The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 2

by Fiona Snyckers

  The weed hits quickly, draining your anger and replacing it with a rare feeling of calm. You don’t hate everyone quite as much as you did. It goes out when it gets to Mikayla, and she passes it back to you to light again.

  It goes out when it gets to Sheena too, but she’s not that dumb. She holds her hand out until you put the lighter in it and then she lights it herself. By the time it gets around to you again everyone has goofy smiles on their faces. This is why you love weed more than life itself. It smooths you out. It pushes down all your spiky bits and lets you feel smooth and mellow. You can even stand Sheena with a little Mary Jane in your system.

  Rosie’s eyes are glittering like beetles in the half-light of the old warehouse. It might be cold and dirty, but it’s the only place you can go to smoke and drink without being disturbed.

  You look down and spot the new tattoo you just got on your leg. It’s a band of thorns circling your upper thigh. You were so happy with it, so delighted. It turned out better than you could ever have hoped. It made you feel gorgeous and sexy and hot. You practically swaggered over to your father’s house to show him. You were convinced he would love it as much as you did.

  The spliff comes past one last time. It’s nearly finished now. The paper is about to disintegrate into a shower of tiny sparks. Someone is going to get their fingers burned.

  You take a deep pull at it, knowing you are going to disappoint Rosie who is waiting for her turn. But you need the hit to help you deal with what your father said when he saw your new tattoo.

  “That would look nice on a girl with a better figure. Your thighs are too plump to pull it off. I suppose it’s too late now, but you should leave that kind of thing to your slim friends like Mikayla.”

  You remember what he said, word for word. It hardly has the power to hurt you anymore, even though he said it this afternoon. That’s the magic of weed. It’s like wrapping all your sore places up in a band-aid. You know they’re still there, but you can’t feel them anymore.

  You glance at Mikayla who is sitting with her back against the wall, legs crossed in front of her. Yes, a circle of thorns tattoo would look great on her. It was just that you thought it looked great on you too. You were stupid to think you might earn a compliment from your father.

  Sheena and Rosie have their heads together and are whispering. Your paranoia leaps into life. You’re sure they are talking about you. They glance up as they talk, which only makes you more suspicious. You don’t know if it’s the weed making you feel like this or if it’s really happening.

  Now Mikayla has joined in. The three of them have their heads together. They’re giggling. They are excluding you. They are gossiping about you.

  “What is it?” you say. “What are you talking about?” You try to sound angry, but your voice comes out slow and slurred.

  Sheena smirks. “We’re talking about you.”

  It’s true. You weren’t imagining it. You start to cry.

  Mikayla shifts over to comfort you. “Hey, man. Not in a bad way. We were talking about you in a good way. We want you to join the club.”

  “The club?” You try to focus on her face, but she’s too close. Everything in this room is either too close or too far away. You push her away, so you can see her.

  “For the record, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” says Sheena.

  “It’s fine, Sheen,” says Rosie. “We talked about it. It’s time.”

  “I don’t trust her,” says Sheena. She sinks back against the wall and closes her eyes.

  “What club?” you say in your strange, slurry voice.

  Mikayla opens her mouth to answer, and then stops. “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “I heard footsteps.”

  You listen, but all you can hear is the roaring in your ears. Suddenly Rosie and Sheena and Mikayla jump up and start grabbing their possessions. You lurch to your knees and sway as you fight off a wave of nausea.

  “Quick, quick!” says Mikayla.

  They climb out the warehouse window and onto the street. Dockside is quiet at this time of night. You hear their footsteps receding. They didn’t wait for you.

  You get to your feet and stand there reeling. Your hands hang uselessly at your sides. The door bursts open and someone comes in. You hear little squeaking noises and realize they are coming from your own throat. A face emerges from the gloom and you see that it belongs to Mr. Richmond, your biology teacher. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that this is it. The school has a zero-tolerance policy on drugs. You’ll be kicked out. Your father will give up on you.

