Once You Go This Far Read online

  “Don’t fucking move,” I said, the knife outstretched.

  I realized he was a teenager, probably no more than fifteen or sixteen. Sandy hair, longish, an oversize black hoodie and ripped jeans, dirty Vans, a few bristly mustache hairs that stood out from his greasy, pale face. His eyes were wide and glued to the knife.

  “What are you doing in this house?”

  He looked from the knife to me to the doorway. I took a step closer. “Don’t even think about it. What are you doing here? Who are you?”

  “Who are you? Where’s Rebecca?”

  “You first. What’s your name?”

  “A—” he said. “A. My name is A.”

  “This isn’t Pretty Little Liars. What’s your name?”

  He seemed to deflate. “Aiden.”

  “I’m a friend of Rebecca’s family.”

  “When is she coming home?”

  The bravado in his voice was fading. I started to feel a little bit bad. “She’s not.”

  “What?” Aiden’s face went from scared to bewildered, a subtle but meaningful shift.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Rebecca died.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There was an accident—”

  “No, no, no, she’s just in Columbus with her daughter, she’s pregnant, she said she was coming back—” He stopped abruptly, expression hardening into a sneer. “How do I know you’re not one of them?”

  “One of who?”

  “If you were really a friend of her family, you’d know.”

  “Okay, listen. I’m a private investigator. Rebecca’s daughter Maggie hired me, to try to figure out what really happened. Do you know something about what happened?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, lady.” He was still trying to sound tough, but his eyes grew foggy with tears. “Oh man,” he whispered almost under his breath. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “What are you doing in her house?”

  Aiden just stared at me, his expression defiant even as his upper lip trembled.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No. I just don’t like being cornered in here by some strange woman.” He swiped at his eyes.

  “I’m not cornering you. I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “I can’t tell you. I don’t even know you.”

  “I’m going to show you my license. So you know I’m telling you the truth.”

  I got out my wallet and flipped it open with one hand—my other hand was still holding the knife.

  “Whatever, like you can’t just make one of those yourself.”

  I tossed one of my business cards onto the bed. “Google me.”

  He picked up the card but didn’t look at it. “Are you just going to hold me here at knifepoint forever?”

  “Until you tell me what’s going on. You’re here, the police were here—what do you know about that?”

  “I don’t know anything about anything.”

  “It sounds like you do, if there’s something you don’t want to tell me.”

  “I can’t believe him.”

  “Who, Aiden?”

  The kid clutched at his temples. The bewilderment had turned to panic. “Rebecca’s supposed to help me.”

  “Help you with what? Aiden, if you talk to me, maybe I can help you.”

  He shook his head.

  “Why’d you unplug the phone?”

  “So they can’t trace it.”

  “So who can’t?”

  Nothing.

  “Look, Aiden, I’ve got all night.”

  “Can I eat my sub first?” Now his voice was plaintive. He did look like he hadn’t been eating much lately. “I’m so hungry, dude. My blood sugar is like super low.”

  I sighed. “You can eat your sub while you talk, how about that?”

  We went down the steps in the dark. Instead of going through the dining room, which would have been shorter, the kid led me the opposite way. I didn’t have time to think about why before he flung open the hall closet door in my face. I banged right into it, and in the second or two that it took me to extricate myself from the door, Aiden managed to get out through the back door, sandwich in hand.

  CHAPTER 12

  I went back into the house and up to the shelf full of yearbooks. The most recent was called Hello, Horizons! It had a cheery sunglasses-wearing sun on the cover. But what were the sunglasses protecting it from, itself? Assuming that a random teen in Rebecca’s house had to be someone she knew through school, I paged through the pages of identical school-day pictures, looking for Aiden’s skinny face. Everyone looked about the same in their uniforms of white Oxford shirts embroidered with the school logo, though the occasional bit of flair showed through—a necklace, a colorful undershirt, an inspired hairdo, an earnest grin or a bad-boy smirk.

  I finally found him near the top of last year’s sophomore class. Aiden Brant.

  Unlike his peers, Aiden Brant just looked lost. His skinny frame swam in a polo shirt at least two sizes too big, and the expression on his face was more easily defined by what it wasn’t than by what it was: not a smile, not a smirk, not a moody stare or a class-clown antic.

  I paged through the Clubs section but found no sign of him there. No sports, no extracurriculars. He did not seem to be engaged in the culture of the Horizons Academy, modern Christian school that it was.

  * * *

  “Aiden Brant, yes, of course, he was a student until a few weeks ago.” Sharon Coombs sipped from the glass of white wine that she’d been working on when I rang the doorbell of her downtown condo. “A junior this year but his parents pulled him out of school, oh, at the end of September to send him to a boarding school in Michigan, I believe.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “He needed structure that we don’t have. He’s a bright kid, maybe too bright. The kind of smarts that manifests as being difficult, I guess you could say.” She gazed out her window to the Maumee River below. “Now that you mention it, Rebecca had been a little concerned when that happened. His withdrawal from school.”

