“Oh. Right.” He thought back. “I guess it must have been a week or two before she left. Died.” He swallowed.

“That wasn’t the last time you saw her, was it?”

He shook his head. “I saw her at school every day after that. And we were still dating, too. Hanging out. You know. We just didn’t come back here.”

I opened my mouth to ask why, whether anything had happened to make them choose not to, but before I could, Derek had taken the conversation in a different direction.

“So when was the last time you saw her?” He had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning against the front of the dresser. Being, as he had said, dense and heavy, it didn’t budge.

“Alive?” Brandon asked.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Of course alive. You didn’t see her dead, did you?”

“Of course not.” Brandon ’s face was pale. “Not until two days ago. And then I didn’t know it was her.”

“So when?”

His eyes flickered. “I guess it must have been the day before she died. Final exams were over, and she told me she was ready to blow town. I tried to get her to change her mind, but she wouldn’t. Then she tried to get me to agree to come with her.”

“I thought she wanted to marry some rich guy and sit around sipping champagne all day,” I commented. “At least that’s what Denise Robertson said.”

That particular fantasy didn’t seem to include a steady boyfriend, especially one she’d dragged clear across the country with her.

“Denise doesn’t know squat,” Brandon answered.

“I thought she and Holly were close friends?”

“Is that what she told you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Look, Holly was gorgeous. Popular. The girl all the other girls wanted to be and all the guys wanted to be with. And she got off on it. It fed some kind of insecurity in her to have everyone admire her. She let Denise hang around with her, but their relationship wasn’t friendship so much as hero-worship on Denise’s part, and maybe some calculation on Holly’s. Denise was always sort of plain and dumpy, and Holly knew that if they were standing next to each other, she’d come off looking better.”

Derek muttered something, in which I thought I could make out the word “Melissa,” but I had other things on my mind and didn’t chase it down.

“She doesn’t sound like a very nice person,” I remarked instead.

Brandon looked frustrated. He tried to drive a hand through his hair, but the police buzz cut was too short to give satisfaction. “It wasn’t that she wasn’t nice, OK? She could be very sweet. She was just immature, you know? Her dad left when she was just a kid, and I think it probably messed with her. Made her feel like he didn’t love her. So she was always trying to get everyone else to love her, or at least like her, instead. Especially men.”

Derek had told me that Brandon ’s dad had left around the same time as Brandon started dating Holly, so maybe that’s what had brought them together. The loss of both their fathers, at different times.

“So Holly asked you to go to California with her?” Derek said. Brandon nodded. “How was she planning to get there?”

“She wanted me to drive,” Brandon said, with a faint, reminiscent smile. “Like that old jalopy I had then would have made it that far!”

“What do you think she did, when you said no?”

Brandon thought for a brief second. “Probably tried to find someone else to take her instead.”

“Would she hitchhike?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I don’t think so. She may have been immature, but she wasn’t stupid. More likely she tried to find another friend with a car who’d be up for an adventure.”

Someone without a sick mother and ties to Waterfield that couldn’t easily be broken. Brandon must have been more mature than Holly, even four years ago.

“Denise?” Derek suggested. Brandon shook his head.

“There’s no way Denise would have left Travis. Her boyfriend. Husband, now. And Holly wouldn’t have wanted the competition, anyway. Getting away from Waterfield and ‘making it’ was her thing; she would have wanted to do it on her own.”

“Would she have asked a guy, then?”

Brandon ’s eyebrows furrowed for a second while he thought. “Most likely she would. No competition from a guy, and she could get most of us-them-to do whatever she wanted.”

“So maybe whoever she asked killed her?” I said.

“Unless she never asked anyone else, and Denise killed her,” Derek answered. “Or her mother did. To stop her from leaving, maybe.”

“True,” I admitted.

Brandon looked a little shell-shocked as he listened to our discussion. He’d known Holly, and must be, in his own way, mourning the loss, as well as processing the shock of finding out she’d been killed, even so long after the fact. Not to mention that he was probably processing the fact that he’d been digging out her skeleton, without realizing it. To us, it was more of an interesting puzzle. And also, if we could prove that Holly had been killed somewhere else, and arrived here only after death, maybe that would make the house a little easier to off-load. Not that there was much hope of that, considering the blood stain on the stove and what was likely Holly’s earring that I’d found underneath the fridge.

“So about dinner,” Derek said. Obviously the discussion hadn’t affected his appetite at all. Derek’s appetite was affected by very little, I’d realized. Brandon, on the other hand, looked queasy.

“Why don’t you two go get some food,” he suggested, “and pick up the stuff we need while you’re at it. I’ll stay here and strip some wallpaper or something. You can bring me back a sandwich, just in case I get hungry later.”

“We can do that,” Derek said, putting an arm around my shoulders.

“Are you sure you want to stay here alone, though?” I asked. Brandon nodded.

“Word’s probably got out by now. I don’t want to go anywhere where I’ll have to talk to anyone. Or listen to them talk about me.”

I could understand that. “Still…”

Derek’s arm tightened. “C’mon, Avery. Let’s go.”

“Yes,” I said as he led me toward the door to the hallway, “but…”

“I’ll be fine,” Brandon assured my back. “I’m just gonna stay here and work. And think. Maybe I’ll remember something that’ll help. The sooner Wayne arrests somebody for the murders, the sooner I’ll be back on duty. No offense, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’d rather be back at my own job again.”

“We’ll see you in an hour or so,” Derek said, without commenting. “Move it, Tink.”

“Yes,” I tried again, “but…”

The rest of my sentence was lost when he whisked me out the door into the gathering dusk.

“What was that all about?” I asked a couple of minutes later, when we were in the truck on our way down Becklea. Just as we reached the corner, we met Lionel Kenefick’s van coming the other way. I waved, but he must not have realized who I was, because he didn’t wave back. I watched in the mirror as he zipped into his driveway and parked.

“He wants some time alone,” Derek answered.

“ Brandon? Why?”

Derek glanced over at me, his expression almost comical. “Put yourself in his shoes, Avery. In the past two days, he’s found out that his old girlfriend, who he thought was strutting her stuff on a movie set in Hollywood, has actually been dead for four years. He’s dug up her skeleton and come face-to-face with a forensic reconstruction of her face. He’s also had to process another murder victim, this one fresh. And now someone is planting evidence around his house, trying to implicate him. He has lost his job, at least temporarily, and along with it his ability to support his mom, whose medicines cost thousands every month. MS isn’t a cheap illness to treat. And on top of that, we’ve just asked him to spend four hours in the house where Holly was buried. Then grilled him about what happened the last time he saw her. I’m sure he’s happy to be rid of us for a while.”