Chapter 16

DAD MUST DECIDE the negatives of having me at the restaurant far outweigh the positives, because he doesn’t take me with him on Sunday. He also barely speaks to me, and I’m happy to return the favor. When I wake up Monday morning, on the kitchen table is my phone and a note.

Went to Verde. Will be back by 2 PM. Come home immediately after school.

Even in writing he’s trying to use as few words as possible. Not a great sign. And neither is the Post-it on my phone that says, “Tracking stays on.”

I can’t find Lily anywhere at lunch, so I ditch my food and duck behind the portables to call her.

“You aren’t at school,” I say when she picks up.

“I decided seeing a body was deserving of a sick day.”

Fair. “Did you get to look into them more? O’Hara? And the police chief?”

“I—” There’s dead air on the line for a second. “I’m not sure if we should.”

“Should what?”

“Keep going with this.”

She can’t be serious. Just when it’s getting real, just when we’ve proven she was right all along about the crime wave—no one’s ever been murdered over a clerical error—now she wants to pull back?

“You want to stop? We can’t stop.”

“Friday really freaked me out, you know?”

“Yeah, Lily, I totally get it, but—”

“We saw a dead person. And I know it was just a horrible accident, and you were really the one who saw the body, not me, but we’re going into these situations we aren’t prepared for at all—”

We can’t leave it like this. She wasn’t the one who had to sit through the police chief recounting her biggest fuckup in excruciating detail. He’s told that story before, I can tell, and I can’t let his new punch line be Friday night and my dad dragging me out of the station. Again.

The next time he tells that story, there’s going to be a different ending.

“So maybe it’s for the best,” Lily says. “That we take a break.”

“But it wasn’t an accident,” I blurt out before she can completely talk herself out of this.

There’s a rustling sound, like she’s suddenly sitting up straight. “What are you talking about?”

“It wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t a coincidence we found that body. We just didn’t stumble on a tragedy—I mean, it’s tragic, someone’s dead, but—whoever O’Hara was supposed to meet did that.”

For a few seconds, it’s so quiet I wonder if the call dropped. Then Lily stammers out: “Are—are you saying somebody killed him?”

“Not somebody,” I say. “Whoever wrote the note.”

“Oh my God.” She breathes out, deep. “Oh my—”

“There’s more. Whoever that guy was, the guy we found, who died—he mattered.”

“Jesus, of course he mattered!”

“No, I mean, the police knew him. Or . . . knew of him.” I give her a rundown of the conversation between the two cops. “What do you think an OC task force is?”

“Orange County?” she suggests. “Maybe the dead guy was from there.”

“That’s a far drive.”

“Then I don’t know.”

“His last name is—was—something ending in -son. Like Vinson, or Venison, or something.”

“Venison is deer meat.”

“I said, ‘or something!’” I wait a beat. “Can you look into that, too? Who he might be?”

Lily sighs into the phone. “Gideon . . .”

“We can’t stop now. The cops don’t even think it was a murder.”

And that’s when I realize—as much as I want the chief and everyone else to see they’re wrong about me and always have been, there’s another part to this, a way more important part that isn’t about me at all.

“A man died,” I say, “and he’s not going to get justice. Unless . . .”

“Unless we, two teenagers, try to solve it?”

I take a beat. “When you put it like that, it does sound like a pretty bad idea.”

“Absolutely terrible,” she agrees.

“You’re going to do it, though, right?”

“I’ll . . .” She sighs. “Do some research.”

That’s not a yes. But it’s not a no. So I’ll take it.

The next time I hear from Lily, it’s sixth period, I’m sitting through a lecture on exponents, and she’s lucky I’m awake enough to feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. Rushing to put it on silent before my teacher hears, I hold my phone under my desk to see what she’s sent me.

First is a text.

Is this him?

Second is a picture.

And there, staring back at me, is a dead man. The dead man, or what he looked like in life, anyway. Broad shoulders and slicked-back hair, the same diamond stud in his left ear, and—

The watch.

On his wrist, facing the camera. Clearly showing it off. Clearly proud of it. The watch I knew was missing from the body. I knew it.

I text Lily back as discreetly as I can.

yeah that’s definitely him

who is he?

Her next message is two links. The first sends me to a funeral home website. There’s the same picture of the dead man at the top of the screen. And below it, an obit.

MARCO L. VINCE

Marco L. Vince, beloved son and brother, passed away unexpectedly . . .

