Uncovering Sadie's Secrets

by Libby Sternberg

  “I don’t know. Let me think.” I closed my eyes and visualized the application. I spit out the date of birth triumphantly, the image coming back to me. The year was consistent with a fifteen-year-old. And then another image came to me, a row of neat numbers, her Social Security number. But something was odd about it, something I couldn’t put my finger on.

  “What?” Connie asked as I continued to squinch up my eyes. “Why are you making that face? What’s bothering you?”

  “What was it you told me about Social Security numbers? About that one you said was phony?”

  “It had double digit zeroes in the group number. Never done,” Connie said, slurping the last of her shake from the bottom of the glass.

  That was it! Sadie’s number had the same mistake. I told Connie.

  “Okay,” Connie summed up, “we know she has a Social Security number on her app that doesn’t exist. And she drives, so it would make sense that maybe she faked her date of birth somewhere along the line too. And, her apartment, I couldn’t see all of it, of course. . .”

  “What about it?” I asked, feeling like we were getting close to something, but I didn’t know what.

  “It was awfully bare. No furniture that I could see in the living room. Just one pole lamp. And the room to the right of the door looked bare too.”

  “She’s living in an empty apartment?”

  “Maybe she’s living by herself.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked Connie.

  “Maybe she’s a runaway,” Connie said. “All I could find on the condo is that it belongs to a Mister Ryan Greavey. Greavey was convicted of drug dealing last year. He’s in prison.”

  “Drug dealing? Oh my God!”

  “Hold your horses,” Connie said. “That doesn’t mean anything. Greavey, or whoever is managing his stuff, could have just sub-let the place. It doesn’t tell us much. Give me that license number you memorized. I have a friend in Motor Vehicles. She might be able to get me something on a California plate if I tell her Kurt was asking about her.” She winked at me.

  “Don’t forget—Sadie also asked about being framed for murder. And she called you about it,” I volunteered.

  “She didn’t call me. Somebody else did, remember?” Connie said. “But it could have been her just giving a fake name.”

  Of course it had been, but I couldn’t reveal that I knew my sister’s voice-mail password, so I shut up about that. “Did this friend ever call again?” I asked instead.

  “No. Never did. Maybe the threat evaporated.”

  “If she’s a runaway, Connie, how does she support herself?” I ate the last of the fries.

  “She looked like she had more than enough money if she was able to give some to that woman and guy,” Connie said.

  “Maybe she’s in trouble with the law.” I sucked in my shake. We lapsed into silence for a few seconds.

  “If she calls again,” I said, then corrected myself, “if her friend calls again, maybe you could kind of point her in the right direction. Kerrie’s dad is a lawyer, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Later, after Connie had paid the bill and we were at a stoplight on our way home, she turned to me and became very stern again. “Don’t forget what I said, Bianca, about your little excursion into the school office. This isn’t a game, you know.”

  TWO GOOD things happened the next day. I talked to Doug on the phone and I figured out what to wear to Kerrie’s Halloween costume party.

  I called Doug right after church when my family was settling into its Sunday veg-out routine. He answered right away and, in contrast to last week’s surly mood, sounded happy to hear from me. I explained that I didn’t get his Saturday message until too late, and he seemed more than willing to buy that explanation. After all, he shared a voice-mail system with a brother, and probably had many messages of his own slip through the cracks.

  I asked if he would be at Kerrie’s Halloween party. When he said yes, we talked for nearly twenty minutes about what he should go as. He wasn’t too keen on dressing up. But I knew Kerrie would be miserably disappointed if only the girls dressed up. I threw several suggestions at him, each easier than the next, and he found a reason to nix each one.

  Grim reaper? No, he wasn’t going to wear a “dress.” Zorro? Too childish. Alien? Might require make-up.

  “Well, what about an FBI agent? All you’ll need is a jacket, sunglasses, and an ID. I can download one off the Internet and laminate it for you.”

