by Rob Thomas
His pupils flared, ever so slightly. When he spoke, his voice was even and simple.
“I wanted her back. Look, the night we fought, things got kind of … heated. I said some things I wasn’t proud of. I’m sure she did too. After that I couldn’t think about anything else for days. I was … mad, and ashamed, and just exhausted.” The intensity of his gaze was unsettling. “Have you ever had a relationship that you knew wasn’t working, couldn’t work, would never work? But you just couldn’t help yourself, because the way it didn’t work was so damn good? That was me and Hayley. That was what we had.”
Veronica looked down at her notebook to hide her uneasiness. His words needled her, working their way under her skin. Yes—she’d had that relationship. She’d had that relationship over and over and over. She’d broken a lot of things for that relationship—and now here she was, back in it again.
Chad paused for half a beat, then continued.
“Anyway, I’m assuming you’ve seen what she posted on Facebook that night. I freaked out when I saw the pictures of her with that other guy. So I called her. We talked for a few minutes. I told her I was sorry, that I’d do better. I asked her for another chance. She told me in no uncertain terms she wasn’t interested.” He raked his hand through his hair, the front pieces standing up in short spikes.
Veronica frowned. “You didn’t happen to get a name, did you? Did she tell you who the guy was?”
He looked away. “She didn’t say. She was more interested in telling me what a great kisser he was,” he said bitterly.
Veronica sat for a moment, her mind sifting through the information, moving it from one column to the next. Sure—Chad Cohan might be a run-of-the-mill disgruntled ex, still reeling from the Sturm und Drang of a complicated relationship. Maybe it was worse than that—maybe he was as controlling and demanding as Bri and Melanie claimed. As controlling and demanding as Veronica read him to be now. That didn’t necessarily mean he was involved in whatever had happened to Hayley. But something about him raised the hair on the back of Veronica’s neck. She asked her next question in a carefully neutral voice.
“Where were you the night you talked to Hayley?”
He looked up quickly. She kept her expression unreadable. “It was midterms so I was in the library, working on a paper, until around twelve thirty. Then I went home.”
“Did anyone see you there?”
A sudden cold smile broke across his face. It changed his looks with the rapidity of a flash flood—the blandly helpful demeanor vanished, replaced with an air of contempt.
“After ten p.m. you have to use your student ID to get in and out of the library. You can probably get those records from the school. I don’t remember seeing anyone in the dorm when I got home—I went straight to bed. But I was in an eleven a.m. class the next morning. Plenty of people saw me there.” His words were matter-of-fact, derisive. “So unless you think I can teleport—no. I didn’t drive overnight to Neptune to abduct Hayley. Sorry, this time the boyfriend didn’t do it.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” Veronica said pleasantly. “Right?”
His smile didn’t falter. “If I were you, I’d focus on tracking down the guy in the picture. Plenty of people saw him with Hayley. The whole Internet saw him with Hayley.”
“That must have really made you mad, Chad,” she said, trying one last time to goad him.
He leaned forward, his eyes boring into hers.
“No,” he said simply. “It broke my fucking heart.”
CHAPTER TEN
“So his alibi checked out?” Mac asked on Wednesday morning.
Veronica was back in the office, leaning against the color printer as it churned out copies. Mac sat on the edge of her desk a few feet away, her slender legs crossed at the ankles, her short hair falling over her forehead. Her coffee mug was printed in running lines of binary. Veronica was willing to stake a day’s pay on the fact that it read something like “Hackers do it better” in code.
“Completely. According to the surveillance cameras he left the library at twelve twenty-six, and Professor Hague said he was on time for his eleven a.m. class the next day. There’s no way he could have made it from Stanford to Neptune and back in that window, even if he was driving like a bat out of hell.” She sighed. “Did you dig anything else up?”
Mac shook her head. “He didn’t use any of his credit cards that night or the next day. And he didn’t fly—or if he did, the FAA didn’t know about it.”
