Mojo (12 page)

“You know what?” I said. “I’ll bet she’s not sure you’re gay, so she didn’t want to ask you out on an actual date. If I’m there, she can get to know you better without things getting weird, you know? It’s the old ‘Let’s be friends so we can segue into a relationship’ strategy.”

“You really think so?”

“I’d say there’s about a seventy-five percent possibility.”

“So you’ll come?”

“If you think I ought to.”

“Yeah, I think you ought to.”

“Okay. On one condition—we convince Trix to go to FOKC headquarters with us.”

Audrey mulled on that for a moment. “That might work,” she said finally. “That just might work.”

I hoped it would work too, but I also couldn’t help wondering if maybe Trix had some sinister ulterior motive for wanting to get together, a motive that had nothing to do with liking either one of us.

On Friday afternoon, we met Trix in a coffee shop on her side of town, an upscale place with men and women in suits chatting or working on their laptops. As for Trix, she was wearing the exact same thing she wore the day we met her. Or the exact same look, I should say. She explained that she had a closet full of identical outfits. “When you find a look that’s you,” she said, “you might as well stick with it.”

The coffees all had weird names, but I figured anything with the word
mocha
in the title couldn’t be all bad, and it wasn’t. Finding a place to sit was not a problem—the place was loaded with comfy chairs and little sofas gathered around coffee tables. I headed to one of the chairs, catching Audrey’s eye and nodding toward the two-seater sofa so she’d have a chance to sit next to Trix. Unfortunately, another chair was left open and Trix sat there.

So far she seemed perfectly cool and all, but I had to consider the possibility that could just be an act to hide the fact she was the psychopath who killed her little friend in California. Maybe her dad even knew she was a psychopath and that’s why he moved her to Oklahoma City. And this may sound
paranoid, but sitting there, I even imagined a derringer tucked into her little black purse. Weirder things happen on
Andromeda Man
every week.

At first we traded some awkward small talk, but sooner or later the subject of Ashton Browning was bound to come up, and it did.

“So I guess you’re still working on your articles about Ashton,” Trix said after taking a sip of her cappuccino. “Word is you even showed up at one of those stupid Gangland parties.”

“You know about that place?” I said. “I thought it was supposed to be secret.”

“Everyone at Hollister knows about it,” she said. “It’s just that the people I hang with don’t really care about it.”

“We don’t care about it either,” Audrey said. “We just thought it’d be a good chance to get more of a feel for the crowd Ashton ran with. Or at least used to run with.”

“I hope you didn’t get the idea that just because I go to Hollister, I’m anything like Rowan Adams and Brett Seagreaves.”

“We never thought that,” Audrey assured her, although Trix didn’t seem like the kind of person who needed much reassuring.

“Brett was all right,” I said. “But Rowan’s definitely on my suspect list.”

Trix laughed. “Rowan? You know, as much as I’d like to see him get into trouble and bring his ego down in flames, I just don’t see him being involved with anything that would actually take real balls to pull off. No, my guess is that nobody at Hollister had anything to do with Ashton missing.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because probably some perv stalker grabbed her. Someone she never even knew.”

So I’m like, “Is that what you think really happened to your friend’s sister in California?”

But Audrey goes, “Dylan, don’t bring that up. She probably doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s all right,” Trix said. “Actually, Dylan’s right. I met that pool guy they arrested for it. I just couldn’t see him doing something like that. He was kind of dumb, but he was sweet. As far as I’m concerned, it was probably just some random guy. That’s the way the world is, you know? It doesn’t always make sense. It’s just a bunch of randomness whirling around.”

“Wow,” Audrey said. “That’s pretty deep.” She looked so love struck I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her. I’d been there before with Jennifer Roberts in ninth grade, to no avail.

“Well,” I said, “we’re not just looking at Hollister kids. We have some other leads too.” I went on to explain about Ashton’s charity work and how it took her to some pretty sleazalacious neighborhoods. “In fact, after coffee, we’re planning on heading to FOKC headquarters to see if we can find out exactly where Ashton used to deliver meals. You want to come with?”

