“Crown Royal, if it’s not too low-class for this joint,” I said.
She grinned at me. “I got this,” she said. She nosed around the bottles until she found my whiskey. She was wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt with a lace panel in the back that showed off her shoulder blades, as well as the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She handed me a glass and poured herself some of the gold-flake vodka.
“Thanks,” I said. I knew I needed to ease into the topic of her friend—and her boss—being a killer, so I started out friendly. “So what’s it like, working for Kenny?”
Marisa shrugged. “Kenny’s, well, he’s just Kenny. I’m a travel agent, or was. But I needed a job, I have two kids. So he’s doing me a favor. I don’t know shit about bartending.”
“You could have fooled me,” I said, and she smiled. “A job’s a big favor, you know him for a long time?”
“God, since kindergarten, I guess. He’s a sweetheart, underneath the big pimpin’ routine.” She sipped at her drink. “Have you tried this stuff?”
“What is it?” I said. “I mean, what does it taste like?”
“Cinnamon,” she said. “It’s good. Here, try it.”
“Did I stumble into some kind of multilevel marketing sales party?” I said as she splashed some into a cup for me.
She laughed. She had a good laugh. “Not that I know of,” she said, “but the manufacturer is basically supporting Kenny’s entire business and, thusly, me, so I hope you’re willing to pay up if it comes to that.”
I drank the vodka. It tasted like a cinnamon lip gloss I had in middle school, sticky and faintly caustic under the atomic sweetness. But it went down very, very smooth. “Uh-oh,” I said.
“At the office, they apparently drink this all day,” Marisa said. “I’m not sure how anything gets done.”
“I think I know someone else who works with Kenny,” I said by way of actual openers. “Curtis Grantham?”
Her eyes narrowed for a second, like she’d had a flash of something ugly. “Yeah, Curt. Finance guy.”
“Did you hear about his daughter?”
“Yes, dear God,” she said. “It’s awful. It’s absolutely awful. I didn’t even know he had a missing daughter, but then to hear how they found her.” She shuddered and looked over my shoulder at something.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing. It’s not polite party conversation.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be a downer,” I said, although I did.
“No, it’s not you. It’s just crazy, because years ago someone I knew was found in that same part of town, the woods over there.”
“Really.”
“Really,” she said.
“A friend of yours?”
She held up a hand and tilted it back and forth: So-so. “Growing up, yeah,” she said. “Then in high school, she dropped out and things got weird.” She tilted her head to one side. “What are you really doing here, though?” she said. “I can tell you didn’t come for the vodka, or the game.”
I liked her and I didn’t want to keep lying to her. Or at least not entirely. “Busted,” I said. “Listen. I wasn’t entirely honest a minute ago. I’m trying to get some information about Mallory Evans. I’m a private investigator and I’m looking into what’s been going on in Belmont. That’s why I’m here.”
Marisa raised her eyebrows. “Why didn’t you open with that? I would have just told you.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Force of habit. In my line of work, people rarely want to talk to me.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, in a way that made it sound like she wouldn’t mind if we stood here talking for a while longer, even if I was a dishonest downer. “So what do you want to know about Mallory?”
I threw out an easy question first. “How come you stopped being close?”
“Oh, it was a lot of things,” she said. “When she got pregnant, she quit school and got married. The guy, her husband, he was just this big dumb loser—God, that sounds bitchy. He was a pretty nice guy, the few times I met him, but just not the kind of person you want to tie yourself to when you’re seventeen. She was miserable, and she got kind of hard to be around.”
“Do you know if she was seeing anyone? Other than her husband.”
Now Marisa’s mouth twisted at the corner. “Well, yeah,” she said.
I waited.
“Oh,” she said. “He didn’t tell you.”
“Kenny and Mallory,” I said. I had been starting to suspect as much, but the confirmation gave me a slight head rush. My cup was empty, but I was feeling warm and loose and the conversation was getting interesting. I was distinctly glad I had come here.
“Yeah.” A faint blush spread across her cheeks. “Well, whatever, it’s not like it matters anymore. But yeah, Kenny and Mallory were together. He used to be the guy you call if you wanted, you know, to buy weed or pills or whatever. He always knew a guy who knew a guy. Mal was way into that, so they were always kind of on the same page.”
“Even after she got married?”
Marisa nodded. “That didn’t really faze her much.”
“Do you remember what happened when she went missing?”
“Well, I hadn’t heard from her in a couple weeks,” she said. “But I don’t even think I realized I hadn’t heard from her. But then Joshua—that’s the guy, her husband—called me asking if I’d seen her and I was like, No, sorry. I thought it was him being overbearing, Mallory always acted like that’s how he was. Then I didn’t think much of it, till Kenny told me he hadn’t seen her either.”
“Was he worried?”
“I guess so. But it was like, they were seeing each other in secret, so he kind of had to respect it if she wanted to lay low. It’s not like it was the love story of the century, they just got fucked up together.”
I thought it was an interesting way to put it, that Kenny had to respect Mallory’s wish to lay low. That made me think that no, he hadn’t appeared all that worried. Because he knew Mallory was beyond being worried about? I let Marisa pour more of the vodka into my cup. “Did you ever hear any rumors?” I said. “About what might have happened?”
“I was away at school, at Kent State, when they found her. So I didn’t get any general gossip from the town, but Kenny and I talked about it sometimes. He was so upset. He thought she went up to Clover Point with the wrong person. It made him crazy.”
“He tell the police about that theory?”
“I’m sure,” Marisa said, although I had my doubts about that. “You should really ask him about Mallory, though, he’ll be able to tell you so much more than I can. He always does this, invites people over and then disappears.”
“Oh, I’ll ask him,” I said. “Anyone else here who knew her? Carrie, maybe?”
“Carrie,” Marisa said slowly. “She hasn’t been back in a long time. And no, I’m Kenny’s only friend left from the bad old days. Why,” she added, narrowing her eyes at me playfully. “Tired of talking to me already?”