  “I knew it,” he says. “I knew this was the spot. Where are the rest of them?”

  You open your mouth, but you can’t form words. You bitterly regret all those extra puffs you took when you were lighting the spliff. Your arms and legs feel like lead. You had more vodka than anyone else – a lot more.

  He smiles at you.

  “Never mind about them, Ms. Chirac. You’ll do fine. I presume you are familiar with the concept of community service?”

  Eulalie’s head spun with the effects of the marijuana. She tried to fight it, to pull herself out of it. Something tapped at her cheek. It helped her to focus. Then she felt a sharp pain against her chest and woke up properly.

  Her head whirled as she struggled to sit. The cat slid from her chest to her lap. She jumped when a voice spoke next to her.

  “Are you okay? Were you dreaming?”

  It was Chief Macgregor. She had forgotten he was there. She turned her glittering eyes towards him and tried to answer. Her voice came out strange and slow.

  “I… don’t know.”

  He looked at her closely, taking in her hugely dilated eyes and slack face.

  “You look like you’re high.”

  She held up a hand. Then she breathed deeply in and out, trying to steady herself. Her hand reached out and found the cat. Holding onto him seemed to anchor her. It drew her back to the present. She blinked as her eyes began to focus.

  Chief Macgregor thought he could smell marijuana. But that was impossible. Eulalie had been lying beside him all night. He was a light sleeper. He would have known if she had got up. Yet she was showing all the symptoms of drug and alcohol intoxication. It made no sense.

  He laid a hand on her shoulder. Her left hand came up to grip his, but her right stayed entangled in the cat’s fur. She was coming back.

  “Normally, I write down what I’ve dreamed.” Her voice was still a little slow. “This time, I think I’d rather tell you.”

  She lay against the pillows and looked up at him, her eyes regaining their usual alertness. “We need to find out about something called the club.”

  Chapter 11

  “The club?”

  “Yes, it’s important somehow.” Eulalie stared at the ceiling as though it would help to fix the dream in her mind. “Rochelle was already drinking alcohol and smoking weed in her junior year. I saw it.”

  “How do you know she was in her junior year?”

  “She and Mikayla Sorenson were still friends. The four of them were hanging out together – Rochelle Chirac, Sheena Macintyre, Mikayla Sorenson, and Rosie Pike, who is now known as Rosalind Grier. Their friendship was still intact. According to Sheena, something happened between their junior and senior years that meant Rochelle and Mikayla were no longer on speaking terms. They still hung out in the same group of friends, but they no longer acknowledged each other’s existence. In my dream, they were still close.”

  “Drinking and smoking weed?”

  “They had broken into an abandoned warehouse near the docks. This was before Dockside became fashionable. There were a lot of derelict warehouses in those days. The kids were on the ground floor, surrounded by old paint tins and drop cloths. They were sitting on the floor in a corner near a broken window.”

  “Was that how they got in – by breaking the window?”

  Eulalie closed her eyes, trying to picture the scene. “I don’t t
hink so. There was no glass on the ground. They had finished off a bottle of vodka, with Rochelle having the lion’s share. Mikayla was rolling a marijuana cigarette, but she was too slow and clumsy for Rochelle’s liking. Rochelle took over and rolled it like a pro.”

  “This wasn’t her first time?”

  “Not by a long shot. Not for any of them. Rochelle was hungrier for it. She made sure she got most of the joint. Sheena challenged her half-heartedly. They got stoned quickly. The joint went around three times before Rochelle finished it. They were all high by then, but Rochelle was the most incapacitated. She was having visual disturbances and her tongue felt thick when she tried to talk.”

  Chief Macgregor frowned. “How do you know what she was seeing and feeling?”

  “It’s because…” Eulalie stopped.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s because I didn’t just dream it. I was there. I was Rochelle. I could see and hear and feel everything that she could see and hear and feel.”

