The Stories You Tell

by Kristen Lepionka

  “I know.”

  The revolving doors spun open and with them, a burst of liquid-nitrogen-cold air. Tom looked outside, at the grey sky and the grey street and the grey concrete steps. “Are you guys doing anything on the eighth?”

  I felt myself sigh. I was no better equipped to deal with the anniversary of my father’s death than I had been days ago. I was possibly less equipped now. “I’m sure we will. But I don’t know what yet. I’ll let you know.” I thought about what Sanko had said upstairs and had no idea what to do about it. “Hey,” I said, “are you doing okay?”

  He turned away from the window and gave me a look like he had no idea what to do about it either. “I’m fine,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  * * *

  I went to Upper Cup for tea and a muffin and wireless internet. I had two of those things at home, but I didn’t want to go home. So I holed up at a table as far away from the door and the cold winter air as possible and tried to make sense of the card I’d found in Addison’s room yesterday.

  Wyatt. There were a lot of people with the name in Columbus. I tried a few different combinations based on what I knew about him—admittedly, very very little—like Wyatt + Addison, Wyatt + hat, all of which was useless. Then I went back to Addison’s deejaying profile—DJ Raddish—and clicked for a while to make sure Facebook’s algorithm wasn’t hiding any salient information from me and was rewarded with a brief exchange in the comments on her long-ago post about an event at Skate Zone.

  Wyatt Achebe Girl. Are you ever going to update this page?

     Like • Reply 5w

  Addison Marie @Wyatt Bitch, be quiet. Facebook is dried up.

     Like • Reply 5w

  Wyatt Achebe @Addison Marie You’re dried up.

     Like • Reply 5w

  Addison Marie True, true.;P

     Like • Reply 5w

  Wyatt Achebe People of Columbus, forget about Skate Zone. DJ Raddish is now at Nightshade almost every damn night! Get on it.

     Like • Reply 5w

  I clicked on Wyatt’s name to view his profile and almost dropped my muffin.

  This was the guy who’d been driving Shane’s Jag from the other night.

  And his profile said that he was a bouncer at Nightshade.

  In daylight he was younger than I’d thought, college-age or so, well-built to the point of vanity, his dark skin stretched tight over impressive delts, which were on display in sleeveless shirts in the handful of pictures his privacy settings allowed me to see. He had a big, easy smile, friendly. But he’d been following me, which wasn’t exactly friendly.

  I closed my laptop and focused on my muffin. This was going to require energy.

  In short order I’d learned that Wyatt Achebe was twenty-three years old and on parole for assault, a charge to which he’d pleaded no contest a year earlier. He lived in a small blue Cape Cod on Loretta Avenue in North Linden. It was an area split off from Clintonville by the freeway, a phenomenon of urban planning that arbitrarily made a neighborhood get a reputation as less desirable. But the houses, while inexpensive compared to the ones just on the other side of 71, were mostly neat and well-maintained, their sidewalks clear of snow. When I knocked on Wyatt’s door, the curtains fluttered almost instantaneously.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  She was tall, forty-five or so, dressed in a cotton housecoat with hearts on it; she had the same soft features as Wyatt did and she was clutching a wad of wet tissues.

  I told her who I was and why I was there, and she pressed her mouth into a flat line. “I’m afraid something awful’s happened,” she said, and began to cry.

  TWELVE

  “I called the police,” she said a few minutes later, once we were sitting at a small round table in the kitchen, mugs of tea in front of each of us even though I’d already had enough caffeine to power me for a few days. “On Friday. When I said that he’d replied to a few of my texts, the officer kind of laughed and said Wyatt was probably just out sowing his wild oats. I tried to explain that my son is—he doesn’t do that, he doesn’t not come home. Ever.”

  I could see where the police might have been coming from but disagreed—the fact that something unusual had happened with or to both Addison and Wyatt on the same night didn’t seem like a good sign. I said, “What did he say in the texts?”

  She took her phone out of the pocket of her housecoat and showed me their exchange.

  Honey, where are you?

  Wyatt?

  I had to get a ride to Dr. Franco’s office with Lenny next door.

  Where are you?

  I’m sorry mom

  When are you coming home?

  I need to get my pills from Kroger

  I don’t know

  I’ll get you an Uber

  I don’t want an Uber, I want you to tell me where you are

  Taking care of something.

  I’ll be back when I can

  What’s wrong?

  Nothing

  What are you taking care of?

  Wyatt?

  What on earth is going on?

  The last response from Wyatt had been Saturday afternoon.

  “I take it that it’s unlike him not to respond to you?”

  “He’s glued to his phone. And he knows that I know he’s glued to his phone. He always texts me back. Especially since I’ve been sick…” Wyatt’s mother trailed off. Her name was Gwen and Wyatt was her only son. “And you know, I get it. The police probably get calls about all kinds of things that don’t amount to much, but when I say my son would not do this, I am absolutely positive.”

  “You’re close?”

  “Very.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Also, I’m having a procedure in two weeks. So things are stressful lately, which Wyatt knows, of course, so he definitely wouldn’t do this, not right now.”

  “And the last time you saw him was Wednesday.”

