The Dead Girl: Greg Owen Mystery #1

by Evan Ronan

  Finally he meanders in and takes the same seat Denise did yesterday. His eyes are bouncing all over the place like jumping beans.

  I get a thought. “Did you stop by yesterday?”

  He nods.

  “Why?”

  Instead of answering, he asks, “Why are you looking into Julie’s murder?”

  “Somebody asked me to.”

  This does not satisfy him, but he doesn’t know how to respond.

  I look at him and he mostly looks back at me, when he can slow his eyes down for a second.

  Then, inevitably, come the first signs of hostility.

  He steadies himself. Says, “Nick admitted to it.”

  “He took a deal.”

  “That’s different?”

  “You seem angry, Henry.”

  His face expresses about seven conflicting emotions in the span of one second. But then it settles back into that introverted, but simmering look.

  “He killed her. He admitted it. He deserves to be in prison for the rest of his life.”

  Henry Lucetti has the hollowed out eyes of a survivor. I wonder if he’s suffering from the guilt that comes with that.

  I say, “How long were you and Julie friends?”

  “Forever.” He thinks about it. “Since fourth grade.”

  “How about you and Nick?”

  He makes a face. “Nick was a jock. I … wasn’t.”

  “What were you?”

  “I was involved in the theater.”

  “How about these days?”

  He shrugs. “I got a degree in Finance and can’t find a job.”

  “It’s tough out there.” The temptation to offer a kid unsolicited advice is too great—I really am getting old. “Start your own business.”

  “What?” He looks at me like I’ve told him to become an astronaut. “How do I do that?”

  “There are ways …” I want to apologize for having an Adult Moment. “But you’re not here to talk about that. Why do you think Nick killed her?”

  “Because he pled guilty.”

  “He took a deal,” I repeat, sticking the knife in a little deeper to see what kind of reaction I get.

  “You know what I mean.” Henry stands. His fists bunch. “Do you know how many times Julie called me, crying and scared? Toward the end of the relationship, it was like every fucking day. Did you know he grabbed her? Did you know he broke the windows of her Jeep?”

  “Did you see her that night?”

  “Before she went to his house.”

  “How about after?”

  “No!” We are standing three feet apart and he’s yelling at me. “No! I didn’t see her after. Like I told the cops, I only saw her Jeep! I didn’t see her.”

  “Okay.” I hold my hands out. “Wanna sit back down and talk about this?”

  “No.”

  But he sits.

  “I told the police that it couldn’t have been her.”

  It takes me a moment to unpack this. “You’re saying you saw someone near Julie’s Jeep and that it wasn’t her?”

  He nods. “I was wasted but it looked like Nick.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “I was wasted.”

  “What if you saw Nick by the Jeep, but he didn’t do it?”

  “He did.”

  “What if he didn’t? Wouldn’t you want the real killer caught? Sounds like you and Julie were good friends.”

  “We were best friends,” he says. “We all were.”

  Something bothers me about that.

  “What was your relationship like with Nick?” I ask.

  He gets real nervous. “I told you. We didn’t have one.”

  “But you ran with the same crowd.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you but it doesn’t have anything to do with Julie’s murder. Nick and I got into a fight once.”

  “He beat you up?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “He didn’t like how close Julie and I were. He was the jealous type, had real anger management issues.”

  “How close were you and Julie?”

  “I told you. We were friends.”

  “Just friends?”

  His face turns red. And I know.

  “You had feelings for her.”

  Those pale cheeks are all lit up.

  “But she didn’t reciprocate.”

  He says nothing.

  “I’ve been there,” I say, mind drifting to the very woman who hired me for this investigation. Denise and I were friends, but she was always more to me than that. After graduation I got over it, but even now it’s hard to look at her and not wonder what if.

  “She didn’t fully reciprocate,” he hedges. “I mean, she was confused. High school is a confusing time.”

  “Most of life is a confusing time. What do you mean?”

  Of course I know exactly what he means, because there were times when Denise would look at me differently. There’d be a light in her eyes that wasn’t normally there. A pregnant pause. A hand on my arm or shoulder. There were plenty of times I wondered why she was calling me late at night instead of her boyfriend … that kind of relationship begins to warp your mind. You see things that aren’t there.

  And maybe some things that are.

  Henry explains, “It was killing me, not telling her how I felt even though I think she already knew. So one night I just told her.”

  “She was dating Nick at the time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me that she sort of had feelings for me too.”

  “And then Nick kicked your ass. Is that it?”

  He shakes his head no.

  “Then why did he?”

  “Because Julie and I hooked up once after she and Nick broke up.”

  Fourteen

  One step forward, two steps backward.

  “Did you love her?”

  “No.” Henry looks away, miserably. “Maybe. I was just a kid.”

  “You’re still a kid.”

  His eyes burn. “Fuck you.”

