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Alvarez scrolled up. “She texted you just about every day, sometimes more than once.”
“Yeah.” He took a long drag from his cig. “Your point is . . . ?”
“So, didn’t you think it was strange that she just stopped?”
“She’s a chick. Y’know. They’re all weird. Sometimes all in your grill, then they get pissed or into something or someone else and they, like, disappear.” He reached for his phone. “Give it back. Some of that stuff is private.” Then, not waiting, snatched it out of Alvarez’s fingers. “Should never have let you see it.”
“It proves nothing, Kywin,” Pescoli said.
“I’m tellin’ ya: I didn’t get any text that night. I didn’t delete any texts. I didn’t hear from her after she sent me the last one you just seen.” He held up the phone, shaking it.
“You didn’t respond.”
“No. I was busy. I was at work when she texted, then with the guys later that night. I already told you this.” He took a final puff on his cigarette, then jabbed it into a cracked ceramic pot filled with sand and soil, where other dead butts had collected. “I gotta go.”
Pescoli asked, “Have you talked to Lindsay Cronin?”
“What?” His eyebrows slammed together.
“Lindsay,” she repeated. “Have you seen her?”
“I saw her at the party up at the point. When Bianca found Destiny. You know we were all there.”
Alvarez asked, “You heard she’s missing?”
“Simone said something about it.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he said, “I don’t know anything about her being gone.” A pause, then his expression changed to incredulity. “Jesus, don’t tell me you think I had something to do with that, too.”
Pescoli said, “We don’t know what happened to her, yet, but she got a message from Destiny, too. Sent about thirty seconds after she sent one to you.”
Gone was the dismissive attitude. “Did Lindsay get hers?”
“We don’t know,” Alvarez said.
“Well, I didn’t. I’ve told you over and over. I don’t know anything about what happened to Des.”
Pescoli pushed him. “What about Lindsay?”
“Are you deaf? Or just stupid? I had nothing to do with whatever happened to either one of them. I don’t even like Lindsay. For Christ’s sake, I’m done talkin’ with you. Done. So get off my property and don’t come back without a warrant!”
He grabbed the handle of the rusted screen door, yanked it hard enough that Pescoli thought it might come off its hinges, then stomped inside, the door banging behind him.
They were about to leave when a Chevy Suburban rolled into the driveway to park behind Kywin’s truck.
Uh-oh. Pescoli braced herself as Franklin Bell, nearly three hundred pounds of him, cut the engine and stepped into the yard. A trucker’s cap shaded eyes already covered by mirrored aviator glasses, his jeans were dusty, his black T-shirt gray with Sheetrock dust. Franklin was a surly man who drank too much, and when he did, more often than not, he let his fists do his talking, and they never said anything good. His ex-wife, Wilda, could tell that story.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” he said, his lips curling into a snarl.
“Franklin,” Pescoli greeted him flatly. “We needed to talk to your son about the disappearance of Lindsay Cronin.”
“I thought her name was Destiny. And they found her.” One sausage-like finger poked in Pescoli’s direction. “Your kid found her.”
“That’s right. Destiny Montclaire was the victim of homicide and now Lindsay Cronin’s gone missing.”
“Damn.” His lips folded in on themselves. “You think one of my boys had somethin’ to do with it? That why you’re here?” His gaze sliced from Kywin’s truck to the house. “Just because I’ve had my trouble with you all don’t mean my kids are . . .” He stared down at Pescoli. “Don’t put this on my boys. You can pick on me all you want, but you leave Kywin and Kip alone.”
A kick of adrenaline charged through Pescoli’s blood. Franklin Bell was violent and unpredictable, but she said calmly, “Kywin got a text from the girl who was killed, Destiny Montclaire, on the night she died, then he lied about it. Still is lying. And now another girl he knows is missing.”
“We’re following up,” Alvarez said.
