by Rob Cornell
He might have had the body of a dancer, but I had a fighter’s body.
Let’s put on a show, motherfucker.
Of course, I just sat there and took his little barbs instead of delivering a right cross.
“What was I saying?” He put a hand to his temple. Then he withdrew the hand and snapped his fingers. “That’s right. I was talking about how your profession is a school of meddlers. People who put their noses where they don’t belong.”
“I’m afraid you have the reality of my profession mixed up with the TV version.” I kept each word measured so my voice wouldn’t snap into a scream. “The fact is, I’ve been hired to find out what happened to your brother.”
Brown put his hand over his mouth and nodded. Through his fingers he muttered, “Peter. Yeah. Timing couldn’t have been worse.”
“Do you think he knew something about his daughter’s mental state?”
His eyes widened as if I’d asked him his girlfriend’s bra size. He planted his drink down on the table, the crystal and glass meeting to make a sharp tink sound on impact. Some of the drink splashed out onto Brown’s hand. “See what I mean? What the hell kind of question is that?”
“One you or one of your relatives have probably already heard from the police.”
“Well, you aren’t police, are you?”
“No. But I would like to find your brother. He might be in some kind of trouble. He might not even know about Sasha. Wouldn’t you want him to know his daughter is gone?”
He slapped his hands together, then balled them into fists. His face burned red. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you in here. Curiosity got the better of me. A real, live private dick. But you’re as much a leech as those reporters hovering over at Debra’s. Sickening.”
Man, was this guy pronged. Rather than let myself get reeled into his bitterness, I took a calming breath and tried to start over. “Do you have any idea where Peter might be?”
His black, shining eyes narrowed to slits. “You came out here wondering if he was with me.” Flat statement; no question.
“I came out there, because talking with you is one way to gain information on where he might be. I can only assume if he was with you, you would have told me by now.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. The guy had started this meeting as an adversary and he didn’t seem like he wanted to play it any other way.
Brown grabbed up his glass and cleaned it out with one swallow. He set the glass down with the same firm tink as before. “He’s not here.” His voice came out rough and strained, more because of the alcohol than anything. That’s what you get for drinking paint-thinner, I supposed.
“Thank you,” I said carefully, washing my words before I spoke them now. I was afraid he might pull a pistol or something. I also cut him some slack, considering he had recently learned his niece had killed herself and his brother had gone missing. A twin brother, at that. And if you believe the urban legends, that had to have bothered him even more than a regular brother.
“Now,” I continued, “can you think of anyone he might go to in a pinch. A friend. An ex-girlfriend. A—”
“Peter and Debra have been married for almost thirty years.” He threw up his hands. “What kind of girlfriend are you suggesting?”
I made the universal gesture for calm down, pressing my hands down in front of me. That got Brown to lower his and take a deep breath.
“I should have never let you come in,” he said.
“All you’ve done,” I said, “was show concern for your brother. A part of you thinks I can help. I know you’ve been through the wringer, but try to hang on a little longer. Let me help you.”
His eyes shifted from side to side, then they locked on me. “Who hired you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Was it those crazy friends of hers? The voodoo kids?”
“I can’t say anything about my client. I’m sorry.”
I expected him to blow up about it, but he let that one pass without quibble. Though I did wonder about his personification of the trio. Strict religion didn’t necessarily make them crazy. And how the hell did voodoo fit in there? I chalked it up to his addled mind.
“Some of my questions are generic. I was not suggesting your brother had a girlfriend. I’m just trying to find out if there is anyone he might have gone to?”
Matt Brown rubbed his temples as if trying to work out a headache. He sighed long and softly. When he spoke, his voice trembled. “I would have hoped he’d come to me.”
“But he didn’t.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t seen him in a week. When Deb called looking for him he’d been gone for two days already. I’m surprised she called me at all.”
“Why’s that?”
“Woman hates my ever-lovin’ guts. She’s like those friends of Sasha’s. Crazy fucking bitch. She told me one Thanksgiving, when I had them to my house here, only one we had together as a full family in years.” He boggled at that, then went on. “Anyway, she has to have this long-ass prayer before we eat and the food is getting cold, and this is a premium spread here. Paid big bucks for it. Best damn turkey feast you’d ever seen…”
He trailed off.
For a second, I thought that might have been the whole story. Right as I opened my mouth to prompt him further, he continued.
“I try to get her to cut it short and she asks me, ‘Who made this feast?’ And I’m like, ‘Andy Telerico, one of Michigan’s finest chefs.’ She goes, ‘No. God made this feast, and he’ll unmake it unless we finish our prayers.’”
He picked up his empty glass, looked at the decanter, set the glass back down.
“So I say, ‘My prayers are done,’ and I reach for the bread basket and the twat stabs my hand with her fork.”
He flipped he right hand around to show me the top. He pointed to a line of four dots of puckered flesh just below his knuckles. “Left me with scars.” He waved his hand in that same dismissive manner, but it wasn’t directed at me. Maybe he thought he had enough money to tell time and memory when to move along. “Anyway, we never made it through dinner. No wonder Sasha did what she did. I hate to say it, but if I lived under the same roof as that whacked-out woman, I would have offed myself, too.”