  “Alright, I deserved that.” He gets up to leave. I say, “Julie told Nick she was going to see her best friend. But Molly says she never saw Julie again at the lake. Do you believe her?”

  He looks uncomfortable. “She and Molly weren’t exactly talking that night.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was over a guy.”

  “Who?”

  “Me,” he says sheepishly, in a way that tells me women have never fought over him before. Or since.

  “Because you and Julie hooked up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You and Molly were together?”

  “No.”

  “I take it back. High school in your day is more confusing than it was in mine.” Back when I graduated, you dated somebody. Sure you might have messed around, had one night stands, but relationships seemed more clearly defined. They took on shape, they had a form, there were lines.

  A few years ago, the Staties uncovered a hidden Internet forum where high schoolers could anonymously post videos, pictures, and messages of a sexual nature about their classmates. If memory serves, a couple local kids got into trouble. I’ve heard the term hookup culture to describe today’s youth and never really understood it, but right now I’m beginning to get a better idea of what it is.

  “We partied,” Henry says, as if that explains it. “One time we hooked up but then she got crazy. That was it.”

  “But you weren’t exclusive.”

  “No!” he says, surprising me with a little bit of venom. “No, we weren’t. At all. Molly got all weird and possessive and she couldn’t take Julie and me getting together, even though it was just one time.”

  “Why was it only one time?”

  He looks away for a moment, then brings his eyes back around. “We hooked up one night. The next day Julie is crying, talking about Nick and worrying about him, and she says she still
has feelings for him and she says that she was drunk the night before and that it was a mistake for us to do that. She saw us as friends.”

  “But she told you she had feelings.”

  “Nick mind-fucked her. She was all mixed up.”

  “Still, you must have been mad at her for playing you like that.”

  “She didn’t play me!” he thunders. “Julie was not like that. She was confused and drunk one night, and we hooked up. When she sobered up, it was a different story.”

  “But still,” I persist, “the girl you love—”

  “I didn’t fucking kill her, asshole, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Okay.” I pretend to grow thoughtful. “Hey, Henry, can I call you if I have more questions?”

  He just leaves.

  Fifteen

  On the way to Collegeville, my daughter Tammy calls me.

  I activate the Bluetooth. “Hey, sweetheart.”

  “Hey, Dad.” She sounds bummed. “So, you talked to Mom?”

  “I did.” My heart sinks. It hurts like hell just thinking about Tammy being four hours away. It’s going to kill me if it becomes reality.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Well, what do you want, sweetheart?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds like it’d be a really good thing for Mom. And us. But I don’t want to be that far away from you.”

  Happiness robs me of speech.

  “What do you think, Dad?”

  I am unprepared for this. “You know what? Your mother and I need to discuss it further. Tammy, I love how we’re able to see each other whenever we want. If you moved down to Maryland I’d …”

  I get choked up.

  “Aw, Dad. Don’t cry.”

  She sounds so old. And when did she start comforting me?

  “Like I said, your mother and I are going to discuss this a bit more. It’s a very important decision that’s going to impact all our lives.”

  “You won’t be mad if I want to go?”

  “No, honey. Of course not. I’ll miss the hell out of you if it happens, but I’ll never be mad at you. I just want to be your father.”

  She mulls that over. “Alright, gotta go. Practice is starting up.”

  “I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”

  “Love you, Daddy.”

  Daddy. She hasn’t called me that in a long time.

  I have to pull off the road to get myself together. And I make up my mind. I will not let them move to Maryland without a fight. I will take Lorelei to court if I have to. She can’t just move our daughter four hours away from me, no matter how fucking great the job is.

  I resolve to get my businesses in order. Very soon, I might have to show a judge how good my finances are to make a case that Lorelei does not need to take a new, higher-paying job. This real estate deal involving the apartment complex just got a helluva lot more important.

  But one thing at a time.

  I find the Graduate Studies Center at the college and park out front. The building is new, looks like it was designed by NASA. A lot of students are coming and going, backpacks on their shoulders.

  Inside I stop by the front desk. An Asian girl with big glasses looks up at me.

  “Hi. I’m trying to find Molly Coates. She said she’d be here.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Greg Owen.”

  She regards me skeptically. “Can I see your ID?”

  “Here you go.”

  She reads it over for a long time. “Okay, Molly is in third conference room. She and the other TAs are wrapping up a meeting, I think.”

  “Where can I wait?”

  “Right here. I’ll point her out to you when she comes out.”

  “Thanks.”

  I take a seat by the door. Oh to be young again. I enjoyed my time in college but I think I learned more in the Marines. Studying for Final exams never taught me how to run a business or close deals or develop a plan or come up with a strategy. Studying just made me good at taking Final exams.

  I’m checking my watch for the third time when the young woman behind the desk says, “Greg. Here she is.”