  Gwen nodded. “Around seven. I fixed dinner for us. Then he went to work. When I got up in the morning, his door was closed so at first I thought he was still asleep—he always sleeps late, since he doesn’t get home till four a.m. Sometimes a bit later, if he decides to go to the gym after. The yellow and purple one over by North Broadway. But anyway, he’s always home in the morning. At about ten, I saw his car wasn’t here, and that was when I knew something had to be wrong.” She swirled her tea bag idly around her mug. “He shouldn’t be working in a place like that. But he’s—he’s a felon now,” she said, shaking her head. “So his options are limited.”

  “Mind if I ask what happened?”

  “Oh, it was a terrible thing. He tried to break up a fight outside a bar on campus—a transgender classmate of his was being harassed. Wyatt stepped in and it—it wasn’t a fair fight, of course, it was two against one, but he’s very strong, my son. He put these boys in the hospital, one of them had a broken jaw. And of course it turned out that he’s the nephew of some bigwig who gives a lot of money to the school. So in one swoop, Wyatt’s expelled and charged with assault. All because he was trying to help.” She shook her head slowly, disbelieving. “This world is not fair.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. It was probably a safe bet that the bigwig’s nephew was white, and Wyatt was not, which was at the heart of a lot of the unfairness. “So not a lot of places are hiring people with felonies on their records.”

  “He’s still looking for something better. But without his student loans, and with my health … he needed to start working right away. So that’s where he wound up. A real snake pit, from the sound of it. Rather than a paycheck, he just gets a stack of cash from the register. His boss is always having him run weird errands. I keep telling him, you need to keep records of what you’re getting paid, what he’s having you do. Don’t get wrapped up in whatever funny business this is. And do not socialize with those people.”

  “What kind of weird errands?”

  “Well, he told me about going to Microcenter to
buy a bunch of techy stuff.”

  “Techy stuff?”

  “Cameras, computer stuff. A couple thousand dollars’ worth. And then the next day, they made him return it all.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head.

  That was definitely weird. Laundering cash from the bar, maybe? It was a wildly inefficient way to do that, especially when you were already in cahoots with something of a master of the medium. But maybe Shane was trying to short Vincent Pomp’s proceeds and lacked the brainpower to devise a better system?

  I said, “Did Wyatt ever mention a young woman named Addison? A deejay?”

  Gwen’s eyebrows went together. “Yes,” she said, an edge in her voice. “He told me about her. He said she had some trouble with someone, in the club. He had to toss some woman out because of it.”

  “Really.”

  She nodded.

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A while back.”

  “Do you know what the trouble was?”

  “It sounded like something to do with a man. Like so much trouble is, you know. But I don’t know the specifics. Wyatt just said that Addison is a real nice girl with the worst luck.”

  There was that word again: nice.

  “Do you think they might’ve been involved?”

  “Involved? No. My son is gay. They’re just friends.”

  “Any idea if they hang out together outside of work?”

  Gwen said, “Unless she likes to lift weights, I don’t think so. But like I said, my son is glued to that phone. I’m sure they message each other and whatnot. I just hope he’s been smart enough not to get involved in anything ugly over there.” She shook her head. “The past year has been nothing but pain.”

  * * *

  There was no answer at Shane Resznik’s motel room. That was my first guess as to Wyatt’s whereabouts, since he’d been driving Shane’s car just a few days earlier. But the car wasn’t here either. I sat in the parking lot for a while just in case one or both of them spontaneously showed up, and I mulled over what Gwen Achebe had to say: trouble at the bar, over a man, which led to Wyatt throwing some woman out.

  There was definitely something brewing between Shane Resznik’s two lady loves, Lisette and the braless Goth bartender, but it didn’t seem like Addison fit into that saga. Resznik had seemed downright surprised when I asked about her.

  That left me with BusPass Guy, who could easily have had a wife, along with pictures of Addison on his phone. But who, also, could have been literally anybody.

  People, in general, weren’t all that mysterious. But when you looked into their lives from the outside—no background, no context—they suddenly looked that way. I was no different; if a detective who didn’t know anything about me needed to figure out where I might have gone or who I might have gone with, there weren’t many obvious answers.

  An interesting thought experiment: my own disappearance, and how I’d investigate it. I’d check my mother’s house, my brother’s place—Andrew’s, not Matt’s, because he sucked—and Catherine’s place, if anyone pointed me in her direction. I’d already checked Wyatt’s mother’s place, his sister lived in Michigan and hadn’t heard from him, and I didn’t know of a love interest or any friends other than Addison, who was, of course, also nowhere to be found.

  I spent a bit of time systematically “friending” some of Wyatt’s connections in case this would magically release any clues hidden behind his profile privacy settings. According to his mother, he worked, went to the gym, and came home—no exceptions or diversions. I didn’t know how likely that was, but the purple and yellow gym by North Broadway could only refer to one place—the Planet Fitness on Indianola. It was beside a large Volunteers of America thrift shop, where I’d once tracked down a porcelain urn containing the remains of someone’s beloved pet ferret.

  Clients hired me to find lots of things, and I took them all seriously—but people, most of all.

