by Piper Dow
Kelly scowled at him pointedly. She climbed into the back seat. “It’s fine, Dad. Can we just go?
Kelly leaned her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes as Dad pulled the truck into traffic and headed for the high school. The morning had not started out well. Kelly had not slept comfortably in the hospital, with nurses and aides coming in and out of the room every hour or so, and the chair that formed a bed of sorts was nothing like her bed at home. She was glad, though, that she had stayed and sent her mother home. When Sam’s breakfast tray had come in, one of the nurse’s aides had brought Kelly a coffee and muffin from the coffee shop in the hospital vestibule. Kelly knew the hospital staff was going above and beyond for her family and vowed to bring in a fruit basket or something for them before Sam was finally discharged. When Mom, Dad, and Wayne had arrived, Dad had been impatient to bring their evidence to the police station. Wayne had been rolling his eyes at Kelly behind Dad’s back, so Kelly knew he’d already gotten an earful that morning before they left home. The final straw had been the detective’s anger when they showed him the pictures of what they had seen in Sam’s apartment, and Dad had pushed Wayne into telling about the encounters on campus and the bus stop.
“Do you kids realize how much danger you put yourselves in? How much damage you might have done to our case? If these guys know you were in that apartment, chances are they’ve already cleaned everything out of it. Even with your pictures, it is still basically your word against theirs - and you’ve put your fingerprints all over everything there, too,” he said. “Look, I appreciate the fact you love your sister, but now you need to let us do our jobs. Don’t make it harder on us by getting into the middle of things.”
They had been quiet on the way out to the truck, but Kelly had panicked when she realized she didn’t have her purse with her. She had been looking at the pictures on her phone on the ride over from the hospital; the bag must have slipped under the seat without her noticing it. She had promised to be quick and rushed back into the police station, pausing at the desk to be buzzed into the back room to look for her bag. The station was slow this morning; it didn’t take long to sweep her eyes around the room and know her purse wasn’t there. Detective Andover was standing in the door of his office, talking with Jess’s dad. They stopped talking when they saw her approaching, a questioning look on Detective Andover’s face.
“I’ll follow up on this after court this morning,” Jess’s dad said, waving the file folder he held in his hand. “Kelly.” He nodded at Kelly in a quick hello and walked toward the back of the station.
Kelly quickly told Detective Andover what she had returned for. When her purse also wasn’t where she had been sitting in his office, he walked her back to the security door.
“Please, Miss Griffin, I know it can be hard to feel like you’re doing nothing, but let us do our job.”
“Have you found out anything about the toilet paper at our house or the damage to our cars?” Kelly asked, glancing back to where she had seen Jess’s dad disappear. She and Wayne hadn’t mentioned his ruse of having his friends tag another house to throw suspicion off of their house. Wayne’s friends skirted the line sometimes between a prank and arrest-able offense, and there was no reason to throw them under the bus for trying to help.
“Actually, we may have,” he said. “We’re following up on a few leads. I can’t give you more information yet, as we’re still investigating, but we are actively working on this. Just let us do our jobs.”
Kelly had nodded, but she had her doubts. What sort of leads did they have? Were they investigating both houses as the same group of kids, or had they figured out they were separate incidents? Should she have told him about Wayne’s friends? Oh, man, she needed another cup of coffee!
She opened her eyes as she felt the truck slowing. Wayne was unbuckling his seat belt, already having grabbed the strap of his backpack. Dad was pulling up to the front of the school. Kelly knew Dad would watch Wayne actually go into the building before pulling away from the curb.
“Kelly, I wanted to talk to you alone,” Dad said, glancing at her in his rearview mirror before hitting his directional to signal that he was pulling back into traffic. “I know you already know how much Wayne looks up to you. You’ve always been a good influence on him, which is one reason it was so hard to believe you let him come with you yesterday.”
Kelly groaned. “Dad, I’ve said I’m sorry! You know I didn’t try to get him into trouble, I was trying to help Sam!”
