She didn’t say anything. But she did take her hands away from her face.
“And if you tell me where you want to look, Shelby, I’ll go to every single one of those places since you can’t.”
“I don’t even know,” she whispered.
“Do you have a recent picture of her?”
Shelby looked up at the wall behind me, nodding quickly. She reached for her phone and thumbed the screen for a few seconds. “This is from the other day,” she said, holding the device out to me.
The picture was a good one: Veronica smiling hugely in the seasonal aisle of a grocery store, clutching a bizarre silver ceramic turkey to her chest. Her reddish-purple hair was braided into pigtails and she was wearing that coat with the ermine collar.
“Send this to me?”
She nodded, typing.
“I’m going to go look into a couple things,” I said as my phone vibrated in my pocket with the image she just sent. “If you hear anything, let me know. And I’ll come check in later.”
It was the exact same thing I promised her father. Shelby finally looked at me. Her eyes, blue-green and bloodshot, were wide with anxiety. “Thank you for helping me.”
I wanted to tell her not to thank me yet, but there didn’t seem to be a point. “Hang tight for a bit,” I said instead.
Back in the car, I felt around in the glove box for a bottle of aspirin but couldn’t find it. “Dammit,” I said out loud. I looked up at the Wexford house; nothing was happening yet, but Meeks’s cruiser was still parked out front. I took the lid off my now-cold tea and grabbed the Crown Royal bottle from the floor. Then I changed my mind and shoved it under the passenger seat, preferring to pretend that I hadn’t just contemplated having a drink at nine in the morning.
TWENTY-THREE
The Brayfields’ housekeeper buzzed me through the gate, and once I was in the house, she pointed me toward the TV room we’d been in for most of last night. Kenny was lounging on the couch in a blue bathrobe, another pond-scum smoothie his hand. “Hey, it’s you,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. He sat up, pausing the animated show he was watching. He didn’t look too happy. “What’s up? Did you forget something last night?”
I had thought about what I wanted to say to him on the drive over, but seeing him here with his stupid robe and his cartoons made me feel crazy and I blew it right away. “What’s up,” I said, “is there’s another girl who didn’t come home last night, Kenny.”
“What are you talking about?” He put the smoothie down, palming the scratchy stubble on his jaw.
“Mallory,” I said. “Sarah. Colleen. Now Veronica.”
“Who’s Veronica?”
“Where did you go last night?”
“What?”
“Stop it. Tell me where you went last night.”
“Kenny, is everything okay in here?”
His father paused in the doorway, eyes narrowed. Once again, he didn’t look at me.
“Fine, Dad,” Kenny said. “We’re just talking.”
Mr. Brayfield walked away, but I had a weird feeling I hadn’t seen the last of him.
“Last night, you missed half your own damn party,” I said. “Where were you?”
“I—look, what’s it to you? I had some work I needed to do. I own a business—I’m always working.”
I took a few steps into the room. “Where did you go?”
Kenny sat up, holding the front of his robe closed. “Jesus, what is your problem? I told you, I had some work to do. I was checking on a display. I’m, like, really busy.”
“Busy,” I repeated. I wanted to throttle him. “Why aren’t you at work now, then? What are you doing home?”
“Because I feel like shit,” he snapped, “for reasons I’m pretty sure you follow. And anyway, I don’t see how that’s your business.”
“Kenny, I was in your house,” I said, regretting that I hadn’t taken a few minutes to calm down before coming here. I was too fired up. “Did you bring her here?”
Now he jumped to his feet. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I resisted the urge to back up and changed tactics. “Why’d you lie when I asked you about Mallory Evans on Saturday?”
“What? I didn’t.”
“You did, Kenny. You conveniently failed to tell me that you used to date her.”
“You didn’t ask about that!”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not finding this funny at all,” Kenny said.
“Me either. But on Saturday when I asked you about her, you acted like you barely knew her. That’s a lie.”
“Okay, fine, I knew her.”
“So why’d you lie about it?”
“Because I don’t like talking about her, okay?” He paced the length of the room, his hands clasped behind his head.
“No, it’s not okay. Give me a real answer.”
He stopped pacing and turned to me. His eyes were flat and hard. Without the jovial, slightly daft smile, his face was angular and tough. “I’m not giving you anything.”
“Where’s Veronica?” I tried again.
“I don’t know any Veronica.”
“Is she here?” I scanned the room, catching a glimpse of the two-story deck through the windows. “Outside, maybe?” I remembered the small shed I noticed last night, the sauna.
“I think you should probably leave,” he said.
“I’m not leaving,” I said, just as I heard heavy footsteps in the kitchen behind me.
“You’re leaving now,” Jake Lassiter said.
I spun around and took in the police chief standing there with Mr. Brayfield. They looked ready to physically remove me from the house. I’d been there for only a few minutes, so this was a new record in terms of the Belmont cops intercepting me.
Lassiter said, “Ken, you were right to call me. Miss Weary here has been stirring up trouble in town for the last week or so, despite quite a few warnings from my department. I apologize on her behalf for the inconvenience. She’ll be on her way now.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Lassiter’s expression made me close it again.
“Let’s go, Miss Weary.”
I took a step, Lassiter nodding at me like I was a good girl. But I turned back to Kenny with my phone out, snapping a quick picture of him. “What the—” Kenny said.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Lassiter said. He grabbed my upper arm and dragged me into the kitchen. To Kenny’s father, he said, “You’re not going to have a problem again. I’m very sorry, sir.”
But Mr. Brayfield was looking at his son with a combination of disdain and dread. “What is she talking about now?” he said.
“Nothing, Jesus, Dad.” Whatever he said next was lost to me as Lassiter yanked me by the arm out through the foyer and down the steps of the porch.
“Let go of me,” I snapped, pulling my arm out of his grip.
He took a step closer to me, a pointed finger in my face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I brushed past him, trying for my car. But he stepped back into my path, grabbing my bicep again.
“Get your hands off me. You told me to leave, and I’m leaving.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Which is it?” I exclaimed, my breath visible in the cold air. “You want me to leave or you want me to talk?”
“You can’t just barge into a house like this, with your questions—”