Veronica stared over Mac’s head at the window. Outside, the bricks of the warehouses looked a brilliant red in the afternoon light. The truth was, she’d wanted it to be Chad. Between what Hayley’s friends had told her about him and her own investigative Spidey-sense, he’d looked like a perfect suspect. She’d spent the whole evening at Stanford, questioning security guards and professors about him. She’d even talked to a few of his friends. One hulking boy with a nose that had obviously caught more than its share of lacrosse balls said he’d always told Chad not to “tie himself down” with Hayley. “He gets all caught up trying to imagine what she’s doing. I’m like, man, the point of having a girlfriend on the other side of the bay is so she doesn’t know what you’re doing. Why are you making such a thing of it? Let the girl have her fun and just make sure you’re getting yours.” Another one of Chad’s teammates told her it was obvious that Chad had been head over heels in love. “She was all he talked about. He sent her flowers every week. He took her on a couple crazy shopping sprees for new clothes and jewelry. I mean, I’ve never seen him lose his head over a girl like this.”
Ah, true love. Who ever went wrong measuring it in dollar signs? But there wasn’t any evidence pointing her toward Hayley’s ex, and his alibi was airtight. There were no recent charges on his credit card, except for the aforementioned shopping sprees and athletic socks from the campus bookstore. It didn’t matter what she thought of what sounded like a very Stella-and-Stanley relationship if it didn’t get her closer to the truth.
“Well, I got some interesting returns on the background checks you asked for.” Mac set down her cup and rummaged around on her cluttered desk for a minute before finding a plain manila folder that read DEWALT on the tab. She handed it to Veronica. “The first search didn’t pull anything up, but I did a little creative digging.”
Veronica flipped through the pages. “Crane Dewalt has a record?”
“It’s a juvenile record, so it took a little extra work to find. The Montana Department of Corrections seals them when the offender turns eighteen. But their databases are, um, not that secure.” Mac looked innocently out the window, and Veronica grinned.
“Underage intoxication. Shoplifting. Possession,” she read. “All kid stuff. Until … oh, wow. Aggravated assault?” She flipped through the documents. At sixteen Crane Dewalt had attacked another kid with a bike chain wrapped around his fist. The victim lost two teeth—and the use of his left eye. Crane was sentenced to nine months in juvie.
“He’s been clean since then. But he definitely has a temper. I’ve been going through his employment history. Looks like he was let go from a Kinko’s after getting in a shouting match with a customer. He’s been doing odd jobs for more than a year now.”
“Interesting.” Veronica closed the folder. “Anything in his recent history that might place him in Neptune the night Hayley disappeared? Credit cards, phone calls, flight records?”
Mac shook her head. “He has six credit cards, all in default. No savings. Twelve dollars and sixty cents in his checking account. So not a lot of traceable activity.”
“If he works under the table, he might have a wad of cash, though. And freeing up some of his parents’ income from Berkeley’s tuition fees would be motive,” mused Veronica.
Mac’s eyes widened. “Motive? So are you saying … he killed her?”
“No, and that’s the problem.” Veronica frowned. “I don’t even know what crime I’m investigating yet. And I won’t until I piece together what really happened t
hat night.” She met Mac’s eyes again. “What did you pull up on the party house?”
“Not a lot. It’s a rental. Owned by a company called Sun and Surf, Inc.” Mac frowned. “I’m still digging, but as far as I can tell that particular address wasn’t rented out to anyone the night in question. According to their records, every single property they have is rented through the month of March. Every single property except that one.”
Veronica was about to respond when loud voices on the stairwell interrupted her thoughts. She and Mac both looked up to see Wallace Fennel herding two teenage boys through the office doors. Neither one looked happy.
“This is blackmail,” said one. He was a tall, dark-skinned boy with long, gangly limbs, a Lakers cap perched at a jaunty angle over his forehead. The other boy was shorter, with carroty red hair and a light smattering of acne over his pale face. He stared around the room in mutinous silence.