It’s short, only a few sentences, and I’m too excited that I was right about the watch to do anything more than skim it.

Valued member of Vince Enterprises LTD. Survived by his sisters, Jasmine and Alexis; his mother, Roberta; and his father, Paul. Visitation at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church.

I was right about the watch, but I completely misheard those two desk cops at the police station. They didn’t say Vinson or Venison. They said he was Vince’s son.

I stop reading there and text Lily again:

It’s his dad, they were talking about his dad, he must be the one who matters

Did you even LOOK at the second link?

I tap the next link, and this one sends me to a newspaper article with the headline “Local Mogul’s Son Found Dead in Apparent Overdose.”

The article’s way too long to read, though, so I text Lily again.

Im in math rn, summarize

Please

Paul Vince is a businessman

Well

“Businessman”

?

In theory he runs a chain of discount furniture stores

In reality, they’re a front for money laundering and a lot of weird shady stuff

He’s been written up and investigated in SD a bunch, and even been arrested a couple times, but nobody’s really been able to pin anything on him.

Nothing that sticks

And he’s been moving his territory into San Miguel

One of his stores just opened, not far from the brewery

Money laundering, shady business stuff—the cops didn’t mean Orange County when they talked about the OC task force. They meant organized crime.

Any connection to the bar?

Can’t find one

Class drags on, but if I wasn’t paying attention before, now it’s like I’m not even on the same planet. My mind is in overdrive, piecing together the new facts.

Here’s what I know:

The dead man has a name.

He’s the son of a shady businessman, if not one himself. And that means he’s the son of somebody with enemies, if he doesn’t have any of his own.

No one thinks his death was a murder—not the cops, not the media, not even his family.

But no, I realize. I don’t know that last part. I’m only assuming it. Just because the cops told a reporter it was a drug-related accident, just because that reporter wrote the story that way, and just because Marco’s own obit reads like he went peacefully in his sleep . . . that doesn’t mean no one thinks it was murder.

It just means someone needs it to seem that way.

Two class periods later, school is over, but I’m still wrapped up in how Marco L. Vince ended up dead on the floor of Triggerfish Brewery—and why. So wrapped up, in fact, that when I walk out of my classroom and down the hall, looking for a good place to call Lily, I don’t notice Tess until I nearly collide head-on with her.

“Hey,” she says. Then frowns. “Where are you going?”

“Um—”

“Herald office is that way, dude.” She points over my shoulder.

Shit. Right. Not only do I have to quit the paper, I have to quit at the start of a Late Night week. Everyone’s going to love that. Especially Tess.

“I was looking for Lily,” I lie.

“Oh, she called out sick.” She grabs my arm, lightly, and turns me around. “Glad I could save you the trouble.”

We’re the first ones in the office, and Tess immediately goes to turn on her favorite computer. Knowing I’ll never get a smaller audience than this, I take a deep breath and prepare to quit one of the only things I’ve ever liked.

“Tess—”

She turns around. “Yeah?”

“I can’t do the paper anymore.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry—”

“Look, I know copy editor isn’t the best job in the world,” she says, abandoning the computer and walking back over to me. “But please don’t bail.”

“I’m not bailing—”

“Well, good. We’d miss you too much.”

I have to quit. I’m supposed to be telling her I’m quitting. But now that all seems secondary.

“Would you?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“No, I mean . . .” I hesitate. “Would you?”

Then she hesitates. Because I think she knows what I’m asking. “Yeah,” she says softly. “I would.”

“Oh,” I say, and my voice is just as soft. “Okay.”

“Is that really enough to make you stay?” She takes a step closer to me. “That . . . I want you to?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation.

I’ve never seen Tess flustered. But the way she sucks her breath in here and can’t seem to figure out what to do with her hands, I think she might be.

“Well—I mean . . .” She settles for folding her arms and smiling. “Great. If it means you’ll stay.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to stay. I’m not allowed to.”

She wrinkles her nose. “What do you mean?”

“So. In a series of events that weren’t my fault at all—”

“Oh, God. What did you do?”

“Nothing! It was just a wrong-place, very wrong-time kind of thing, and my dad completely overreacted and now I’m not allowed to be anywhere out of his line of vision.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Then she asks: “Do you really want to stay? Or do you just not want to hurt my feelings by quitting?”

“No,” I promise her, “I do want to be here, for every Late Night, every dinner. I want to be here for—”

If this were a movie, the last word would be: you. But this is real life, and I am a coward.

