Fifteen minutes later and Joel was behind the wheel of the convertible, already wondering how he could keep his absurd promise to his mother. He didn’t know the first thing about investigating a murder. He was hopeless at everything beyond reading Excel spreadsheets and fighting hangovers and executing dead lifts.
All this grief and anger—it was a little pathetic, wasn’t it? He’d barely paid Dylan a thought in a decade. Upon learning last Sunday that his little brother had problems, an inner life of any kind, Joel had secretly delighted in how noble it would be to save him, how easily he could make a permanent friend of Dylan with just a little lazy largesse.
And now? Now Joel craved one of his signature Manhattan benders. He wanted bottle service, hard drugs, a handgun in his mouth. He wanted anything that would take his mind off the fact that beneath his cultivated body and his boutique T-shirts Joel Whitley was nothing more than a scrawny fag who’d been too weak to protect the one person in his life who had ever needed him.
He settled for Adderall, and motion.
As Joel drove he dialed Wesley Mores, the Baptist Church’s youth minister. Joel remembered something Wesley had mentioned Sunday night: how KT Staler had gotten into trouble over the summer and Dylan had been concerned about it.
The phone rang and rang. The voice of Darren, Paulette’s boyfriend, flitted now through Joel’s head: “I put in two thousand of my own money.”
Joel thought about the expensive Sonos soundbar he’d noticed on Dylan’s dresser, the pricey watch Joel had found in Dylan’s nightstand drawer, right alongside a bottle of painkillers (POTENTIAL FOR RECREATION/ABUSE: HIGH). Paulette had told Joel that the soundbar and the watch were gifts from Bethany Tanner. Joel couldn’t quite believe this.
Investigator Mayfield had asked Joel if KT Staler had given Dylan “any trouble.” KT’s sister, Joel remembered, had been arrested for concealing meth in the shells of hollowed-out Nokia phones. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine that KT might have gotten involved in some shady business through her. Perhaps Dylan had gotten sucked in as well.
And now, apparently, KT Staler had gone missing. Joel wondered if Wesley Mores might have any theories why.
The call went to voice mail.
Fine.
He drove to the bank to inquire about his brother’s account and was told that it contained two thousand dollars, not four. “I put in two thousand of my own money,” Darren had said. So where had the other two thousand gone? Despite his best efforts, the girl behind the counter at the bank would tell Joel nothing more.
Joel stopped when he reached an empty spot in front of Lott’s Hardware. Inside, gnomish Mr. Lott, a man Joel had hoped to speak to since his return on Friday, gave him a sad little wave through the store’s front window.
The sight of this bald, small man with his bushy mustache, his shirt and bow tie and starched overalls, brought back a memory to Joel like a knife through the chest. Ten years ago, Joel had been inside that store, hiding inside a pair of headphones in the wake of his arrest, sent by his mother to buy something his house didn’t need—paint thinner? a torpedo level?—in the hopes of getting him out of bed. At the counter, Mr. Lott had made no effort to ring up his purchase. Lott had motioned for Joel to take the headphones off, which he did, reluctantly. Braced for some fresh humiliation, Joel had instead heard the first kind words an adult had spoken to him since those photos had appeared in everyone’s paper the week before.
As Joel stepped inside the store today, the bell chimed brightly, as if even it too was grateful to see him again.
“Dear God, Joel,” Mr. Lott said, embracing him. “Am I ever sorry.”
Déjà vu. He had said exactly the same thing to Joel ten years ago.
Joel composed himself enough to say, “I’m glad this place still exists. I heard they opened a Walmart down the highway.”
Lott waved this off. “Forget the Walmart. Joel Whitley, how the hell are you walking?”
“I’m not entirely certain.” Joel glanced around at the empty shop. “I don’t want to keep you—is your daughter here?”
“Kimbra? She mentioned you were looking for me Sunday. She’s probably at the Egg House with a few of the girls. I try not to make her work on the weeknights. God knows we hardly have the business.”
Lott’s eyes seemed to follow Joel’s around the shop, taking in with him the faded deals, the ersatz stack of wheelbarrow tires and, on almost every vertical surface, Bentley Bison merchandise. There were pennants, commemorative calendars dating back decades, framed jerseys of yesterday’s golden boys: BROADLOCK, STEELE, CLARK.
TOBIAS LOTT, BOOSTER CLUB CHAIR, read a nameplate mounted on the store’s wooden counter. A pristine replica of the State Semifinals trophy from the year before sat next to the paint-speckled cash register.
Joel spotted a picture of his beaming brother mounted next to an official portrait of the president. The president’s photo was smaller.
“It’s nice to see you haven’t changed,” Joel said.
Lott tried to smile. “Should I be concerned about your designs on my daughter?”
“It’s her boyfriend I’m worried about,” Joel said, and Mr. Lott’s face darkened. “Has KT ever made any trouble for Kimbra?”
“There’s always going to be someone else you’d wish would take a shine to your little girl.”
Joel noticed something odd on the wall. “Did they not have a team picture in ’75?”
Lott seemed happy to change the subject. “That’s the only one I’m missing. Nobody held on to it. I have a few with your brother, though. They’re yours if you want them.”
Joel demurred. He turned to go, hesitated and looked back at Mr. Lott to say, “Do you remember what you told me that afternoon? The week after everything happened?”
“I’ve said a lot in my time.”
“It was just a few words—” Joel began, but Lott cut him off.
“I’m sure I meant every one of them.”
For years, though he had no interest in returning to Bentley, Joel sometimes imagined coming home, thanking this funny little man for saying exactly what he’d needed to hear at exactly the right moment.
“You’re too good for this town,” Lott had said back then. Simple, and yet it had saved Joel as surely as a flare fired in heavy fog. It had pointed toward a future. It had given him a reason to live: to see what life was like elsewhere.
“When you told me to get out of Bentley I think you kept me alive, Mr. Lott. That’s all.”
“When I told you what?” Lott said. The man rubbed at his mustache and looked acutely embarrassed.
“Never mind,” Joel said, after a long hesitation. He took one last look at all this Bison bric-a-brac. “Good luck to the boys on Friday.”