“You can’t do this to us,” the first boy said.
“Excellent,” said Veronica, pushing up off the copy machine. “My assistants have arrived.”
Mac looked at Veronica, one eyebrow raised. “Your what?”
“This one tried to bolt while we were coming up the stairs,” Wallace said, jerking his head toward the first boy. “You’ll have to keep an eye on him. Hey, Mac.”
“Hi, Wallace. Why are you delivering urchins to our door?”
“Because I’m a helpful guy. Veronica Mars says she needs boots on the ground, I find her some boots.” Wallace gave a lopsided grin, running a hand over the stubble of his goatee. “See, Coach Fennel knows all and sees all. I caught two of my best players in the Cabo Cantina with the worst excuses for fake IDs I’ve ever seen. In exchange for my clemency they’re gonna help you out this afternoon.”
The kid in the hat turned around to scowl at Wallace. “It’s no fair. You can’t give us detention for something that happened during spring break. We weren’t even at school, Coach!”
Wallace gave him a pleasant smile. “You’re right, T.J. I can’t give you detention. But I can bench you for the rest of the season. Or—now, here’s an idea—I could call your mom.” A look of horror flitted over the kid’s face. Wallace pretended to pick up a phone. “Ring ring. Well, hello, Mrs. Wiggins. I just wanted to make sure that T.J.’s allowed to drink three-foot piña coladas, right?” Wallace dropped his hand. “But see, I want to keep my point guard alive. So instead, I’m giving you the option of a few hours’ work to pay your debt to society. Sound fair?”
The kid nodded, eyes wide.
“How about you, Quinton?” He turned to the redhead, who nodded too.
Veronica grabbed the stack of flyers off the copier and held one up. She’d arranged two pictures of Hayley on the page, both of them from the night Hayley went missing. One showed her on the dance floor, her hair suspended in midair as she moved. The other showed her curled up on a couch with the handsome stranger. Instead of the tip line, she’d put the number of one of Mars Investigations’ dedicated phone lines across the flyer.
“I need you guys to hit the pavement for me. Put these up on lampposts, hand them out on the boardwalk, see if you can get them in shop windows. Especially in places where there are lots of spring breakers.”
They both took stacks of flyers from her, their eyes darting over the pictures. They exchanged glances, and then T.J. looked up with an earnest and helpful expression on his face.
“Do you need us to interview people too? We can ask around, see if anyone wants to talk to us. You know, on the beach?”
Veronica gave him a piercing look before she answered. “You have my permission to talk to any bikini babe you want, as long as you get the flyers circulating.”
“And as long as you are perfect gentlemen who do not make your coach or your team look bad,” interjected Wallace pointedly. “Because your next not-detention isn’t going to be this easy. Got it?”
T.J. looked insulted. “Hey, I don’t need lessons on how to respect the ladies. I respect all the ladies. Skinny ones, medium ones—”
“Boys.” Veronica clapped her hands. “Let’s focus here. I need these to get out as quickly as possible. As an added incentive, if I do find Hayley, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”
Both boys looked suddenly alert.
“Each?” asked T.J.
“Each,” said Veronica. “So make sure you get these flyers posted in as many places as you can. This will only work if they get seen.”
T.J. and Quinton turned to each other, strategizing in low voices—deciding where they could get the most flyers seen by the most people, versus where the hottest and least-dressed girls hung out. It seemed to be mostly T.J. doing the strategizing, with Quinton muttering “Yeah, yeah” every few seconds. Veronica turned to Wallace.
“Thanks,” she said, handing him another pile. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Can’t say I planned to spend my spring break supervising teenagers,” he said under his breath. “You owe me, Mars.”
“Just add it to my tab.”
He grinned. “So what are you guys doing tonight? Want to go get a few beers?”
“Tempting,” Mac said. “But I thought I’d stab my eyes out with a spoon instead.”
