JODY GROPER WAS ABOUT twenty-five, hardly what Leith would consider a cougar. But he supposed it was all relative.
Already she had two little kids. Two.
He sat in the dining room of her apartment, listening to the squalling of little lungs and the television babble of cartoons. The woman had asked him for five minutes so she could change the younger’s diaper and get the other dressed. The five minutes gave Leith time to think about his discussion with Alison this morning. Alison had grown up with several brothers and sisters, and wanted the same experience for their three-year-old, Izzy. She had a feeling time was running out.
She was wrong about that, in Leith’s opinion. They were in their midforties, and as far as he was concerned, time had run out. Izzy would be their only child, and they should be happy with that. But this morning she’d asked about it again. One more, then, she’d said, bargaining for a life.
This morning Leith had given in and agreed. Of course they’d try for one more. He hadn’t reminded her of the two times she’d lost track of Izzy, and hadn’t told her, Only if you promise to be more vigilant. He hadn’t said any of it, and he and Ali had gotten to work at it right away, which had made him late for work.
Even now the miracle could be happening in Alison’s body, he realized. Izzy could soon have a little brother or sister. He sat at Jody’s dining room table and listened to the battle down the hall, imagining the joy a second child would bring to him, and trying to smile.
Jody was back with one clean and happy baby on her hip, while another ripped about the small apartment with a toy airplane. “So what can I do for you?” she asked. She sat down, bouncing baby on knee.
Leith told her he was looking for Kyler Hartshorne, and that he understood she and Kyler were close. Had Kyler been here recently?
“Yes,” she said. “He left this morning, about ten. Why? What did he do?”
“Nothing that we know of. He’s a possible witness, though. Do you know where he went?”
“Nope.”
“Or when he’s coming back?”
“Nope.”
Short interview. Leith said, “He’s not answering his phone.”
“He turned it off last night.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t want to be bothered. We were having a hoopla.”
An eighteen-year-old and a cougar. Leith dearly hoped they’d used birth control, and something a little more reliable than the good old rhythm method. He said, “Maybe he forgot to turn it back on after. The phone.”
“Maybe,” Jody said. “And don’t worry. There’s no way in hell I’m going for a third.”
She had read his mind, he supposed. “So, no idea where he’s gone today?”
She gestured at the window. The world outside was wet and grey. She said, “With all that B.C. bud in his pocket and the inheritance from Uncle Bob, I’d say he’s gone to do some serious shopping. Can never have too many black hoodies with skulls and wings all over ’em, can we?”
Inheritance? Leith kept the surprise off his face. To keep the fountain flowing, it sometimes helped to appear to know more than you did. “Quite a windfall, was it?”
“Quite. And the bud is personal-use possession only, by the way.”
“And the inheritance, he said it was from Uncle Bob?” With the trick of inflection Leith had let her know that he considered that a bald-faced lie. The shrug she gave him said she agreed.
“Do you know the grand total?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Was it money in the bank or cash in hand?”
“Don’t know.”
“Why didn’t he take you on this shopping spree, if that’s where he went?”
She shook her head. “Babies and malls don’t mix.”
“With his windfall, he could have got you a babysitter.”
“She’s out of town.”
“Pick up the paper, find another,” Leith said, not sure why he was pressing this tangent.
As if she, too, was waiting for the answer, the baby on Jody’s knee turned to look up at her mother’s face. Jody returned the gaze, transmitting something to the child, and it was something to do with warmth and security and faith. Then she looked at Leith and said, “I’d never leave my kids with a stranger from the classifieds.”
He was pleased enough to smile.
She went on, “And as for Kyler, you prob’ly have the wrong impression about us. We’re not a couple. Just the occasional bouncy bed party, and then I’m happy to see the back of his saggy jeans in the morning. Like, go away. It was nice, though, that he sprang for the goodies this time, instead of mooching off me.”
She flapped a hand at what she might have seen as disapproval on Leith’s face at the word goodies. “KFC and beer,” she said. “Budweiser. I had maybe two beers and one drag on his joint. And way too much fried chicken. Getting too old for the wild life.”
Too old for eighteen-year-olds, anyway, Leith thought.
The kid with the plane whirred into his mom’s lap, seeking nothing but a touch, a pat on the head to power him through, then buzzed off again.
“You think Kyler’s heading back this way after the mall?” Leith said.
“Nope. I think he’s heading for the Mexican border.”
Was that fact or metaphor? “What makes you say that?”
“Because that’s all he talks about, getting rich and taking off to Mexico. Get away from trouble, live in the sun.”
God, Leith thought. Monitoring airports and border crossings was expensive, and the budget only stretched so far. He said, “You know about Luna Garland?”
“The little girl who went missing, yeah.”
“Did Kyler mention her to you at all?”
A change had come over Jody. A tensing. Mention of the missing Luna had upset her. “No,” she said. “Why?”
“It’s possible he knows something. Are you thinking he knows something?”
She shook her head. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Not sure. We’d very much like to talk to him, though. As soon as possible.”
As he left, he gave her some stern last words. With no proof and no authority he couldn’t force her to do anything, but he could sound damned serious. He told her that if Kyler showed up she shouldn’t discuss this visit with him; she should just get in touch, right away. And by no means should she leave with Kyler, and more so — and he couldn’t stress this enough — she should not leave her children with him. Not for a moment.