  Molly Coates is tall and blonde with an unpardonable haircut. Half the hair on her head is buzzed short. The other half is long and falling down one side of her face. She has pretty eyes and cheekbones so high a model would kill for them. The stud piercing the middle of her nose though is jarring.

  “Molly?”

  “You’re the PI?” she asks.

  “Among other things.”

  “Ohhhh a cryptic answer. What other things?”

  The woman behind the desk is getting a kick out of Molly giving me an attitude.

  “I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here to talk about you and your friend.”

  Molly nods. Her face softens a bit. “Come on back.”

  I have to walk through a turnstile that the woman behind the desk unlocks for me. Molly doesn’t wait for me to catch up, she just walks ahead. She’s wearing a mismatched brown t-shirt and long green dress over military style boots. I guess it’s a fashion statement, but then again I have no room to talk. I buy clothes maybe twice a year and only when there’s a sale.

  Molly stops me in front of an open door and motions me inside. Three walls with whiteboards and a conference table with a power strip and plug-ins running down the middle of it. I take a seat near the door, which Molly closes, and then she sits diagonally to me.

  “Are you really investigating Julie’s murder?” Molly says.

  “I am.” And even I still can’t believe it. “You and she were friends.”

  “Were. Till she …” Molly’s voice is hard, but she pauses and this has a calming effect. “Look, we were good friends till she dumped Nick. Then anytime a guy was remotely interested in me, she had to move in. We had a big fight about one of the guys she hooked up with and that was that. We weren’t really on speaking terms the night she was killed. I remember hearing at the trial she was coming to talk to me but that never happened. I never saw her once she left to go meet Nick.”

  “Do you think he killed her?” I ask.

  “Yes. He was an asshole. I mean, an asshole. Everybody loved the guy but I always knew better. Every time they fought I warned her. I knew he was going to do something. I just knew it all along. He scared me.”

  “How did you know?”

  “She couldn’t breathe without his permission,” she says. “She couldn’t do anything or go anywhere without him. He knew the password to her email and was always checking her phone. He was a real creep.”

  “Why do you think she wanted to talk to you that night?”

  “I don’t know she did,” Molly says. “That’s just crazy Nick’s word against nobody’s.”

  “Why would he make up a thing like that? What does he get out of saying she was on her way to talk to you?”

  She shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe he was trying to get me in trouble. I don’t know.”

  The hostility is like a tangible force coming off her. “Okay, let’s say it’s true for the sake of argument. Why do you think she would want to talk to you after seeing Nick, especially if you two weren’t on speaking terms?”

  “Maybe she was ready to apologize.”

  There is so much anger in this girl. But who am I to judge? She and her best friend had some unfinished business when Julie was murdered. This is just Molly’s way of dealing.

  “At the trial, you testified glowingly about her.”

  “Everything I said was true,” Molly says. “Just because we fought about a boy didn’t mean she wasn’t nice and caring and funny and smart and all that.”

  “Let’s pretend like Nick doesn’t exist for a moment.”

  “I do that all the time. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

  I laugh. “Who else could have killed Julie?”

  “No one.” She’s emphatic. “She was the nicest and most popular girl in school. Everybody loved her. I mean, loved. She could do
no wrong. Sometimes that pissed me off too.”

  “You and she had a fight about Henry.”

  “Henry.” The most fleeting of smiles. Then the bitterness. “It seems so stupid now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was obsessed with Julie. There were other guys that were interested in me. I shouldn’t have wasted my time on him.”

  Talking to these kids that have graduated college, I can’t help but feel a big piece of them is still trapped in high school.

  “Could Henry have killed Julie?”

  “No.”

  “But she broke his heart.”

  “So what? They hooked up. Everybody did. It’s just how it is.”

  “Still.”

  “Henry wasn’t …”

  I let her search for the word.

  “… tough enough to kill somebody. He was shy, introverted and, you know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He was soft,” she says. “Kind of a wus.”

  “Did you two have a falling out?”

  “No,” she says impatiently. “I liked the guy. But don’t ask me why. Looking back, I can’t explain it. I mean, he’s okay-looking and he was nice and smart but …”

  She looks at me like I’m supposed to fill in the blanks for her.

  “But?”

  “You go away to college and your whole world expands. You meet new people and you realize the world is bigger than this little town you grew up in. There are so many places to go and people to meet. You know?”

  “Sure do.” Reminds me of my time in the Marines, got to see some of the world.

  She goes on. “I liked him but of course he was smitten with Julie and she had to swoop in the minute after she and Nick broke up. It just pissed me off.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on,” I insist, “you and Julie fought about it.”

  “We just yelled at each other.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes, alright? That’s all.”

  “What did you say?”

  She’s losing control.

  “I told her how much I hated her. Alright?”

  All of a sudden she stops.

  The anger leaches out of her.

  The tears begin.

  Very softly I say, “You must have been angry.”

  She nods, swiping at tears. “I told her how much I hated her and how bad a friend she was and then she …”