At least the address of Stevie’s other friend wasn’t far, just a few miles away on the other side of Ventura Boulevard, where the homes were smaller and closer together. Parents in this neighborhood who sent a kid to Stoddard weren’t merely adding another tractable expense; they were making sacrifices that might squeeze them forever.
Waldo rang the doorbell. A thin-haired man in baggy chinos and a UCLA sweatshirt opened the door, drooping, drained by the day or maybe by life.
Waldo said, “Are you Mr. Whiting?”
“Yeah. What’s up? It’s past nine.”
“My name’s Charlie Waldo; this is Lorena Nascimento. We’re private investigators, working for fellow parents of yours from the Stoddard School—Joel and Paula Rose?” Whiting’s eyes hardened; Waldo could tell he’d dropped the wrong names, but there was no turning. “Your daughter Kristal is a friend of Stevie’s?”
“So?”
“So, Stevie’s missing. If Kristal’s around, we’d like to talk to her.”
Lorena added, “We know it’s late. Just for a minute or two.”
The man looked at a flower bed and Waldo could almost hear him count ten in his head before speaking. “Kristal’s not here,” he said, slowly, evenly. Another parent with a girl on the loose.
“Do you have any idea when she—”
The man cut him off but kept the same even cadence. “Kristal’s in rehab.” Waldo didn’t even get to say, Oh. “Leave my family alone. Stevie Rose has done enough damage.” Kristal Whiting’s father closed the door.
Three leads and nothing to show. Lorena sighed and said to Waldo, “I guess that’s a night,” while she started to order their next car, their fifth of the day. They waited quietly, a few driveways down, so as not to linger in front of the Whitings’. When their ride pulled up, his heart sank again: a Dodge Grand Caravan. “What the hell is it with Uber?” he said. “It’s all SUVs.”
“Yeah, XL,” said the driver. “That’s what you ordered.”
Aghast, Waldo turned on Lorena, who was already giggling. “Lighten up, Waldo. I just wanted you to give my poor Mercedes a little love.”
* * *
• • •
Willem wasn’t home, so Lorena microwaved a bag of popcorn and watched the Malibu Malice pilot in the living room. Waldo sat nearby, cruising the internet and diving deeper into the Roses.
Their moment in the sun, he learned, had been a masterly marketing scheme of their own devising, one that made Malibu Malice a succès de scandale right out of the box some four years ago. Their network, a struggling cable stepchild of one of the big conglomerates, acquired in a package with a more coveted sports network and known mostly for tired reruns of second-tier sitcoms from the nineties, had decided to “go edgy,” i.e., to break the same new salacious ground that thirty other networks were already breaking.
With Malibu Malice, its first venture into scripted programming, the network had, at the Roses’ urging, eschewed traditional advertising and targeted teens only through social media. Their provocative message of Watch it online and clear your browser . . . your parents will never know! suckered watchdog groups into a predictable uproar, and the creators did everything they could to build the attention into a bonfire: Joel and Paula Rose had been everywhere, from the look of it, talking about the right-wing forces of censorship and how kids were too smart to fall for it. When the initial conflagration died down they stoked it again with a second-season opener in which super-vixen Eden Conner persuades an innocent freshman to hold on to her boyfriend and still keep her virginity by having anal sex instead. Waldo found four different YouTube interviews from that autumn in which Joel Rose defended the story line with the same rationale, offered each time in the same earnest timbre: “Believe me,” Joel would say, “this is happening all over. This is a real issue.” Indeed, thought Waldo, just like deforestation, or the scarcity of clean water.
Lorena got to the end of the pilot and snapped off the TV. “And now these people have Stevie Rose,” she said.
“What do you think?” said Waldo.
“What do I think? I think some people get everything they want, and everything they deserve.”
TWELVE
They delayed their arrival at the school to miss the drop-off rush. A police SUV sealed off the driveway, so they drove past and parked on the street. As Waldo tried to pass between the police car and the gate, the same decrepit security guard, unstrung with sudden responsibility, fumbled to ask if he had a pass. Waldo started to argue that he’d never needed one before, but the old man’s eye started twitching and Waldo dropped the pushback, gave his name and asked him to call the headmaster’s office for approval.