“I’m not just talking about going to Sam’s apartment,” Dad broke in. “I’m talking about the zombie party at your school. I know that with everything that has happened since then, it might seem like it’s not that big a deal, but don’t think we haven’t been thinking about the kids that were brought to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Did you know it was going to be that kind of party?”
Kelly opened her mouth, then closed it. Her shoulders slumped. “Well, I didn’t know the drinking was going to get out of hand and the cops were going to be called, how could I? But did I know that there would be alcohol? Dad, it was a college party - of course there was going to be alcohol!”
Dad looked at her again in the mirror. He glanced at the road, quiet for a moment, then caught her eye again.
“You know the trouble that Wayne has been getting into. You know that he tends to follow others, and you know that he looks up to you. Surely you can see that bringing him to a party where you know there could be trouble is unwise?”
Kelly held her father’s gaze. “Dad, I didn’t drink. I wouldn’t have let Wayne get into trouble. And I know Wayne is, well, Wayne - but he knows what you guys think about that kind of partying. He wouldn’t have let himself get into trouble, either.”
Her father looked back at the road. “Just, please, be aware of what kind of influence you are with him, that’s all I’m asking,” he said. He signaled to pull into the campus access road, pulling to a stop behind a line of cars trying to turn into the parking lot. “Which building are you going to?”
Kelly directed him to the library, planning to grab a coffee from the shop at the front before hitting her first class. Promising to keep in touch with her mother throughout the day, she climbed out of the truck. She struggled to pull her backpack free of the back seat, leaning in to slide its strap off where it had caught on the hinge of the front seat.
“I’ve got a couple of hours between classes, I might see if I can catch a ride back to the hospital if Rick is still there. I haven’t heard from him since I saw him there on Monday,” she said.
At her father’s nod, Kelly shouldered her backpack and turned toward the library. As she joined the line at the counter of the cafe, she toyed with the decision of whether she wanted a caramel swirl or hazelnut coffee. If she was going to have to be Wayne’s conscience as well as her own, she was going to have to increase her caffeine intake by at least half.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Kelly pulled the fabric at an angle and pinned it, cocking her head to one side and squinting her eyes to get a better idea of what the jacket would look like at a distance. The assignment was an easy one - tailoring a coat to fit a working class, middle-aged man with a paunch belly and flabby arms. The costume would be seen from a distance, and with stage lighting, so it didn’t need to stand up to normal wear, but Kelly always turned in work that went above the professor’s expectations.
“Tell me again, how do I attach this braid to the seam here?” Her classmate Erin asked, holding up gold braided ribbon and pointing to a pair of pants one of the cast members would wear during the marching band scene.
Kelly moved to the table and tucked in the end of the braid, showing Erin how to pin it so that she would be able to sew down the side without hitting the pins with the sewing machine needle.
“You’re lucky your mom taught you to sew,” Erin said, taking the pins and stabbing the braid where Kelly pointed. “My mother uses iron-on tape to fix hems. If a zipper breaks, she buys a new pair of pants.�
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Kelly laughed. “Honestly, so do I! I sew the fun stuff - I leave the fixing stuff for other people. Besides, some clothes are so cheap, you can’t make them for what you can buy them for. But I agree, I am glad my mom taught me to sew. You’re getting it, though - you can do the basics now, and some of the fun stuff. You’ll see, it gets easier.”
“Is this your first theater class?” Erin asked, pinning the rest of the braided ribbon and moving on to the other pant leg. “I was just taking the class as a good way to learn to sew, and add it to my syllabus, but I’m really loving it!”
“No, Kelly said. “This is my third year. I’ve taken the cosmetology class each year - its a basis for the theater makeup class. You can retake that one as many semesters as you want, and get credit each time, because you’re helping on the productions and each semester is different, you know?” She moved back to the mannequin she had the jacket pinned on and began stitching a couple of basting stitches to hold things in place more accurately when she moved the jacket to the machine. “‘The Music Man,’ is cool, and I love getting to work on the costumes, but next semester will be ‘Into the Woods,’ and I can’t wait to work on the make-up for that!”
