Chuckling to himself, Joshua got up and went to the fridge. “Veronica lives next door but we always joke she should get her mail forwarded, she’s over here so much. She doesn’t get along with her stepdad—I don’t blame her for that, really. One time he asked me to cut my grass more often because he didn’t like looking at my yard from his deck.”
“Some people,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Another beer?” he said.
“Sure.”
He handed me the beer. “Cheers,” I said.
“To what,” he said.
“To being bigger-hearted than your neighbor.”
Joshua liked the sound of that. He tapped his can against mine and we drank. “Now, where were we?”
It didn’t seem like Joshua was going to mention Kenny’s name spontaneously, so I decided to dig in. “Did Mallory ever hang around with this kid, Kenny Brayfield?”
His eyebrows went up. “Brayfield? Like the family that built the park?”
“What park?”
“Brayfield Park,” Joshua said. “It’s over by the high school.”
“I don’t know anything about a park,” I said. “But yes, them. Kenny was a classmate of Mallory’s.”
He looked doubtful. “East side and west side don’t really mix in Belmont,” he said. But then something rippled through his eyes. “But there was this one time. I found a ring on the bathroom sink, like a diamond ring, pretty nice. It wasn’t something I got her. We didn’t even have wedding bands. But this ring, it looked expensive. And I asked her about it, like who’s dropping money like this on you, and she got kind of weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Weird like she didn’t want to talk about it. But honestly, that’s how all our conversations went. I could ask her what she wanted on her half of the pizza and she’d act like I was smothering her.”
“You still have the ring?” I said. Half thinking maybe there was an engraved inscription; stranger things had happened.
But Joshua shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to it. I only saw it that one time. This Brayfield guy, you don’t think he’s involved, do you? That would be a hell of a thing.”
“Just following up on some ideas,” I said. “I don’t know yet.” This bit about the ring was obviously inconclusive, but I tended to disagree with what Joshua said about east side versus west side: Kenny had been tight with Brad, who had described the former as a wannabe gangster, not a country club kid like he was probably supposed to be.
“I wish I could help you more.”
“You’re helping a lot,” I told him.
He shook his head, his eyes filling up. “I still can’t believe it, when I think about it. That for seven months I was thinking she was a selfish bitch, when actually she was dead. It just makes me sick now, to think that there was more than one victim.”
I touched his shoulder. “I know people have told you not to blame yourself,” I said, “and I know that’s easier said than done. But Joshua. Do not blame yourself. You need to be strong for Shelby.”
He grabbed my hand. “I know,” he said thickly.
After I finished my beer, I went out to the car and sat there for a moment, thinking. I was doing that a lot lately. I could still smell Catherine’s perfume on the upholstery from the other night, though that mattered less to me now than it might have otherwise. I didn’t have a lot to go on: a pricey ring that may have come from Kenny or may have come from literally anyone else in the world, and the first names of two of Mallory’s friends. I imagined myself trying to find a Belmont High yearbook and paging through the black-and-white pictures until I saw the name Marisa next to one of them. I wrote it down in my notebook with a question mark beside it. Then I remembered what Kenny had told me about his Monday Night Football party in his parents’ absence today. Just some old friends, he said. I wondered if high school friends counted among the attendees, and if I was still invited. I put the car in gear and pulled out just as a Belmont cruiser turned down the street, slowing to a stop right beside me. I sighed. This was past the point of absurdity.
Sergeant Derrow rolled down his window and I did the same. “Everything okay here?”
“Yep,” I said.
He rested his hand on the doorframe, tapping lightly. “All right, I can see you’re leaving. So carry on.”
I nodded, glad he wasn’t going to make a thing of it. “Tell Lassiter I said hi,” I said.
TWENTY
The gate at the driveway of the Brayfield house was open, so I drove in without having to announce myself. There were a dozen or so cars parked on both sides of the curve. Since I might want to make a quick getaway, I made a three-point turn and wedged my car as close to the exit as possible. Then I went into the house, the door to which was unlocked too.
Kenny was apparently unfazed by the recent crime development in Belmont. Maybe because he knew too much about it.
I stood awkwardly in the two-story entryway and looked for signs of life—from the back of the property, I heard the muffled strains of a television and, elsewhere, someone tearing through an Everclear song on an out-of-tune acoustic guitar. I unzipped my coat and headed for the kitchen, the only room I could confidently locate in the massive house.
Once again conspicuously clean, the kitchen offered a giant bowl of cheese curls and a tray of veggies. I helped myself to a red pepper slice and kept walking through a dining room with a long, polished table that could seat at least twelve people, and finally I found the den, which offered a leather sectional sofa with several good-looking women lounging on it. They were laughing about the misfortune of someone named Bridget. I’d been half expecting to see Danielle here, but I didn’t. Though it was just after seven, the coffee table was covered with beer bottles and cups of gold-flake vodka. No one looked up at me.
“Hi,” I said finally.
Six highly styled heads turned my way. I tried to decide if any of them looked like a Carrie or a Marisa. When I determined that I couldn’t, I finally said, “Is Kenny here?”
“He stepped out for a few minutes,” one of the women said. She had reddish-brown hair in a long ponytail, light green eyes.
The football game hadn’t even started yet, which made it seem a little weird that Kenny was stepping out already. But I thought there was a possibility that he was a murderer. That meant everything about him was a little weird.
“I’m Roxane,” I said, but no one seemed particularly interested in me. I took a seat in an armchair in the corner and they resumed their conversation about Bridget, but I noticed that the green-eyed woman was still looking at me.
“You don’t have a drink yet,” she said. “Let’s do something about that.”
That sounded good to me. She got up and stepped over someone sprawled on the carpet, a guy ignoring the group in favor of his phone, where he was furiously swiping right on Tinder.
“I’m Marisa,” the woman said, leading me into the kitchen.
That sounded even better. I tried to play it cool. “Hey,” I said.
“What are you drinking?” Marisa said as we stood in front of a liquor cabinet that put my father’s to shame. Then she looked a little embarrassed. “I’ve been bartending at Kenny’s launch parties for a few months, since I got laid off from my actual job. I apparently can’t stop getting people drinks.”