Chapter 9
When Tean got home, the front door was unlocked.
Beyond it, the living room was thick with shadows, lit only by the low-slanting beams of late afternoon sun.
A steady thump-thump began to beat, and then a furry head poked up over the back of the sofa.
Followed, a moment later, by a slightly less furry head.
“Hey,” Jem said before sinking back down again.
Scipio, on the other hand, gave a wiggle, and his tail began to thump the sofa cushions more rapidly.
“Hey,” Tean said as he stepped inside. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
Scipio’s tail picked up more speed.
“Why are you lying here in the dark?” Tean asked.
“We’re—” As Tean approached the sofa, Scipio half-crawled, half- dragged himself toward the back of the sofa, in the process clambering across Jem. “Ugh, Scipio, don’t—ow!” In an aggrieved tone, Jem said, “We were napping.”
Tean stroked Scipio’s ears, then let the dog sniff his hands and lick the inside of his wrist. Jem lay flat on the sofa, staring up at Tean.
His usually neat part looked rough, as though Jem might have run his hands through his hair—which, on the whole, was more Tean’s thing than Jem’s.
He’d changed into a black tee printed with weird purple creatures and the word GRIMACE, and a pair of purple running shorts that practically qualified as underwear.
The remains of chips and queso lay on top of a flattened Taco Bell bag.
Tean smoothed a hand over Jem’s forehead. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great.”
Tean let his hand still, but he didn’t lift it. He let this thumb follow one of Jem’s eyebrows. “Because you don’t seem like you’re okay.”
“I’m good.” This must not have seemed like enough, though, because Jem said, “Tired.”
“Hmm.”
“And Scipio was hogging the couch.”
“That sounds about right.”
“And he wouldn’t share any of his chips and queso.”
Tean hesitated. After all this time together, he knew Jem was joking. Probably joking. Most likely joking. “You didn’t give him all of it, did you?”
A smile cracked Jem’s face.
“Well, I don’t know,” Tean said. “It’s not exactly out of the realm of possibility.” And before he could chicken out, he said, “Did something happen at work?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know. You seem…down.”
“Work was fine.”
“Slow day?”
“I sold two cars. One of them, the guy wanted every single add-on. Little Dick was so happy he had to go change his pants.”
“Eww,” Tean said with a laugh. His thumb jumped as it followed Jem’s eyebrow again. “Hannah said—well, she implied, really—that you might not be happy that I’m helping Ammon.”
Jem’s eyes were a blue-gray squall. After what felt like a long time, he said, “Is that a question?”
“I guess.” But this wasn’t enough either, so Tean made himself say, “I’m sorry I—I jumped into this. Without talking to you about it.”
“We talked about it.”
“Without asking you.”
“Would it have made a difference if you had?”
Motes of dust drifted in red-gold bands of light.
Tean drew his hand back, regretted it, couldn’t think of how to undo it. He sounded too stiff when he said, “Yes. Of course.”
Jem didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry if I—” Tean stopped. “Jem, obviously what you want matters. No, that’s not right. It’s not obvious, is it? Not if I have to say it. I’m sorry.”
Jem reached up to scritch Scipio’s ear, and that soft sound filled the silence between them. Finally, the word strained, he said, “No. No, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
“I am. I’m—it was just a long day, and I’m tired, and now I’m taking it out on you for some reason.”
“If you felt like your feelings weren’t being valued—”
“Oh my God, stop. I know you care about what I think. I’m being a baby.”
“You’re not being a baby.”
“I am. I’m in a bad mood, and I’m throwing a fit.”
Tean came around the sofa to sit next to Jem. He cupped Jem’s chin; Jem’s beard tickled his palm. “I love you. I’m sorry I’ve gotten so caught up in this. And I’m sorry I didn’t show more respect for you and your feelings.”
“It’s fine.” Jem laughed at whatever he saw on Tean’s face, and it was a real laugh—soft, yes, but sweet.
“Seriously. Don’t get in your head about this.
Yeah, it’s a shitty situation. Yeah, I don’t love it that we’re helping Ammon.
But I know he…matters to you. I know you want to help him.
And I want to help you. So, that means I want to help Ammon, which is honestly a sentence I never thought I’d say unless it ended with ‘into a wood chipper.’”
Tean watched him for a long moment, waiting for some sign, a hint of vacillation, a buried meaning he was supposed to tease out.
“God,” Jem said, that smile cracking the corner of his mouth again, and he reached up to tease Tean’s hair. “Do you know how easy it would be to drive you crazy?”
“Extremely.”
For some reason, that made Jem’s smile get bigger as he nodded in agreement.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Tean asked.
