Dark Places(102)

I knew I would keep going like this, actually, that I couldn’t stop until I found some sort of answer. Ben knew, I was sure of that now, Ben knew something. But he wasn’t saying. So keep going. I remember watching a very sensible love expert on TV once. The advice: “Don’t be discouraged—every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one.” That’s how I felt about this miserable quest: every person I talked to would let me down until I found the one person who could help me figure out that night.

Lyle was coming with me to Teepano Feed, partly because he wanted to see what Trey Teepano was like, and partly, I think, because he was nervous about the guy. (“I don’t really trust Devil worshipers.”) Teepano Feed was just east of Manhattan, Kansas, somewhere in a squat of farmland wedged between several new suburbs. The developments were blank and clean. They looked as fake as the Western souvenir shops back in Lidgerwood, a place where people only pretended to live. To my left, the boxy houses eventually gave way to an emerald lagoon of grass. A golf course. Brand new and small. In the cold morning rain, a few men remained on the fairway, twisted and tilted as they swung their clubs, looking like flags of yellow and pink against the green. Then just as quickly as the fake houses and the fake grass and the pastel-shirted men appeared, they were gone, and I was looking at a field of pretty brown Jersey cows, staring at me, expectant. I stared back—cows are the few animals that really seem to see you. I stared so hard I missed the big old brick building labeled Teepano Feed and Farm Supply, Lyle tapping my shoulder, LibbyLibbyLibby. I hit the brakes on my car and hydroplaned a good fifty feet, that soaring feeling reminding me of Runner letting me loose after spinning me. I backed up wildly and swerved into the gravel parking lot.

Only one other car was parked in front of the store, the whole place looking worn. The cement grooves between the bricks were filled with muck, and a kids’ merry-go-round near the front door— quarter a ride—was missing its seats. As I walked up the wide wooden steps that spanned the front, the neon lights in the windows blinked on. “We Got Llamas!” Odd words to see in neon. A tin sign reading Sevin 5% Dust dangled from one of the building posts. “What’s Pharoah quail?” Lyle said as we hit the top step. A bell on the door jangled as I opened it, and we walked into a room colder than the outside—the air conditioner was blasting, as was a soundsystem, playing cacophonous jazz, the soundtrack to a brain seizure.

Behind a long counter, rifles were locked in a glimmering cabinet, the glass enticing as a pond surface. Rows and rows of fertilizer and pellets, pick-axes, soil, and saddles stretched to the back of the store. Against the far wall was a wire cage holding a pack of unblinking bunnies. World’s dumbest pet, I thought. Who would want an animal that sat, quivered, and shat everywhere? They say you can litter-box train them, but they lie.

“Don’t … you know,” I started saying to Lyle, who was snapping his head around, shifting into his oblivious inquisitor mode, “You know, don’t—”

“I won’t.”

The crazy-making jazz continued as Lyle called out a hello. I could not see a single employee, nor customer for that matter, but then it was midmorning on a rainy Tuesday. Between the music and the sun-baked lighting from the ruthless fluorescent lamps, I felt stoned. Then I could make out movement, someone in the far back, bending and stooping in one of the aisles, and I started walking toward the figure. The man was dark, muscled, with thick black hair in a ponytail. He reared up when he saw us.

“Oh, dang!” he said flinching. He stared at us, then at the door, as if he’d forgotten he was open for business. “I didn’t hear you all come in.”

“Probably because of the music,” Lyle yelled, pointing up at the ceiling.

“Too loud for you? Probably right. Hold on.” He disappeared toward a back office and suddenly the music was gone.

“Better? Now what can I help you with?” He leaned against a seed bag, gave us a look that said we’d better be worth his turning down the music.

“I’m looking for Trey Teepano,” I said. “Is he the guy who owns this store?”

“I am. I do. I’m Trey. What can I do you for?” He had a tense energy, bounced on the balls of his feet, tucked his lips into his teeth. He was intensely good-looking with a face that blinked young-old, depending on the angle.

“Well.” Well, I didn’t know. His name floated in my head like an incantation, but what to do next: ask him if he’d been a bookie, if he knew Diondra? Accuse him of murder?

“Um, it’s about my brother.”

“Ben.”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised.

Trey Teepano smiled a cold crocodile smile. “Yeah, took me a second, but I recognized you. The red hair, I guess, and the same face. You’re the one who lived, right? Debby?”

“Libby.”

“Right. And who’re you?”

“I’m just her friend,” Lyle offered. I could feel him willing himself to stop talking, not pull a repeat of the Krissi Cates interview.

Trey began straightening the shelves, readjusting bottles of Deer-Off, poorly pretending to be occupied, like reading a book upside down.

“You knew my dad too?”

“Runner? Everyone knew Runner.”

“Runner mentioned your name the last time I saw him.”