“Of course not,” she said, and he knew she had gotten the message loud and clear. He could see it in her eyes. It was dawning on her that she might have been rubbing up against the very flanks of evil. “He’s not stepping in this door again, promise,” she said. “But if he comes by I’ll call you, the second he walks away.”
“Thanks.” As he left, Leith looked back once more at her two little kids. Two.
* * *
Little Dom was big. He was a recent grad of Riverside Secondary, twenty years old, six foot three or four, JD estimated, and with the looming presence of an airplane hangar. But soft-spoken. His father, who had opened the door to JD and called out to summon his son, was a pint-sized Italian Canadian with a bullhorn voice. Go figure.
JD and Little Dom sat in the privacy of a TV den, and Little Dom’s eyes were huge and troubled as he waited for JD to explain why she’d tracked him down like this. His mass relaxed when he realized he wasn’t in some kind of major trouble for throwing the party, and when he learned it was about the missing Luna Mae Garland, he became about the most helpful witness JD had ever had the pleasure of interviewing.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know these guys too well, but this is what I know. This kid Kyler started beating up on this kid Tia, for some reason, and Tia’s half his size, right? That’s just wrong. I broke it up, and then kept an eye on them, and they seemed okay. I even saw ’em chatting and laughing it up about half an hour later, which is good. You know, parties are about having fun. I don’t get it when people start getting pissy for no reason.”
JD nodded in agreement. How much easier life would be if people didn’t get pissy so often over nothing. She asked where he’d seen the two chatting and laughing.
“Out back, which is the only place we’re allowed to smoke.”
“Can you show me where?”
Little Dom gave her a tour that ended on a generous covered deck overlooking a small backyard with a dormant vegetable garden.
JD asked him if Tia and Kyler had been alone out here that night.
He shook his head. “The party crashers,” he said. “Those two British people, a man and a woman. I saw ’em out here, and I went out and said, ‘Sorry, do I know you folks?’ And the guy said he was a friend of Kyler’s, and his name was Sid, and his girlfriend was Nancy, but I think he was joking about their names. If he was, I didn’t get it. Like I said, they sounded British to me.”
“British,” JD said. “Outrageously British?”
“I don’t know what’s outrageous, but definitely British.”
“Party crashers, you say.”
“Must be. I have no idea who they were, and I don’t go around inviting strangers to my parents’ house, so I told them they had to leave, and Kyler, too. And they did, shortly after that, all of ’em. A bottle of tequila also went missing, by the way.”
“Did Tia leave with Kyler and the Brits?”
“No, he hung out a while, I think. I lost track of him after that.”
“When you stepped out to confront them, did you hear what these four were talking about?”
“I did,” Little Dom said, smiling, pleased to be helpful.
“What did you hear?” JD asked, and for some reason she imagined being swept up in Little Dom’s arms and tossed on a bed to be smothered beneath his gigantic body. What was the matter with her? She was not only acting like Niko Shiomi, but outdoing her. First the middle-aged counsellor and now this huge, dark-eyed youth. Must be his smile, which was warm and firm. Like a good shoulder massage.
But the smile was gone in a wink as Little Dom sat back, suddenly indignant. “They were talking about buying and selling drugs. Would you believe it? In my parents’ house. That’s when I told ’em to get lost, all of ’em, and they took off after that. With the tequila.”
JD was disappointed. Drugs and petty theft. She said, “Can you remember any of their conversation?”
“No, I can’t,” Dom said. “Except I’m pretty sure Kyler said something about ten thousand dollars. So this wasn’t nickel-and-dime dealing.”
“Did you hear them actually talking about drugs? Anything specific?”
“Nothing specific. I had enough on my mind, making sure everybody was having a good time and not messing up the place too much, eh? My mama, she’s fussy.”
JD sat for a minute mulling over his story. For all she had discovered, she hadn’t discovered what mattered. What she needed was someone who had been privy to this promising new lead — Tiago, Kyler, and the mystery couple out on the back deck talking about babies and big money.
“Oh, and Caroline Brownstein,” Little Dom said, and indicated a large planter at the bottom of the stairs. “She was puking into mama’s chives, so I had to help her out down there.”
“Sorry, what was that?” JD said.
* * *
Caroline Brownstein was a small, terse college student. She told JD she’d been trying not to hurl her last meal all over Little Dom’s backyard when she’d overheard a conversation between four people up on the covered deck at her back. She didn’t know them, and so she didn’t really pay them a whole lot of attention.
“All I know is those two Brits wanted to buy something,” she said. “And the big ugly dude with the buzz cut …”
JD nodded. That would be Hartshorne, no doubt.
“… said he could get one for them for ten thousand dollars, and they were like, okay, and the skinny little dude …”
Tiago Garland.
“… was like, sure sure, and I don’t know much after that. Oh, they said they’d need a passport, too, and the big dude said that would be an extra five. I kind of thought they were joking, but …” She paused as she seemed to hear her own words, and looked at JD with horror. “Oh wow. Don’t tell me …”
“Don’t tell you what, Caroline?”
“They were wheeling and dealing that kidnapped baby? Is that what this is all about?”
“No, that’s not what this is all about,” JD said. “There are a lot of holes in this case, and I’m just looking to fill ’em. That’s all.”
But of course it wasn’t all. She didn’t say so to Caroline, not wanting the news to go viral. With the girl’s input, though, it was fairly good tentative guesswork. The best they had so far.