We stopped for breakfast burritos, which I am also something of an expert on, but I won’t go into that right now. With Audrey speeding pretty much the whole way, it still took us almost forty minutes to get to the nature park. We weren’t late, but a ton of cars were already parked in the lot and overflowing down the shoulders of the road.
We fell in with the rest of the crowd heading to the check-in area at the far end of the parking lot, but this redheaded girl stopped us. According to her, we wouldn’t be allowed to take our bags on the search. I had a backpack and Audrey had a big bag that also carried her camera.
I’m like, “But we have our snacks in here,” and the redhead goes, “Sorry, they said no bags. I guess they don’t want people smuggling anything in or out. Besides, they’re going to provide hamburgers for lunch.”
I’m like, “Hamburgers? Cool.” And that was it for the guilt over quitting my job. Hamburgers for lunch—that had to be some kind of sign that I was doing the right thing.
I ran the bags back to the car while Audrey stayed and chatted up the redhead. I was only gone for about two minutes, but they seemed like buddies already by the time I got back.
Turned out the girl’s name was Trix Westwood. Trix was short for Beatrix, she said, an explanation that she’d obviously tossed off so many times before it was practically part of her name by now. It wasn’t hard to see why Audrey was grinning at her. Trix had the artsy flair Audrey would be attracted to—her red hair wound into pigtails just like Audrey’s, blue lipstick, black top, short black skirt with black-and-white-striped tights underneath, and clunky black shoes—a cool look but not really great hiking attire. “Trix goes to Hollister,” Audrey informed me. Hollister is the rich-kid private school Ashton Browning also attended.
“Where do you guys go?” Trix asked.
I’m like, “How do you know we don’t go to Hollister too?”
“Oh, please,” she says. “You guys are much too cool to go to Hollister.”
She didn’t follow up on where we went to school, and I didn’t volunteer the information either. Not that I was ashamed of our high school, but it’s quite a few cuts below a place like Hollister.
“You don’t like Hollister much?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding?” Which obviously meant that she didn’t. “So, you guys just decided out of the goodness of your hearts to help find Ashton Browning?” she asked.
“That and we’re doing a story for our school paper,” I told her.
“I’m the photographer,” Audrey said. “Guess since I had to put my bag back in the car, I’ll have to use my phone.”
Trix goes, “A story for the paper, huh? That’s cool. Stick with me. I’ve done this before.”
I’m like, “Really? You’ve gone on a missing-girl search before?”
She nodded. “Yeah. When I lived in California. A missing twelve-year-old. It didn’t turn out well.”
That seemed like an odd coincidence, that Trix would be around when two different girls in two different states went missing. I glanced at Audrey to see if she might be thinking what I was, but no—she just grinned at Trix, obviously with other things on her mind.
At the check-in area, we signed our names and gave our phone numbers and addresses, both real-world and virtual. A huge cop asked us a few questions, which needless to say jangled my nerves a bit. What if he looked me up on the computer and found out a couple of his cop brethren once suspected me in the death of Hector Maldonado? Maybe he’d think I was somehow involved with the disappearance of Ashton Browning too.
I didn’t like the looks of him, and he didn’t like the looks of me either. He stared at my hat like it was a suspect all by itself. He didn’t arrest me or anything, though, and we squeezed through into the big blue-and-white tent where the cop in charge was about to give instructions for the search.
The place was nearly full—the local news was even there—so we had to stand in the back. The crowd wasn’t what I would call diverse. By far most people looked like rich kids or rich kids’ parents or maybe the rich kids’ parents’ employees. There was little doubt that, except for maybe the cameramen and some of the cops, Audrey and I were the only ones who came up from south of Tenth Street.
The cop in charge—Captain Lewis—looked pretty smooth with his starched white shirt, crisp gray suit, and high-dollar haircut. Everything about him said, Check out my authority—it’s awesome.
