I HAD A hard time sleeping. I was too busy planning what I would say to Luna’s dad. Would he be hostile, like his daughter? Or would he welcome the help finding her? Maybe he wanted her to go back to juvie, too, so she could get the help she needed. He was Vanessa’s ex, so obviously he had seen the light at some point. It was possible that he was totally normal, if he couldn’t handle being with that nasty mess. In fact, it was better than possible. Given that Luna had run away from him, it was probable. Luna did not do normal. It wasn’t in her DNA.
I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, wondering what kind of relationship Luna had with her dad. How could it be tight, when she’d left him to follow Hollis fame and fortune? Although he had at some point apparently found Vanessa attractive, so maybe he got it.
I found myself wishing I could call Chris and ask him to go with me. And then I was pissed that I somehow felt like I needed to have a man come save me in case things went bad. I didn’t need any man. I could protect myself. I’d done it before; I could do it again. Not like Chris wanted to help me. He’d made that perfectly clear.
I felt like I had barely closed my eyes when my alarm went off in the morning. Still, I bolted upright, ready to go. I took a quick shower, dressed, and grabbed an apple on my way out the door. Dad was either not up yet or had gotten up and gone already. Either way, I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. Not until I had answers.
Answers were at the Fairchild house; I could feel it.
Thanks to the internet, it wasn’t hard at all to find where Luna’s dad lived. I’d looked it up before, back when I was first researching the Hollises while Peyton clung to life in the hospital. The address stuck in my head: pink, white, melon, copper. 257 Noble.
The weather was beautiful, and I drove with my windows open, sunglasses on, the smell of beach faint in the air. I turned up the radio and sang along, feeling halfway normal for a change. It was the kind of weather that made you want to do fun things—go to a festival or see a movie or hang out at the dojang with the doors open and the fans on.
Or capture the girl who’s been trying to kill you, and who might be the last link to avenging your mother.
I turned down the radio as I got closer to Luna’s house, for some reason feeling like announcing myself with noise was not such a great idea. But when I pulled up to the curb, I realized my fear was for nothing.
I checked the address, and even double-checked on my phone to make sure I wasn’t remembering it wrong. Yep, 257 Noble. That was Luna’s address. The house she grew up in. Plain and small and boring.
And currently for sale.
Not to mention deserted. There weren’t even curtains left on the windows.
I parked at the curb and stared in disbelief. I supposed it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine not wanting to live in a tight neighborhood like this one when your daughter was a known murderer, but for some reason being unable to just walk up to the door and talk to Peter Fairchild felt like a blow. Or should I say another blow.
I leaned my forehead on the steering wheel and groaned. Option after option after option. Dead end after dead end after dead end. Chris was done helping me search. Shelby was clueless. Even Vee had seemed to give up. Blue had nothing for me. Pear Magic. Angry Elephant. igNight. Blue Yonder. I had literally been everywhere I could possibly think of to find Luna. And she was not in a single one of those places. She was a ghost. A shadow. A memory that nobody wanted to hold on to. Now what?
I turned so my temple was resting on the wheel and opened my eyes.
I could so see why this house wasn’t enough for a person like Luna. It was charming. It was unassuming. Black and white with tidy—if not dreadfully plain—little trees and bushes. The only thing colorful anywhere around it was the For Sale sign.
I sat up.
Of course. The For Sale sign. Caroline Mackey, agent. I got out of the car and took a flyer out of the box attached to the sign. White, white, white, bronze, pink, brown, pink.
Without giving it another thought, I pulled out my phone and dialed.
“Caroline here,” a voice sang into the receiver after the first ring.
“Um, hi. I’m wondering if you can show me a house?” I felt squeaky, so I cleared my throat, tried to make my voice sound deeper, more mature.
“Of course. Which house were you wanting to see?”
“Two-fifty-seven Noble,” I said. I scanned the paper in my hand. “Three bedroom, two bath? Great starter house?”
“Oh, of course! Yes, it is a perfect starter house. And your name is?”
“Carrie,” I blurted. I’d never used my mother’s name before, and the move took me by surprise. I fumbled for a last name, then said the first thing that came to mind. “Carrie Martinez.” Surprise number two. I was full of them today. “We, um, I’m a newlywed, and we’re, um, looking.” I squeezed my eyes tight. I sounded like such a liar, even to myself.
“Wonderful!” she exclaimed. If I sounded like a liar, she was ignoring it. “Can you be at the address in an hour?”
I stuffed the paper back in its box. “Sure.”
I HAD AN hour to convince Chris to join me.
I drove until I found a nearby coffee shop and sat at a table by the window, which overlooked a busy boulevard.
Hey, I texted.
No response. I sipped my coffee while I waited. After several minutes, I texted again.
I don’t suppose you want to pretend to be my husband for an hour?
I knew he was mad at me, but surely that would get him talking. Surely it would at least make him curious. But the minutes ticked by and there was nothing. I tried again.
You can’t stay mad at me forever.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then, just when I was about to text again, this:
I’m not mad. I’m busy. You will have to find someone else to play actor with you.
I could feel the bite in his words, even through the phone. He may have been saying he wasn’t mad, but he was 100 percent lying.
Come on. You know you’re my favorite actor.
Nothing. So much nothing I started to actually get irritated. I was out of coffee and out of patience and it was going to be a hell of a lot harder to pretend I had a good reason to be looking at this house if I was alone. I dialed his number and got voice mail.
