Chapter 9 #2
“Can I ask you something?” Gracie asked, and I bit my tongue to keep from making the same terrible dad joke my own father used to make about how she already had.
Instead, I leaned my forearms on the counter and gestured for her to go for it.
She bit her bottom lip like she wasn’t sure she should say what she was about to, but decided to do it anyway.
“You said you watch a lot of cop dramas, and I was just wondering if they ever covered what someone is supposed to do when the police decide to stop investigating.”
“You lost someone?” I asked, despite already knowing the answer.
Gracie didn’t say anything for a moment and then nodded.
“My cousin, Lexi, went missing seven years ago. I was the one who—I’m a medical examiner and a hand came in.
I confirmed it had belonged to someone deceased, so I knew, the moment they got a match to my cousin.
I knew she was dead. Still, we never found the rest of her remains and we don’t know what happened to her, but the police have decided she isn’t worth the manpower anymore. ”
I made a sympathetic noise as I recalled Mrs. Carver talking about finding the hand.
That was two mentions of the same event in one week.
More importantly, I remembered the way that Trick had shut the conversation down when I asked him about it.
Now Trick’s connection with Lexi Tate made sense.
He must have known her through Gracie, who was close with Kenna.
I tried to remind myself that this was none of my business, that digging into Lexi’s disappearance and death could only lead to trouble, but I also knew there was no way I could let it go now.
Not if the police had decided the case was cold.
Not when Gracie was sitting at my bar looking so hopeless and distraught.
“They hire someone,” I told her.
“What?” Gracie said, looking up at me like she hadn’t actually expected me to answer.
“In all the cop dramas there are two choices. Investigate the case yourself, or hire a private investigator,” I explained, wiping down the counter again despite how immaculate it was.
She took a hesitant sip of her drink and smiled at the balance of sweet and sour I’d all but mastered now.
It was incredible what a little determination and a playlist of recipe videos could do for a girl’s bar-tending skills.
Setting the damp cloth aside I leaned forward on the counter and clasped my hands together in front of me in the picture-perfect imitation of a wizened bartender.
“But this isn’t a cop drama, is it? It’s real life, and in real life you shouldn’t go investigating things without the right training.
So, you hire someone who has that training and the experience to solve the case. ”
“And what do you do when even the private investigator you hired hits a dead end?” Gracie asked, slumping back on her stool and taking another sip of her drink.
I paused as I considered her words, wondering if Kenna had become a private investigator in the hopes of finding Lexi.
If there was one thing I could relate to it was the drive to become a professional investigator to solve a case that hit too close to home.
“In that case, you wait. Because cold cases usually stay cold until someone reveals a clue that the police didn’t already have.
I’m assuming Kenna is your P.I.?” I replied, feeling a spike of irritation running through me as I parroted back the things that Monica had once said to me.
Just because I didn’t like them didn’t mean they weren’t true, though, and I decided to add a little more wisdom.
Gracie nodded.
“Continuing to talk about it is important, though, because sometimes all it takes is the right person hearing the right details in order for everything to click into place.”
I let Gracie think about that for a moment, watching her consider my advice in real time. Her fingers tightened slightly around the stem of her glass before she placed it on the counter in front of her.
“Kenna and I knew Lexi was missing right away,” she said quietly. “The very first thing we did was give the police the last ping from her Find My Friends app and that’s what they based their initial search on.”
I nodded, letting her talk.
“It placed her last known location near the turn-off for Good Dog Trail. Lexi was an avid hiker, so that made sense,” she said. “We went over it a dozen times with the teams. Dogs, drones, ground crews. But… there was nothing to find.”
“Nothing at all?” I could feel the weight of that. Seven years, and it had started with the women who cared most, leading the search.
“Nothing on that trail, at least.” She shook her head, her lips pressed together. “No tracks, no gear, no sign she’d been there. Because we were looking in the wrong place. At the end of the week Lexi’s phone turned up, waterproof case and all, on the riverbank near the Benham Falls Trailhead.”
“And that shifted the search?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Once they found the phone, the teams widened the radius, but by then we had wasted over a week looking in the wrong place. And then they told us there was nothing more they could do.”
The words sat heavy between us.
I had heard my own variation of that sentence more times than I cared to remember and I knew that it never got easier to hear.
Before I could ask anything else, the front door opened and Kenna stepped back inside, her jacket half unzipped, her expression tired but determinedly bright.
“Okay,” she announced, glancing between us and clearly seeing something in the way the two of us were holding ourselves that gave her pause, “we’re getting this party back on track. What did I miss?”
“We were talking about Lexi,” Gracie said.
Kenna’s smile fell, just a touch, but her eyes sharpened. She stepped forward and rested a hand on Gracie’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“There’s a time and a place for Lexi,” she said quietly, “and that time is during her memorial. Tonight is about you. About your divorce. About the fact that you survived it and came out the other side still standing.”
She turned toward me and planted her hands on the bar. “Shots.”
Gracie snorted softly. “Kenna?—”
“Nuh-uh,” she said, standing her ground. “This is happening. Non-negotiable.”
I reached for the bottles, grateful for the excuse to move. As I lined up the glasses, I caught Gracie’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar—the way her shoulders slowly eased, the tension bleeding out of her posture.
But the details she’d shared stayed with me.
Benham Falls Trailhead. Good Dog Trail. A last location ping far north of where the only evidence was found. A hand found even farther south.
And seven years of heartache and unanswered questions sitting heavy between it all.