Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Aunt DeeDee went to grab some extra plates and napkins from storage, and I headed toward the kitchen staff’s lockers, planning to quickly look through Joe’s possessions to see if he had anything that might make it seem like he’d wanted his oldest friend dead.
Maybe he had a bottle of undetectable arsenic rolling around in the bottom of his bag?
The lockers were in an alcove in a narrow hallway off the kitchen, and as soon as I reached them, I began trying the metal handles. The first four were completely empty. The fifth contained car keys; the sixth, a wallet with a couple of dollars and a debit card inside.
The very first one listed was Small Town, Big Romance in the part of “Brett Brinkley’s friend,” which made me think again that the show must’ve been heavily scripted. The rest of the list consisted of appearing as an extra in five movies I’d never heard of, and one Netflix show.
Under “Representation,” his agent was listed as Presley Lombardi, which was strange, particularly since, as far as I knew, Presley wasn’t an agent.
Maybe she was unofficially representing him?
Could that be the reason that she and Joe had seemed so close earlier this evening, their heads practically touching as he’d leaned across the table and whispered to her?
I held the photos and tried to wrap my mind around what Joe was playing at.
As far as I knew, he’d mostly performed odd jobs around Aubergine to make ends meet, and apparently, he’d tricked my aunt into thinking he was a good enough guy to deserve help starting, of all things, a catering business.
But his first major gig had ended in the death of his best friend.
Joe was looking guiltier and guiltier to me, but for Aunt DeeDee’s sake I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, I wasn’t sure how seriously Charlie would take my hunches. I needed proof of something, anything.
I put the photos on the bench and turned to the remaining contents of the locker, all the while keeping an eye on the door to ensure I wasn’t caught unawares.
There was a backpack, and inside I found a yearbook from 2015, which would’ve been strange if the reunion wasn’t this weekend.
Maybe Joe had planned to pull it out and reminisce.
I opened the cover and spotted several signatures, including mine.
There was also a note from Lacy, dating back ten years:
To the biggest weirdo. Take care of Brett at V Tech next year.
—Lacy, 5/24/15
Brett and Joe had been admitted to the same school—or, to be more accurate, Joe had been recruited to play football for them.
Although I’d never cared about team sports, I did remember that he’d led our fearless Aubergine Fighting Farmers to victory at the state championships our junior and senior years.
Joe had come home from college after only one semester, though. From town gossip at the Christmas tree lighting that year, I knew it had something to do with him being caught with an illicit substance. There were even whispers of Brett’s name too, but he’d stayed and graduated right on time.
Something had happened, possibly something involving Brett Brinkley, that had derailed Joe Larson’s college career.
I smelled motive, and the scent was revenge.
Next to Lacy’s entry, in different handwriting, was written valedictorian, which seemed strange enough on its own. But while some people might’ve gone back and labeled people that they didn’t want to forget as they aged, Joe certainly didn’t seem the type.
I went back through the pages and spotted Savilla’s 2015 message to Joe:
Get rich and marry me. Or not. JK.
XOXO—Savilla
I scanned the rest, which seemed like inside jokes and ridiculous allusions to our twelve—thirteen, if you counted kindergarten—years together. It made me glad I’d grown up in Aubergine, a close-knit community.
Maybe too close-knit sometimes.
I came across a comment that, based on the initials and the creep factor, must have been from Brett Brinkley.
Your mom was fun last night. I’m coming for your sister (the hot one) next.
—BB
Ew.
Brett had been dating Lacy when he’d written that—they hadn’t broken up until right before both of them left for college. Even if he hadn’t been, though, it was still not okay. I shuddered at the kinds of things that were normal for boys to say only a decade or so ago.
I flipped through the pages of the yearbook and landed on one that had been dog-eared. It was a photo of Brett and Joe in football uniforms, sweaty and exhausted after a game, their arms thrown over one another’s shoulders—except that Brett’s figure had been Xed out with a thick, black marker.
I set aside the yearbook and quickly pulled out the rest of the contents from the backpack: a Swiss Army knife, a receipt for an oil change, a pack of gum that was mostly empty, and a case with one silver CD inside. How very early 2000s of him.
I flipped the case over to see handwriting that matched the loopy scrawl from the yearbook: Our Big Romance.
It was part of the name of Brett and Presley’s reality TV show from two years earlier but with the possessive plural pronoun added.
I considered the implications, which depended on the answers to a few key questions.
Whose romance, exactly? And was the tone intended to be nostalgic?
