Liars, Inc.

by Paula Stokes

  “Max was just telling me that Preston left the beach early on Sunday. Apparently he wasn’t feeling good.”

  Gonzalez made a face like I had just taken a dump in my pants. “Oh yeah? A little too hung over to surf?”

  It didn’t sound like a real question, so I didn’t answer him.

  “Do you know if he went straight home?” McGhee asked.

  I sipped my water. “I figured. But he didn’t say.”

  McGhee nodded to himself again. “Did you and Preston take a walk along the top of the cliff on Saturday night?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He was fooling around by the edge. Pretending to fly, stuff like that.”

  “Did you guys argue?” McGhee asked.

  “What? No.” Preston and I never argued. I had known him over a year and couldn’t remember a single fight. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Just following up on a tip. Probably irrelevant.” He flipped his notebook closed. “I think that’s all the questions we’ve got for now, Max. But if you think of anything else, please give me a call.” He slid a business card across the table.

  I slipped it into my wallet behind my health insurance card, back in the section of stuff I almost never looked at. “Thanks,” I said.

  Gonzalez stopped twitching long enough to give me one more glare. I stood up, unsure if I was just supposed to leave or if I had to wait for one of the agents to walk me back out to the front.

  “Isn’t it kind of early to assume something bad happened?” I asked. “I thought you had to wait forty-eight hours just to file a missing persons report.”

  “That’s actually a myth perpetuated by TV shows,” McGhee said. “There’s no required waiting period in California. And it’s been over forty-eight hours since either of his parents saw him. You’re the only one who has seen him in the last couple of days.”

  I nodded. I wished I hadn’t brought it up.

  “We don’t know anything for certain,” McGhee continued. “But we need to consider the possibility that Preston’s disappearance is politically motivated until we can rule that out.”

  “What? Like . . . terrorism or something? Don’t you think that’s a little unlikely?”

  “A high-profile senator’s son disappearing right after an election? We’re just trying to stay ahead of the curve,” McGhee said. “Which reminds me. We’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to anyone about what we’ve discussed this morning.”

  I nodded. “Am I done? Do you know where my parents went?”

  “I’ll show you where they are.” McGhee pushed his chair back and stood up.

  I followed him out of the room and back down the hallway, past the desk sergeant and out into the police station lobby. Darla was chewing on her lower lip as she paced back and forth across the scuffed floor. Ben sat in the chair nearest to the door, his canvas sneakers crossed at the ankles. He was flipping through a sports magazine and swilling down a cup of coffee. Man, talk about opposites attracting.

  “Max.” Darla headed over to me, arms wide, like I’d just woken up from a coma.

  “Jeez, Darla.” I wriggled out of her grasp. “I was only gone for twenty minutes.”

  “I know. It’s just the thought of your friend missing . . .” She trailed off.

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “Not officially, but I’ve seen you two surfing,” she said. “Just because you don’t bring your friends around doesn’t mean I don’t care about them. I can’t even think about what I would do if it were you.”

  I resisted the urge to tell her she could always replace me with another broken child. Maybe upgrade to a nice amputee, or a blind kid. “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said. “He probably just needed to get away from all the political stuff going on at his house.”

  “You think so?” McGhee asked. His voice made me jump. I didn’t realize he had stopped at the desk for a moment and could still hear me. “Did he ever say anything about taking off?”

  “He said something about Vegas not too long ago,” I hedged. Maybe I could dole out the truth in tiny pieces that, once assembled, would make a picture that resembled a reality in which I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Darla put an arm around me. She cleared her throat meaningfully, and Ben looked up. “We all done here?” he asked. Reluctantly, he returned his magazine to the basket in the corner. The three of us headed for the door.

  “One more thing, Max,” McGhee said. “Did you and Preston both park at the overlook?”

  “Yeah,” I said, without much thought. “Why?”

  He flipped his notepad open again and made a quick notation with his chewed-up pencil. “Just a routine question.”

