Her Last Day (Jessie Cole #1)(60)

She nodded, lit a cigarette, then sucked in a lungful of nicotine.

“You’re on record as saying you had no idea what men, if any, Sophie hung out with during high school, but it’s become apparent that she made the rounds at any number of random bars from Placer to Sacramento County.”

She gave a tiny shrug of one shoulder.

“Is that a yes?”

“That sounds about right,” she said flippantly.

“You two were close,” he said.

She nodded.

“Did you visit these bars with her?”

“Maybe. Sure. I don’t really remember.”

He sighed, opened the file he’d brought with him, and then showed her the pictures he’d had printed.

Her face paled. “Where did you get those?”

“Myspace.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I deleted my account ages ago.”

It was his turn to shrug. “I have a friend. You could say he’s sort of a techno whiz at that kind of thing. Your account popped right up.”

“When did you meet Sophie?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know . . . middle school. I was probably twelve.”

“So you hung out from the age of twelve until she disappeared.”

“Yeah.”

He laid the pictures across the counter. There were six total, blown up to eight-by-tens. Juliette and Sophie were in every one. The first four were group pictures, Sophie, Juliette, and unidentified men, everyone making silly faces. The last two were Juliette and Sophie alone in semi-intimate positions. He looked at Juliette and waited for her to meet his gaze. It didn’t take long.

He raised an eyebrow. “Do I even need to ask?”

“No. We were more than just friends.”

“So she was bisexual?”

“No,” she said, sounding possessive.

“Why all the men in the bars?”

“We needed money, and Sophie was good at getting it.”

“You two were a team,” he said when he finally caught on to what she was saying. “She’d pick a guy up at a bar, bring them to a hotel, and you would rob them?”

“Something like that,” Juliette said before taking another hit of her cigarette. “Let’s put it this way—hotels were costly.”

He understood. “So, she brought him to her car, and that’s when the two of you would take his money.”

“Close,” she said. “Sophie would get him in the car, drive down the road, pump the brakes, pretend she had a flat tire, then pull over to the side of the road . . .”

“Where you would be waiting,” he said when she failed to finish her thought.

“That sounds about right.”

“And yet nobody ever turned either of you in?”

She shook her head. “Mostly I think they felt like idiots. And we rarely went to the same bar twice, so it would have been difficult to track us down.”

“What about the Wild West in Auburn?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Ben let that go for now. “All anybody had to do back then was describe what Sophie looked like and then report the make and model of the car or license-plate number.”

She laughed. “Neither of us owned a car.”

“So whose car did you drive?”

“Take a guess,” she said, still chuckling as if he was the biggest moron she’d ever met.

“You stole a car, drove to a bar, zeroed in on some fool, robbed him, and then left the car on the side of the road.”

She stubbed her cigarette out on a dirty plate. “More often than not, we returned the car to its original owner.”

“I’m sure they appreciated you returning their vehicle.”

“I’m sure.”

Judging by her mannerisms and the tone of her voice, it wasn’t that Juliette didn’t have a care in the world, Ben thought. She just plain didn’t care. “You never thought to tell the police any of this?”

“Why? I couldn’t tell you the name of even one man we robbed. It’s not like we killed anybody.”

“You never stopped to think that maybe one of these men might have wanted revenge?”

“Nope. That would take brains and balls.” She laughed.

“You talked to Sophie’s sister, Jessie, on more than one occasion after Sophie disappeared. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t tell her much—why is that?”

“It was Sophie’s sister, for God’s sake. How do you tell someone that their sister lies, cheats, and steals on a daily basis?”

“You sound bitter.”

“I was. Maybe I still am. I loved Sophie, but the truth is, she was bad news. She taught me how to disengage a car alarm and hot-wire an engine. Then she showed me how to make a living by robbing men who think with their dicks. My parents didn’t like me hanging around her, but Sophie Cole was addicting. I couldn’t let go.”

“What about the pregnancy?” Ben cut in. “How close were you two by then?”

“Close enough. She was raped.”

“Are you sure about that?” He pulled out one last photo from the manila folder and slapped it on the counter. This picture was of Sophie and a good-looking fellow with light hair and a friendly smile. A young Robert Redford look-alike. Sophie was sitting on his lap, her long arms hooked around his neck as she gave him one of her winning smiles and gazed longingly into his eyes.