“Look,” I said, talking through my teeth to keep my voice low. “I know you’re mad, and I’m sorry, okay? I will help you track down Leon or Heriberto or whoever you want, but I need you right now. I’m going to be looking at Peter Fairchild’s house in, like, fifteen minutes. It’s two-fifty-seven Noble. Just meet me there.” I unclenched my teeth, knowing that I sounded angrier than I felt. Magenta tears popped into my eyes and I blinked to keep them inside. “Chris, this is dumb. We’re a team because you basically forced it. I didn’t want to work with you, but you wore me down. I got used to you. Bailing on me now would be . . .” I had to blink again. Damn it. I hated this. I took a deep breath and reclenched my teeth. “It would be a real dick move. I’ll see you there.”
I was halfway out the door when my phone beeped. A text message.
Don’t worry, I’m not forcing you anymore. You’re free.
THE HOUSE WAS empty. Bare walls, bare floors, bare shelves. It had a closed-up feeling, but not like it had been closed up for long. Our footsteps echoed on the hardwood in the living room, on the tile in the kitchen; our voices bounced back at us in every room.
Caroline yammered on what seemed like endlessly about the features of the house, and I had to pretend that I cared, which was immeasurably more difficult after the conversation—or not conversation—between Chris and me. I was a mixture of so many colors—disappointment, shame, anger, despair—it was hard to tell what the resulting shade or texture even was. I could only liken it to something rotting. I started thinking of it as rottenshade. Congratulations, Martinez, you created a new hue.
There was nothing to see here. Not a scrap of paper or a computer screen or even so much as a footprint to help guide me to where Peter—and perhaps Luna—had gone. But I couldn’t just cry defeat. I had come too far. I had to at least try to get information out of good old Caroline.
We had toured the whole house, ending back in the kitchen, where she’d lain her keys, phone, and a stack of flyers for various other houses she was selling just in case this one wasn’t the right fit. I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room while she leaned against the counter.
“So why did the previous owner move out?” I asked, hoping I sounded like the average home buyer. Crossed my arms over my chest. Uncrossed them. Scratched my forearm and crossed again. How did average home buyers hold their arms?
“Major life change,” she said, smiling. Caroline seemed to never stop smiling. Her teeth were glossy and intensely white. “He bought a houseboat. Wanted to live on the water.”
“A houseboat?”
“Well, I went there to go over paperwork. It was more like a yacht, in my opinion. Between you and me, I don’t know where he got all that money. He’s still paying a mortgage on this until it sells. Can’t be free to tie up at Del Rey every day. I think he just likes being able to say he lives in Tahiti.” She winked.
I had an idea where he’d gotten all that money. Luna. She was all that was left of her family. She must have figured out how to get her hands on the Hollis family fortune. Knowing them, they had an illegal stash hidden somewhere, and she knew exactly where it was.
“Just him?” I asked. I bent low to look at the underside of the counter so I would look disinterested in her answer.
“Not sure, actually.” I stood; she was still aiming that dorky smile at me. “So what do you think?”
I sighed, trying to look torn. “I wish my husband could be here. I would feel so much better if we could talk to the owner, you know? Get his take on the pros and cons of this place. I don’t suppose you could hook us up?”
For the first time, her smile fell. She looked floored that I would even ask such thing. Apparently, asking to speak to the owner was not something people usually did. I tried to save it. “You make him sound like such a personable guy. I figured he probably wouldn’t mind.”
“I can’t—” Her phone rang, one of those loud, old-fashioned rings that all old people have on their phones. She checked the screen. “Speak of the devil!” My heart skipped a beat. I had to resist wrestling it out of her hand and answering it myself. “He must be wondering how the showing went.” She looked at me pointedly, then pressed a button to silence the ring. The phone went dark. Damn it. “Hopefully I’ll have good news to call him back with. I’ll just let him know I’m still with you.” Back with the smile. She keyed in her passcode and sent a text, then returned her phone to the counter. “So what do you say?”
I say that the very guy I’m looking for just called you and I can do nothing about it. I say that this has been how my entire life has been going lately—so close, yet so far. I say that a killer could be out on that houseboat and she could just decide to set sail any day now and never come back. And I will be living the rest of my life looking over my shoulder and wondering what happened to my mother. I will spend the rest of my life wondering if my dad was in on her murder. I will never be at peace. Not for a single day. That’s what I say.
I say that if you would just give me five minutes alone with your phone, I would . . .
“Can we look at the backyard again?” I asked. I held up my own phone. “I want to take some pictures for my husband.”
“Sure,” she said, practically leaping out of her pumps to get to the back door. I followed her out, stopping to pretend to tie my shoe, setting my phone on the counter as I did so. I left it there as I stepped through the door behind her. “So, like I said before, you have a really big backyard here. Some shade in the south corner, which is good. The shed can stay or go, depending on what you want. Great neighbors on both sides. Feel free to take whatever photos you’d like.”
I reached into my pocket and let a surprised look fall over my face. I checked my other pockets, patting them briefly, and then chuckled and rolled my eyes. “I must have left my phone inside. I can’t believe I’m so absentminded. I’m just so excited about this. One second?”
She nodded and went over to a flowerpot, poking around at a half-dead stem inside.
I darted inside and went straight to her phone, praying the colors I’d seen when she keyed in her passcode were right. It was at an angle, and I wasn’t paying the closest attention in the world. But that was one of the great things about synesthesia—sometimes it did the paying attention for you.
Cornflower blue. Sea green. Silver. Brown.
I was in.
I was fucking in!
Now all I had to do was memorize his phone number and I would be good to go. I pressed her contacts icon. I didn’t need Chris after all. I was perfectly capable of getting shit done all on my—
I nearly dropped the phone.
Peter Fairchild. White, white, white. Bronze, melon, bronze, brown.
Easy number to memorize. It wasn’t the number that made my skin crawl, my throat dry, my breath catch.
It was the photo icon next to the number.
White-blond hair, blue eyes, super-tan skin.
Peter Fairchild was the white-blond-haired man.