Jem gave Tean’s hair a little shake. “I guess we’re going to find out.”
The only sensible thing to say to that seemed to be “Do you want McDonald’s for dinner?”
“Is this a peace offering?”
“It’s a way to show you I know you and love you.”
“Can I order two large fries?”
“No.”
“Remember your guilty conscience,” Jem said.
“Right, I know, and obviously you’re an independent adult, and you don’t need my approval, and you can do whatever you want. But Jem, the sodium alone—”
“So easy,” Jem murmured to himself as he rolled off the couch. “Scipio’s getting nuggets.”
So, they argued about—discussed—that on the way.
“So,” Jem asked as they sat in the drive-thru, “what’s the next step in Operation Save Ammon’s Ass?”
Tean filled him in on his conversation with Hannah, along with the conclusions—or possible conclusions—he’d reached.
When he finished, Jem said, “It wasn’t Lucy.”
“What?”
“Lucy didn’t do it.”
“I don’t think she’s capable of it, no, but—”
“No, it wasn’t her. I was reading an article about the murder, and they said Brennon had bruises on his neck.”
“Right,” Tean said slowly. “But the warrant said he was stabbed. That was the cause of death.”
“I know. But if Lucy was going to kill him, why choke him—or whatever happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not just stab him?”
“I don’t know, Jem.”
Jem was silent for the next few minutes. Then he said, “So, we need to figure out what happened to Brennon—I mean, when, where, that kind of thing.”
“Okay.”
“And I know you think Unsolved Mysteries is too sensationalized, and you find it upsetting to watch—”
“I mostly find it upsetting to watch because you made me watch that episode with Jon Bon Jovi, like, five times.” He thought about this and added, “And you keep trying to call the tip line. That number went out of service twenty years ago.”
“But if Unsolved Mysteries has taught me anything—and it has—”
“It has not.”
“—it’s that the wife is always the most likely suspect.”
Tean knuckled his chin. Finally he said, “Okay.”
“And that means talking to Brennon’s wife.”
“If I call Lucy, she’ll give me her number.” Tean felt obliged to add, “I think.”
“Screw that,” Jem said as they rolled up to the speaker. “If we call her, she’ll be ready for us. Best thing to do is catch her by surprise.” He leaned past Tean to shout, “A number one, super-sized—”
“They don’t do that anymore,” Tean whispered.
“—with a second order of even larger fries. And how many nuggets do you recommend for a seventy-seven-pound Lab?”
Over Jem’s objections and literal wails, Tean ordered himself a hamburger, no cheese, extra pickles.
“Why?” Jem asked three separate times as they waited for their food. “Why would you make it worse?”
Since Tean couldn’t think of a better plan, they ate in the truck as they drove to South Jordan again.
After demolishing a Big Mac, one and a half extra-large fries, and a Coke the size of a gas can, Jem leaned against the door and announced that he was full, sleepy, and thirsty, and that he needed to close his eyes for a minute.
“Because you just ingested enough salt to raise the blood pressure of a horse,” Tean said. “Look up Brennon’s address, please.”
Jem found it quickly enough on a public white page search engine, and Tean plugged the address into his phone.
Instead of the street of smaller, brick ramblers, this time, they found themselves passing newer, larger homes, until the phone announced they’d reached their destination.
It was a brick-and-stucco two-story in muted earth tones, with a thick—and weed-free—patch of lawn and a white vinyl privacy fence in back.
A satellite dish perched on the corner of the roof, and a gravel drive ran alongside the garage for parking, in happier times, an RV.
Even with evening settling over the valley, it was easy to make out a standing stone near the door painted with the words THE LEE HOME – FAMILIES ARE FOREVER.
In other words, the stereotypical Utah house from the early 2000s.
On the stone, someone had drawn a penis in red spray paint—Tean guessed that was a recent addition.
Signs of scrubbing showed a half-hearted effort to remove it.
“It’s a little crooked,” Jem said.
“What?”
“The wiener.”
Tean had nothing to say to that, so he got out of the truck. A faint whiff of something sweet met him—like a cheap perfume, maybe, but it was hard to say because it was lost under the dying eddy of the truck’s exhaust.
Jem, on the other hand, apparently had more to say about it. As they made their way toward the front door, he asked, “What? You don’t think it looks wonky?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” It was hard for Tean to tell if he was hearing outrage, disbelief, or horror in Jem’s voice. “Oh my God, mine doesn’t look like that, does it? With that weird bend in the middle?”
“Jem.”
“Because if it does, you have to tell me.”
“Jem.”
“Nobody’s ever said anything.” Then Jem brightened. “Unless it’s a good thing.”
“Jeremiah!”
“What?”
“Please. Stop.”