Anyway, Mr. Browning went on to talk about how great Ashton was, how she excelled at tennis, won awards for her civic involvement, and how her smile could set a whole room aglow. You had to hand it to him—he was a good public speaker and never let his emotions get the better of him.
Toward the end, he waved for his wife and son to step forward. Julia Browning was probably about ten years younger than her husband. She was the kind of woman you would rate as attractive but you’d never call hot—too stiff and formal, kind of like she was trying to hold a fart in all the time. But there was a hollow look about her face, especially in her eyes, that let you know she wasn’t taking the disappearance as calmly as her husband.
The son they called Tres—pronounced “Trace”—but his real name was Eliot Browning III. He was my age, really pale and skinny, and had a bit of a turtle face. There wasn’t anything majestic about him. Sure, his forest-green shirt and dark brown trousers had the big-money sheen going, but if you put him in a hoodie and old jeans, he’d look more like a prime target for bullies in my high school cafeteria than a big-shot banker’s son.
He and his mom didn’t say anything. They were just there for emotional impact. Mr. Browning went on about how empty the house had been the last few days and how he wouldn’t rest until his daughter was back to fill it with her smiles and laughter. Then he pulled out the big guns.
“That is why,” he said, stepping back to loop his arms awkwardly around the shoulders of his wife on one side and son on the other, “the Browning family has decided to offer a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the safe return of Ashton.”
You better believe that sent a murmur through the crowd. Me, I was thinking about all the mojo a hundred thousand bucks could buy. Plus, the ’69 Mustang was back in the picture.
“So, please,” he added, “as you set off on this search today, keep Ashton in your hearts”—I wanted to add and wallets—“and don’t pass over any detail. You never know. It could be the key to finding my daughter.”
All in all, Mr. Browning was impressive, though that last part came off a little bit too much like a coach telling us to get out there and win the big game for the old alma mater. Still, I’d watched enough true-crime shows to know the cops usually assume parents or boyfriends are the most obvious suspects in cases like this. So you’d think that would’ve landed Mr. Browning right at the top of my list, except I also knew from watching all my fictional detective shows that the culprit is never the most obvious suspect. So that would rule him out. It was a real conundrum.
Then I had a stroke of brilliance—if the dad is the most obvious suspect and the real culprit is never supposed to be the most obvious suspect, then doesn’t that really make him the least obvious suspect? Therefore, if he’s the least obvious suspect, then he must be guilty.
Case solved. Now all I had to do was prove it. And hope that his wife would still make good on the hundred-thousand-dollar promise.
CHAPTER 9
Outside the tent, officers came around and assigned everybody to search different sectors of the nature park, so Audrey and I and Trix got lumped into the same group, along with two uniformed officers and about thirty other people, mostly teenagers. Unfortunately, we had to walk in a line through a hilly field way to the east of the prime location for clues—the woods where the hiking and jogging paths were.
“This is crap,” I said as we headed into the field. “How am I supposed to find any clues out here? I want to go where Ashton went, see what she saw, hear what she heard. I have to get into her mind.”
“Oh God,” Audrey said. “He’s kicking into TV-detective mode.”
So I’m like, “Well, it’s true—you have to know your victim first to figure anything out.” I turned to Trix. “You must’ve known Ashton pretty well, right? What kind of girl was she?”
Trix brushed a pigtail back over her shoulder. “I knew her, but I can’t say I knew her well. This is just my first year here. But I guess she seemed okay. Bad taste in music, but she was cooler than most of the androids at Hollister.”
“Androids?”
“Yeah, you know.” She made a stiff motion with her arms like a robot. “Like sixty percent of the student body has been programmed to act the same way—like they’re better than everyone else. I can’t believe how many people around here think everyone from California is some kind of freaky hippie driving around in an electric car and eating kelp or something. Like the world would be better off if the big earthquake hit California and it sank into the ocean.”
Actually, being from Oklahoma, that viewpoint didn’t sound so strange to me, but I’m just like, “Right. So what was different about Ashton?”
“I don’t know. At first she seemed like a lot of the other people around here who like to think they’re high society.” She put on a snooty voice for the high-society part. “But the thing is the real society types in New York or someplace like that might let them in the door, but they’d make fun of them after they left. It’s pathetic, really. But then this one time in class Ashton gave a speech about helping to feed the poor. That was different. She was definitely more likable than her little brother.”
“Tres? Isn’t that his name?”
“Yeah, Tres. You saw him up there with his dad and mom. He’s a little on the wimpy side. I think he was born prematurely or something and never quite got caught up.”