  “Total empathy?” he said. “I heard of the empaths of Prince William Island before I came here, but I thought it was a myth.”

  “Of course, it’s a myth. Empathy is scientifically imposs…” She stopped herself. Why bother? Why was she going through her usual routine of pretending that the things she could do were impossible? This was Chief Macgregor, not some laughing thirteen-year-old in middle school taunting her about being a freak. She took a breath.

  “Sorry. Old habits. Yes, it’s a form of empathy. No one knows why, but it is more common in the village than anywhere else on the island. That’s probably why it hasn’t been formally studied. You know how inaccessible the village is.”

  Chief Macgregor nodded. Making the day-long trek through primeval rainforest was not his favorite thing to do. He wouldn’t even attempt it unless he had Eulalie to guide him.

  “Rochelle was sitting in the warehouse feeling queasy when the other girls started whispering about something. First it was Rosie and Sheena, but then Mikayla joined in as well. Rochelle’s paranoia sky-rocketed. She asked them what they were talking about and they said that she should join ‘the club’. They laughed and joked about it – nudging each other as though they had a delicious secret that they were finally ready to share with her.”

  “Did she know what they were talking about?”

  “She had no idea. She asked them what the club was and just as they were about to answer, they heard footsteps in the warehouse.”

  “A junkie? A homeless person?”

  “They didn’t wait around to find out. The other three jumped to their feet and scrambled out the window. Rochelle was feeling too sick to move. Her last thought was that they didn’t wait for her. Then the biology teacher came in. Cole Richmond. He obviously suspected that they were there. He asked her where her friends were, but she didn’t answer.”

  “Even after they left her behind?”

  “I don’t think it was loyalty, exactly. She was so stoned she could hardly form a sentence. He said something about how she would have to do community service.”

  “That’s a new trend in schools. Instead of handing kids over to the police, the school deals with it internally. The kid gets referred for drug counselling and has to finish a certain number of hours of community service. Sometimes it just means doing odd jobs around the school, picking up litter and so forth. It’s quite common in Scotland. I’m surprised they were doing it fifteen years ago at Queen’s Town High.”

  “It has always been a progressive school. And that’s all I know, because Paddy chose that moment to wake me up.”

  “Not a moment too soon. You didn’t know who I was when you woke up. You were as high as a kite. Your pupils were the size of dinner plates. If you’d spent any longer in that dream, it could have been dangerous.”

  “You should have been here the time I dreamed about a woman plunging to her death from a balcony. My heart stopped beating. I still don’t know exactly what brought me back. After that, I got seriously scared. I didn’t want to go to bed at night. But then the cat turned up, and it’s been fine ever since.”

  “I woke to find him sitting on your chest tapping at your cheek with his paw. I was about to push him off so you could sleep some more. Then he stuck a claw into your chest and you woke up.”

  Eulalie stroked the cat who arched and purred under her hand.

  “He knows when I need to snap out of it. He has earned his breakfast this morning.”

  As if he understood, the cat jumped off the bed and stared pointedly towards the kitchen.

  “I’ll feed him if you want to shower,” said Chief Macgregor. “One sachet of cat food, right?”

  “Right. And please fill up his water and make sure he has enough kibble.”

  When Eulalie came out of the shower she found the cat sitting in a patch of sunlight washing himself. In the kitchen, Chief Macgregor had laid the table for breakfast. There was a bowl of fresh fruit, some plain yoghurt, and several boiled eggs wrapped in a cloth to stay warm.

  “Hmm.”

  She noticed more details – the freshly squeezed orange juice, the pot of coffee. Everything about the breakfast table seemed to say “Here, eat me. Look how convenient I am. A nutritious breakfast waiting just for you.”

  Eulalie bypassed the table and headed for the pantry. She was just reaching for a box of cereal when his voice made her jump.

  “Don’t you want some fruit and yoghurt?”

  She spun around, annoyed with herself for feeling guilty. “Where did you appear from? How could you have showered so quickly?”

