ROSE W: Women
BD E: U work out?
ROSE W: Duh
BD E: Want to show me what you wear to work out?
I typed not really, deleted it, then sent him a picture of my rack of leggings.
BD E: Are those all yours?
ROSE W: No, for work
BD E: That’s the lady from cbus isn’t it
BD E: Spinspo
ROSE W: You know your women’s workout clothes
BD E: I just read a thing about her in the paper, that’s all
ROSE W: Do YOU work out?
BD E: Every day
ROSE W: Match made in heaven
Too strong? He didn’t respond to that. A few minutes later, my phone rang.
THIRTY-ONE
Joe and Cindy Javonovich lived on the northeast side of the city in one of those Gahanna subdivisions where the houses all had three-car garages that were at least one-third full of junk. Theirs was a vaguely mauve-ish stone affair with a two-story entry and a large wooden table that featured a bowl of blown-glass fruit just inside the door. I complimented the fruit as she invited me in, mostly because she seemed to expect a compliment of some kind.
She was tall and artificially blond and wearing a leather blazer and heeled ankle boots in her own home, so it was pretty clear that we were not going to be compatible as people. But she made a mean cup of Earl Grey and she had the air about her of someone who was very willing to dish.
“I thought about murdering him,” she said. “I mean, not seriously? But sort of seriously. A little rat poison in his green smoothie? Ha!” She laughed. It was not apparent how serious she was, exactly. “But he never met her, never even talked to her on the phone. It was all just in the stupid app. The worst part? My brother-in-law works for that stupid start-up, too.”
“Um,” I said.
Addy Marie’s profile was up on my phone, between us on the kitchen table. This one didn’t have any blown glass on it.
“I found their little conversation by accident. The accident being that I thought it would be a good idea to snoop through his phone. My therapist told me to be honest about that. The accident part.”
“That’s healthy.”
She sighed.
“So you accidentally thought that looking through Joe’s phone would bring you peace.”
“Yes! That’s all I actually wanted. Peace. See, you understand. Why is it so hard for everyone else to understand?”
“What happened then?”
“Well, I read their whole dirty conversation and saw the pictures they were sending each other. And she’s—okay, so she’s young. But there is no way she’s prettier than me. Hips like a crinoline. Joe never got to fuck a greaser in high school so all I can figure is that’s what it’s about.”
She was a lovely, lovely person. “Okay, what then?”
“I told him what I saw, of course, and he swore up and down it was nothing, it was just the stupid app, that she contacted him and he was just playing a game and got caught up in it. But I called bullshit on that. He gave her money. And one thing you should know about my husband is that he doesn’t part with his money over nothing. Throwing money around makes him feel better than everybody else,” she said. I suspected the same could be said about her. But maybe that was why they were so perfectly miserable together.
I said, “What was the money for?”
Cindy waved a hand like a swarm of gnats had alighted from the table. “Her rent, is what she said. It’s not like Joe would actually ever help someone in need but a pretty girl says she needs help with her rent and suddenly he’s St. Francis?”
“Your metaphors are very creative.”
“Thank you.”
“But he never actually met her.”
“No.”
“Spoke on the phone?”
“No. Just chatting in the app.”
“When was the last time?”
“The minute I found out, I made Joe swear he would never use the app again. I made him delete it off his phone. And I check it on the computer sometimes, just to make sure.”
“And he didn’t, I don’t know, create another account without you knowing?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Besides, even if he did? There’s no way she’d ever talk to him again.”
“Why’s that?”
Cindy gave me a tense little smile.
I thought about the seemingly disparate clues I had so far, trying to find something that would fit. With Joe’s name appearing on Addy Marie’s list of recent connections, that meant that they’d talked as recently as two weeks ago. “Would you be willing to show me the conversations with her?”
Cindy was more than willing; she got out her iPad and gleefully logged into Joseph J’s account. “I’m going to start dinner. Joe will be home soon.”
“You still make this motherfucker dinner?” I said as I skimmed the messages from about three months ago, which was when the majority of them had been sent.
Joseph J: I’m rock hard just imagining it
Addy Marie S: Imagining what?
Joseph J: You sitting on my face
Addy Marie S:
Cindy said, “My marriage is not a failure.”
That didn’t answer the question, but at the same time, it did.
The mystery of the recent communication between Addy and Joe was solved with a series of messages from Cindy via Joe’s account:
Joseph J: Slut
Joseph J: Slut
Joseph J: Slut
It appeared she sent them once a week, and that Addison was smart enough not to respond. The point at which Cindy had wrested control of the account was obvious; at the beginning of January, I found this exchange:
Joseph J: Hey where are you
Addy Marie S: At home, why?
Joseph J: Lying slut. I’m standing right behind you
I said, “You went to the nightclub, didn’t you?”
The woman that Wyatt had poured into a cab after she lost her mind at Addison.