  “How so?”

  “She asked for his home address. Which I gave her. I didn’t hear anything else about it.”

  “Do you think she could have gotten mixed up in something, maybe through trying to help him?”

  “We have established protocols for issues with students,” Sharon said. “Suspicions of abuse, trouble at home, et cetera. Rebecca always followed them.”

  That was the thing about mysteries—no one ever deviated from the routine until the moment they did.

  “So the trouble with Aiden Brant wouldn’t have been something she was involved in.”

  “I can’t say for sure that he never went to see her, but he wasn’t one of the repeat offenders, you know, the kids who end up in the nurse’s office every day. His trouble was more along the lines of sassing his teachers and refusing to do his assignments. I fully supported the parents’ decision to find a new school environment for him. What makes you ask about Aiden Brant?”

  “Something Maggie said.” The lie rolled off my tongue so easily, I was a little disarmed by myself. I was racking up the fibs so far on this case, something I’d possibly worry about if they weren’t so damned effective.

  “I’m surprised Rebecca would have mentioned him to her.”

  “Well, I think they were very close.”

  That eyebrow flicker again. “I’m glad.”

  “Do you disagree?”

  Sharon smiled. “They had their own rough patches. Maggie was too smart for her own good too. But it sounded like getting ready to have a baby of her own made her rethink some of the attitudes she had towards Rebecca.”

  * * *

  Beginning to wonder if my own client was telling me the whole story, I gave Maggie a call but had to leave her a message. If people didn’t start picking up the phone when I contacted them, I was going to develop some kind of complex.


  It was around seven when I left Sharon’s house. Still vaguely suspicious of my motel, I posted up at a Starbucks nearby and tried to see what I could see about Aiden Brant. I looked for social media profiles, finding a private Instagram and a public but abandoned Twitter account where he retweeted skateboarding videos until the summer before last, when he just stopped posting. I also found an obit from the Toledo Blade from the same time, for Geoffrey Brant, age forty-one, who died following a short illness, survived by his wife, Nadine, and his children Aiden and Katie.

  I followed the thread of these names for a while. Katie Brant was an apple-cheeked fourth grader who attended a gifted and talented school and had come in third in the Ohio statewide spelling bee earlier this year—she went out on the word amelioration. I found Nadine’s current address, a big white house in Ottawa Hills, just below the nature reserve. It was an architectural wonder, this house, as if the builder had set himself the challenge of adding every possible style in suburban home design to the façade of this one structure. A circular driveway, a turret, a portico, a two-story entry, a sky-lit garage, and a black wrought-iron fence with a painted-brick base. The yard was cleared of fallen leaves but the once-colorful chrysanthemums around the front porch had been neglected to death. I rang the doorbell, which sounded with a chimey rendition of the first bars of “Ode to Joy.” It was that sort of place.

  The doorbell’s serenade was interrupted by a barking dog, which made itself visible in the panes of glass that flanked the door—a white and floofy creature with a shiny black nose. It looked big.

  I took a step back, which afforded me a glimpse of the ruffling curtains in a window to the side of the door.

  The dog retreated, accompanied by the sound of nails scampering on tile.

  The door opened and I found myself looking at the down-market Russell Crowe from last night’s dinner.

  * * *

  He looked positively shocked to see me. Hopefully I hid my own shock a little better as I said, “Well, how about that, we are neighbors.”

  “Hi, uh, Roxane, was it?”

  I nodded. “This is just such a coincidence, Joel, I can’t even believe it. But I was driving down the street here, just out here,” I said, pointing over my shoulder and stalling for time, “and I ran over this.” I pulled the yearbook out of my bag and brushed at the cheerful sun on its cover as if to wipe away the tire tracks. “I just thought, someone’s going to miss this.”

  Joel laughed, a little uneasy. “Well, that is quite the coincidence.”

  “Do you know who this might belong to?”

  “My sons go to Horizons.”

  “Well, how about that.”

  He was holding a stack of mail, which I casually glanced at; an AmEx bill was addressed to Joel Creedle, care of Keystone Christian Fellowship. He said, “So you were just driving by?”

  “I got turned around after I left the nature preserve. Such a great spot for hiking.”

  He nodded. “It’s great.”

  “This seems like a wonderful area for kids.”

  “It is.”

  “You said you have sons?”

  “Twin boys. Preston and Porter.”

  I vaguely remembered seeing those names in the yearbook, possibly one year behind Aiden.

  “Great names. Just the two kids?”

  Joel nodded vaguely and fanned the pages of the yearbook and I was suddenly seized with worry that someone had signed it like Have a great summer, Nurse Newsome! But if anyone had, he didn’t let on. “Well, thanks for this, I really don’t know how to explain how it got out there, but I’m sure the boys will be glad to have it back. I don’t mean to be abrupt, but I was in the middle of something.”

  “Of course,” I said, “you have a great night.”