  TEN

  I MADE IT TO SCHOOL just in time for lunch. After tossing my backpack in my locker, I checked in at the attendance office and then headed for the cafeteria. I passed a group of freshmen arguing loudly about football, two boys in college sweatshirts pushing and shoving across the table as they made a friendly wager.

  It made me think of Preston, how he hadn’t wanted to surf because he was avoiding Jonas Jacobsen. I scanned the caf. Jonas’s brother Jared stood in the salad line, fiddling with his puka shell bracelet while the cashier made change. He took his tray to the condiment station and then headed toward the lobby. It looked like he was going to eat outside. I used to do that too, before Preston transferred to Vista Palisades.

  I followed Jared through the glass doors and out into the sunlight. “Hey,” I said, plunking down on the front steps next to him. As usual, his nose was peeling a little, new pink skin emerging from beneath his perpetual tan. The wind whipped his blond dreadlocks around his mouth, obscuring part of his expression.

  “What’s up, Cantrell?” His eyes flicked around the parking lot and then back to me. He picked up a shrink-wrapped vegan cookie and popped the package open.

  “How much money does Preston owe your brother?”

  Jared set the cookie down on his tray next to a wilted spinach salad. He shook his dreads back from his face. “What makes you think DeWitt is doing business with Jonas?” he asked slowly.

  “He told me he was avoiding your brother because of the UCLA game.”

  Jared blinked twice. “I don’t know what to say, brah. As far as I know, DeWitt hasn’t invested with Jonas in months. Maybe he found better odds elsewhere.” He shrugged and turned away, his tan fingers snapping the hard cookie into pieces.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” I said, more to myself than to him. “Why would Preston tell me that if it wasn’t true?”

  Jared swallowed hard, watching as the breeze stole a few pieces of spinach from his tray and sent them dancing toward the parking lot. “I guess you don’t know your friend as well as you thought you did.”

  “Guess not,” I mumbled. I went back inside and glanced around for Parvati. She wasn’t in our usual spot. It looked weird, those empty seats at the end of the long table, like a seesaw with only one rider. And something else was off too. There were usually about twelve kids at the table, sometimes more if Astrid or Preston felt like inviting someone else over. But today there were only six. A couple of the football players were missing. Astrid glanced up and caught me staring. She held my gaze for a few seconds, her tan face slightly reproachful, as if it were my fault that the All-Stars had lost half their members.

  “Max.” Parvati snuck up on me from behind. “What’s going on? Where have you been all morning? Where’s Pres?”

  I skipped past the first two questions. “I don’t know. Did you eat?”

  “I’ve been collecting fees for Liars, Inc.,” she said with a grin. She opened the pouch of her tiny silk purse to show me a wad of twenties. “I was going to grab a protein bar from my locker and then work on something for the newspaper. It’s not like I want to eat with them by myself.”

  “Yeah. Me neither.” I could still feel Astrid’s eyes on me as I turned away. Parvati and I headed down the main hall to where all the seniors had their lockers.

&nb
sp; “A hundred of this is yours, by the way,” she said.

  I barely heard her. I spun my combination lock and opened my locker. Then I pulled my phone out of my pocket. No texts. No missed calls. “You haven’t heard from Preston today, have you?”

  She shook her head. “No, but some kid named David caught me after second hour and was freaking out about his calculus exam. I had to refund him his money. Pres was supposed to swap tests with him today.”

  “Yeah. So weird.” I rattled off a quick text: Dude. Where the hell are you? Everyone is freaking out.

  “Are you all right?” A mass of wrinkles formed across her forehead. “You’re acting kind of strange.”

  I glanced down at my phone again, even though I knew Preston hadn’t responded in the last five seconds. “I need to talk to you in private.”

  “Ooh, secrets.” Parvati smiled. “I know where we can go.” She kicked my locker closed with one of her boots and led me through the halls past the gym to the Olympic-sized indoor lap pool. One girl was swimming in the far lane. It looked like first-team all-American breaststroke champion Cassie Rhodes.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “You want to talk here?”

