The Stories You Tell by Kristen Lepionka

Author:Kristen Lepionka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

TWENTY-ONE

The phone woke me up around five o’clock. This was getting to be a bit of a habit, and one I didn’t like. “Morning, doll,” Peter Novotny said. “Good news and bad news.”

“Let’s hear the bad news first,” I said. I dragged myself down the hall and perched on the edge of my desk, nudging my laptop awake. The fruits of my research into Mickey’s cousin Rick were still up on the screen, though they didn’t amount to much: he’d had the same job at Best Buy for eleven years, lived at the same address his entire life, no record, not even a speeding ticket. I didn’t have any emails from Kenny Brayfield, either. I closed the lid.

Novotny said, “Okay, the bad news is your guy must have gone into the gym at some point during the night and I missed it.”

“You missed it, or your reinforcement missed it?”

“Something like that,” he said, not answering the question. “But that brings me to the good news.”

“Okay?”

“I got him leaving this morning, and I’m currently on his tail.”

I was already pulling on my jeans. “Where?”

“On 71 now, headed towards downtown.”

By the time I got myself out of the house and onto the snow-covered freeway, Wyatt and Novotny had exited onto Main Street, driven east a while, and pulled into a motel.

A familiar motel.

“Right in there is where he went,” Novotny said once I had joined him in his car, a plush maroon Caddy that made me miss my old Mercedes, may she rest in peace. He pointed at the door at the end of the building. The room where I’d talked to Shane last week. “He took two grocery bags in. So what’s the approach?”

“Approach?” I said. “I figured I’d wait till somebody came out. Wyatt knows what I look like, Shane knows what I look like, so the element of surprise is out. Not to mention I don’t know who else is in there.”

Novotny clapped his hands together. “I know, isn’t it exciting? Here’s what we should do.”

Ten minutes later, I watched as Novotny shuffled up to the room, hunched over in an exaggerated old-man posture. He knocked tentatively on the door.

Wyatt opened it. “Can I help you?”

“Oh my goodness,” Novotny said loudly, “Thank you. I can’t find the room, my daughter—it’s so cold—can I use your phone, young man?”

Wyatt looked out across the parking lot, saw nothing amiss, and motioned for Novotny to come inside.

A few seconds later, my phone rang. “Dad!” I said. “Where are you?”

We put on a brief teleplay wherein he told me that two nice young men were helping him, and I said I would be right down. Then, with a hat pulled low over my brow, I knocked on the door too.

“Dad, it’s me,” I called.

Wyatt opened the door and let me in.

Over his shoulder, I saw Shane Resznik fake-sleeping on one of the room’s double beds.

I took my hat off. “Hi guys,” I said. “Sorry for the trickery.”

“What the—” Shane said, jumping out of bed.

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