  I walked back to the car wondering why Joel Creedle didn’t count Aiden and his sister Katie among his kids, step or no, and why a pastor’s stepson was hiding out in a dead woman’s house, certain she was going to help him.

  CHAPTER 13

  I started the morning with a rather tense phone call from my client. “Aiden Brant,” Maggie said over the Bluetooth connection in my car. The day was overcast and chilly and felt like a biting rain was inevitable before the sun went down. “No, I’ve never heard the name.”

  “She never mentioned a student from her school that she was particularly close to?”

  “I mean, maybe she mentioned a student here or there, but she never said that he had been to her house. Why would she ever have a student at her house?” In the background, baby Bea started to cry. Our conversation had started on the high note of Maggie locating the addresses for Rebecca’s other rental properties, but things were going downhill quickly.

  “I don’t know. So your mother tended not to confide in you?”

  “What does that mean?”

  I wasn’t sure what it meant. “I spoke to a coworker at the school,” I said. “Sharon Coombs. She was under the impression that you two had been through a rough patch.”

  Maggie didn’t answer right away, and when she did, her tone was measured. “Was I a perfect daughter? No. Did we have a perfect relationship? No. But we loved each other and we both knew it. Isn’t that good enough?”

  Only Maggie herself could answer that one. I said, “Do you know anything about a man named Joel Creedle?”

  She cleared her throat. “Well, of course.”

  “Really?”

  “The Fellowship is a big part of my life.”

  “The Keystone Christian Fellowship?”

  “Yes.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, James and I moved down here to be a part of planting a Columbus church.”

  “Planting?”

  “That’s what it’s called. Starting a new church.”

  “So you know Joel Creedle personally?”

  “No, no. Someday I hope to hear him preach in person but for now, just the worship stream.”

  “Worship stream?”

  “Why are you asking these questions about the Fellowship?”

  “Curiosity. What’s a worship stream?”

  “They can beam the service on the internet. So we can watch, no matter where we are.”

  It was an odd description of the technology for a twentysomething. I said, “Was your mother a member of the Fellowship too?”

  “She was for a long time, but she disconnected.”

  “Disconnected.”

  “It’s what we call people who leave the group.”

  “Why’d she leave?”

  Maggie sighed. “It was around the time she split up from Keir. She was going through some things.”

  I thought about that. Five or six years was a long time for a church-related vendetta. “Did she know Joel Creedle personally?”

  “Oh no, she had left already by the time he took over. But I know that he has children—maybe she knew him through the Horizons Academy?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Okay, what about the St. Clair Club?”

  “No.”

  “Detroit?”

  “Well,” Maggie said, her tone getting a little sharp, “I’m sure at some point she mentioned Detroit for some reason or another.”

  “You know I’m trying to help you.”

  She sighed. “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just … well … it seems … improper. That some kid from her school was in her house. I didn’t think that you were going to find out something bad about her, but I guess that’s the way this works.”

  “You never know what might be out there. But I don’t know what’s going on with this kid yet. There very well could be an innocent explanation.”

  Maggie didn’t say anything.

  I felt for her. What she’d really hired me to do was to ease her mind, allay her fears, prove that nothing was wrong after all. Reassurance, plain and simple. That was still possible, but that wasn’t the same thing as likely.

  “I did find out something interesting, about Windsor,” I continued.

  “Oh
?”

  “Your dad is the director of security at the casino there.”

  “What?” If her voice was tense before, now it was practically fraying apart. “Did you talk to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So maybe it’s some coincidence.”

  “Maybe, but I tend to think not—”

  “I don’t want to hear anything else about him.”

  “I understand that it’s a sensitive subject for you.”

  “If my mother got back in touch with him, that’s really her business. But I don’t want anything to do with him.”

  “Okay. You don’t have to.”

  “Keir Metcalf is the person you’re supposed to be looking at anyway. Not Pastor Joel and not Barry and not this Aiden whoever.”

  “Maggie, I know.”

  “Well? Have you spoken to Keir?”

  “I have.” I cleared my throat. “He mentioned that you two had a disagreement—his word, disagreement—when you were in high school.”

  She went quiet.

  “I’m not saying that you’re wrong about him, but I did want to check in with you to see if that could be why you’re so certain that he’s involved.”

  “A disagreement.”

  “Like I said, his word.”

  “I’m certain he’s involved because he’s a creep. Look, I have to go. Bea needs me.”

  She hung up just as it started to rain.

  * * *

  Despite Arlene French’s general disdain for renters, I didn’t think they had anything to do with Rebecca’s demise. But I wanted to check the places out anyway. There were two, both in Old West End, both brick Victorians on a tree-lined block of Scottswood Avenue. A kid in a University of Toledo sweatshirt answered the door at the first, rubbing his eyes blearily.

  “Your landlady,” I started.

  “Rebecca?”

  “Yeah. What do you think of her?”

  “She’s sooo nice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I mean, who can say they have a nice landlord? We’re lucky. Especially because she hasn’t cashed our October rent check yet and there was a bit of a cash-flow shortage in September, know what I mean?”