Erin shook her head. “Not me. I have a hard enough time getting my eyebrows to come out even, I just can’t imagine being able to make people look like real creatures just with make-up. I mean, in movies, at least they have computer graphics to add effects.”
Kelly laughed. “I’ve been playing with Halloween make-up since I was a kid. I’ve gotten pretty good at gashes, zombies, that sort of thing - it doesn’t really have to look alive, right? But I want to be able to transform someone to look not like themselves. You know, like Robin Williams in that ‘Mrs. Doubt fire’ movie. To be that good - that would be amazing!”
She had moved the jacket from the mannequin and placed it in the pile to be stitched on the machine. She picked up the next item on her table, a woman’s blouse with puffy shoulders and neat white lace in a placket near the buttons. “See this shirt? For theater, you aren’t going to really tailor this for the actress - you just have to get it good enough. It doesn’t have to be exact, because maybe a different actress is going to wear it in the next show, right? Or they might use it for more than one scene, and it might need to fit differently. But prosthetic pieces made with latex and foam - the type of makeup that actors have to sit still while you apply it - that’s not going to be just anyone who can do that. You have to be good. That’s my goal.”
Kelly heard shuffling and conversations escalating in volume and turned around. The class was ending, and most of the other students were packing up their things to head to their next classes. Erin noticed, too, and gathered up the pants to add to a pile of other clothing at the side of the room.
“I’ve got statistics in an hour, and I’ve got to reread the assignment. I’m sure I didn’t get it right,” Erin said, stuffing her tin of straight pins into her bag and swinging it over one shoulder. “See you next class.”
Kelly nodded, gathering her own supplies, and smiled a goodbye. She had gotten distracted by the thought of the job she’d dreamed of since she was thirteen, to be able to work on a movie set and make fantasy creatures come alive. She glanced at the clock and swung the bag onto her shoulder. She didn’t have another class for three hours. When she had seen her schedule at the beginning of the semester, she had thought it would give her too much time between classes, but she should have known better. There was never enough time in the day for her. She had begun spending extra time in between classes working on the costumes or hanging out with the make-up students, trying to pick their brains or just absorb by watching. There was also an enormous amount of work for her non-theater classes, but she usually managed to get that done quickly. Today, though, she was going to see Rick.
Kelly followed the sidewalk to the intersection near the parking lot, then meandered through the parked cars heading for the bus stop. She wasn’t sure of the schedule but knew there were regular buses running the routes near the hospital. She’d catch one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Rick was sitting up in bed, his leg outstretched under the sheets, his arms over his head with his hands laced behind his head. He was watching the TV mounted near the ceiling and didn't notice Kelly as she hesitated in the doorway.
“Hey, you look pretty comfortable there - what do you think, you’re at a hotel?”
His head swiveled from the screen to look at Kelly. “Hey! ‘Bout time you came back to see me!” He patted the bed and moved his legs over to give her a little room to sit down.
Kelly glanced around the room as she stepped inside, but didn’t see a chair she could sit in instead. She sank down on the foot of the bed, holding her bag in her lap with both hands. “I wasn’t sure you would still be here, actually,” she said. “I thought you said you thought you were going to be one more day?” Her eyes followed the line from the IV bag and saw that it was still feeding into his hand.
“Yeah, turns out that some infections require a stronger antibiotic than you can take at home,” he said. “I guess it’s precautionary, but they wanted me to do at least 5 days of the IV stuff before I can start on pills.”
“How’s it feeling?” Kelly asked, glancing down at the leg but not touching it. Last time she had been in to see him, she had inadvertently increased his pain. She didn’t want a repeat.