He explained how the police had already scoured the nature park with their dogs, but now they wanted to cover more ground in case they’d missed something. According to him, Ashton was last seen by another visitor to the area about four p.m. Wednesday as she put some of her things into the trunk of her car. She was wearing a blue running outfit with blue running shoes and probably a blue hair clip, one of her usual exercise getups. Her jewelry included a gold necklace and two gold rings. It was pretty clear to me that finding any of this stuff would mean that whatever happened to Ashton wasn’t going to be good.
Before explaining the search routine, Captain Lewis asked Ashton’s dad to say a few words, I guess to pump us up for our mission. Eliot Browning looked to be in his early fifties—a square cowboy-hero chin, the kind of complexion that looked like he probably paid someone else to take care of it for him, and salt-and-pepper hair that swooped back behind his ears, more like what you’d expect from a movie director than a banker. And, of course, he had the expensive, perfect-fit suit, and I’m sure a pair of thousand-dollar shoes, though I couldn’t see them from where I was. Talk about mojo—this guy was probably born with it.
He started in about how all of us had daughters or sons or brothers or sisters and asked us to imagine how we’d feel if one of them disappeared. In my opinion, this was a pretty good way of engaging the crowd, including those who’d be watching on TV. Me, I didn’t have any siblings, but Audrey had an older sister who’d moved away to college this year, and I missed her every once in a while.
Anyway, Mr. Browning went on to talk about how great Ashton was, how she excelled at tennis, won awards for her civic involvement, and how her smile could set a whole room aglow. You had to hand it to him—he was a good public speaker and never let his emotions get the better of him.
Toward the end, he waved for his wife and son to step forward. Julia Browning was probably about ten years younger than her husband. She was the kind of woman you would rate as attractive but you’d never call hot—too stiff and formal, kind of like she was trying to hold a fart in all the time. But there was a hollow look about her face, especially in her eyes, that let you know she wasn’t taking the disappearance as calmly as her husband.
The son they called Tres—pronounced “Trace”—but his real name was Eliot Browning III. He was my age, really pale and skinny, and had a bit of a turtle face. There wasn’t anything majestic about him. Sure, his forest-green shirt and dark brown trousers had the big-money sheen going, but if you put him in a hoodie and old jeans, he’d look more like a prime target for bullies in my high school cafeteria than a big-shot banker’s son.
He and his mom didn’t say anything. They were just there for emotional impact. Mr. Browning went on about how empty the house had been the last few days and how he wouldn’t rest until his daughter was back to fill it with her smiles and laughter. Then he pulled out the big guns.
“That is why,” he said, stepping back to loop his arms awkwardly around the shoulders of his wife on one side and son on the other, “the Browning family has decided to offer a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the safe return of Ashton.”
You better believe that sent a murmur through the crowd. Me, I was thinking about all the mojo a hundred thousand bucks could buy. Plus, the ’69 Mustang was back in the picture.
“So, please,” he added, “as you set off on this search today, keep Ashton in your hearts”—I wanted to add and wallets—“and don’t pass over any detail. You never know. It could be the key to finding my daughter.”
All in al
l, Mr. Browning was impressive, though that last part came off a little bit too much like a coach telling us to get out there and win the big game for the old alma mater. Still, I’d watched enough true-crime shows to know the cops usually assume parents or boyfriends are the most obvious suspects in cases like this. So you’d think that would’ve landed Mr. Browning right at the top of my list, except I also knew from watching all my fictional detective shows that the culprit is never the most obvious suspect. So that would rule him out. It was a real conundrum.
Then I had a stroke of brilliance—if the dad is the most obvious suspect and the real culprit is never supposed to be the most obvious suspect, then doesn’t that really make him the least obvious suspect? Therefore, if he’s the least obvious suspect, then he must be guilty.
Case solved. Now all I had to do was prove it. And hope that his wife would still make good on the hundred-thousand-dollar promise.
