CHAPTER SIX
The number on the scrap of paper Margie Dewalt had thrust at Veronica turned out to belong to a girl named Bri Lafond, one of the three girlfriends who’d taken the bus down with Hayley from Berkeley. Veronica called her from the courthouse parking lot to ask if she could meet that evening. The eager, anxious voice on the other end told her that one of them—Leah Hart—had been taken home by her parents the week before. “She was really upset,” she said. “But Melanie and I are still here. We’ll tell you anything we can.”
They were staying in the Camelot Motel. The sun-bleached building was surrounded by pawn shops, storefront churches, and bars so divey even the spring breakers didn’t bother—which meant it was one of the only places the girls could afford after their spring break reservations ran out. Veronica had spent more caffeine-fueled nights outside the motel than she liked to recall—it was a favorite for the kind of trysts that resulted in shattered prenups, messy divorces, and broken hearts. Read: a home away from home for an enterprising young PI.
At just after seven, she knocked on the door to their room. From the other side of the blinds she saw the reddish glow of a table lamp.
The girl who answered the door was short and muscular and luridly sunburned. Her strawberry blond hair hung in an uncombed tangle around her face, and a small silver stud winked from one nostril. She peered out around the edge of the door with startled woodland eyes.
“Hi,” Veronica said gently. “I’m Veronica Mars. Are you Bri?”
The girl hesitated, as if she had to think about her answer, then nodded. “Hi. Yeah. Come on in.”
Veronica stepped into the drab, cramped little room. Two full-size beds were shoved against opposite walls, the faded floral coverlets made from the same material as the curtains. The décor was thrift shop Americana: a painting of ducks taking flight from a lake hung adjacent to one of a small cabin releasing puffs of smoke into a wintery sky. Clothes covered the floor, and an unwashed, sweaty odor mingled with the smell of old takeout.
A second girl sat on the far bed, but she stood up when she saw Veronica. Her long dark hair was looped through the hole in the back of a beat-up Dodgers cap. She wore a hoodie and a pair of denim cutoffs, but her curves were obvious even under the baggy clothing.
“Hi. I’m Melanie.” Her voice was husky but even. She held out a hand for Veronica to shake. She glanced around the room, then gestured wryly to the bed. “Sorry we don’t have a chair to offer you.”
“No problem.” Veronica sat down on the edge of the bed. Bri locked the door and leaned against the chipboard dresser. She chewed on the corner of a fingernail. Melanie sat cross-legged on the other bed, leaning toward Veronica, an intense, focused look on her face. Both girls were a stark contrast to the bright, careless spring breakers on the beaches—they looked ragged edged and tired, more like kids who’d just finished finals than like kids at the end of a vacation.
“So you guys stayed in town to help with the search?” Veronica flipped her notebook to a fresh page and jotted down the date and their names.
They both nodded. Melanie twirled a lock of brown hair around a finger, coiling it so tight the tip of her finger was bone white. “Yeah. We’ve been handing out flyers at the boardwalk.” She took a piece of green paper from a stack on the nightstand and held it up. Hayley’s senior portrait beamed out from it.
“No one even cares, though.” Bri’s voice was so soft Veronica had to strain to hear it. Her lower lip trembled a little. “We hand them out to people and they take them. Then they just crumple them up and throw them on the ground a few feet away. No one cares that she’s missing.”
The words swiped at Veronica, and she flinched. She suddenly realized that this was Bri Lafond’s first lesson that people sucked. Veronica remembered that letdown, the way the world suddenly seemed stripped of bright colors, your beliefs toppled like dominoes. She’d learned it when she was sixteen, after Lilly was murdered and Keith, sniffing out the cover-up but not the truth, had gone after Lilly Kane’s rich, handsome father. Keith was recalled as sheriff, and suddenly she’d found herself not only friendless but a pariah. Her friends circled their wagons around the Kane family, and Veronica spent the better part of the year scraping spray-painted expletives off her locker and replacing her slashed tires. And for a while, no one had raised a finger to stand up for her.
That had changed, of course. She’d made peace with some of her old friends—Duncan. Meg. Logan. And she’d found new, fierce ones in Wallace, Mac, and Weevil. She’d come out of it stronger, smarter.
But that didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt.
“Do you think Hayley’s okay?” Melanie asked, bringing her back to the messy little room.
“I don’t know.” Veronica took a deep breath. “The last thing I want is to give anyone false hope. I’m going to do everything I can to find your friend, but I need your help. Can you walk me through the last night you were with her?”
The girls glanced at each other, and then Melanie spoke.
“I was on a sailing trip with a bunch of other Berkeley kids, but we got a text from Hayley at seven that she’d heard about some party up the coast. We all met up at the motel—we were at the Sea Nymph last week, closer to the beach—and got ready together. It was a black-and-white party, so you had to wear—”
“Black or white to get in.” Veronica nodded. “Sure. Somewhere Truman Capote is spinning in his grave.”
“Who?” Bri cocked her head like a curious spaniel.
Veronica shook her head. “Never mind. Where were you that afternoon, Bri?”
She bit her lip. “Me and Hayley and Leah lay out on the beach for a while, but Hayley got bored and told us she wanted to wander around. We weren’t in the mood, so she went off on her own. A few hours later she texted us about the party.”
“How’d she seem that night while you guys were getting ready?”
“She was fine,” Melanie said, picking at the pilled fabric of the bedspread beneath her. “Normal. She told us some guy had invited her and said she could bring as many girls as she wanted if they were as cute as her.” She rolled her eyes. “She always eats lines like that up.”
“Did she say anything else about this guy? Did you bump into him at the party?”
Again, that subtle exchanged glance.
“She didn’t say anything else about him. And the party was kind of … crazy. If Hayley bumped into him, we didn’t see it. We were sort of out of it.” Bri took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Okay. Let’s talk about the party.” Veronica looked down at her notebook, where she’d jotted the address from the police report. “The address you gave the police was 2201 Manzanita Drive. Is that right?”
“Yeah,” Melanie said. “It’s a huge place, right down on the beach. A mansion. We showed up around ten. They had security guards at the gate doing pat downs and bag searches—it was kind of intense.”