“I want to be here for everything,” I finish. And it takes saying it out loud to realize—it’s true.

I want to be here because Tess is here, but I want to be here because I’m here, too.

That doesn’t make any sense. Or maybe it does.

When I’m here, I’m not going through the motions of a school day. I’m not biding my time, counting down the minutes and hours until I get to be somewhere different. I’m not a shadow in the corner, watching everybody else pass me by.

When I’m here, in this room, I feel like I’m here.

“It’s my dad who has the problem,” I say, “and I’ve tried to explain to him I can’t leave, it’s not fair, but he’s being so unreasonable—”

“Call him.”

I take a step back. “What?”

“If you call, will he pick up?” she asks. I nod. “Then call him.”

“And what am I supposed to say?”

“Tell him . . .” She pauses. “Tell him Ms. Flueger wants to talk to him.”

I look around. “She’s not here yet.”

“He doesn’t know that.” Tess smiles. “Call him.”

I try the home phone first, since he’s probably still there. He picks up on the second ring. I expect him to start interrogating me about why I haven’t started walking home yet, but he doesn’t.

“Do you need me to pick you up?”

“No.” Then I hesitate. Out of the corner of my eye, Tess gives me a thumbs-up. “Um—Ms. Flueger wants to talk to you.”

“Who?”

“The staff adviser. For the paper.” I look at Tess again. She makes a “keep going” gesture. “You know, that thing you told me I had to quit. . . .”

He sighs. “Right, yeah. Put her on.”

When I hand Tess the phone, she draws her back up totally straight, flips her hair over her shoulder in a very un-Tess-like way, and drops into a voice that’s slow and smooth and disconcertingly adult.

“Hi,” she says, drawing out the word. “Is this Gideon’s dad?”

Dad must confirm he is—it’s a relief to know he hasn’t disowned me yet—because she keeps going. “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. Green. First, I’ve got to tell you what a wonderful job you’ve done with Gideon. He is just the sweetest kid.”

Stop, I mouth at her. She winks.

“No, not any trouble at all,” she says after a pause. “Honestly, he’s been a great addition to the newspaper, and we would be so sad to see him go. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to change your mind.”

Tess pauses for a moment while Dad talks. “Yes, he did mention something about—” She stops again, much longer this time. Then her eyebrows shoot up, and she turns to look at me. “The police? Really.”

I bury my face in my hands.

“Well, I completely understand why you’d be concerned.” She waits a beat. “No, of course. But this is a perfectly safe place for him to be. I’m always here supervising.”

I guess that’s not technically a lie.

“And you know, a lot of parents like their kids on the paper because of college apps, and yes, it’s wonderful for their résumés, but . . .” Tess lowers her head a little. And her voice a little, too. “I think it’s more important than that. For your son.”

My breath catches, then. Because when she says that, it isn’t in her Ms. Flueger voice. It’s in her own.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like maybe Gideon spent a lot of time alone before. In his own head. Feeling like he didn’t really have a place, maybe. Somewhere he belonged.” And she fixes her eyes on mine. Because when she asks that, she’s not asking Dad. She’s asking me.

I nod, slowly. Tess smiles, sadly.

“Everyone on the paper is very close,” Tess says, back to Dad. “It’s . . . a family. In a way. And I think it’s been good for Gideon to be a part of it. I think he would lose something if he had to leave.”

What is it about hearing someone say what you’ve already thought that makes it real? Is it that I didn’t have the words, so I’m grateful she found them for me? I think it’s more. Tess knows how I feel, even though I’ve never told her. She didn’t guess. She’s not a psychic. She didn’t decode it. She’s not a detective.

She just knew. Because she recognized it. She knew, because she’d felt it, too.

“I promise you, if he’s here, he’s safe, and”—she smirks at me, barely able to contain her laughter—“definitely not in a holding cell.”

I am never going to live this down.

“Yes,” she says in response to something Dad asked. “I won’t let him out of my sight.”

Tess hands me back the phone, then retreats to a far table to pretend like she’s not listening.

“She seems nice,” Dad says to me.

“Yeah, she is.”

“And she really seems to like you.”

My face goes hot, and I turn away so Tess can’t see it. “I guess so.”

He’s quiet for a moment, like he doesn’t know where to go from here. “Gideon, about Saturday.”

God, are we really going to rehash this? Wasn’t it enough for him to yell at me in front of his entire staff? But then he takes a breath and says: “I’m sorry.”