Trix’s eyes brightened. “That sounds like an adventure,” she said. “And I love adventures.”

For the drive to FOKC headquarters, we took Trix’s sweet silver BMW. It wasn’t as luxurious as Nash’s Lexus, but it had its own kind of flair. I hated to be wishy-washy, but I had to seriously consider whether I was actually more of a BMW man after all. There was no doubt something like this would look tasty sitting in a parking spot in front of school next year. I wondered if they made them in red.

I rode in the backseat while Audrey sat up front with Trix. Mostly they chatted while I kept my mouth shut. They actually had quite a bit in common—musical artists, taste in fashion, books. Trix was even impressed that Audrey wanted to be a high-art-style photographer. She wished she could be an artist, but so far she hadn’t found something she was that good at. I was glad they were getting along. You never want to see your friends put their hearts out there just to get trampled on.

We finally found the building we were looking for a couple blocks west of the bus station and not too far from the homeless shelter. The BMW definitely stood out in the middle of these dilapidated surroundings. If Ashton had to deliver meals in a neighborhood even worse than this, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there.

Inside, the place wasn’t so bad. They’d fixed it up to look cheery and hopeful. Earlier in the week, I’d contacted FOKC and set up a time to come in and talk about delivering meals to the disadvantaged or whatever they go by these days. Nobody was there to greet us, though. I called out a hello, and shortly a woman in a pastel-blue pantsuit appeared from a hallway. At first she looked confused to see us, but when I explained about our appointment, her face burst into a sunny smile.

“You must have talked to Linda,” she said. “Come on back.”

We followed her to a small office where a little gray-haired lady sat behind a cluttered desk. The lady was talking on the phone and held up a finger, a signal for us to wait until she finished. When she hung up, the pantsuit lady explained who we were, and Linda smiled and asked us to sit down. There were only two chairs, so I stood while Audrey and Trix settled into their seats.

“I thought there were only going to be two of you,” Linda said. “But the more the merrier.” She tapped at her keyboard, bringing something up on the computer. “Let’s see—you were the ones interested in taking over Ashton’s route until she comes back.” She looked up at us. “And we all know she will be coming back, don’t we?”

“Definitely,” I said. “No doubt. But—”

“Okay, then, we’ll put you right to work.”

What I was getting ready to say, before she cut me off, was that I never mentioned anything about actually taking over Ashton’s route. I just wanted to talk about it. Maybe get a list of who she delivered to. But for a little five-foot-nothing lady with a slight hunchback, this Linda was a real go-getter. Never letting me get in a word, she popped up from her desk and led us to the back room where the meals were being prepared. Audrey
and Trix gave me looks like,
What’s going on?
But all I could do was shrug.

The back room was a regular meal factory—part kitchen and part assembly line. There were probably thirty people flocked around two long tables, putting sandwiches together and stuffing them into white foam containers. A lot of the volunteers looked to be retired, mostly old ladies, but there was also a sprinkling of old men, along with a few teenage girls. None of them looked like they came from the same kind of rich neighborhood that Ashton came from.

“We do three meals a week,” Linda said. “Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Hot meals are only on Wednesdays. Let’s find you a place at the table so that you can start putting your meals together. Then I’ll go over your route with you. Usually, we like to send teens out with an adult, but with a big boy like you, Dylan, I don’t think we need to worry. Do you know the city streets pretty well?”

“We’re experts,” Trix said. She looked as if she thought the whole thing was highly amusing.

The assignment was to slap turkey sandwiches together, plop down a dollop of potato salad, and finish off with a handful of chips and a pickle spear. I was wedged in next to one of the old men, who introduced himself as Bernie and showed me the routine. Compared to the old ladies, who were real masters, he was pretty slow. Obviously, this was more of a social thing for him. He made the typical old-guy comment about how I was lucky to be the escort of two lovely ladies and kept up a running conversation about where I went to school and where he went to school and how things had changed since his day. I liked him. I also figured he might be a good source of information.

