at the picture. “Veronica,” he said, “right?”

  “Yes,” I said, perking up a little. It seemed like a good sign if she’d made it to the show, although she was still gone. “Was she here?”

  His mouth twisted. “I don’t think so? I didn’t talk to her, anyway. She comes to a lot of my shows and she always comes up to me and says hey or whatever, afterward. It was crowded though, so I’m not sure.”

  I showed him Kenny. “Okay. How about him?”

  “No, but I know that dude, he came in here once and wanted to put a flyer on the community board, for some flavored vodka or something. I told him, it’s for community events only.”

  That sounded about right. “Thanks,” I said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  He started to stand up, but I added, “Wait, one more thing. Have the police been here to talk to you?”

  “The police?”

  I nodded.

  “Nope.”

  He walked away and I finished my tea, barely tasting it or noticing the temperature. It had been hours since Shelby gave Meeks her information about where Veronica might have gone last night. Even if she went somewhere else, they should have been checking, they should have been looking. They were mighty quick to attend to my whereabouts, but not a missing girl’s. I returned my mug to the counter and went back outside. Maybe the police didn’t feel like looking, but I sure did.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Insomnia sat in a strip mall with a grocery store, a dry cleaner’s, a tutoring center, a dentist, a small, crusty bar called the Varsity Lounge, and a hair salon. With the exception of the grocery store and the bar, they had all been closed on Monday night. But I went i
nto each store, asked about security cameras, and showed my two photos. The dry cleaner’s, tutoring center, hair salon, and dentist did not have cameras that faced the parking lot. The grocery store had cameras, but they weren’t allowed to show them to me without a warrant or written authorization from their corporate loss prevention department. But the Varsity Lounge had lot-facing cameras without any such policy attached. I offered the bartender twenty bucks if he’d let me look at them.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  But the twenty had already disappeared into his pocket. A social contract had been made. I waited. He waited too. So he agreed to the terms, and it was a matter of price. I opened my wallet and teased another twenty out.

  “I could get into a lot of trouble,” he said. He was a tall, broad fellow with a bushy red beard. I didn’t exactly buy him tolerating any trouble with anyone. But I still pulled out the twenty and a ten. That was all the cash I had on me.

  “It’s this or nothing.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  The bar’s office was a storage closet stacked high with beer kegs and papers. “Don’t touch anything else,” he told me officiously, nudging the computer mouse to wake up the machine. “There’s payroll stuff back here.”

  “You just took a bribe,” I said, “be nice.”

  After he left, I sat down at the computer terminal. It was an old system with a jerky frame rate of five or so per second, but the interface was straightforward and I clicked through the folders of the previous day’s video files. The bar had six cameras: two on the sidewalk, facing each other so that I had a clear view of several yards in either direction; two inside, one in the front and one in the back; and two in the rear of the bar. I focused on the front sidewalk cameras, starting with seven o’clock last night. Veronica had left Shelby’s house at seven thirty, and though the show at Insomnia wasn’t until ten, I thought maybe there was a chance she had walked over early, intending to kill time somewhere before it started. I didn’t expect to catch a crystal-clear picture of Kenny luring Veronica into his late-model Lexus, but I was at least hoping for something: a sign that would help establish more of the timeline, something that the Belmont police couldn’t ignore.