I sat there a moment, breathing through my gaping mouth. Then I collected myself enough to ask him something. “You think Peter had the same problems with his wife? Or was he on her side?”
Matt shook his head emphatically. “Hell, no. He knew she was batshit. He spent most of their marriage trying to make her sane, I swear. But she got worse instead of better.” He dragged a hand down over his face. “So the answer is no. I don’t know where he might be. But I’m just glad he got the hell out of there. I hope he stays away. Sucks for Collin, though. Maybe he’ll come back for the kid.”
“And get charged with kidnapping? You think he’d do that?”
His eyes went to the empty glass again. He gave in and poured another. After he threw it back and screwed up his face as if it tasted as bad as it smelled, he looked me straight in the eye. “Between Sasha—who was a lot like her mother in some ways—killing herself, and Peter in the wind…I’d believe almost anything.”
He stared through his empty crystal glass as if seeing his future among the glinting edges. “I always thought money could insulate me from the hard shit. My parents were dirt-ass poor raising me and Pete. We suffered and struggled a lot.” He shook his head. “Money ain’t gonna save little Sasha, though. Money ain’t gonna do a damn thing.”
Chapter 9
I drove up to the guard box and waited for the woman inside to pull the lever and let me out. Meanwhile, I felt less informed than when I’d headed the other way through the gate. Investigations can get like that, though. It takes an unexpected turn, you have to adjust your expectations and roll with it.
I headed home, letting the thoughts popcorn through my head. A small flurry had started while I was in talking with Matt Br
own. I drove a little under the speed limit and kept my eyes open for deer. In the heavily-wooded northern parts of Hawthorne, you could run into them often, literally, and do serious damage to your car, never mind the deer.
As wealthy as the residents were, my neighborhood did not have a gate. I pulled into my garage between the Rolls-Royce and the SUV my parents were killed in during a carjacking gone wrong. The police had long ago released the vehicle to me. There were still bloodstains on the seats. But I couldn’t bring myself to have it detailed and sold. And I wasn’t about to ever drive the wicked thing.
As I entered and made my way through the house, I nearly stumbled into what might have been a wingback chair covered in a sheet. A lot of the furniture remained draped under sheets to keep the dust off. The house basically looked the same as I had inherited it after the former staff, including Sheila, my parents’ executor, had put the house in stasis until I returned from California to decide what to do with it.
I’d meant to sell it.
A clause in my parents’ will that I run the High Note in their stead, lest I lose the entire inheritance, gave me second thoughts. Not that I worried so much about the property or the money. But when something means so much to your parents that they put a weird stipulation in their will to make sure it happens…needless to say, I felt an obligation to their wishes I continue to serve, however inadequately, to this day.
I wound my way through the sheet-covered furniture and upstairs to the same bedroom I grew up in. I had managed to do enough redecorating that it didn’t look like a teenager’s room as much, but there were still remnants, like the torn Guns and Roses poster featuring the original band.
I fell into bed before undressing, nearly fell asleep with my pants around my ankles. The house’s heat worked great, so it could have been summer outside for all I knew if I didn’t look out the window and see the snow, more than a flurry now, collecting around and inside the empty backyard pool.
Once fully undressed, I let myself drift.
In the dark I heard Sasha Brown singing. I saw the highlights in her hair caused by the stage lights. I remembered a few other details I hadn’t noticed before, like the small gold cross hanging on a chain around her neck. Or the way her lower lip quivered as she sang. The wetness in her eyes, though a tear had never fallen.
She knew, I thought as I fell asleep. She knew right then she would take her own life later that night.
I had no way to prove it, but I was still certain.
If I had had longer to look, I would have know something was wrong.
A light sparked behind my closed eyelids. I opened my eyes and sat up in bed, no longer even a tiny bit tired.
If I could see it, how come her closest friends had not? None of them had admitted to thinking something was wrong. None of them had so much as hinted they had felt Sasha a little ‘off’ that night. At the same time, none of them expressed shock that she had committed suicide. Carrie had referred to it as the “ultimate sin.” But other than that, they seemed rather level-headed about it. Everyone deals with grief in their own way, which is why this felt strange—because these three kids all dealt with it the same way: they marched into my office and asked me to find Sasha’s dad.
I was missing something.
I didn’t like missing things.
Tomorrow, assuming I could get any sleep, I would find that something, or I was going to be one cranky private eye.
* * *
I ended up spending most of the night downstairs in the entertainment room, playing Halo on my Xbox, putting mouthy thirteen year-olds in a different time zone in their place by delivering multiple headshots. I heard more foul language out of those kids in a night that I ever heard working on the streets of LA doing skip traces.
I managed about three hours of sleep after I finished my digital slaughter. In the morning, I took a shower that seemed to last a third of that time. By ten a.m. I was dressed in a button-up shirt, a pair of dress pants, and a matching jacket. I couldn’t find a pair of dress shoes that fit, so I went with navy blue sneakers that almost blended with the outfit. Almost.