  “It’s not like she’s going to hear us.” Parvati took my hand as we started circling the pool, carefully navigating the wet spots. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I set up an alibi for Preston,” I admitted. “He wanted to go to Vegas this weekend.” I paused for a second. Parvati was still moving forward but she had her head turned, staring at me. “He never came home. I’ve tried calling him like a million times.”

  Cassie Rhodes broke the crystal surface of the water. She pushed her wet hair back from her face and then used the side of the pool to propel her body out of the deep end. With trails of water streaming from her arms and legs, she padded barefoot across the painted concrete to the low diving board where she had left her towel. Parvati waited until Cassie had toweled off and disappeared into the locker room before continuing.

  “Vegas?” she asked. “How come I didn’t know about this?”

  “Pres wanted it to be top secret,” I said. “He went to hook up with some girl.”

  Parvati used one hand to brush imaginary dirt off the lowest level of bleachers. She sat down, just the faintest sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead. I sat next to her.

  “What girl?” she asked.

  “Violet something.”

  Parvati made a face. “Are you sure she’s real?”

  “I never heard him talk about her before,” I said. “He said he met her playing online poker, and that she seemed cool and invited him to go hang out.”

  “So then what’s the big deal if he’s a little late coming home? Senator Dad making a federal case out of it?”

  “Literally. I got questioned by the FBI this morning.”

  Parvati whistled under her breath. “That’s heavy. Did you tell them where he was?”

  “Not really. I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble for lying. I basically told them he left the beach early and I didn’t know where he went.”

  The ends of her hair bobbed up and down as she nodded. “Maybe his phone is dead or he’s just having too much fun to call anyone back. I’m sure he’s fine. He’s Preston, you know? Pretty street-smart for a spoiled little rich kid.”

  As usual, she made me feel better. “Like someone else I know.” I nudged her in the ribs.

  Parvati made a mock offended face. “Hey. I come from humble origins. The daughter of an immigrant and a hardworking military man.” Her eyes sparkled. “Hopefully Pres will be back today and everyone can quit overreacting. It would suck if he bailed on your birthday.”

  I had almost forgotten that the next day was my birthday. I shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I don’t have any major plans.” Or any plans, for that matter.

  “I wish I could spend it with you.” Parvati glanced up at the clock on the wall. “You know, Coach Raymond will be in here to set up for the freshmen any second.”

  “So?”

  “So this.” She tilted her neck up and pulled my head down to hers. Our lips met. I wrapped my arms around her back, threading my fingers together. She teased the inside of my mouth with her tongue and I almost slid right off the bleachers.

  I broke away. “Enough. Or I’m going to have to take a cold shower before next period.”

  “That’s kind of sexy.” She winked.

  “Really?”

  “No.” Parvati took my hand with a smile, just as Coach Raymond appeared from the locker room in a plain black racing suit with a pair of canary-yellow gym shorts over it.

  It was definitely time to go. Teachers in swimwear—generally an epic fail.

  Parvati and I walked back to our lockers together and then I headed to fifth period. My acting teacher paced back and forth as she talked about the play Arsenic and Old Lace. It sounded halfway interesting, but I couldn’t focus on pretend mysteries when a real-life one was brewing right under my nose.

  ELEVEN

  December 6th

  THE NEXT MORNING I HAD two messages. One was a happy birthday text from Parvati. The other was a voicemail from my two favorite FBI agents. They had a few routine follow-up questions. Could I please call them at my earliest convenience so they could stop by my house?

  Earliest convenience? How about never?

  Darla frowned when I told her about the message. She was busy trying to put impossibly tiny sneakers on one of the twins. “Your dad and I both have to open the shop today,” she said. “I know you’re eighteen now, but I don’t like the idea of you dealing with those guys alone.”

  “I’ll be okay.” I kept my voice casual, like it was no big deal.

