Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 03 - Saving Sasha Brown

by Rob Cornell

  Saving Sasha Brown

  A Ridley Brone Mystery

  Rob Cornell

  For Lawrence Block, whose Matthew Scudder novels introduced me to a genre I would love forever.

  Chapter 1

  I met Sasha Brown the day before she died. She came into the High Note with three other friends—one boy and two girls. Their boots were crusted with snow, the shoulders of their coats dusted white. The waitress that served them drinks had to card them because they looked fresh out of high school and nowhere near legal drinking age. But it turned out each of them hit the minimum age, a couple just barely. Though Sasha ended up only ordering water.

  I sat in my regular booth, sipping a gin and tonic with a lime. I’d spent most of the day in my office upstairs running background checks. Tedious work, but I owed a favor to a friend.

  My name is Ridley Brone. By day, I run a detective agency, by night, I follow my parents’ last wishes and run the karaoke bar they built from the ground up and once made so famous real musicians made sure to stop by Hawthorne, Michigan, whenever they had a tour that took them from Detroit to Chicago. Hawthorne sat nearly halfway between. A good place to stop. A town big enough to serve your needs, but small enough to keep you from getting mobbed by fans.

  Times have changed, though. We don’t see many celebrities here anymore. Still, Hawthorne provides a fair share of wannabes and regular drunks to keep the place running.

  I said I first met Sasha that night, but we never actually spoke. She put her name in with my karaoke host to sing, and when her turn came up I forgot all about background checks and the good old days when my parents ran the High Note. I forgot about my drink. I might even have forgotten my name.

  The sound of her voice rang out like a clear bell, like an angel’s voice, like a perfect breeze on a summer day. Something like that anyway. I was raised by professional musicians and songwriters, yet I couldn’t think of a single way to describe how perfect Sasha’s voice was. Just trust me—she could sing better than most of those kids on the reality shows, let alone the locals.

  If I were a record producer, I would have tried to sign her right there on the spot.

  The stage lights shone against her straight cut bangs of white blonde hair that looked like something spun in a fairytale land. She kept her eyes closed most the time she sang, but when she needed a reminder of the lyrics, she would open them for an instant, exposing the crystal blue that, again, looked fanciful, the eyes of a Winter Princess.

  My memory of her looks might have suffered some exaggeration in translation. But no matter how I described her, the fact was she was plain beautiful…just not nearly as beautiful as her voice.

  I did not recognize the song she chose. It sounded like a gospel tune, which I had no idea we had anything like in our songbook. She sang it as if she’d learned it at birth.

  When she finished, the whole bar burst into applause. My bar tender, Paul, who had the standard disposition of a prickly pear, even put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, then put his hands together for her.

  As she smiled and gave a little bow, I felt like I had to do something. I felt antsy. This girl had to become something big. A sensation. She should try out for The Voice or…or…move out to California and find herself a record deal. Something.

  She stepped off stage and beelined back to her table with her friends—who also clapped, but in a casual way, as if they’d heard this all before and were even a little bored by it. Or jealous. I wanted to pop up, rush over to her, and say something. I kept my seat, though. I mean, what the hell would I say? I didn’t want to gush. A hardass private eye doesn’t gush.

  Instead, I flagged Paul for another drink and settled in for the next singer. I nearly cried when I saw Hal climbing the steps.

  Hal makes most regulars look like part-timers. He’s been coming to the bar nearly every night for as long as I can remember. Even before my parents died and left the place to me. And before my high school years when I worked at the bar before opening, cleaning, unstacking chairs, testing the sound system, and the like.

  Hal wore his standard uniform—a button-up shirt buttoned up only enough to form a V on his chest, showing off the once dark, now graying curls and the gold chain and medallion around his neck. His pants were a couple sizes too short, accentuating all the wrong things. Despite his age—which I’ve never been able to pinpoint—his eyes shone a clear blue. His voice, on the other hand, did not always shine as bright.

  He started in on a Jack Jones number and I started working on tuning him out.

  The gin helped.

  When I glanced back to Sasha’s table, I found it empty. It was like she had dragged her friends in so she could sing one song while they had a drink, then leave.

  I was disappointed. I really would have liked to have said something to her, encouraged her at the least. I had a pretty good musical pedigree, despite my choosing a very different path than my musician parents would have liked. Of course, she was so young, she probably didn’t know a thing about the name Brone and how famous it used to be in this town.

  No worries, I decided. There wasn’t another karaoke bar in town. She’d come back for another song sometime and I could have a word with her then.

  My mistake.

  The next day, Sasha Brown was dead.

  * * *

  I first learned about her death on the news. I sat in a pub down the street from the High Note, having lunch. The pub had a damn good cheeseburger with bacon that I tried to indulge in only once a week. This was a Sunday, and I technically didn’t need to work today, but I wanted to get those blasted background checks off my plate. I figured I deserved a nice lunch since I was doing boring work on one of my normal days off.

