“Sure.”

He cleared his throat and tried to imitate Joe Mantell. “‘Forget it, Jake. It’s Greenwich.’ Don’t get me wrong. He’s only been arrested for petty crap. He broke into the high school a few times, drives too fast, vandalism, deals a little pot, you get the drift. And to be fair, none of this happened before his old man died. We all knew and liked the father, and the mother, well, Dana Phelps is good people. Salt of the earth. Will do anything for you. But the kid . . . I don’t know. There’s always been something off about him.”

“Off how?”

“No big deal, really. I got a son Brandon’s age. Brandon didn’t fit in, but this isn’t an easy town.”

“But he came to you a few days ago. He told you he was worried about his mother.”

“Yep.” There was a paper clip on his desk. Schwartz picked it up and started bending it back and forth. “But he also lied to us.”

“How?”

“What did he tell you about his mother’s supposed disappearance?”

“He said she met a guy online, that she went away with him, that she always contacted him but hadn’t.”

“Yeah, he told us that too,” Schwartz said. “But that’s not the truth.” He dropped the paper clip and opened his desk drawer. He took out some kind of protein bar. “Want one? I got plenty.”

“No, thanks. So what is the truth?”

He started rifling through a stack of papers. “I put it here because I knew you were . . . wait, here it is. Brandon’s cell phone records.” He handed her the sheets. “See the yellow?”

She saw two texts highlighted in yellow. They’d both came from the same phone number.

“Brandon received two texts from his mother. One came two nights ago, the other early yesterday morning.”

“This is his mother’s cell phone?”

“Yep.”

Kat could feel her face started to redden. “Do you know what they say?”

“When he was here last, I only had a record of the first one. I confronted him about it, so he showed it to me. It said something like ‘Arrived, having a great time, miss you.’ Something like that.”

Kat kept her eyes on the sheet of paper. “How did he explain it?”

“He said his mother hadn’t sent it. But it’s her number. You can see it right there, plain as day.”

“Did you call the mom’s number?”

“We did. No answer.”

“Do you find that suspicious?”

“No. To put it crudely, we figure she’s on some island, maybe getting laid for the first time in three years. Why, you don’t agree?”

“No,” she said. “I do. I was just playing devil’s advocate.”

“Of course, that isn’t the only explanation.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Schwartz said with a shrug, “Dana Phelps could very well be missing.”

Kat waited for him to say more. Schwartz waited longer. Finally, Kat asked, “Did Brandon tell you about the ATM charge?”

“Interestingly enough, no.”

“He may not have known about it when he saw you.”

“That’s one theory.”

“You have another?”

“I do. Or let’s say, I did. See, that’s the main reason I wanted you to take the ride up here.”

“Oh?”

“Put yourself in my shoes. A troubled teenager comes to me. He claims his mother is missing. From the texts, we know his story is a lie. We find out some money was taken out of an ATM. So if there was foul play, who would be your number one suspect?”

She nodded. “The troubled teenager.”

“Bingo.”

Kat had thought of that in passing but hadn’t really gone there. Of course, she hadn’t known about the kid’s past—then again, Joe Schwartz didn’t know that Brandon had broken into YouAreJust MyType or her own connection to the case. On the other hand, Brandon had lied to her about the texts. She knew that now. So what exactly was he up to?

Kat said, “You thought that maybe Brandon harmed his own mother?”

“I wasn’t ready to go that far. But I didn’t think that she had vanished, either. So I took the precaution of taking one extra step.”

“What was that?”

“I asked for the ATM surveillance video. I thought maybe you’d want to see it too.” He flipped the computer monitor around on his desk so she could see the screen. Schwartz hit a few keys. The monitor came to life. The video was a split screen, two camera angles. That was the latest technology. Too many people knew about the camera on the front of the machine and would cover it with their hand. So the picture on the left was exactly that—one of those fish-eye views of an ATM machine. The second shot, the one on the right of the screen, had been shot from above, like you see in every convenience store heist. Kat understood that installing a camera near the ceiling was easier, but it was almost always useless. Criminals wore baseball caps or kept their chins tucked. Shoot from below, not above.

The videos were in color, not black and white. That was getting more and more common. Schwartz took hold of his mouse. “Ready?”

She nodded. He clicked the PLAY button.

For a few seconds, there was nothing. Then a woman came into view. There was no doubt about it. It was Dana Phelps.

“She look in much distress to you?”

Kat shook her head. Even on the surveillance camera, Dana looked rather beautiful. More than that, she looked ready to go on a vacation with a new lover. Kat couldn’t help feel a pang of something akin to envy. Dana’s hair looked as though it had just been professionally done. Her nails—Kat could see them up close when they were tapping the keys—were freshly manicured. Her outfit too looked ideal for a romantic trip to the Caribbean:

A bright yellow sundress.

Chapter 16

Aqua was pacing in front of Kat’s apartment.

His pace was done in tight two-steps-spin-180 two-steps-spin-180 formation. Kat stopped on the corner and watched for a moment. Something was clutched in his hand. Aqua kept looking at it—was it a sheet of paper? He kept talking to it—no, Kat thought, more like arguing or even pleading with it.

People gave Aqua wide berth, but this was New York. Nobody overreacted. Kat started toward him. Aqua hadn’t been to her apartment for more than a decade, so why now? When she was about ten feet away from him, she could see what was on the sheet of paper he had bunched up in his right hand.

It was the picture of Jeff she had given to him over two weeks ago.

“Aqua?”

He stopped mid-stride and spun toward her. His eyes were wide and just past the northern border of sanity. She had seen him talk to himself before, had witnessed a few of his paces and tantrums, but she had never seen him look so . . . was it agitated? No. It seemed more than that. It seemed pained.

“Why?” Aqua cried, holding up Jeff’s picture.

“Why what, Aqua?”

“I loved him,” he said, his voice a wounded wail. “You loved him.”

“I know we did.”

“Why?”

He started sobbing. Pedestrians now gave him wider berth. Kat moved closer. She opened her arms and Aqua fell right in, putting his head against her shoulder and continuing to cry.

“It’s okay,” she said softly.

Aqua kept at it, his body racked by each new sob. She shouldn’t have shown him the photograph. He was beyond fragile. He needed routine. He needed sameness, and here she had gone and given him a picture of someone he cared deeply about and never saw anymore.

Wait. How did she know Aqua never saw Jeff anymore?

Eighteen years ago, Jeff had broken up with her. That didn’t mean he had given up all his friends and connections, did it? He and Aqua could still be in touch, still doing what friends do, hang out, grab a beer, watch a game. Except, of course, it wasn’t as though Aqua had a computer or a phone or even an address.

But could they still be in touch?

It seemed doubtful. Kat let him have his cry, there on the street. He pulled himself together, but it took some time. She patted his back and cooed soothing words. She had done this for Aqua before, especially after Jeff left, but it had been a long, long time. In those days, she had both taken pity on him and been angered by his reaction. Jeff had dumped her, not him. Shouldn’t Aqua be the one comforting her?