Jex Malone (9 page)

Cissy's words are like a stun gun to my brain.

“What? They—as in my dad and Sandy—have known each other forever?” I ask, adding, “How exactly are you defining
forever
? In real time, how do you classify it?”

“Didn't you know this? It's no secret. They met years ago when Patty Matthews disappeared. Sandy was a student teacher at the high school at the time, and apparently she knew everything that was going on with Patty before she disappeared. I heard that she was the only one Patty ever confided in about all the awful things going on in her life,” Cissy states.

I must have had a weird look on my face, because at this point she's starting to look like she's let out some awful secret.

“Your dad didn't tell you any of this?” Cissy asks nervously. “I thought you'd know all this.”

I do the mental tally. Bad husband. Bad dad. Bad cop. Cheater?

“Jex, for what it's worth, they really didn't start dating until a few years ago. It's been a long time since Patty Matthews disappeared and I am sure it has nothing to do with the two of them getting together,” Cissy says, trying to ward off what clearly is my on-coming crying jag.

I grab the searing-hot Pop-Tart out of the toaster and plop it on the plate as I shake my slightly burned hand. I do this while turning my back to Cissy so she can't see that I'm trying hard not to cry.

“Patty Matthews? Did someone say Patty Matthews?” another voice shouts from the sliding glass door. “Who wants to find out what happened to Patty Matthews? I do!”

Nat is standing in the patio doorway with a huge smile on her face.

Nat sidesteps me and walks right into the house. What else should I expect? She doesn't say hello or even pat the dog. I haven't even had coffee yet (another perk of living with Dad) and Nat is bombarding my sleeping brain cells with nonstop chatter.

“There's something important you need to know and it's been bugging me since that whole Patty Matthews case came up yesterday,” she rambles, plopping in a chair at the kitchen table. “Oh, Pop-Tarts. Can I have one? Hi, Ciss. What are you doing here? Wait, tell me later. I have to talk to you, Jex. Right now.”

I might spontaneously combust.

Nat has obviously been up for productive hours.

“For the record, I didn't even live here yet when it happened. My mom and dad moved here a couple of months afterwards from Tampa, and I once overheard my mom say they got such a great deal on the house because this neighborhood would be forever linked to a girl disappearing and probably dying,” Nat informs me. “I was only three at the time, so I wasn't on the case. Yet.”

“Wow, Tampa,” I reply, sipping a giant cup of coffee that I have poured myself. Only half listening to her now, I reply, “Florida. Hot. Gators. Dangerous.”

“And also for the record, my parents never worried too much about our neighborhood's safety. My mom blamed the Matthews family for their daughter's disappearance and would say, ‘They probably had unsavory friends. You lie down with dogs, you get bit by fleas,'” Nat says.

That one gets my attention.

Even Nat has to drop her FBI act and laugh.

“My mother,” she sighs. “The canine-loving poet.”

For the first time all morning, the three of us burst into laughter, and for some reason it's so ridiculous and funny and scary to talk about all this that I laugh so hard that tears form. Like a blur, I see Cissy race off to the bathroom.

Cissy is in there forever, which gives Nat time to explain “the case” to me in detail.

“Let's just put it this way: Patty's choice of boyfriend probably was the last bad choice she made—at least, that's what I think,” she says.

I stop her mid-sentence. Resting my head on the actual kitchen table, I mumble something to Nat that basically asks her how she got so interested in detective work.

“I suppose in a completely subconscious way it's been Patty's ghost—or rather the ghost of Patty's case—that got me interested in forensics in the first place,” she says. “That, and I happen to be pretty good at science. My mom thinks I'm going to go to medical school one day. Keep dreaming.”

I can tell that like Dad, Nat thinks that bodies are only interesting when they've assumed room temperature.

“I can't tell my parents that I'm going to be a detective someday. If my mom ever heard me utter those words, that would be the last I'd ever see of that can of spray Luminol I managed to get with my allowance,” she says.

“Luminol?” I ask. “Is that some new fragrance?”

Nat laughs in that snorty kind of way that makes me smile. At least I haven't lost my sense of humor in all this heat.

“Of course, Luminol is what police spread around the room to see if anyone has been ‘offed.' Even the wiped up, cleaned up, tidied up blood shows up or illuminates.
Brill-i-ant!
” Nat says. “You know you can even buy the stuff on the Internet? That's how I got mine, but don't tell anyone.”

I give her the peace sign to indicate my silence. Then I wonder if Cissy is in our guest bathroom getting a kidney transplant. She has been in there a long time.

When she finally returns, Nat is in the middle of lecturing me about repositioning the ugly, supposedly decorative mirror in our hallway.

“You really should position mirrors above counters so you can see who is sneaking up behind you. You know, just in case of armed robbery,” she says.

Cissy has returned with a pained look on her face and a small picture in her hand. “I swear, Jex, I was just looking for a hand towel when I opened the bottom cabinet and found this,” she says, handing me a photo of my dad and some skinny blonde.

“Look. I don't care who my dad dates!” I say in much too loud a voice, which makes Cissy shrink down and Nat perk up.

“Watch it girl, no one yells at Cissy—except maybe me and Deva, and, of course, her mom and sometimes the teachers,” Nat says. “Okay, everyone yells at Cissy, but not new people until we sanction them okay to yell at Cissy. Officially.”

“Sorry,” I say in a much calmer voice.

“My one and only encounter with Sandy the Stick Figure PE teacher/pep squad coach involved her yanking open my hoodie and telling me to embrace my—and I quote—‘budding female form,'” Nat says. “It was totally mor-ti-fy-ing!