  That did the trick and I went to bed that night feeling like a Chinese menu selection—Double Happiness. Doug and I were friendly again. And I had done my friend Kerrie a favor by convincing Doug to wear a costume to her party.

  ON MONDAY, Connie talked to her friend at the Motor Vehicle Administration. But she didn’t volunteer the information she had found. I had to drag it out of her.

  Okay, okay. I just had to ask her. After the dinner dishes were washed and Mom thought I was doing my homework, I wandered into Connie’s lair and popped the question.

  “What did you find out about Sadie’s license?”

  Connie was sitting in a reading chair under a bright light. She had some papers on her lap that she closed in a manila folder when I came in.

  “The car belonged to Melinda McEvoy,” Connie said.

  “So it’s stolen?” I asked, already feeling betrayed. I had tried to help Sadie and she was a felon?

  “Not that I can tell,” Connie said. “That’s the odd thing. I did some more checking. Melinda McEvoy is dead.”

  My mouth fell open to the floor. Well, not really. But I was shocked. Sadie had originally entered my orbit by asking a question about being framed for murder. Now I find out she’s driving around in a car that belongs to a dead woman?

  “Do you know anything else?” I asked after swallowing hard.

  “No. Not much. Only that this Melinda person lived near Monterey, and she died in the spring of this year.”

  “Sadie transferred in July. That’s what it said on her application.”

  “Okay,” Connie said, and then went silent and deep.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Bianca. I’ve learned not to jump to wild conclusions.”

  “But Sadie could be involved in. . . Well, don’t you remember? She called you, asking about being framed for murder. And now. . .”

  “A friend of hers called.”

  “No! It was Sadie,” I said emphatically. “You know it was.”

  Connie looked down, which told me I was right. She knew that the “friend” who had called her was really Sadie.

  “Maybe you should contact her,” I suggested.

  “And say what?”

  “Tell her you remember someone calling about being framed for murder and you remember me mentioning her question about that same subject and thought she might want advice. I don’t know, offer her some kind of ‘buy one, get one free’ PI coupon or something.”

  “What you’re suggesting,” Connie said slowly and condescendingly, “is that Melinda McEvoy, whoever she is, was murdered and that Sadie is being framed for it.”

  “Think about it! Lemming Lady and Ice Man get her to withdraw money. They’re probably blackmailing her.”

  “Who is Lemming Lady?”

  “The woman at Sadie’s apartment. And the man,” I said, exasperated. It all seemed so clear to me now. Why couldn’t Connie see it too?

  “Before you start jumping into La-La Land, I think we need to do a little more digging,” Connie said.

  “Okay. Like what kind?”

  “Like let’s find out how Melinda McEvoy died. That’s a start. I can get on it in the morning.” She opened her file again and began reading, a clear sign she was finished with me and this strategy session.

  BUT I wasn’t finished. This PI business was beginning to float my boat. Although I was a good student, and got great comments on most of my papers, I was completely clueless as to what I wanted to do wit
h my life. As things stood now, I was on the fast track to a stellar career in the “Undeclared Major” department of any decent university.

  Working on the Sadie case, however, was presenting me with a focused challenge. Maybe I’d follow in Connie’s footsteps after all. Then again, maybe I’d become a trial lawyer, and then a top prosecutor, and then an Attorney General, and then, heck—why not dream big?—a Supreme Court Justice. Nothing seemed out of reach now that I had a mission.

  I went downstairs to the kitchen and logged on to the Internet. As soon as I was on-line, a chirpy IM from Kerrie appeared. I filled her in about Doug’s costume—which I hadn’t had a chance to do during school that day—and told her I was working on a paper. She chirped back with a question about what I was going to wear. “A shroud,” I retorted, but added a smiling emoticon so she’d know I wasn’t being irritable, even though I was.

  While we bantered back and forth, I pulled up a search program and plugged in Melinda McEvoy’s name. Zero documents retrieved, and the same non-results came up over and over. I tried just the last name and got the exact opposite result—thousands upon thousands of possible entries ranging from McEvoy Bed and Breakfast in Lowell, Massachusetts to the McEvoy family tree in Dust Ridge, Kentucky.

