Page 23 of Vanished in the Mist
“Perfect. Are you willing to be our designated driver today?”
“You do know it’s not even one in the afternoon, right?”
She grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She opened the bottle and took a deep sip. When she set it on the countertop, Kaden leaned on the raised part of the counter across from her.
“What did you learn from that interview?” he asked.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether Tristan Cargill went missing before or after Tanya.”
He stared at her a long moment. “You suspect Tristan had something to do with Tanya’s disappearance?”
“I think it’s possible that he had some part in it, yes.”
“And then what? Someone found out and killed him, as revenge?”
“Maybe.”
“O-kay. And why would they do that? Who would do that? Not Tanya’s parents. They’re both pushing for answers. If they found out that Tristan killed Tanya, I can’t see them killing him and then hounding the police to keep investigating. They’d want his death covered up, not exposed.”
“Agreed. I doubt they have anything to do with Tristan’s death. And I’m not saying with any degree of confidence that Tristan killed Tanya. I’m just considering that he might have known something about it or have been involved in some way. You heard Peyton talk about having friends in high school. But when I questioned her about them, she said they’d all gone their separate ways, lost touch. You don’t get to be a prom queen without being an outgoing, people person, someone who’s popular and makes friends wherever they go. She’d have to have had a personality transplant after high school to immediately give all of that up. If she truly hasn’t kept tabs on her high-school friends, there has to be a compelling reason. And I’m betting that compelling reason is whatever made her nervous whenever I brought up Tanya.”
“I’m following but not following.”
She took another swig of beer. “I’m all over the place. I know. This isn’t my normal way of investigating, being in a rush, trying to jump from pointAto pointGwithout covering the letters in between. I’m babbling and going off on all kinds of tangents.”
“How about we sit, take a deep breath, then talk it through.”
“Good idea.” She reached for the beer again.
He took it from her and set it in the sink. “Let’s keep that brilliant mind of yours operating on all cylinders since we have a limited amount of time. Okay?”
She rolled her eyes but headed to the table, where they sat across from each other.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Slowly, for those of us not used to doing investigations like this. What are we looking at so far?”
“So far.” She crossed her arms on the tabletop. “All right. Let’s talk it through. We have a sophomore, a fifteen-year-old about to become a junior. She’s smart, a bookworm, creative, introverted. The reports we read say she didn’t have any close friends. Her parents and her books were her only real support system.”
“Aside from your sister, right? Cassidy was her teacher and concerned about her.”
“Cassidy said that Tanya was very private, hard to get close to. She worried about her not having friends so she’d spoken to her parents several times, becoming close to them. Cassidy is one of those teachers who is usually the favorite, the teacher all the kids adore. But in Tanya’s case, she, well, wasn’t. I think that’s why Tanya’s disappearance hit her so hard. She’d tried to be her friend, to be there for her, but never quite managed to break through Tanya’s wall.”
She gave him a sad smile. “We’re back to a young girl pretty much on her own. She goes missing a few weeks after graduation. And after that, one of the most popular seniors, Peyton, cuts off contact with all her friends. Not only that, her main friends from school were at the lake today and ignored not only her, but each other. So it’s likely that her friends did the same thing, dropped all of their close acquaintances after graduation. There aren’t any huge, traumatic events in town that I’ve heard of from Cassidy that happened around that time. The only traumatic event was Tanya’s disappearance and the fallout from that.”
“The police grilling Peyton and her friends, among others.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And now one of those former friends has died. Not just that, he was murdered. Peyton spoke about him like she still cared for him, and yet she hadn’t talked to him in almost a year. Add to that her nervousness, fear really, every time I mentioned Tanya and, well, you can see where I’m going.”
“It’s all connected.”
“Seems like it,” she said.
“What if those conclusions we’re jumping to are completely wrong?”
“What if they aren’t?”