CHAPTER 9
Outside the tent, officers came around and assigned everybody to search different sectors of the nature park, so Audrey and I and Trix got lumped into the same group, along with two uniformed officers and about thirty other people, mostly teenagers. Unfortunately, we had to walk in a line through a hilly field way to the east of the prime location for clues—the woods where the hiking and jogging paths were.
“This is crap,” I said as we headed into the field. “How am I supposed to find any clues out here? I want to go where Ashton went, see what she saw, hear what she heard. I have to get into her mind.”
“Oh God,” Audrey said. “He’s kicking into TV-detective mode.”
So I’m like, “Well, it’s true—you have to know your victim first to figure anything out.” I turned to Trix. “You must’ve known Ashton pretty well, right? What kind of girl was she?”
Trix brushed a pigtail back over her shoulder. “I knew her, but I can’t say I knew her well. This is just my first year here. But I guess she seemed okay. Bad taste in music, but she was cooler than most of the androids at Hollister.”
“Androids?”
“Yeah, you know.” She made a stiff motion with her arms like a robot. “Like sixty percent of the student body has been programmed to act the same way—like they’re better than everyone else. I can’t believe how many people around here think everyone from California is some kind of freaky hippie driving around in an electric car and eating kelp or something. Like the world would be better off if the big earthquake hit California and it sank into the ocean.”
Actually, being from Oklahoma, that viewpoint didn’t sound so strange to me, but I’m just like, “Right. So what was different about Ashton?”
“I don’t know. At first she seemed like a lot of the other people around here who like to think they’re high society.” She put on a snooty voice for the high-society part. “But the thing is the real society types in New York or someplace like that might let them in the door, but they’d make fun of them after they left. It’s pathetic, really. But then this one time in class Ashton gave a speech about helping to feed the poor. That was different. She was definitely more likable than her little brother.”
“Tres? Isn’t that his name?”
“Yeah, Tres. You saw him up there with his dad and mom. He’s a little on the wimpy side. I think he was born prematurely or something and never quite got caught up.”
“So it’s not like she was the type people would hate and want to get out of the way?”
Trix laughed. “Hey, around here, people don’t necessarily have to hate you to want you out of the way.”
“Why’s that?”
“What I mean is they don’t have to hate you. You just have to be in their way.”
I’m like, Hmmm—interesting. Maybe Ashton’s dad’s not the only suspect around here. Maybe she just got in the way of the wrong person. But out loud, I go, “See, that’s why I don’t think we’re doing much good in this field. We’d be better off interviewing her friends. All we’ll find out here is anthills and rabbits.”
“I don’t know,” Trix said. “Think of it this way—the police and their dogs have probably already done a good job of combing the trails. We may be the first ones paying much attention to this area.”
That was a good point, a very good point, and it reminded me of how Trix had coincidentally been through this kind of thing before. “So,” I said, keeping my tone nonchalant like I was just asking about the weather, “that twelve-year-old girl in California, did you find anything when you went looking for her?”
“No, we came up empty,” she answered, totally unaware that I might have my suspicions about her too. “They found her body six months later in the desert about a hundred and twenty miles from where we searched.”
“I’m so sorry,” Audrey offered. “That’s terrible. Was it someone you knew?”
“A friend of mine’s little sister. They arrested the pool guy for it. He’s in prison now, but I never thought he did it.”
“Really?” I said. “Did they ever look at the parents?”
“How did you know?”
“He watches all the murder shows on TV,” Audrey said.
“Well,” Trix said, “her mom was a bitch. I wouldn’t have put it past her. But you know how it is when you’ve got money.”
Audrey’s like, “No, but I can imagine.”
“When you got the money, you got the mojo,” I said.
And Trix’s like, “The what?”
“The mojo.”
“Don’t get him started on that,” Audrey said.
After that, Audrey took over the conversation. It was kind of embarrassing. I’d never actually watched her try to flirt with a girl so obviously. Still, I kept my ears open. Sure, Trix seemed cool and everything, but I couldn’t rule her out as a suspect.
