CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The theme that night was simple: bikinis. Only for girls, of course; the guys seemed to be perfectly happy in pop-collar polos and baggy jeans. But to get in with a pair of X chromosomes, you had to be showing some skin.
Veronica moved slowly through the crush, a beach bag tucked under her arm like a life preserver. She didn’t have a lot of time for sunbathing these days, and she was painfully aware of the fish-belly white of her bared midriff. Still, she could feel eyes tracing the lines of her body beneath her pink string bikini, prying and eager.
As she made her way through the house, she kept her eyes peeled for any sign of Willie Murphy’s dark blond dreadlocks. Mac’s background check had yielded a portrait of a petty criminal: public intoxication, possession, disorderly conduct, trespassing. He’d been in and out of county lockup since he was seventeen years old, the longest stay a six-month stint for possession with intent to sell. His last known address was a grimy efficiency down the street from the Camelot, but he’d been evicted in January. Since then he’d had no known permanent address.
She’d considered calling Lamb, handing her new evidence straight to him—but she’d decided against it. Lamb wouldn’t want to bust the party. He’d just put Murphy’s picture all over the news and give him a chance to run. No, the only way she’d get answers was to talk to him before he knew he was being hunted.
Now she just had to find him.
The house was packed with sweaty, bared bodies, faces leering from every dark corner she passed. Tonight’s celebration was, if anything, more frenzied than the party she’d seen the night before. It was nearing the end of spring break for most of these kids, and they seemed determined to push through the exhaustion, as if holding still would bring an end to this magical pretend world where everything felt good and you didn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to. Clouds of smoke billowed up from the crowd—she caught a whiff of tobacco and the sticky-sweet smell of pot, and something else, acrid and chemical, like the air in a cheap salon. Meth. She’d encountered the smell once before, tracking down a deadbeat dad in Riverside, finding him in a garbage-strewn apartment with a pipe in his hand.
She squeezed through the crowd, eyes sharp. A herd of beefy, shirtless boys stampeded past her in the hallway, chanting something she couldn’t quite make out. In the kitchen a game of strip poker was under way, and a smooth-chested boy had already lost his shirt. A girl in an electric-blue bikini sat across his lap, wearing an incongruous silk necktie. In the music room an elfin boy sat on a gilt coffee table, a friend helping him secure a length of tubing around his upper arm.
Out on the patio she took a deep breath of clean air. She made her way down the stairs to the lower level, where the pool roiled with activity. No sign anywhere of Willie—or the Gutiérrez cousins. She craned her neck to scan the pool and the Jacuzzi and for a moment forgot to watch where she was going. She walked right into someone.
“Ow!”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry …”
The words died on her lips. Standing in front of her, in board shorts and a puka shell necklace, was Dick Casablancas.
He did a double take. “Hey, Ronnie,” he said. “You know, this is not where I expected to bump into you.”
The cluster of girls he’d been standing with eyed Veronica with interest. She stood frozen to the spot, hoping against all hope that he wouldn’t say anything too stupid.
She’d known Dick since high school—for a while, after her father’s fall from grace, he’d been one of her tormenters. After she started dating Logan—who just happened to be Dick’s best friend—he’d eased up, and over time they’d made a kind of peace, though she wasn’t sure she’d call him her friend. He was rich and careless and had the emotional depth of a chunk of concrete; the only real goals that registered for him were surfing, drinking, and screwing.
In other words, she really shouldn’t have been so surprised to see him at a party run by the offspring of cartel kingpins a half mile down the beach from his own house.
“Hi!” she said, in her clipped, bright Amber-the-Coed voice. “Isn’t this party amazing?”
He gave her a confused, blank look. “Um, yeah? That’s kind of why I’m shocked to see you here.” He turned back to his audience of bikini-clad girls. “We went to high school together. I guess you girls would have been in, like, fifth grade? Crazy.”
She glanced at the girls—a few of them stared daggers at her, territorial aggression alight in their eyes.
“Anyway, Ronnie here’s a private dick,” he said loudly, gesturing at her. He leaned toward one of the girls, chortling and nudging her with his elbow. “I’m a not-so-private Dick, if you get what I’m saying.” The girls giggled as he thrust his pelvis at them.
Veronica grabbed him by the arm and pulled him, staggering, a few feet away from the little entourage. She threw a big, shiny smile over her shoulder at the girls, then turned back to Dick.
“Whoa, whoa. I know Logan’s been gone for, like, weeks, but I can’t go all the way with you, no matter how lonely you are.” He smirked affably. “Bros before hos, you know what I’m saying? Handies only.”
“Shut up,” she commanded. She kept a smile frozen on her face, her eyes darting over the patio. “I’m here to work, Dick.”
His gaze moved up and down her body. “Nice uniform.”
She punched him in the arm. From far away it might have looked playful. Dick clutched his bicep, groaning.
“Jeez, Double-O-Psycho, what’s your problem?”
“Listen, just keep your voice down, okay?” They were walking back along the edge of the patio now. On their left, a set of stairs led down to the dark beach. The ocean glowed gently beyond, the tidal roar completely swallowed by the noise from the party. She rummaged in her straw beach bag and pulled out her phone. “I need your help. Have you seen this guy here tonight?”