  She dodged a kick from Ji Hyun. “If you’re sure,” she said dubiously. “I’ll call the school when we get to work and let them know you’re going to be late.”

  Ben appeared from the kitchen wearing black surf shorts and a T-shirt from last year’s Malibu Open. He was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. “Christ, Darla. It’s his birthday. Just let him stay home.”

  “Could I?” I hadn’t slept well, and crashing on the couch all day sounded like an excellent idea.

  “I guess it’d be all right,” Darla said. “And then we can all go out to eat tonight, okay? Unless you’ve got plans with your friends.”

  Not likely, since one of my friends was MIA and the other wasn’t allowed to hang out with me. “Dinner sounds good,” I said.

  Darla looked forlornly at the tiny pink sneaker in her hand. Sprawled on her back on the sofa, Ji Hyun squealed and kicked her legs as if she thought being dressed by force was a really fun game. Nearby, Jo Lee sat on the floor trying to fit one of her own sparkly sneaks into her mouth. I pinned Ji’s legs against the sofa’s threadbare fabric one at a time, and she pouted as Darla wrestled the sneakers onto her tiny feet.

  “I think she might need a bigger size already.” Darla shook her head. “I can’t believe how quickly kids grow up.”

  Ji Hyun kicked at the sofa and started wailing. Immediately, her twin sister joined in.

  “Not quick enough for me.” Ben winked at Darla to show her he was kidding. He chugged down the rest of his coffee and set the mug on top of the TV. With half a doughnut dangling from his mouth, he picked up Jo Lee and spun her around in a circle. Immediately, she quit crying and made a little cooing sound.

  Amanda peeked out from the entrance to the kitchen. “Happy birthday, Max.” She held out a box wrapped in snowman wrapping paper.

  I ruffled her hair. “You didn’t have to get me anything, Mandy.”

  “I made it,” she said proudly.

  “Seriously?” That could be good or bad. I ripped through the paper and prepared to gush over whatever was inside the box. Folding back a few squares of toilet paper that she had used as tissue paper, I uncovered a coffee mug painted with brightly colored surfboards and coated with a shiny varnish. It was actually pretty awesome.

  �
�You made this?” I asked.

  “Well, I painted it,” she clarified.

  “It totally rocks.” I leaned down to give her a hug.

  “How come you’re not dressed yet?” Amanda asked. “You get to skip school because it’s your birthday?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled.

  “Are you still going to give me a ride home?”

  “Of course.” Darla didn’t baby Amanda because of her cystic fibrosis, but she hated the thought of her having to ride home on the crowded, dirty bus, so I always picked her up.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do I get to skip school when it’s my birthday?”

  “You can on your eighteenth birthday,” Darla said, shooting me a grateful look. I didn’t know if it was because I was picking Amanda up from school or because I didn’t say anything about the FBI dropping by later. Amanda was already a little too obsessed with death and detectives for a eleven-year-old. If she found out Preston was missing she’d want to help investigate.

  “Mom, can we put the tree up tonight?” Amanda bounced up and down on her toes. “My friend Clara said her mom put their tree up the day after Thanksgiving.”

  “Sure,” Darla said. “We’ll do it after we get home from dinner.”

  Not exactly my dream birthday, but if I couldn’t be with Parvati then tree-trimming with my little sis wouldn’t be too bad. I twisted the mug around in my hands to check out the painted surfboards one more time. Amanda was actually pretty cool for a kid. I hoped she would rub off on the twins as they got older.

  After everyone headed out, I relaxed in front of the TV. There was still no word about Preston’s disappearance, not even on the local news. I knew I should call Agent McGhee, but he probably didn’t expect me to skip school. The twins would be at the babysitter’s and my parents would be at the shop until sunset. I could give McGhee a call an hour before I had to pick up Amanda from school. That would be a convenient excuse to cut the “routine follow-up questions” short if things got tense. I couldn’t leave my chronically ill little sister without a ride home, could I?