  On and on I went, trying M. McEvoy and even looking through the Internet white pages in California. Too many McEvoys popped up again, including a few dozen or so in the Monterey area. I actually thought of copying these names and numbers down and trying a few, but with nothing more to go on, it seemed too expensive and too frivolous to make all those long-distance calls for what could end up being a wild goose chase.

  Besides, what would I say when I called all these M. McEvoys? “Excuse me, aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

  In the meantime, Kerrie chimed in to say she had found a great old “flapper” costume her mother once had worn to a party. She was sure it would fit me, and if Doug was coming as an FBI agent, he could be Eliot Ness to my Zelda Fitzgerald. I said okay just to make her feel good, figuring the costume probably wouldn’t fit me anyway.

  Maybe it was mentioning Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of 1920s novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, that got me to thinking about writing, and writing got me to thinking about reporting, and reporting got me to thinking about newspapers. Just as I was about to sign off and give up the hunt, I decided to try newspapers in the Monterey area.

  I quickly found a couple major dailies and pulled up their web sites. Then, I punched in “Melinda McEvoy” and waited, expecting no result. Well, actually I was hoping for some story on a murder victim by that name. A few seconds later, an obituary appeared.

  “McEvoy, Melinda,” the notice read, “passed away on May 11.” It was an ordinary and very brief obit, nothing jumping off the page to solve the mystery. Melinda McEvoy was forty-five when she died. The obit didn’t say what had led to her demise or anything about family.

  Had Sadie known the McEvoys? Had she taken their car? Or had Melinda McEvoy given it to her? Connie said the car was not listed as stolen as far as she knew.

  It was getting late. One more piece of the puzzle, but still no clear picture in sight.

  I HAD every intention of keeping the McEvoy information to myself while I looked for more to flesh out the story. After all, my goal now was to excel at this investigation business so I could pave my way to more triumphs in the corridors of justice later on.

  I wanted to solve this mystery and present the whole thing to Connie wrapped up in a nice big bow, so to speak. Call me crazy, but I had this thing about wanting to show her I could surpass her in the PI department.

  My secrecy plan, however, was foiled early the next morning by circumstances beyond my control.

  Okay, okay, it was more my lack of self-control. I got mad at Connie and spilled the beans.

  But she was so darned smug, warming her hands around her mug of herbal tea, reading the newspaper at the kitchen table with eyes half closed while I had already showered and dressed and was ready for school. The kicker, though, was when she asked me if I wanted to drop by her office to learn more about her filing system.

  Her filing system? This was her summer employment offer? I was an experienced sleuth by now. And I wanted Connie to recognize my superior talents.

  “Filing?” I asked, withering scorn dripping from my voice.

  “Yeah. Filing. As in a part-time job. I thought you wanted to make some extra cash.” She casually flipped a page. “I thought you wanted to learn more about the business. We’ve talked about this.”

  “Filing isn’t learning about the business,” I sputtered. “Filing is—putting papers in folders.”

  “What do you expect to do—bring in serial killers single-handed?” Connie didn’t even look at me when she said that. That was what unlocked my sealed lips. Not so much the fact that she wanted me to do grunt-level filing, but that she didn’t even look at me when she threw a sarcastic remark my way. This was war.

  “For your information,” I said icily. “I know who Melinda McEvoy is.”

  “Huh?” She kept reading the paper, not paying any attention. I smacked my hand on top of what she was reading so she’d have to look at me.

  “Melinda McEvoy. You know, the woman whose car Sadie is driving?”

  Did Connie kiss my hand? Did she start to exclaim what a clever girl I was? Did she thank me, bless me, offer me the keys to her office? Of course.

  Not.

  “Let me guess. She died on May 11.” Connie stood and put her now-empty mug in the sink. “And you don’t know squat about why Sadie has her car. Hmm. . . I think that adds up to a big, fat goose egg in the investigation department. I think it adds up to what I already know.”

