J. Black - The Survivors Club

“I’m in a relationship,” Tess said. “It’s…problematic.” Then she added in a rush of words, “I can’t add to that, to our troubles. I have to…I have to think about it and I have to figure out if I want to stay with him.”

She was aware that she sounded like she was pleading.

He sat still beside her. He blew air out of his lips. Looked into the middle distance and then down at his hands.

A good-looking man.

A man she liked being around.

A man she could maybe, possibly, fall in love with.

But she wasn’t going to do it this way. “I’m sorry, Alec.”

“I know.”

She managed to pull herself together. Uncrimp and straighten her clothes. Tell her body to stop screaming at the top of its horny little lungs.

She heard herself say, “I want to keep in touch.”

Then she bolted out into the chilly spring night.

Wondering just how much more she could screw up her life.

As Tess headed for her car, her phone chimed. It was Barry Zudowsky.

“I got a sketch artist with Frieda Nussman today. I’m going to send you a photo of her sketch.”

“Do you have a name?”

“No. Let me send it to you.”

He disconnected. Tess knew he was done.

A few moments later she was staring into the face of the man who had purchased the mountain lion.

She’d seen the face before—twice. In the first picture she’d seen of him, he’d been thirteen years old, standing at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a water treatment plant. He’d lost the baby fat he’d had as a child but had retained the passivity in his expression. She recalled the more recent version of him from the family portrait in Tucson Lifestyle .

As a young man, his mane of blond hair was streaked with white from hours, days, months, and years of the surfing life in California. His face had become more angular and was deeply tanned. Chad DeKoven was a true boy of summer.

He was also a gamer like his brother, Michael, and his sister Jaimie.

He was part of it.

Tess looked for an address for DeKoven. He lived in Laguna Beach. She was able to access the DMV files, and this in turn yielded his phone number.

She sat in the car and considered how she would approach him. If he was a killer as she suspected, he would stonewall her. She knew she would only tip him off if she approached him head-on. She knew she’d need to do an end run around his defenses, run a game on him, but right now she couldn’t think of anything. So she decided to call and see if he was there. She used her home phone to punch in his number.

A canned message sounded. Chad DeKoven’s phone had been disconnected.

There was one person she hadn’t yet talked to, other than Chad—Brayden DeKoven McConnell.

CHAPTER 33

Brayden McConnell lived in a very nice townhouse in Ventana Canyon at the foot of the Santa Catalina Mountains.

The first thing Tess noticed was a wood gilt-edged sign beside the door said, “Brayden McConnell, Real Estate Law.”

She rang the lighted bell.

No answer. She tried again. Nothing. She was walking back to the car when Brayden answered.

Brayden’s hair was pulled up messily in a clip. She wore a sweatshirt and purple drawstring velveteen sweatpants, none too clean. But she was pretty in a plain, sweet way. She looked nothing like the whippet-thin Jaimie or comic-book-hero-handsome Michael.

She kept the door between them, her pale eyes wide, sad, and frightened at the same time.

“Oh, I thought you were the babysitter.” She started to close the heavy door. Tess was practiced at putting her foot between the door and the jamb. Thinking: you’re going out like that? “Just a couple of questions, I’m a detective with Santa Cruz County.” She nodded to the shield clipped to her belt.

“This is Pima County.”

“I’d like to talk to you anyway. I can come back with a TPD detective if you’d like, or we can go to TPD midtown.”

“Might as well. “ She opened the door and led the way inside.

Tess pulled the door shut behind her.

Nice place, expensive furnishings, but sparse. Tess knew Brayden was divorced. It looked like someone had taken half of everything.

Her little girl, Aurora, was shy at first. They sat on a couple of sofas, and Aurora warmed up quickly, showing her dance steps and eventually building up to running around them shrieking, and alternately crawling onto Tess’s lap.

“I’d like to ask you about your brother, Chad.”

“Isn’t that a little soon?”

“Soon?”

Brayden played with her hair clip, kept poking stray strands of hair into her chignon or whatever it was. “My brother Chad was a really good guy. A sweetheart. That’s all you need to know.”

Something off, here. Brayden sounded defiant. She’d said “was” a good guy. Tess summoned up the photo of the artist sketch on her phone. “Do you recognize him?”

Brayden stared open-mouthed at the sketch. Then she started to whimper. “He just died ,” Brayden said. “Can’t you leave it alone for a little while?”

Then Aurora chimed in. She clung to her mother and started to wail.

Tess was shocked. That was why Chad’s phone was disconnected. “When did this happen?”

“I don’t think I should talk to you—it’s personal.”

“Brayden, the sketch I showed you links him to a homicide in Orange County,” Tess lied. It merely linked him to an animal that might have been used in one. But Tess needed the upper hand now.

“What do you want from me? I don’t care and I think you should go and leave us alone. We just had a long airplane ride and Aurora’s having nightmares and she’s breaking out! She has pimples! She’s sick to her stomach and it isn’t fair, so why are you here ? You’re harassing us and it’s just plain mean and I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry, excuse me, but you should come back tomorrow or maybe go harass Michael because I don’t know anything and my daughter’s stomach needs to be settled!”

The kid was shrieking. Brayden kept on talking, none of it making sense. Just a barrage of words, throwing them at Tess like weapons. At first Tess thought the woman really was in shock, but it soon occurred to her that Brayden was able to avoid specifics by babbling. Her voice was so low even as she said paranoid and angry things, and Aurora’s voice was so loud. It was like trying to listen to a babbling stream under a band saw.

It occurred to Tess that they were a good team. Brayden was stonewalling her. Brayden babbling and Aurora crying: a one-two punch.

Fracturing Tess’s concentration. “Can you tell me how Chad died?”

“Why are you such a ghoul ? Why do you care? He’s dead, not that you or anyone else cares anything about him.” She paused. “All right, Miss Ghoul. You want to know? Somebody murdered him! Someone killed my brother .”

“Can you tell me—”

She looked into Tess’s eyes. “I don’t know anything, except that somebody killed him. He was just going surfing, he was just a harmless adult kid , and somebody just throttled him and left him out there like they’d throw away a Dixie cup—like so much trash !”

Tess waited for the crying to subside. Either Brayden was suffering from histrionic personality disorder, or she was using the drama to stave off questions. And the daughter took her cues from the mother.

Tess held out the sketch again. “Is this Chad?”

Brayden stopped sobbing and looked. “It doesn’t even look like him. But he wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. If you think he’s involved in anything bad like that, you’re barking up the wrong tree, and I’m not saying anything more.”