“Yes,” Cindy said. “And you know what? I’m not sorry. She deserved it. I wasn’t about to fall for her little ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ act.”
“That’s what she said?”
“Isn’t that what you’d say?”
If a drunk and angry stranger accosted me while I was at work? Probably. Cindy was chopping asparagus with violence in mind.
“But she never sent another message after that, so clearly she did know,” she added.
An expensive engine pulled into the driveway—because the garage was full of crap, I assumed—and Joseph J himself entered through the front door, dropping his coat and briefcase on the table with the fake fruit. “Cindy, there’s a car on the street—oh,” he said when he saw me. His BusPass pictures were clearly of a younger Joseph J; in the present era, he was puffy and greying and wore a yellow-and-grey striped tie with a blob of mayo on it. He looked at me nervously. “Cindy?”
“This is Roxane, and she’s a detective, and you’re going to tell her all about the slut from the dating app,” Cindy said. She kept her voice amazingly even.
Joe glanced at his wife, then at me, then back to Cindy. “A police detective?”
“Yes,” she said.
Everyone was interested in making me seem more important than I was this week, but only to further their own agendas.
I nodded gravely.
Joe spluttered, “I haven’t talked to her! Cindy, you know I haven’t. I haven’t! Did she say I talked to her?”
It was pretty clear to me that while the man had terrible judgment, he was being truthful now. So I left them to their dinner of root vegetables and marital discord and sat in the car on their dark suburban street, which felt like every other suburban street I’d ever sat in the car on. That was either what was wrong with suburbs, or it was what people liked so much about them.
I cranked the heat and thought about the days when I kept a flask in the glove box along with my gun. Not exactly a bette
r time, but a shot of whiskey sounded good right about now. I was cold and discouraged. Addison Stowe didn’t make any sense to me. From what her friends had told me, she wasn’t the attention-seeking type. Intensely private, it was hard to imagine her sending the cat-face/tongue emoji combo to someone she hadn’t met. And even if she had, would she really continue down this path of flirting with men online even after the spectacle at Nightshade when Cindy Javonovich showed up?
Anyone was capable of anything.
This was something I had to make a point of reminding myself on the regular.
I checked my phone to see if there were messages from Addy Marie’s other chat mates.
Rajit M: Hi, sorry, meant to change my relationship status! Seeing someone right now. Good luck!
A curiously polite response, given the general level of sleaze that seemed to abound in this app.
BD E: What are u drinking tonight?
The message was accompanied by a picture of a bottle of Yakima Fresh gripped in a rough, blunt-fingered hand that floated above a granite countertop, grey, with a herringbone tile floor in the background.
I thought it looked familiar, in the anonymous suburban way I was just contemplating.
It could be anywhere.
Then I realized that it was familiar, actually. I’d spent quite a bit of time the other day at that counter, while Elise Hazlett folded laundry.
“Brock, you dirty dog,” I said.
THIRTY-TWO
The Hazletts’ street was quiet in the dark, lawns glowing faintly blue from the hard blanket of snow. Brock answered the door, the very same beer in his hand. “Elise isn’t here,” he said.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you, actually.”
I remembered the brief darkness that flitted through his face when I mentioned Addison the other day. Now it made a lot more sense.
“Uh, okay.” He stepped aside to let me into the house.
His hand grazed the small of my back, and I ducked away so that he didn’t feel the revolver holstered at my hip.
I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Do you, uh, want anything to drink?” Brock said.
We were standing around the kitchen island. He had on a Browns sweatshirt and tattered gym shorts and white socks pulled up to mid-calf. The house was quiet.
“Where’s Elise?” I said.
“At Jordy’s.”
I wondered how big Jordy’s place was; she was taking on a lot of refugees. “You have a fight?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“What about?”
“Just stuff. Married people stuff. What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Actually, a drink does sound good. Have any rosé?”
He blinked at me.
“Let’s chat about BusPass, Brock,” I said. I showed him the conversation he’d just been having with me on my phone.
“What the hell? Is this why Elise hired you? Because—”
“Calm down. Elise didn’t hire me, though maybe she should have. How long have you been chatting with random ladies on BusPass?”
“I don’t—”
“Can it. This is all the proof either of us needs to see.”
I tapped the photo he’d sent me an hour earlier and held up the phone so the edges of the image lined up with the actual room.
“But—”
“Brock.”
He sighed. His face was a hypertensive pink. Embarrassment, or anger? That remained to be seen. “You entrapped me into messaging you.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what entrapment is. And anyway, these messages are not my concern. Let’s talk about Addison.”
“Um, Addison? I don’t really know her that well—”
“Brock. Sweetheart. I know you’ve been messaging her too. I guess the only question is, does she know that? Does she know that BD E is actually her childhood bestie’s husband?”
The fight or flight went out of his posture and he slumped a little. “No. I mean, I don’t think so.”
“Were you careful enough not to send her pictures in your own kitchen?”