I wanted to look as professional as possible. I think my laid-back nature, the jeans and t-shirts I tend to wear, give the wrong impression. At times, I want that wrong impression. Today, I meant to make a different—and deeper—impression than usual.
On my way to the office, I dialed the number Carrie had given me and asked her to round up her friends for an update at my office. I arrived first and left the downstairs door unlocked for them. I set my notebook on my desk, shimmied out of my parka and hung it up, then parked myself behind the desk, where the kids wouldn’t see my sneakers anyway.
I could have added a tie, but there was only so far I was willing to go. Voluntarily fastening a noose around my neck went way beyond that line.
From my bottom desk draw I pulled out a can of air freshener and spritzed some of that around. Put that away. Folded my hands on my desk. And waited.
The trio showed up about ten minutes later.
I smiled at them as they entered the office, all in a line, as if in pecking order, with Carrie in the front, Holden in the middle, and Rachel bringing up the rear. They brushed the snow off their coats and hung them up. Carrie wore a knit stocking cap, her red locks flowing down over her ears from underneath the cap and framing her freckled face. She left the cap on, and this time took one of the seats in front of my desk.
Rachel wore a pair of fuzzy earmuffs and a scarf. She pulls off the earmuffs and unwound the scarf, hanging them both with her coat, then took the other chair.
Holden, who didn’t have either a hat or a scarf, took the couch, his ears and cheeks a brilliant red from the cold outside. He blew into his hands and rubbed them together, trying to warm up.
“Did you find something?” Carrie asked, right to business.
“I found lots of somethings. Your missing persons case keeps veering on me.”
“What do you mean by ‘veering?’”
“My questions keep leading back to Sasha.”
It was hard to tell if the red on her face was an angry blush or from the cold. “We already told you, this isn’t about Sasha. It’s about finding her dad.”
“It’s about finding her dad so you can tell him about Sasha, right? Rub it in his face what a terrible father he is? A bit of karmic justice?”
Carrie crossed her arms and didn’t say anything.
Rachel brushed some snowflakes off her hair. “Mr. Brone, we really just want him back. His son and wife need him at a time like this. Family should stick together.”
“I thought mom and dad didn’t get along?”
“They’re still a family. Their marriage is eternal under the eyes of God.”
“So God is okay with Mrs. Brown slicing Mr. Brown open with a knife?”
Carrie looked like she wanted to say something, but she hugged herself tighter and stayed mum.
Rachel seemed the elected spokesperson for the trio. “Of course not. But you can’t let some adversity break the sanctity of marriage. Never mind what he owes Collin as a father.”
Maybe I’d sprayed too much air freshener. The scent of lilac and lilies (according to the can) started to turn my stomach. “I can get behind him coming back for his son, but from what I hear, Mrs. Brown is a dangerous, unstable woman.”
Finally, Carrie couldn’t contain herself anymore. She uncrossed her arms and let loose. “You mean because Mrs. Brown is dedicated to the Lord? You must have talked to Sasha’s uncle. He’s always had a twisted picture of Sasha’s mom.”
“She stabbed him with a fork,” I said. “And left scars.”
Abbey shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“He could show you the scars.”
“How do you know they didn’t come from somewhere else and he’s just blaming her because he thinks she’s…how’d Sasha say he said it?”
“Crazier than a banana-fucked monkey,” Holden said from the couch. T
hen he slapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry,” he said, the word muffled by his hand. He cringed as if expecting a cosmic slap on the back of the head from God. But God spared him this time.
Me? I couldn’t help but snicker. The phrase barely made sense, yet it made all the sense in the world.
I quickly dialed down the chortling when I got three dirty looks, all aimed at me like a firing squad.
I cleared my throat, thinking about the four tiny scars lined up on the back of Matt’s hand. I tried to think of what else might make such a mark and came up empty. Still, I’d yet to meet Mrs. Brown for myself, so I had to reserve judgment until I could make my own assessment rather than trust the words of a few kids in their early twenties and a bitter, rich bachelor living in a huge house by himself like Bruce Wayne, but without the Batcave underneath.
I held up my hands in apology. “Let’s move past any second-hand opinions of Mrs. Brown for the moment so we can get to the issue I called you three over for.”
Carrie folded her arms again and leaned cockeyed in her seat as if thinking This ought to be good.
Rachel ran her hands down her navy blue pants, smoothing them out except for the sharp crease down the middle. Holden tugged at the collar of his turtleneck as if too warm.
“Since you three are my clients, I’m going to play this straight.” I waited a second, setting up the dramatic moment, eyes ready to notice the slightest strange twitch from any of them. “The night Sasha killed herself, did you guys know something was wrong with her? Did you have any idea what she planned to do?”
Holden stopped playing with his collar and pressed his hands together between his knees as if in prayer. “She didn’t record her video until after we split up for the night.”
“That isn’t what I’m asking. Did you guys suspect something wrong with Sasha’s mental state earlier in the evening?”
They started that back-and-forth looking among themselves as if checking the other for the correct response. Finally, Carrie shrugged. “She seemed fine,” she said. “And if you’re asking if we knew she was going to kill herself, the answer’s no. A hundred times, no.”