And then I have to sit down.

“Um—” I manage to get out, but nothing else before he jumps in again.

“I was angry, and frustrated, and especially after the night before, it was the last straw—” He pauses. “But I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. Especially in front of everyone.”

As a rule, my dad does not apologize. I never thought that was some huge flaw—noir detectives don’t apologize much either, and they do way worse things than Dad ever has. But it made me feel like I couldn’t apologize either, or he’d win. But maybe it isn’t a competition. Or shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s a give-and-take. Or should be.

“I’m sorry I was a terrible waiter,” I say.

“I don’t think it’s your calling.” He pauses. “Is this?”

“Is what?”

“Your teacher seemed to think I’d be doing you a real disservice, making you quit. That this was good for you. Important for you.”

“Yeah, she’s right,” I say, glancing over at Tess. She lifts her eyes up to meet mine. Smiles. “She’s pretty much right about everything, so . . .”

Tess mouths the word Aw and makes a heart shape with her hands. Which makes my heart jump. And my throat close up.

“Okay,” Dad says, snapping me out of it.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” But he sighs the word, like he’s still not sure. “Look. Here’s the deal I’m going to make you. Keep your phone with you and the tracking activated. When I check, I want to see your location either on school grounds or at home. You do that, and we’re good. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“If not, you’re going to be back at Verde rolling silverware until your fingers fall off.”

It’s always nice to be able to roll my eyes when he can’t see. “Okay.”

“I’ll see you later. Have a good time.”

I hang up and stick my phone back in my pocket. Tess looks so pleased with herself that if I didn’t want to kiss her for talking Dad into this—actually if I didn’t want to kiss her in general—it might be annoying.

“Sounds like it worked,” she says.

“Tess,” I tell her, “you’re the greatest person I’ve ever met.”

It’s the truth, but I don’t think she knows. Because she only laughs. “You need to get out more.”

She says that, but I bet she’s never been kicked out of a dive bar. Or broken into a construction site. Or sat in the back of a cop car.

“I’ve been trying,” I say.

She tilts her head. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes. You can even ask me another one.”

That makes her laugh again. “Where’s your favorite place in the world?”

Not Doc Holliday’s or Triggerfish and definitely not the San Miguel police station.

“My bedroom.”

Tess makes a face. “God, is it really?”

I almost say yes. Because it’s been true for so long. But instead I say: “No. Not really.”

She shrugs, like, Then, where? It takes me a minute to realize the answer because it’s so far from what’s been true for so long. I always thought of true things as unchangeable. If the answer changed, it was because you hadn’t figured it out before, but the right answer had always been right. You just hadn’t known it.

But now, I think . . . it’s more complicated than that.

“Here,” I tell her. Simply. Truthfully. “This is my favorite place.”

Her expression shifts. Is it pitying? Or just softer? I can’t tell.

I sit down on the table next to her. Not too close. But not so far. “Where’s your favorite place in the world?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “Pacific Beach.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “I’ve driven by. It looks nice.”

Tess’s mouth drops. “You’ve never been?”

“My dad’s not really a beach person and then I wasn’t either, so—”

“Let’s go,” she says in a rush of pure excitement that makes me think of a little kid at the Disneyland gates. “You have to go.”

“Right now?”

“No, not right now, on a weekend. But you should see it, we should go.”

We?

“You and me, you mean?” I say. “Together?”

“Only if you want to.”

“I do.”

“Okay, then,” she says. “I can’t this weekend, but maybe the next Saturday?”

“Cool,” I say. “It’s a da—” But then I stop. Because the word I was about to say was “date.” And I don’t know if it’s a date. I also don’t know what to do with my hands, and I don’t know why they feel so sweaty.

She looks confused. “It’s a . . . day?”

I double down. “Yes.” And when she still looks confused, I double down harder. “Like, an event. A thing. It’ll be a . . . day.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Only if you want it to be,” I add quickly. Then just as quickly realize that made no sense.

She lifts an eyebrow. “I do want it to be a day, yes.”

I try to swallow, but my mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton balls, so instead I cough out the word: “Cool.”

“Mostly because the beach is closed at night.”

“Right.”

“But first . . . you have to tell me something.”

My heart is pounding. My stomach is churning. It would probably be bad for the future of this not-date if I threw up all over the table.

“Yeah,” I say. “Anything.”

Tess leans back on her hands and smiles. “How’d you end up in that police station, Gideon Green?”