  I answered this with a stinging rebuke—silence.

  “Unless the information you found said, ‘oh, by the way, Sadie Sinclair is now using Melinda McEvoy’s car because. . .’ it doesn’t tell us much. Besides, I already knew McEvoy was dead, probably from the same on-line obit you read, Sherlock. And I know the car hasn’t been reported stolen, so I’m assuming Sadie knew McEvoy well enough to get the car after McEvoy passed on. Not to worry. Unlike you, I’ve got some other things I can check.”

  “Like what?”

  From upstairs I heard Tony calling me. “You ready to roll, rat head?” he called out in his usual dulcet tones.

  “In a minute!” I yelled back, just as sweetly. Standing, I turned my attention back to Connie. “Like what, Connie? What else can you check to find out about Melinda McEvoy and her connection to Sadie?”

  Connie said nothing at first but just leaned against the sink, twisting her mouth to one side as if deciding what to reveal and what to keep hidden. I’m not sure if her reasons included an in-depth analysis of “need-to-know” requirements. I think it was more along the lines of “if I tell Bianca, will she feel like she won something here?”

  Whatever the outcome of her inner debate, it was interrupted by Tony, who flew into the kitchen. Mom had told him the night before he had to take me to school today. She was already at work, putting in extra hours to earn Christmas money.

  “Come on, Bianca! I’m going to be late!”

  I grabbed my backpack from the kitchen floor and shrugged into my blue blazer. “Well?” I asked Connie one last time.

  “I have a few databases I can check, a few friends I can call,” she said nonchalantly. “Things and people a PI knows. Internet search engines have their limitations.” She turned to the sink and began washing the breakfast dishes.

  I harrumphed as best I could and briskly followed Tony to the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  WHEN I arrived at school there was little time to stew about Connie’s smugness or her secretiveness or her arrogance. Right away, I ran into Kerrie, who proceeded to overwhelm me with her enthusiasm for the flapper costume. She’d brought it with her, neatly folded in a paper grocery bag (Kerrie’s family didn’t believe in plastic bags), and made me take a look at it in the locker hall before clas
s.

  I have to admit I was expecting maybe a slightly better version of a K-Mart costume. You know the kind—thin fabric with designs glued on in sparkles or sequins, maybe a plastic mask thrown in for good measure. This was more like the Neiman Marcus version of that. It was a gorgeous mauve colored silk with real beading and fringe sewn on. It came with a matching cloche hat, purse, shoes, and tons of sparkling jewelry. In fact, this didn’t look like a costume at all. It looked like the real thing—something a flapper had actually worn.

  “Wow,” I said, stretching my descriptive powers to the limit. “This is great.”

  “I knew you’d like it,” Kerrie said. “If the shoes are too big, maybe you can stick tissue in the toes or something.”

  “Hmm, how should I do my hair?” I reached up and touched it. Today it was pulled back in a scrunchie in a fetchingly uncomplicated “natural” look. In other words, it was a little on the messy side.

  “Oh, let me do it for you! Come over early. I have a crimper and a curling iron. Or, you could come in the afternoon and I’ll set it in pin curls.” Kerrie was practically squealing with joy. And I have to admit that having her do my hair was probably better than trying to do it myself. At least if Kerrie did it, I could blame it on her. And that included blaming it on her if it looked really good.

  You have to understand that looking too good, or looking like you try too hard to look good, is just as bad as looking bad. So, having someone else responsible for part of your look was a great way to look good without worrying about looking like you tried hard to look good. You can sort of shrug and say, “Well, Kerrie did it,” and everyone would understand that you just had to look this good because Kerrie’s feelings would be hurt otherwise.

  Am I making myself clear here?

  “Okay,” I agreed. “We can make a plan later.”

  We parted ways for class, and hardly had a moment the rest of that busy day to catch up. Even the lunch hour was filled with announcements and special activities. Kerrie was starting a Christmas donation fund and stood at the cafeteria mike giving out detailed lists of items she would need to make the project work.