“Oh, you know, like I got knifed,” he said, grinning at her. “No, seriously, it’s sore as anything, but it could be worse. At least by my having to stay in the hospital for the antibiotic, my parents haven’t gotten a chance to kill me, yet. They brought in my laptop so I could work on assignments, so I guess I still get to stay in classes. They did move me out of the dorm, though, and Mom had plenty to say about the shape of my room when they went in to get my stuff.”
Kelly noticed the laptop laying closed on the bedside table. She moved her backpack to use it as a backrest and leaned back so that she could swing her legs up onto the bed beside Rick’s. She had been a little nervous coming to see him, remembering how he had acted at the party, and in the hospital the next day. Rick was back to being Rick, though - funny, slightly spoiled, and comfortable to be around.
“My dad gave me a lecture this morning about looking out for Wayne,” she said.
“Seriously? You weren’t even there when the police crashed the party!” Rick was outraged on her behalf.
“Well, to be honest, he might have had a point,” Kelly said with a grimace. She gave Rick the highlights of the events of the day before. “I wasn’t thinking. I mean, I would probably do almost all of it again, but we should have told someone we were going. I’m still not sure if we should have told the police about the TPing or not. But I saw Jess’s dad standing there, and he really has it in for Wayne. It just would have caused more grief. I’m sure my parents don’t need that right now.”
She realized she was trying to reassure herself more than explain anything to Rick. She shrugged, smiled, and glanced at the TV. “What are you watching?”
They passed the next 20 minutes picking apart the acting and costumes of the teens in the old horror movie he had been watching when she walked in before Kelly had to leave to get back to school for her last class of the day.
On the bus on the way back, she couldn’t get past the feeling that there was something more she should do to try to stop the men who had attacked Sam. Digging through her backpack, she pulled out a sketch pad and pencil. She kept replaying her encounter with the man in the sweatshirt outside of the library. His face was so clear in her mind, she wondered if she could get a close enough likeness on paper. She glanced around the bus, but no one was sitting very close to her, and no one was looking at her. She started with a light touch, roughing in the basics, and was soon using a bolder stroke. She was so engrossed in getting the eyes right that she almost missed her stop. The bus rounded the corner and hit a pothole, jostling her against the side of the bus and making her look up. She g
rabbed her bag and fumbled it, her pencil and pad, and her cell phone as she stood and made her way to the door to disembark.
She took a few steps to the side to get out of the flow of pedestrians before putting her bag on the ground to put her things away. Holding up the sketchpad, she assessed the drawing with a critical eye. It wasn’t great - but it might be close enough.
“Nice picture,” the comment was thrown over a woman’s shoulder as she hurried past. Kelly glanced around again, suddenly aware that she was crouched in the open holding a picture of a possible murderer. She stuffed the pad back into the bag pack and zipped it closed, then stood and swung it over her shoulder again. Her Sociology class was in the building to the left of the library, halfway across campus, and she had about five minutes to find a seat.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“They had to have been in there, I can’t find the book anywhere!”
“Does anything look like it was touched? You said nothing in the house looked out of place,” David said, his voice calm in opposition to the anxiety tightening his guts. He had tried to warn them, but it hadn’t done much good.
“Nothing looks touched, but nothing looks the same, either.” Mark was pacing around the car, running his hands through his hair. His eyes constantly swept the parking lot to make sure no one else was close enough to overhear them. Nervous energy poured off him.
“Dude, that makes no sense,” David laughed, trying to lighten the mood. He turned away from Mark and ducked into the open car door, taking a deep breath as he leaned forward to grab his phone. He slowly breathed out, keeping his actions calm. He needed to make sure Mark couldn’t sense his growing unease. He swiped across the phone to open the texting app and used the time to focus on slowing his breathing and calming his heart rate. Straightening from the car, he turned back to face Mark.
“Josh said there were a couple of bikes in the driveway, but he didn’t see anyone inside, and he couldn’t see anything amiss inside the house,” David said. “If he hadn’t said there were bikes in the driveway, would you have thought there was anything different in the house?”