Waldo didn’t recognize the young female uniform who’d gotten out of the SUV and was talking to Lorena near the street. She was already telling Lorena about some guy she was looking at; from the snippet he could make out, the suspect’s name might be Weitzman. Waldo loved it: leave it to Lorena to charm a cop out of the car and a lead out of the cop before they even made it onto campus. Waldo tried to pick up more of their conversation, but the guard, talking louder than required, kept asking Waldo to repeat his name and even made him spell it twice.
Waldo wandered over to Lorena. The officer was telling her, “I love that cone. I have trouble with stilettos, though—I tore up my knee a couple years ago and it still isn’t right.”
Lorena turned a leg, showing off her sharp-toed ankle boot, black leather with four decorative buckles. “These might work for you. The support’s more like a block.”
“Really?”
Lorena said, “I bought the Stuart Weitzmans, but then I saw these and I needed them, too.” Whoever Stuart Weitzman was, Waldo was pretty sure he wasn’t the guy who shot Victor Ouelette. The very notion of fashion galled him, with its perpetual cycle of gratuitous consumption and disposal. He looked at Lorena’s boots and said, “Needed?”
Lorena said, “I didn’t have any cone heels.”
“Why did you ‘need’ cone heels?”
“Because it’s this year.” The police officer laughed. Lorena gave Waldo’s own worn, pragmatic ensemble a once-over, eviscerating it with a raised eyebrow and giving the cop’s laugh a fresh roll. “Waldo,” she said, “this is why we work.”
“Amen to that,” said Lorena’s new friend.
Waldo looked over at the guard to check if he’d gotten permission to wave them in yet but saw Hexter coming out of the gate and walking toward them instead. The headmaster steered Waldo away from the others. “It’s too chaotic in there. I don’t know what your role is—”
Waldo indicated Lorena. “My partner and I are working for the Roses. Stevie’s missing.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Hexter squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You do know the police are calling her a suspect.”
Waldo said, “I need to talk to some of your teachers.”
“No. I can’t have you on campus. The school’s a tinderbox already.” The two men watched the traffic on Chandler, avoiding each other’s eyes. Their ledger was already tortuous: yes, Waldo had preserved a career-threatening secret for Hexter, but the accommodation Hexter made in return was no small thing, granting second-grade admission conspicuously late in the school year to the daughter of a drug dealer who’d saved Waldo’s life. It would be hard to adjudge, at this point, just who owed whom.
Lorena was still chatting with the cop but eyeing the men. Waldo kept her at bay with a slight shake of the head. He said to Hexter, “Give me one. His best friend on the faculty, whoever that is. Then I’ll go away.” When Hexter still balked, Waldo said, “You can send the guy out here.”
Hexter pawed the ground with a scuffed oxford, then said, “No promises,” and walked back through the gate and toward the office.
There was nothing to do but wait, so Waldo went back to the women. The police officer was sayi
ng, “But I can’t really wear fuchsia.”
A few minutes later a female teacher came out to see them, midthirties, with frizzy hair, a bohemian dress and army boots. She told them her name was Cheryl Falacci and that she taught art. She was a close friend of Victor Ouelette’s, she said, not just at Stoddard but since they were freshmen together, and later off-campus roommates, at UC Irvine. In fact, she said, she was the one who’d recommended him for this job. The woman was jittery, brittle; it was hard to tell how much of that was her normal affect and how much was anguish at her friend’s murder.
Waldo told her they were trying to find Stevie Rose. “I’m sorry to make this even more unpleasant, but I have to ask: have you heard any rumors about her and Victor?”
Brittle or not, that set her off. “Hateful. Yes. All horseshit, and hateful. And see what happened?” She’d lost Waldo already. She explained: “Why would anybody kill someone like Victor? People talk hateful crap, it becomes a thing, and then all of a sudden it’s a problem. Like Trump and Sweden. There was no terrorism at all in Sweden until Trump started talking about it. Then? Guess what.”