  I ate at the bar, watching the television hung above one end, the volume low but the closed captions on so I could read whatever my ears missed. The story took my breath away. One minute, the talking heads were going on about the economy, the next they had a head and shoulders picture of Sasha whose body, they went on to inform, was found on top of a snowbank on the edge of a parking lot at Garfield Park.

  The name of the park gave me a chill. I’d had some of my own trouble there a couple years back. Someone had died then, too.

  The news story was how I finally learned her full name.

  Of course, police authorities were not revealing any further information at this time, yada, yada. Cause of death was unknown. No confirmation or denial if foul play was involved.

  All I could think about was what a beautiful voice had been silenced. I’d missed my chance to tell her how talented she was. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered. You can’t sing when you’re dead. Though the voices of the dead did linger. I could still hear both my parents and the sounds of their singing.

  I had half of my burger left, but after hearing about Sasha, I didn’t want it. I dropped it on the plate next to my untouched fries and asked for the check. Then I shrugged into my coat and went outside to face the wind.

  I had to squint at first as the snow blew sideways, flakes cutting like tiny razors across my face. About an inch had accumulated in the parking lot since I went inside for my burger. I made footprints in the snow as I crossed to my car, a six year-old BMW I’d inherited as part of my parents’ estate. I also got a Rolls-Royce, but that one didn’t leave the garage very often.

  The second I got in the car, I started it up, cranked the heat, and turned on the radio to a local station. The station was in the middle of a Billy Joel song, not any news about Sasha. I switched to the public radio station, but they were discussing wars overseas, not a death in a small Michigan town.

/>   I snapped the radio off and drove back to my office, the Billy Joel song stuck in my head.

  I found a car parked in the lot when I pulled in, an old beater of a thing that looked like it belonged to somebody’s grandpa. Exhaust puffed from the tail pipe. Despite the car running, a film of snow clung to the windows, so I couldn’t see much more than moving shadows inside the vehicle.

  I really hoped I did not have a couple making out in my lot.

  They held a spot close to the building, by the side door that led to the stairs going up to my office. The main entrance a handful of yards down would, obviously, take them into the bar. At that moment, both doors were locked. So rather than a kanoodling couple, it could have been a client waiting for my return to the office. But it was Sunday. And a damn cold Sunday at that. Why not wait until business hours Monday? Unless they knew I was working that day. But the only person who knew that was me.

  I pulled up right next to the boat on wheels, taking the spot on its driver’s side. Then I tapped the button to bring down the window on my passenger side. A gust of wind wooshed into my car and nearly made the heater irrelevant. Wild swirls of snow blew in, landed on the leather interior and instantly began to melt.

  The driver’s side window on the boat cranked down in fits and jags, the driver having to manually crank the glass down.

  I recognized the young guy behind the wheel instantly. I recognized the girl on the other side of him in the passenger seat as well. Something told me a third one sat in the backseat as well.

  Sasha’s friends who came with her the night before.

  Both the kids I had in view had raw, red eyes as if they’d cried a lot and for a long time. The girl in the passenger seat dabbed at her eyes with a crinkled-up tissue.

  Nobody said anything, as if giving Sasha a moment of silence on this first official meeting between us after her death. A little buzz ran up the back of my neck. I had a feeling they knew more about what happened to Sasha than the news reporters. I also had a feeling they somehow wanted me to do something about it.

  I would have to give my standard speech about how the police were better equipped for this kind of investigation, I was only one man, they had a whole department and forensics specialists, and all that jazz.

  “Hi,” the boy finally said, his voice partially swallowed by the wind.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, raising my voice to compete with the blustering.

  “You’re Ridley Brone. The detective?”

  Yep. Here it came. “I am.” I almost added a “but” followed with The Speech. I didn’t feel like shouting the speech, though. And with my window down, my heater was starting to lose its battle against winter.

  The boy wiped his nose with a leather-gloved hand. Glove looked expensive. If he came from north of the tracks, he sure was driving a funny car. Most of those kids drove either mom and dad’s hand-me-down Beemers, or they got brand new Mercedes for their sixteenth birthdays. A wide generalization, true. But I lived north of the tracks, and kids like that were my neighbors. I saw it all the time.

  Made me wonder about this kid. Made me curious.

  Never a good thing.

  “We want to hire you,” the boy shouted.

  We couldn’t really have a conversation like this, hollering through the wind. “Come on upstairs,” I shouted. I zipped my window back up, cut the engine, and got out, making sure I had the door key ready. The less time I had to spend in the cold and schlepping through this white crap the better. Nothing made me wish I could move back to California more than damn Michigan weather.

  I unlocked the office door and kicked my boots against the first step to knock off the snow.

  As I had guessed, a third passenger in back—the other girl from the night before—joined her friends as they filed in through the door and let it swing shut behind them, all of us now cramped on the landing.

  The trio followed me up the stairs after stomping their feet on the landing’s rubber mat to clean the snow off as best they could. It was wet snow that tended to cling. Good snow for making snowmen or having snowball fights or building snow forts.