“Come on, it’s not nearly as crazy out there as it was last year.” He looked from her to Veronica. “If I’m going to be wrangling these kids all day, I’m going to need a little R and R, you know what I mean?”
An idea suddenly came to Veronica. A slow, thoughtful smile spread over her face. Wallace’s eyes widened, and he leaned back a little.
“It scares me when you smile like that.”
“Scares you? Wallace, come on. Don’t you trust me?”
“Are you looking for the honest answer or the one where we stay on speaking terms?”
“All right, fine.” She lifted up her hands in mock surrender. “I thought you were looking for some R and R, but if you don’t want an invite to the party of the season, I can’t make you go with me.”
He gave her a wary look. “Party of the season?”
“Party of the century, if the stories are to be believed.”
“Uh-huh. Veronica Mars, social butterfly? No one’s buying it. So what’s the catch?”
“No catch.” She looped her arm through his. “But if we’re lucky, we may just score some information on what happened to Hayley Dewalt.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Manzanita Drive was a winding road that ran parallel to Neptune’s northern coastline, surrounded on both sides by the dense foliage that cloaked the hideaways of the superrich. A lot of the houses were vacation homes for movie stars, diplomats, and CEOs, though a few were permanently occupied—Logan’s friend Dick Casablancas lived on the Drive, in a Cape Cod overlooking the Pacific.
Veronica had passed his gates earlier that night, when she’d gone to check out the house Hayley’s friends had told her about. They’d said there were theme parties there every night, and from the aloha shirts and flower leis she saw as she drove by the crowd of waiting guests, it looked like tonight was a tiki party.
She’d run home after, hoping against hope there was something trashy and tropical at the back of her closet. When she emerged an hour later, she was wearing a skintight red sarong dress, purchased more than a decade earlier for the pep squad’s annual luau-themed fund-raiser. She’d curled her hair in bouncy Marilyn ringlets and, as an afterthought, picked one of her dad’s plumeria blossoms and pinned it behind her ear. When her father caught sight of her he did a double take.
“Hot date at the Tonga Room, dear?” Keith sat on the sofa, a battered paperback copy of Get Shorty in one hand. Veronica kissed him on the forehead.
“Don’t wait up,” she said, looping her arm through the straw tote bag she’d traded for her studded leather purse, then leaving to pick up Wallace.
Now they were waiting in the house’s gated driveway behind a RAV4 full of college kids. Beyond the gate, through a copse of palm trees, she could make out the pulsin
g glow of a mansion. Laughter, shrieks, and the steady thump of bass reverberated in the cool night air. She angled the rearview mirror toward her and reapplied her lipstick.
“Think I can pass for a coed?” she asked, blowing a red kiss at Wallace.
“Do you really want me to answer that?” He was wearing an aloha shirt that belonged to Keith, procured on a Maui vacation a few years earlier. It hung off him, two sizes too big. He caught her grinning and narrowed his eyes. “I know you’re just marveling that I can look this good in a Don Ho shirt.”
“Hell yeah, I am,” she said, rolling the car forward as the line moved up.
She could now see a cluster of dump-truck-size security guards standing in front of the open gate. Veronica watched as one by one the occupants of each car stepped out. One guard appraised the guests and decided if they were going in or not. If they got the nod, a second guard—or maybe just an incredibly muscular valet—would step up and take the wheel of their car while a third guard patted the guests down.
“What kind of party is this again?” Wallace stared at the enormous security guards ahead of them, brows arched skeptically.
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
It was all very organized for a spring break rager, which led Veronica to believe that either the parties were some kind of marketing campaign—maybe put on by a party promoter who had a special deal with Sun and Surf, Inc., or an alcohol distributor launching a new product. Or, perhaps, the owner of the mansion had some very good reason to keep security tight.
A guard waved Veronica forward, and her heart sped up as she pulled up to the gatehouse.
“Evening. Can you both get out of the car for me?” He was polite and no-nonsense. A professional, for sure. Maybe even ex-military?