“So you think Victor was killed because of the rumor?”
“I’m sure it didn’t help him any.”
“Who would do that?”
“I have no idea. There’s just a meanness out there now. I was scared to leave my house before this.”
“But you’re sure it wasn’t true about Victor and Stevie Rose.”
“These kids—how they live, what they do with each other online—there’s no privacy, there’s no modesty. Everything’s nothing to them. So dragging down a man like Victor? That’s nothing either. And let me tell you—the teachers aren’t any better.”
“Did he have enemies on the faculty?”
“Enemies? No. But they were all jealous. The kids loved Victor. He got asked to advise more clubs than any of us. He coached track. He took on more independent studies. Victor Ouelette was one of the most decent men I’ve ever met in my life, and they killed him. This country . . .” She was overcome. “I’m sorry . . .” She turned and scurried back onto campus.
Lorena said to Waldo, “Wouldn’t be the first thing Stevie made up.”
Waldo was doubtful. “Why would she lie to her best friend about something like that?”
“To impress her.”
Waldo shook his head and started back toward the car. “I never understood girls.”
Lorena raised another eloquent eyebrow.
* * *
• • •
They reviewed the previous day’s interviews with Stevie’s parents, to match their impressions against what the Roses knew. Waldo told them that the Lem boy claimed that he and Stevie weren’t deeply involved.
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Paula. “I only met Ky the one time.”
“Koy,” corrected Lorena. She asked if the Roses knew that Kristal Whiting was in rehab.
Paula, distressed, said, “No, I didn’t know that.”
Joel said, “Who’s Kristal Whiting?”
Waldo asked if they’d printed out the phone records. Paula went to the kitchen and brought back a sheaf half an inch thick. “Stevie uses her phone a lot. It’s mostly texts.”
Lorena said, “How’d you do identifying the numbers?”
“Not too well. We x-ed out mine and Joel’s, but that’s about it.” She said to her husband, “We should probably get Dionne’s number, at least. For emergencies.” Waldo was struck by the implicit optimism. Or maybe it was denial.
It wasn’t hard to figure out Dionne’s number, though; it showed up thousands of times during the month, a hundred or more texts in both directions every day, many through the classroom hours. The last of those, outgoing, was sent at ten thirteen a few nights earlier, presumably Stevie telling Dionne she couldn’t make it to school the next day. One other phone number appeared a couple hundred times, mostly texts too, ending abruptly about ten days before, probably marking Kristal Whiting’s entry into rehab. Different numbers popped up prominently for a few days, then disappeared. Lorena said those were probably boys.
The most glaring revelation, though, and the troubling one, was that, except for scattered, unanswered incoming texts and voicemails, the phone had been used only once since that final message to Dionne, and that only half an hour later. Hundreds of calls, thousands of texts, and then nothing for two and a half days, nothing since about five hours after Waldo and Lorena had been the last to see her. Nothing since the night Victor Ouelette was shot to death in his garage.
Lorena pointed to something on the last and third-to-last calls, made on either side of the final Dionne text. Waldo looked closer: they were different phone numbers, both outgoing, one at five fifty-eight, which lasted twenty-seven minutes, the other at ten forty-seven, which lasted two minutes. Both had 949 area codes.
Waldo said, “949? Is that O.C.?”
“Irvine’s 949,” Lorena said, floating a possible link: that was where Cheryl Falacci said she and Ouelette had gone to school and lived for a while.
Paula said, “What do we do with all these phone numbers we don’t know?”
Lorena told them she subscribed to a service called Transparentator, one of several available apps that work as reverse white pages, even for cell phones. She wanted to run the numbers here, with the Roses nearby, to see if they recognized any of the names as they popped up.
“You’re going to do all of them?” said Joel, dismayed. Waldo wondered what he had to do that was more important.