  Everyone filed up the stairs and into my office proper, which amounted to little more than a single room, sparsely decorated, a metal desk in the center, one chair behind the desk and two in front of it. I also had a couch tucked in one corner where I could take naps if my upstairs job started conflicting with my downstairs job and regular sleep got cut in order to balance them both.

  I was pretty picky about the work I did, so I seldom needed the couch. But sometimes, usually when doing favors—like those lame background checks—the couch came in handy.

  I had recently hung three framed posters as well, one for each of the original Star Wars trilogy. The older I get, the more nerdy I get.

  The kids looked around, appearing let down. I’ve seen all the movies, so I know the stereotype everyone holds about what a PI’s office should look like. I even feel bad when I burst that bubble for them. But the reality is, I could work from home if I wanted. A PI doesn’t need much when it comes to an office. Especially in the modern era. Most of my work gets done on the computer sitting on my desk.

  I removed my coat and shook some of the snow off, then hung it on one of a series of pegs by the door. The kids followed my example and hung up their coats. I noticed they wore little pins on their shirts, small round buttons with tiny lettering on them I couldn’t read from a distance. The girl from the front seat and the boy had matching pins, but the redhead’s was a different color. They all had crosses hanging from a chain around their necks.

  I sat behind my desk and waited for them to decide how to settle. Only two chairs in front of the desk. Interestingly, the boy and the girl who sat in the front seat took the chairs. The girl from the back seat sat on the edge of the couch.

  She sat with her back straight as if her spine were a broom stick and folded her hands in her lap. She had curly red hair that flowed down over her shoulders. Freckles crowded her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She wore a conservative pair of slacks and a white button-up shirt. Her outfit looked like part of a uniform.

  The girl from the front seat wore exactly the same thing, which—detective that I am—led me to believe the clothing was part of a uniform. She had straight brown hair that hung just shy of her shoulders. The cut looked a lot like Sasha’s, with the straight bangs across the forehead.

  The boy had a typical preppie haircut made to look stylishly messy and neat at the same time. He wore light tan pants and a blue sweater vest over an Oxford shirt and tie. He had loosened the tie and unfastened the top button at his throat.

  They all looked like they went to prep school, but if they were drinking at my bar, they were too old for that. Next guess was they attended a private college of the religious variety. There was no such college in Hawthorne, so they must attend somewhere out of town.

  All three of them sat rigid in their seats, hands clasped or fidgeting, gazes directed downward as if they’d been sent to the principal’s office to get their knuckles rapped.

  I gave them a reassuring smile, but none of them looked up to see it.

  I noticed the girl on the couch, with the red hair, didn’t have the same raw look around her eyes from crying as the other two. Maybe she hadn’t been as close to Sasha.

  I cleared my throat and got to the crux. “I have a pretty good idea why you guys are here.”

  Red glanced up, but only for a breath.

  “I remember you guys from last night. And your friend…Sasha.”

  The boy and the girl sitting at my desk reached out and clasped hands. “This is hard for us. We’re not real experienced with this kind of thing.”

  “Well, I have a little background on it. But I’ve probably wasted your time having you come inside. You really ought to let police handle things. They have more manpower, more tech, more everything.”

  Now the couple in front of me exchanged glances. Confused glances. The quality of the energy in
the room changed. I went from thinking I knew it all to wondering what the heck was going on. I kept quiet, deciding to let them come out with whatever they wanted on their own time.

  A light dawned in the eyes of the girl with the brown hair. She looked at me with a somewhat crooked mouth. It was hard to tell if she was smiling or frowning. “This isn’t about Sasha.”

  I raised my eyebrows. What else could this be about?

  The boy told me. “This is about Sasha’s dad.”

  I spoke slowly, as if I were the only English speaker in the room. “What about her dad?”

  Red spoke up from her place back on the couch, lifting her chin as if in challenge, though I didn’t know to what. “Sasha’s dad went missing three days ago. We want to hire you to find him.”

  Chapter 2

  I sat there blinking for a few seconds, my brain changing gears. I looked over to the Empire Strikes Back poster, but Darth Vader wasn’t giving out advice. Wasn’t Darth the ultimate missing father?

  I shifted in my seat, leaning on one arm of my chair as I took the trio in, trying to get a read on them in case their friend’s death had messed with their heads. Then I asked the necessary question. “You have no interest in investigating Sasha’s death?”

  “Of course we do,” the girl at my desk said, her voice thick as if she might start crying again. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. She got control of herself, but one tear did manage to escape and skate down her cheek. “But the police are doing that, aren’t they?”

  “Most definitely,” I said.

  The boy started to talk, but I held up a hand. “I can’t talk with you three much longer without names. Help me out here.”

  They each called out their names as if in a school room, starting with Red.

  “Carrie.”

  “Holden,” the boy said. “Like Caulfield.”

  I smirked. Nice.

  “Rachel,” the girl next to Holden said.

  I noticed the two of them still held hands.

  I looked at each of them in turn. Carrie seemed to be the most put-together at the moment, so I focused on her, rolling my seat to the side so I didn’t have to look over Holden’s shoulder to see her. “So what’s the interest in her father? Do you think he’s somehow tied to Sasha’s death?”