It turned out her dad was what she called a “corporate gunslinger,” which she explained was a high-powered lawyer who keeps one company from getting busted for screwing over another company. She didn’t sound like she admired him much. He’d moved her here from California after his wife—Trix’s mom—left them for, of all things, a Broadway choreographer. That was just the kind of exotic touch that was sure to intrigue Audrey even more. But I figured it could also be something that would trigger an already-troubled girl into acting out in some kind of bizarro way. You didn’t even have to be a Californian for that to happen.
Our group’s assignment was to trudge to the end of the field, then move over and trudge back, then do the same thing all over again until we’d covered the whole area. Since we had to stay in a single line, the pace was excruciatingly slow. Also, the yellow-brown grass was knee-high and getting higher as we went, so the chances of us finding any hot evidence seemed less and less likely. I occupied my mind by working on kidnapping theories. Obviously, the basic motive for kidnapping was collecting a ransom, but so far no ransom note had appeared. As far as I was concerned, that fact put a big bold check mark next to Mr. Browning’s name on the suspect list.
So, if it wasn’t ransom, what could it be? Maybe she hadn’t been kidnapped at all. Maybe she’d been murdered. I hated to be Mr. Negative, but I had to at least consider the possibility. A crazy sex-maniac serial killer could’ve been hiding behind a tree and when she jogged by—well, goodbye, Ashton. But I didn’t like that theory. A crazy sex-maniac serial killer would probably just leave her body out here. It’d be too much trouble to lug her all the way back to his creepy serial-killing van. Someone would’ve seen him. That brought me back to Mr. Browning again.
But if he killed his daughter, why would he come out here to do it? Then my mind started clicking—maybe he didn’t. Maybe he killed her somewhere else and just planted her car here. But no, that couldn’t be it. A witness saw her putting something in the trunk of her car in the parking lot. At least the witness saw someone. Maybe it wasn’t Ashton at all. Maybe Mr. Browning hired a look-alike to pretend to be Ashton.
That theory sounded pretty good. I’d seen something close to it on my favorite detec
tive show, Andromeda Man. In case you haven’t seen it, Andromeda Man is about a Minneapolis, Minnesota, homicide detective who is actually a space alien. He’s semi-telepathic. He couldn’t be all the way telepathic or he’d solve the cases too easily, but he can really read people. It’s pretty awesome.
Anyway, on one episode, this woman, who is like a local theater diva, gets murdered via a curling-iron attack backstage before the opening-night performance, and everyone thinks the understudy did it. Or the director. Or the leading man. Or the playwright. Everyone except Magnusson, who is actually the Andromeda Man. He has another suspect in mind. It’s weird because his cranky boss and his own partner, the super-hot Detective Carin Svendsen, keep arguing with him about it, even though he solves every case week after week. Turns out he’s right, of course. It was the diva’s own daughter who killed her. And here’s the thing—the daughter had disguised herself as her mother so people thought they saw the diva walking around backstage while she was actually already dead.
So, yes, I decided it was pretty likely that Mr. Browning paid someone to dress up as his daughter while he disposed of Ashton’s body, not backstage at a play or anything, but maybe in the basement of one of the properties his bank foreclosed on. I didn’t have any proof, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least run my theory by one of the cops in our search party. I didn’t get the chance, though.
I had just broken ranks and started to walk down the line to where the first cop was when I stepped on something in the deep grass. It made my ankle do that thing where it turns sideways real fast and hurts like you’ve just been shot by a crossbow. I’m like, “Arrrrgh!” and buckled to the ground. That’s when I found it. What I’d stepped on was a shoe. A blue running shoe.
CHAPTER 10
They never told us what to shout if we found a clue. Probably it should’ve been something official-sounding, but all I could get out was, “Holy crap, I found her shoe! I found her shoe!”
Immediately, the cops rushed over. I was holding the shoe up by the loose shoestring, and the first cop goes, “Weren’t you listening? You weren’t supposed to touch anything!”