Page 8 of Nowhere Good

The detective jotted things down, tilting his notepad enough to hide it from her vision.

“I’m sure you’re just doing your due diligence, right?” She laughed nervously. “I mean, my boyfriend can’t be a suspect here. He didn’t know Eliza.”

“Of course,” he replied, but this time, she sensed he was not being honest. “Maybe I could talk to Dillon myself. Is he around?”

“Um—”

A rough hand smoothed over her shoulders. Claire turned into a block of ice. Her dad leaned over them, his white hair in a long ponytail, shaved short at the front, matching the goatee around his mouth. He’d swapped out of his denim vest and into that long-sleeved tartan button-up that did well to hide his tattoos. Now, he looked no different than a grandpa in a Wal-Mart ad, flipping burgers in front of a grill.

He playfully said, “Aww, come on, man, you always come into a man’s business and make his daughter cry?”

“I’m not crying, Daddy,” Claire muttered, wiping her eyes to be sure. Maybe there were a few stragglers left. Sully bounced on her lap. Claire had been so absorbed into the conversation, she’d nearly forgotten about him.

Detective Winslow’s expression didn’t change as he exchanged a firm, slightly-too-long handshake with her father.

“Ron Dyer,” her dad said. “I own this bar, been in my family for two generations now.”

“Detective Winslow. I was just asking—”

“I overheard ya. You were asking where my cook, Dillon, is, but I’m afraid he’s not in today. I sent ’im to grab some supplies from a farm in the next town over, so he won’t be back for a while.”

Claire frowned. Dillon was in the back. Why were they lying?

“How long is a while, sir?” the detective asked.

“Sir!” Her dad cackled. “Hey, it’s nice to have some respect ’round here. You’re all right, kid. Polite. To answer your question: few hours, prob’ly, but Dillon’s his own man. Will see ’im when I see ’im.”

Detective Winslow did not seem convinced. He turned to Claire. “You don’t know when he’ll be back?”

“N-no idea.” Claire’s stomach lurched. Here she was, complicit in all these lies, when she didn’t even know what she was lying for.

“Right,” Detective Winslow said. “I need to talk to him. Could you let him know I stopped by?”

“Sure, man, no problem,” her dad replied.

The door dinged, and a group of people came in—the Welsh family, equipped with Grandma Welsh, her daughter, her daughter’s daughter, and a baby. They came in every Sunday like clockwork for bacon and eggs lunch, but this time, their timing was impeccable—the perfect out.

“Ahh, the lunch rush begins,” her dad said.

Detective Winslow stood, and Claire did too, scooping Sully into her arms. “I’ll come back at a better time.” His gaze briefly met hers before he nodded at them both, then took off across the bar.

“I’m sure you will,” her dad muttered.

As he left, the detective glanced at the kitchen window, but Dillon wasn’t there anymore.

THREE

Back at the station, Seth leaned over his laptop in the conference room as late-afternoon light spilled through the windows, his coffee cold beside him. He’d spent most of his day getting up to speed on the case and reviewing potential camera angles from the night of the murder, but he didn’t find anything Haylock might have missed. And his mind kept going back to Dillon Beamish.

If Claire Dyer wasn’t going to tell him about her boyfriend’s relationship with Eliza Johnson, then there were other ways to dig up the truth.

Social media. Like a gift from beyond the grave, Eliza had left her Facebook profile public. It hadn’t been touched in years, but photos from her high school days were wide open. Before she ended up homeless and addicted.

Even the most recent photos were from eight years ago—Eliza, alone in front of a willow tree; Eliza at sunset, holding a fishing line in front of a lake; Eliza on a grassy trail, bathed in sunlight. She wore clothes from another era, yoga pants and hoodies that had long gone out of style. Even all the way out here, at a high school in Missouri, some trends had been the same as when he’d been in high school in New York. It made him strangely nostalgic for a time he barely thought of anymore.

Someone had taken these photos of Eliza. When Haylock and the cops had interviewed those who knew her, they’d come up shorthanded. She’d spent the recent years of her life in and out of the women’s shelter and mostly slept on the street, so any friends she once had were long gone. She did have a phone, but had pawned it a month before, probably for drug money. As Seth skimmed past each picture, he checked the names of those who had liked them, but didn’t see any of the names who’d earned a spot on his radar yet. No DB.

Seth sighed and leaned back in his chair. The conference room was much smaller than what he was used to. It was encased by windows looking out into the bullpen, where a handful of officers sat on desks throughout. A corkboard with crime scene photos pinned to it had been set up by Haylock, but Seth had created his own section too, just for his persons of interest. Dillon Beamish’s picture had made the cut.