  When neither Shane nor Wyatt had resurfaced in close to two hours, I decided to try the gym. There was a perky blond woman in a black-and-purple uniform behind the counter when I went into the gym. I wondered if she owned SpinSpo leggings and assumed she did. Proof that the universe has a sense of humor: two different fitness-related cases at the same time, despite my firm anti-exercise stance other than running my mouth. I showed her a picture of Wyatt on my phone. “I’m looking for my friend,” I started, not expecting much.

  But then her face lit up. “Wyatt!”

  “You know him?”

  “Sure. He used to come in here all the time.”

  “Used to?”

  I noticed she had a streak of purple in the lock of hair tucked behind her ear. “Like last year.”

  “Was he friends with anyone here?”

  “Friends? I don’t know, probably not. Although, he applied for a job here, had an interview and everything. Then he started going to another gym. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t hire him. He’s super nice. Great smile.”

  I figured I knew why—a failed background check—but there was no point in splashing Wyatt’s business around. “Do you know what gym he goes to now?”

  She tipped her head to the left, the way people so often did when trying to remember a name or to think of a lie. I hoped it was the former in this case. “He told me what it was called but it’s just gone, you know? But it was something like—it sounded like a deodorant brand.”

  “What, like Speed Stick?”

  She laughed. “No, fresh or something.”

  “Any idea where it was?”

  Purple Streak shook her head. “Sorry.”

  * * *

  I went home and spent an hour making a list of gyms in Columbus that also potentially sounded like deodorant brands:

  Speed Round

  Clear Confidence Fitness

  Purity

  Stride

  CleanSweat

  Crystal Sweat

  X-Treme System

  But by now it was Sunday night and it looked like most of them were closed.

  I stood at the front window and looked out at the dark street. There weren’t any headlights shining this time—where was my low-key stalker when I actually wanted to speak to him?

  A woman in a parka with a fur-lined hood walked by, a husky trotting alongside her. The dog looked happy. The woman looked miserable. I sat down on my sofa and said to the empty room, “I am so fucking frustrated I could scream.”

  Sometimes saying it out loud helped a little. This time it didn’t. All of this runaround might be over nothing, but without knowing what exactly had happened at Nightshade, I’d never figure it out.

  I grabbed my keys and left.

  THIRTEEN

  Shimmy’s was over on 161, about where you’d expect: in the long string of condemned motels and nightclubs with names like the Blue Fox and Tart. From the name, I was afraid it was going to be a strip club but when I got there I realized that very little shimmying was going on. One lone dancer in fishnets and a neon-green swimsuit stood on a small parquet stage with an antique pole in the center, talking on the phone. “I know, sweetie, I miss Grandma too,” she was saying. When I walked in, she looked up, turned away from the door, and went back to her conversation. There was music playing, but it was an unidentifiable blare of bass and crackling speakers. The place was empty except for the dancer and a bartender, similarly dressed. I sat down on one of the bar stools.

  “Um,” the bartender said, “can I help you?”

  I kept finding myself in bars that didn’t want me this week. It was starting to seem like a metaphor for something. “Crown Royal, neat.”

  “No, I mean, do you need help?”

  “Why, because I’m here?”

  She bit back a laugh. “This isn’t a ladies’ night kind of place.”

  “And yet, here we all are. Is Mr. Pomp here?”

  Under the hazy lights, her expression changed. “Nope.”

  “How about Bo?”
/>
  She’d been slowly working the lid off a bottle of Crown, but now she reached for a phone that was underneath the worn bar top.

  “Tell him it’s Roxane Weary,” I said. “He’ll be happy to see me.”

  Bo wasn’t that happy to see me. Maybe it was because I’d come to him, at the slightly embarrassing Phoenix Group social club, or maybe it was because I was interrupting his Sunday night with business.

  “Why the fuck would I let you see the security cameras at Nightshade?” he was saying.

  I had no idea what was up with Wyatt’s electronics-return routine, but Gwen had given me an idea. If something had happened at the club, maybe there would be a recording of it. “Because I asked nicely, and because I think something happened there on Wednesday night, two people are suddenly nowhere to be found, and you might want to figure out what’s going on before someone other than me starts wondering about it.”

  “Two people?”

  I explained about how two employees had sort of gone AWOL in the past few days.

  “I ask again, why would we show you the security footage?” he said, glaring at me a little.

  But I could tell that under the tough-guy act, he knew that what I was saying wasn’t exactly good news for his boss. I said, “If you could help clear a little smoke, don’t you think Mr. Pomp would appreciate that?”

  * * *

  Nightshade looked the same as it had the other night: black, empty, uninviting. Armed with a real flashlight this time, we did a full search for the light switches, finally locating a panel on the wall in the loading dock that required a key to operate.

  “Jesus Christ,” Bo muttered. He held up a massive ring with at least three dozen keys on it.

  “What are all those for?”

  “The fuck if I know.”

  “Here,” I said. I squinted in the flashlight beam at the small lock, then picked through the keys until I found five likely contenders.

  The third one worked.

  “Magic,” I said.

  Bo just frowned and slid the switches up into the on position; one by one, lights buzzed on and illuminated quadrants of the club.