Ashwin Dhillon was busy being screamed at when we found him at the returns counter of a clothing outlet in the Guildford Mall. He was the assistant manager, a dapper young man in a brocaded vest, silk shirt, and heavy gold watch. The customer waved an opened package of underwear in his face.
Once he was free, we approached him and asked if we could talk about Tabitha.
“My break’s at two,” Dhillon said. “How ’bout I meet you at the food court?”
Kay and I found a four-seat table between a Manchu Wok and a New York Fries. She read over her notes while I studied the passing crowd. Seniors, teens, workers on their break. All food courts are lonely places, even—especially—when they’re busy. Life’s lowered expectations brought you here. The underlying subtext to all such places is, Let’s get this over with.
At ten past two Dhillon walked over to our table, asked us to wait while he ordered a mango Julius. He returned with his drink and sat down.
“I really hope Tab’s all right,” he said, punching his straw through its paper wrapper. “I feel bad for getting her involved with this, because you could totally tell she didn’t want to be. She was asked to take over events, she never ran for it.”
“We were told you had something to do with Tabitha getting picked,” Kay said. “Why her?”
“We suffered through high school together. We weren’t friends, but when we both ended up at Spew—that’s what we called Surrey Polytech—we got closer. Started carpooling.” His brow fell and he smiled thinly. “You talked to Indy and Sonny, right? They prob’ly told you we hooked up.”
Kay said, “That’s your business. We just want to find Tabitha.”
“We were together for a little while, but that’s not why I asked Indy to bring her in. She was an econ student, and I thought—” He shrugged.
“Thought what?” Kay asked.
“She could help right the course,” I said.
Dhillon nodded. “Indy knows business but he only really cares about himself. Sonny’s a nice guy, but he had no business being treasurer. It was a mess.”
“Did she try to change that?” Kay asked. “Clean things up?”
“Tab took care of events just fine, but events were never the problem. The problem was, Indy set a bad example.”
He removed the lid of his drink and stirred it with his straw. Behind him, four construction workers jockeyed for table space with their trays.
“Indy should’ve never handed out company phones,” Dhillon said. “That gave everyone an excuse. Every time he tried to get hold of things, people’d just point to his own crazy-high phone bill. ‘Well, you can run up that much, why can’t I?’ And when people found out about the loans, and the money he was making—”
Again he didn’t finish his thought. He stared at his drink and the hands clutching it, his gold watch and gold ring.
“I’m not saying I was any better,” he said. “I know I’m the kind of person who fits in with whatever is around. Put me in with good people and I’ll be good—and the opposite. I thought Tab as an econ student would be responsible, and she’d help keep us on track. But she was so quiet, just did her job and left. Like she didn’t want to associate with us.”
“Who ended it between you?” Kay asked.
“I did.”
“But you stayed friends.”
“Friendly, yeah.”
“Were you disappointed she didn’t speak up about the scandal?”
“At first. Now I see how it must’ve been for her. Maybe she thought there was nothing she could do. And maybe there wasn’t—I mean, we’d messed things up pretty good by the time she got there.” Dhillon placed his empty cup on an adjacent table. “But now I’m trying to take responsibility,” he said.
“Did Tabitha have other friends at the college?”
“She didn’t socialize with a lot of other students,” Dhillon said. “She liked to follow her teachers around—I think she thought that made her more mature. She liked Dana Essex, the English teacher, and she spent a lot of time with her poli-sci prof, Paul something. Italian or European-sounding last name, I forget.”
“Mastellotto,” Kay said, shooting me a sideways grin to show she’d done her homework.
“Right,” Dhillon said. “You should talk to them.”
I held up my cell phone and showed him the torn photo of Tabitha and her friends. “Recognize them?” I asked.
“Harv and Gurv,” he said, grinning. “High school friends of ours. Damn, that was a while ago.”
“Was she close with these two?”
“Not really, no. Back then she mostly hung out with—” The nostalgic grin faded.
I tapped the corner of the photo, the T-shirt and arm. “Any idea who got cut out?”
Dhillon studied it. Something clicked into place for him.
“I should get going,” he said.
“Who’s the T-shirt belong to?”
Instead of answering, Dhillon turned in his seat to inspect the people surrounding us. Not spying any obvious threats, he slumped in his chair, elbows sliding forward across the table.
I asked him again who it was.
“One of the Hayes brothers.” Dhillon said the name warily. “Guess it’d be Cody, he was a couple years ahead of us.”
Dhillon looked like he wanted to walk away from the table. He sighed. “I’m only telling you to help Tab,” he told us, and himself.
“Of course,” Kay said. “Goes no further than this table.”
“You read about the murders in the tower last year?”
I nodded, suddenly appreciating his fear.
For Kay’s benefit, Dhillon said, “One of the new high-rises near Surrey Center. Four guys our age, low-level dealers, were all found shot to death in their apartment, along with their neighbor from across the hall.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kay said. She crossed herself on reflex.
“You have to understand,” Dhillon said. “In school we knew Cody as just another kid. We’d see his brother around town, Dalton, driving his Porsche. We didn’t put it together till later, they were League of Nations.”
“Meaning they dealt for them?” I asked.
“I mean they are the League,” Dhillon said. “Dalton Hayes is the guy that started it, him and his friends. Cody’s right up there, too. That kid was always big, he was top weightlifter at the school, but afterward he got scary-big. ’Roid monkey, y’know? They call him Baby Godzilla now.”
“And they knew the people in the tower?” Kay asked.
Dhillon shook his head. “Rivals. Rumor is, Dalton’s the one that did it.”
“And his brother knows Tabitha,” I said.
“Not sure how close they were, but yeah, they knew each other. We were all neighbors.”
Dhillon looked relieved when I put the photo away. “Do you think they did something to her?” Along with fear, I heard genuine concern in his voice.
“Wouldn’t put it past them,” I said. “Would you?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past the Hayes brothers. Cody especially. That kid’s capable of anything.”