When the chance finally opened up to throw in a question of my own, I asked if he knew Ashton, and his eyes lit up. When Ashton first started working for FOKC, she had been teamed up with him to make deliveries, and he got to know her pretty well. Then her brother got involved too, at least in the delivery part. He didn’t come in to help fix sandwiches because of some kind of school activity, but Ashton would go pick him up so she wouldn’t be on the route alone, which was an FOKC no-no.

“Ashton Browning,” Bernie concluded. “She’s a real corker.”

I didn’t know what a
corker
was, but it sounded positive.

“They have to find that girl.” A look of concern washed his smile away. “If they can find that Mormon girl in Utah, they can find Ashton.”

I knew about the Mormon girl from one of my true-crime shows. She was abducted by a nut who thought he was some kind of prophet. It was quite a while back. The nut brainwashed her with his crazy-prophet act, but she finally got away. Things hadn’t been good for her while he held her captive, but she seemed to deal with the whole thing in a heroic way. I admired her. Maybe she was a corker too.

I asked Bernie if he thought Ashton might’ve been kidnapped by some nut too, and he’s like, “No, no, I wouldn’t ever say that. But I just don’t see how that girl could have any enemies. I pray she just ran away for a little while and that she’ll come back as soon as she sees how much her parents really love her.”

“Really? She didn’t think her parents loved her?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Young people—they can get on the outs with their families every now and then. It’s normal. I tried to run away once, but I ended up down at the pool hall, playing
pool all day long. When I got over being mad, I went back home, ate green beans and meat loaf for dinner, just like nothing ever happened.”

“So, what was Ashton on the outs with her family about?”

Bernie picked up a slice of bread and scattered a healthy layer of turkey across it. “The usual thing, you know—didn’t think her parents understood her. She had a boyfriend they didn’t like. Or maybe they hadn’t met him, but she just knew they wouldn’t approve of him. Something like that.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Did this boyfriend happen to be named Rowan Adams?”

“She never did say. Why? You don’t think the boyfriend had something to do with her going missing, do you?”

“I don’t know.” I snapped the lid shut on another meal. “But anything’s possible.”

When we finished fixing the meals, it was time to load them up, which wasn’t that easy. They don’t really make BMWs like Trix’s with hauling stuff around in mind. We figured the trunk would be too hot, so I ended up having to share the backseat with a whole pile of meal boxes. Linda explained our route, along with a few rules such as how we should greet the people, what we should do if they weren’t home, and what topics of conversation to avoid. “Don’t mention the word
charity
,” she said. “Don’t comment on their homes, no matter how bad they might be, and always smile.” She supplied us with an example of the kind of smile she was talking about—cheery and wholesome. “We’re not just in the business of feeding people,” she added. “We’re also in the business of spreading good cheer.”

Ashton’s route ran through a mostly Hispanic area south of the river. It wasn’t really what I would call a
bad
neighborhood. Audrey and I had driven around there a couple of times before, checking out the cool flavor of the place—green buildings, orange buildings, lowriders, vendors pushing their tamale carts down the streets. It was a place where people sat on their front
porches by the dozen. They even cooked out in the front yards. None of that hiding behind a stockade fence with the grill so neighbors couldn’t horn in.

As we started handing out meals, though, it was strange—none of the folks on our route were actually Hispanic. Mostly they were ancient white people—old ladies or old men who lived alone. They’d probably bought their houses way before the Mexicans migrated in and just stayed, unlike the younger set. Maybe they liked their houses too much to move, or maybe they were too set in their ways for a change, or maybe they just weren’t bigots. Of course, I didn’t ask. Linda hadn’t told us not to, but I figured she would have if she’d thought of it.

Another question was,
Why didn’t any Hispanics want meals?
I thought it could be because they didn’t like turkey sandwiches, but Audrey suggested they might be too proud to accept charity.

“Or maybe they just don’t trust us,” Trix said.

And I’m like, “Why wouldn’t they trust us?”

“Because they might be here illegally,” she said. “And they don’t want us to turn them in.”

“I wouldn’t turn them in,” I said. “They never did anything to me.”