Lorena handed Waldo the printout. The calls and texts ran in reverse order, most recent at the top, so they started there. He read Lorena the number of the last call, the one at ten forty-seven. She typed it in, waited a moment for the result, then read, “M. Amador.” The Roses shook their heads at the unfamiliar name. Lorena said, “You’re sure.”
Waldo said, “Think, now.”
Paula said, “M. Amador? Orange County? Sorry.”
Joel said, “No idea.”
Lorena said, “Okay.” Waldo, skipping over the Dionne text, read off the third number on the page, the one for the longer call Stevie made around six, a couple of hours after they’d been in this room with Stevie.
Lorena saw the name and sat up. “Fuck,” she said.
Waldo resolved to find a good moment to suggest she watch her language around clients. He said, “What is it?”
Lorena slid her phone to him so he could read it on the app himself. One short name, six letters total, but enough to knock a couple of teeth loose in his jaw.
Roy Wax.
Waldo said, “Fuck.”
THIRTEEN
What?” said Joel.
Lorena said, “A name we’ve seen before. Do you know a Roy Wax?”
The Roses looked at each other. “Why?” said Paula.
Joel said, “He’s my brother-in-law. Paula’s brother-in-law.”
Paula said, “He’s married to my sister.”
Joel said, “How do you guys know him?”
“Unrelated case. Coincidence,” said Waldo, though he didn’t believe it. Lorena grimaced bewilderment like someone was telling her the laws of gravity had been revoked.
Joel turned to his wife. “Why would Stevie call Roy?”
Waldo said, “Or someone with a phone on Roy’s account. Does the app tell you the actual user?” Lorena was still too gobsmacked to answer.
Joel, putting it together, spit, “Daron.”
Paula sighed exasperation and explained to the detectives. “Our nephew. Brenda and Roy’s son.”
Waldo said, “Stevie’s age?”
That set Joel off. “Not close. Old enough for prison. You still know any cops?” he said to Waldo.
Waldo said, “Prison for what?”
But Joel was too riled for discussion. “Spoiled little prick. From w
hen he was, what, seven? No values . . .”
“None,” Paula seconded.
“That whole family. No compassion . . .”
“None.”
“No—no—no . . .” He looked for it. “. . . empathy. Human scum.”
“No compassion. It’s all about themselves.”
“Scum. All of them.”
“Prison for what?” Waldo asked again.
“Anywhere he’d fucking hate it,” said Joel, answering a different question in his head. “Anywhere so fucking awful, he hangs himself in his fucking cell.”
“Joel,” said his wife. “Maybe you should take a Xanax.”
“I don’t need a Xanax. I need somebody to stick that little bastard’s head in a vise and pop his eyes out with a spoon.”
“You need a Xanax. One of the good ones. Want me to get it for you?”
“I’ll get it.” Joel stood and left the room again, muttering about whether a fork might be more effective.
Paula turned to the others. “About a week after we saw them at Thanksgiving, I smelled something in Stevie’s closet. Marijuana. I found three baggies, and one of cocaine—all in a business envelope from Roy’s company.”
“She was fourteen!” hollered Joel from down the hall.
“And Daron was twenty,” added Paula.
Lorena said, “Does he live with his parents?”
“No, he’s got his own apartment. In Costa Mesa, I think.”
“Do you have the address?”
Somehow that question spun Paula out like her husband. “Jesus, why would I have his address? The kid is a menace! They should lock him up, and throw away the key.” Then she remembered. “Oh wait, of course I have it. I needed it for the Christmas cards.”
She gave them a family history lesson as she rummaged through the files on her MacBook Air. Brenda and Paula Steinfeldt had grown up in Artesia, near the Orange County line, back when the suburbs were creeping north from Santa Ana and Anaheim and tumbling south from Los Angeles proper. The sexual adventurousness of the seventies made life a little too interesting in the Steinfeldt house; divorce hit when Brenda was seven and Paula only three. They didn’t see their dad much, and Kitty, their mom, was more interested in her dating life than in making sure her older daughter didn’t bully her little sister. With that plus the age difference, Brenda and Paula had never been much like friends.
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