Keeping Secrets in Seattle - By Brooke Moss Page 0,51

houses. Old cars were parked out front. Toys littered the sidewalks. Bikes were parked in front of the porches. Some houses looked clean and well kept, but many of them were in need of a fresh coat of paint, and a few of the houses on each street had fairly neglected yards. The neighborhood didn’t fit the mold Alicia described.

“I think I’m gonna google an address,” I murmured from the backseat as Betsy wove the Chevelle up and down streets slowly.

“Good idea.” Kim pointed into the parking lot of a gas station, where the sign was flickering and someone in a low rider had the bass up way too high. “This is like looking for freaking Waldo.”

Betsy turned off the car while I powered on my BlackBerry and searched for the name “Von Longorial.”

“It’s not here,” I said to the girls, who’d started humming the Mission Impossible theme. “I’ll check for Long.”

“What about a phone number?” Kim asked, checking her eyeliner in the visor mirror.

I scoured the Internet for a few more minutes. “Nothing. They must be unlisted.”

“What? Let me check.” Kim grabbed the phone from me and began pushing buttons. “Well, crap. You’re right.”

Betsy shrugged. “We’ll have to figure out where they live another way.”

“How?” I scanned the neighborhood. There was nothing around us except a warehouse and a few older homes that looked vacant.

“Let’s just ask where the wealthiest neighborhood in the school district is and then drive around there,” Betsy announced wisely.

I scowled. “How am I supposed to recognize Alicia’s parents’ house?”

Kim turned around in her seat and stared at me. “We didn’t drive all the way here just to give up. It’s sunny today. Maybe her mom will be working in the yard. We’ll look for red hair.”

Betsy adjusted her glasses. “Bulimia Betty strikes me as the type who’d have a gardener. Just sayin’.”

“Good idea.” Kim smiled encouragingly. “Then we’ll ask a neighbor.”

“All right…but you do realize people are going to think we’re casing houses to rob?” I blinked at a passerby who was looking at us while clinging to her grocery bag tightly.

“Let ’em stare.” Betsy waved. “Hey, a woman in a minivan just pulled in. Go ask her.”

“Argh…fine.” Grumbling, I got out of the car.

Kim giggled. “The things she’s willing to do in order to stalk someone.”

Betsy covered her mouth. “I know, right?”

I teetered across the parking lot to a woman filling the tank of her minivan, wishing that I’d skipped the spiked zebra-print boots this morning.

“Um, excuse me, ma’am?” I waved at her cheerfully.

She turned to face me. Her nondescript brown hair was pulled into a ponytail, and one knee of her sweats had a tear.

“My friends and I are from out of town, and we were just wondering…um, where is the rich neighborhood?”

She frowned at me. “The what?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I’m looking for a more affluent neighborhood in the South Summit school boundaries?”

The line between her brows deepened, and I heard a baby wail inside the van. Her eyes flicked between my friends—who were now singing along with Led Zeppelin at the top of their voices in the Honda—and me. “Why?”

“Oh, no. I’m sorry.” I laughed and stepped forward. She immediately backed away from me. “We’re looking for an old friend. She’s, well, her family is wealthy. And so we just have to figure out which part of town she lives in. But we know that she went to the high school here.”

The woman bit her lip. “South Summit?”

I nodded and blushed as Kim and Betsy began to sing the chorus to “Dazed And Confused.”

“Well, there’s Minting Heights. That’s a development a few miles south of here. Those are some pretty nice houses.” She shrugged at me. “You can try that.”

I charged back to the car, and cursed Kim and Betsy out for terrifying the woman. She was probably calling the cops as we drove away to tell them that a bunch of stoners was out casing the rich neighborhoods. We headed due south, and sure enough, we came to a gated community with rows and rows of cookie-cutter houses, all in varying shades of taupe. This was Alicia’s type of neighborhood. Lucky for us, the electronic gate was open, so we cruised right in.

We rolled up and down the streets, eyeballing the houses carefully, watching for any visible sign of “Von Longorial” or “Long” on a mailbox, or red hair. Finally, after twenty minutes of peering into the front windows of house after house, I told Betsy to pull