Sarcastic? Derisive? The show playing in the Media Room earlier that night came to mind.
Did this CD also contain footage of Small Town, Big Romance?
I needed to find out, and since I didn’t have anywhere to put it, I lifted the back of my shirt and tucked it in the waistband of my jeans.
As I began to stuff the other items back inside the bag, someone stepped forward.
It was Presley, a puzzled expression on her face. “Dakota?”
I stared blankly at her.
Jutting her head like a schoolmarm who’d caught a kid cheating, Presley said stiffly, “Can I help you?”
I didn’t immediately answer because I was confused as to why she was asking if she could help me with Joe’s things. What business was it of hers if someone rifled through Joe’s personal belongings?
I grabbed the closest thing within reach, which happened to be Joe’s headshots, inventing a feasible lie, something I’d never been good at. As Momma always said, I was a born truth-teller. My face, if not my words, gave me away.
“I opened the wrong locker,” I said.
She glanced down at the open backpack. I wasn’t fooling anyone, and we both knew it.
“What are you doing all the way in the kitchen?” I asked, realizing that perhaps I could turn the questions around and stump her.
Presley straightened and then crossed her arms. “I was looking for Joe.”
I raised my eyebrows to study her, and now she was the one to squirm.
“All of this has been so…” Presley’s eyes began to fill quickly, and her shoulders crumpled forward as she sank onto the bench next to the backpack, which still had the yearbook sticking out of the top.
Her tears bought me time to think. I wasn’t sure if I should try to comfort her or demand answers about why her name was on Joe’s headshots.
I sat down next to her, at a loss for how to proceed and feeling defeated by this whole terrible night.
I placed the headshots in her hands and decided to let her tell me what she wanted, when she wanted. I was almost too tired to do otherwise.
“Joe wants to be famous,” she said, taking them from my hands and hiccupping. Presley put a hand over her lips and smiled down at the image of him. “He’s so much like Brett.”
I knew that look: the same one Lacy had when she turned to Anton; the same one I likely had whenever Charlie came into view. So it was true. Brett’s girlfriend had eyes for his former bestie. I could only wonder how far these feelings had gone.
“Is Joe actually like Brett?” I asked, struggling to see the similarities.
Of course, they’d always been buddies, and they’d always gotten into trouble together.
But Brett had struck me as a self-obsessed jerk while Joe seemed to have a couple of redeeming qualities.
He could carry on a conversation without making it all about himself, for example.
And Joe was a hard worker, even if he couldn’t ever seem to find his calling in one particular career.
“He and Brett were always competing, even for me. That’s why I told him I’d help him get a foot in the door in Hollywood.
What he doesn’t understand is that a foot is never enough.
You have to give over your whole self, every ounce, every inch.
” She shivered and drew her arms around herself.
“It’s like being eaten alive, bite by bite. ”
The words Lacy had said to Anton came back to me: I know how to handle a man who bites. My heart beat faster, and I inhaled deeply. Those words didn’t mean anything. They didn’t.
I watched Presley wipe at her eyes with a clenched fist and decided to slightly redirect our conversation.
“I bet Joe was pretty jealous when Brett’s song became a hit,” I suggested. “Do you know if he wrote ‘The One That Got Away’ about Lacy?”
“I thought so, but when I asked…” Presley shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
That was odd, to say the least.
Presley’s eyes were bloodshot, and there were rings under her eyes, which were also smudged with mascara. Her obvious signs of fatigue reminded me that time was running short, so I decided to go straight to the key information.
“Do you have any idea what Brett’s email password might be?”
Her eyes squinted, as if she were trying to get her bearings in the middle of a conversation she didn’t know we were having.
“His password? How would I know that?”
“You are his girlfriend,” I reminded her, hoping, even though I knew it was a long shot, that they were the kind of couple who shared passwords.
She laughed in my face, a kind of half-cackle, half-amused sound. “Yeah, no. We weren’t that close.” The words were mocking, as if she were communicating a message far beyond the words, as if they hadn’t even been friends, much less a couple.
More and more, Presley and Brett’s relationship seemed to be built on secrets and hidden things, two features no real relationship could bear long term. I observed her, noticing the way her tears caught the light.
“It’s eleven fifty-eight,” Presley said, as she glanced at her watch. Then, her eyebrows shot up as she thought of something else and stared straight at me almost as if in a trance. “Almost midnight,” she mumbled to no one in particular. “The witching hour.”
With that, she stood and hurried away, leaving me there to wonder what else Brett hadn’t told her—and what she hadn’t told him.