  Not only was he showered, but he was fully dressed too. He wore one of the two work outfits he had started keeping at her apartment.

  “Blame it on a public-school education. I never shower for longer than two minutes, unless there’s someone in there with me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Someone?”

  He smiled. “You.”

  “That’s better.”

  If she thought she had distracted him from the issue of breakfast, she was wrong.

  “Wouldn’t some eggs and fruit and yoghurt be nice for a change?”

  “Sorry, Chief. Your healthy mix of fruit and protein just doesn’t stack up against my nine vitamins and iron.”

  She pulled a box of Lucky Charms with extra marshmallows from the pantry and tapped it with her finger. “This is a health food, right here.”

  “That’s just marketing. A few vitamins and minerals don’t cancel out the fact that you’re eating pure, high-glycemic sugar. That stuff will kill you.”

  “At least I’ll die happy. My day doesn’t feel right unless it starts with a mountain of sugary cereal.”

  He shook his head. He decided to find a scientific article on the internet about the benefits of a good breakfast. He would send it to her. Perhaps that would change her mind.

  He watched as she walked around the kitchen, fetching milk and sugar. He had to admit that she was a walking advertisement for the benefits of sugary cereal. As small as she was, her body was lithe and muscular. She looked and moved like a gymnast. Pound for pound, she was much stronger than he was. She was the fittest and most agile person he knew. It didn’t seem likely that her arteries were clogging up.

  They ate their breakfast in peaceful silence. They had discovered early on that they both preferred silence at breakfast time. Eulalie caught up on the news of the day on her iPad, while he scrolled through the police reports for the Indian Ocean area of which Prince William Island was a part. This included Madagascar, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Reunion Island.

  “What’s on your schedule for today?” Eulalie asked as they lingered over coffee.

  “I have a meeting at the governor’s office with a team of South African dog handlers and trainers who are going to help us set up our K9 unit.”

  “Are you going ahead with that already? That will be a real asset to the island.”

  “Funding was approved last week. We’re starting off with one sea
rch and rescue dog because that’s our biggest priority – tourists going missing when they hike in the mountains. If that works out well, we should be able to expand the unit.”

  “Good luck with that. I want to track down Mikayla Sorenson and Cole Richmond. As far as I know, they’re both still on the island.”

  They cleared the kitchen and stacked the dishwasher. Then Chief Macgregor set off for the governor’s mansion to make his meeting. Eulalie was pleased to hear his car roar into life through her open window. It was always touch and go as to whether it would actually start.

  It was only eight, but she decided to go into the office to get a head start on tracking down her two witnesses. If she could find out what the club was, she would be a lot closer to solving this mystery.

  “Coming down to the office, Paddy?” she asked the cat, holding the door open.

  He stretched out in the sun and gave her a baleful look.

  “Too early for you, is it? I suppose you keep a pocket watch in those furry britches of yours.”

  He yawned at her and lowered his chin to the floor.

  “All right, lazy bones. But you’d better come down at nine or Mrs. B will be up here to fetch you herself.”

  Eulalie closed the door behind her and trotted down the stairs. She had just remembered that she had a third person to interview. If Jimmy the Knife really had information on Odysseus Pryor, she wanted to speak to him as soon as possible. Unfortunately, that meant not before seven in the evening. Jimmy was strictly a nocturnal creature.

  She switched on her laptop to find several emails from Queen’s Town Federal Life. They contained access details that would allow her to log into the private servers of the companies that had been affected by the computer hack. This was what she had been waiting for. The hacker in her couldn’t wait to get to grips with a fellow hacker.

  But first she wanted to trace the ghosts from her dream.

  It took only a few minutes to locate Mikayla Sorenson and Cole Richmond. Sorenson was thirty-three years old and working at a comic book store in Finger Alley. Eulalie knew the store well but had never gone in there because comic books didn’t interest her.