“
Everyone is lucky we didn't need to spray Luminol to piece together the case of her disappearance,” she says, and I have to laugh because now I get it.

“My buds are my business,” Nat says in a defiant tone, and I look up and see that she's in a dark purple man-size sweatshirt today with what looks like a white T-shirt underneath and … a heavy black sports bra. She pairs this with shorts. I guess her legs are a nonissue.

Those buds might need air, but they're getting nothing in their current smooshed down state.

“I myself am suspicious of very thin people. Hungry people are desperate people. And desperate people do desperate things like apparently date absentee-dad detectives who can't solve a simple missing persons case. Pathet
-ick
,” Cissy says.

We barely get to the “ick” part when my sliding glass door is in motion again. “I was getting my beauty sleep when Cissy called me,” says princess Deva. “I heard flushing. Were you calling me from the bathroom? Again?”

We all turn to see Deva, towering four inches taller than usual, in platform wedges right out of the last
Vogue
magazine and with a bright purple parasol to protect her from the piercing 1,000-degree sun. Apparently, people in Nevada actually walk around with umbrellas during the summer to shield themselves from UV rays.

“Drew-Ids reporting for duty,” Deva says, pulling off a light cotton linen shirt to reveal a black tank top and slim black shorts. She looks like she's ready for her close-up.

“Now that we're all here … let's get to it,” Nat injects.

Cissy looks so nervous that I see her quake again. It's obvious that she works herself up into a worried frenzy, only to look relieved after her friends save her, probably about 1,000 times a day.

What a stress routine.

“You know, I read the case files last night and I was thinking … ” I begin.

“Yessss!” Nat cries. “We are so in business! Jex, you are what my mom calls a kindred spirit.”

“I know what you were thinking,” Deva says, nodding her head.

“I was thinking it too,” I interject, standing up and pacing the kitchen in my blue jean shorts and red UNLV tank, a present from Dad. At least it didn't have Hello Kitty on it.

“I definitely don't want to think it,” Cissy says, twisting her hair into nervous little knots.

“You thought that perhaps we start looking for that missing girl because everyone has given up on her, which doesn't quite seem fair?” Nat continues. “This is despite the fact that after the initial twenty-four hours, the mathematical odds of finding a missing person plummet sharply.”

“By the way, there was a twenty-five thousand dollar reward put in a bank account thirteen years ago for any information about Patty Matthews's disappearance, and my records indicate that it's still there because no one found anything out about her. In any real way,” Nat informs us.

“If you do the math and figure in the fluctuation of interest rates over time, current value would be forty-one thousand two hundred fifteen dollars and seventeen cents,” she concludes.

“Not that we're doing this for money … but it's just good to know all the variables,” Nat says.

I look at her and raise one eyebrow quizzically.

“Whatever,” I say in response to the cash. “Let's just … start.”

“It's time to show Jex the house,” Nat continues.

“What house?” Cissy says innocently.

Like she doesn't know. But she does know.

“Patty's house,” Deva says. “Where it all began.”

“Or ended,” I add.

“You can't solve a case by thinking about it. You have to go inside of it.”

—Nancy Drew

So … here's the 411: Patty Matthews lived in a two-story house made from cinderblocks and painted a dreary gray. There are two windows facing the street and someone built window boxes, but the only things “growing” there are two faded plastic flowers that might have once been pink or red, but now they pretty much just look gray, too.

The four of us are sitting in Deva's “car”—which actually is a souped-up, four-seater golf cart that, if you ask me, probably cost twice what my mom's Hyundai did back home.

I've only known this girl for a day and a few hours, but I can tell you this with absolute certainty: Deva has an answer for everything, and if she doesn't, she has an American Express Black Card that does.

Five minutes ago, we were standing in my dad's kitchen getting this wild-hair idea to go scope out Patty Matthews's house (i.e., the scene of the crime), which isn't all that far away provided it's not 2,000°F out and perhaps you happen to be a person of fair skin who doesn't do so well hiking for blocks and blocks with the blazing desert sun eating into your Irish-Polish complexion.

For a split second after Deva suggested we come over here, I almost volunteered again to get my dad's files out just to avoid the skin-searing experience of walking over here.

Deva—who also has a penchant for catching a furrowed brow, most likely so she can recommend a Botox treatment—must have read my mind.

“Don't worry, I'll drive,” she says, prompting another wrinkle-inducing quizzical look.

“You have a car?” I inquire.

“Oh, she's not talking about a car,” Cissy pipes up. “She had a car. Her parents took away the keys after she flunked English last semester and she got her seventh ticket for parking in a fire zone outside of Bloomingdales, but never fear. There is transportation. Deva has a golf cart.”

“Excuse me,” I gasp.

More Jersey eeking out in my voice.

“A golf cart, you know, four wheels, electric motor, totally eco-friendly. You can drive them out here on certain public streets,” Cissy informs me, suddenly chatty and animated. “It's a low-speed vehicle.”

“Not the way Deva drives it. She had her mechanic soup it up,” Nat adds, suddenly jumping back into the conversation from being deep in thought, certainly pondering the next move in our “investigation.”

“Look, as long as I get you there in style and don't run over Mrs. Jones and her cock-a-poo again—or nick a blade of Mr. Foster's precious grass—it's the only wheels we have until my parents give me back my Beemer, so unless you have a scooter we can all get on, my sweet country club ride is the only way from Point A to Point B, my friends,” Deva counters, her hands placed firmly on her hips and affecting her best imitation of a countess.

“Okay, okay, let's stay focused,” Nat interrupts again. “Forget cars, which are unimportant here. If we are going to go to Patty's house, let's have a plan. What are we going to do once we get there? It's a short drive.”