He nodded.
“I have a lot of questions, Brock. First of all, why?”
“She wrote to me! Like Rose did.”
“Oh, okay, so you were powerless.”
“Yeah!” Then he realized that I was being sarcastic and he added, “No, I guess not. I just thought it was funny at first, I mean, I only got the account because this buddy of mine from work was always wanting to send me stuff from the app and I couldn’t see it so he’s just like, ‘Sign up for a fake account already.’ So I did.”
“So it’s his fault too.”
“No, I’m just saying.”
I motioned for him to go on.
“So I got the account and then sometimes, I guess I’d just start flipping through, you know? For something to do. It was, you know, there. Then this one time, I saw Addison’s profile.”
“And you passed right on her?”
“I should’ve skipped her. But yeah, I passed right. I wasn’t really thinking. But we kinda have a history.”
My ears perked up at that. “Kinda?”
“Well,” he said.
“Spill.”
Brock rubbed his face. “Me and Elise have been together since high school, junior year,” he said.
“Lovely.”
“But before that, me and Addison kind of had something going on.”
I stared at him.
“We were both on the swim team.”
“What kind of something?”
“Just, you know. Fooling around. We were like fifteen. Riding to meets on the bus together out of town. But I mean, it was never serious. We weren’t going together or anything.”
It seemed that Brock thought that was a point in his favor. “Does Elise know about this?”
“She knew Addison and I hung out, before. But it wasn’t a big deal.”
“So when you saw Addison in the dating app, you just thought it might be fun to open up that Pandora’s box again for no reason?”
“I don’t—it’s like—listen, I’m not proud of it. But Addy’s just, damn, I mean, she’s fine and she doesn’t even care. She’s fine because she doesn’t care. She’s just cool. And don’t get me wrong, I love my wife, but Elise is not exactly cool.”
“Perhaps because she is busy raising your children?”
That shut him up.
I added, “I thought you said you didn’t know Addison that well?”
“Yeah, um. I don’t anymore, I mean, I hardly ever see her.”
“So you found her in the app and figured this was a great way to get some of that coolness into your life without hurting anyone?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Brock, you need to work on your ability to detect sarcasm. I am not on your side here. What did you and Addison talk about?”
“Oh, just, you know, stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Like, music. She has badass taste in music, for a chick. And beer.”
“Badass taste in beer for a chick too?”
Brock nodded.
“What exactly was she getting out of this interaction?”
“I don’t know. Someone to talk to.”
“About beer and music?”
He nodded again.
“Mind if I take a look at your messages?”
“What—no, that’s private.”
I drummed my fingertips on the counter and stared at him. He looked afraid of me. Finally, he said, “She sometimes sent pictures of herself. Like, sexy ones.”
“Show me.”
“I deleted the conversation. Yesterday, after Jordy was saying that Addison is missing or whatever. I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”
“No, of course not,” I said. This time, he grasped that it was sarcasm. “So you never met up with her.”
“No!”
“Talk on the phone?”
“No
.”
“Just beer, music, and sexy pictures?”
“And compliments. From me, to her. She always did like that. Validation.”
I wanted my revelation about Brock to be worth more than this. I thought for a few beats and said, “Who’s Corbin Janney?”
“Who?”
“Corbin Janney.”
“I have no idea.”
Brock wasn’t a great liar, so I was inclined to believe him. But I didn’t want to let him off the hook that easily. “So you didn’t create another profile under that name to get even more sexy pictures from her?”
“No! Nothing like that. I wouldn’t do that—” But he stopped, probably upon realizing that he already had.
“When was the last time you heard from her?”
“Not for like two weeks.”
Roughly the amount of time she’d been gone. But she was still using the app—she’d talked to Wyatt that way.
Brock was fidgeting a bit in front of me.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I said.
“I sent her money.”
He leaned hard against the counter.
“Oh?”
“For the pictures.”
I waited.
“She said she needed three hundred bucks or else she was going to lose her apartment. I told her that I might be able to help but I needed a little visual inspiration. I’d been, I don’t know, trying to get her to send a pic or two and she wouldn’t. But then I said that. I was gonna send her fifty bucks or something regardless.”
“So what you said about her wanting validation?”
“I’m just embarrassed, okay? This is embarrassing. And isn’t it, like, a crime?” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper on the last two words.
“I really don’t care,” I said. “I just want to find her. How much money did you send her?”
Brock muttered indistinctly.
“Come again?”
“A lot. I don’t know. She sent me a lot of pictures. Are you going to tell my wife about this?”
“Right now I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Addison,” I said. “Once I do that, then we’ll see.”
He looked at me for a while, clearly working out something else in his head. “So if you don’t really do social media for SpinSpo, why do you have so many leggings in your house?”
“Brock,” I said, “you’d be well-served by worrying less about women’s pants, okay?”
The Stories You Tell Page 23
