The Dead Girl: Greg Owen Mystery #1

by Evan Ronan

  Still though, he knew.

  Fereday was so certain.

  Now what, private investigator?

  I’m coming back tomorrow. But for now, I need to immerse myself in the details of Fereday’s crimes even further.

  Back to the pool hall.

  Wally and Roy are at it again. We’ve got a couple other tables running too, including a solo player.

  Henry Lucetti.

  He misses a duck. The four ball rattles around and the intended pocket coughs it back up. Henry looks at the ball like it owes him something, then notices me and comes out of his crouch. Chalking the cue, he watches me a moment and nods toward my office.

  “Come on back.”

  Henry lays the cue stick on the table and follows me.

  Inside my office, he’s a different man. Yesterday he was agitated, angry, broken. Today, he’s … determined?

  “What’s up, Henry?”

  “I want to help.”

  “I appreciate that, but …” But what? This requires the work of a professional? That’s hardly you, buddy. “Last we spoke, you were convinced Nick had done it. Now you want to help me?”

  “If Nick’s innocent, then her real killer should be caught.”

  “But you don’t think Nick’s innocent.”

  “I just want to help. I’m not asking to get paid. You need help. You’re not even a private detective really.”

  “I kind of am.” I give him a shit-eating grin. “Thanks, Henry, but I’ve reached the point where I think I have to bring the police in.”

  “What?” His eyes pop. “You found something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What?”

  He’s leaning way forward in his seat, palms pressed firmly against his knees.

  “Henry, I can’t really discuss it. But I’m at a point where I think I need the police to get involved.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Henry—”

  He’s out of his chair. “WHO?”

  I stand too. I’ve got seven or eight inches on him, thirty pounds easily, and my Marine training. I might be a step slower these days, but that training doesn’t go away. Best in the world.

  “Henry, you’re very emotional right now. I think you’d better leave this to the police.”

  He points a finger at me. “I have a right to know. She was my friend.”

  “And you will know, if anything comes of this.”

  Henry storms out of my office.

  Oh boy.

  I go to work, reviewing the news stories on Fereday again but this time paying more attention to detail. With the exception of one, all the girls Fereday … selected … bear a resemblance to Julie Stein: fair skin, brown hair, blue eyes. They’re all built the same way too.

  Is it possible?

  My phone interrupts my train of thought. The property inspector calling to let me know that everything is going well. Denise texts me to see how it’s going and it takes me a long time to decide to tell her—

  Good.

  My ex-wife calls an hour later.

  “Hey, Lor.”

  “Greg. How are you?”

  “Wheeling and dealing.”

  “Like always.” She pauses. “Hey, I heard about the store. I’m very sorry. Was anybody hurt?”

  And I give her the executive summary. I know she’s only half-listening, and I know I’m only half-telling because both of us are dancing around the real subject and reason for her call.

  “So,” she says.

  “Lor, it’s your decision to make about the job.”

  “But?”

  “But.”

  Silence.

  “You’ll fight me?”

  “I’ll do everything in my power to ensure I can still see my daughter during the week and always on weekends.”

  “Greg, think of your daughter.”

  “I am.” I’m losing my patience. “Her life is better if her father is in it. Not if he’s living four hours away.”

  “You still have the weekends. Maybe in the summer she can stay with you for extended periods?”

  Lorelei is trying to be reasonable … but at the same time, she’s also ready to take my girl away.

  “You and I both know that won’t happen. She’ll get used to her life down there, make new friends, and want to spend her time with them when she’s off from school. I don’t want to force her to stay with me if she doesn’t want to. Think about what kind of position that puts me in, Lorelei.”

  She takes a deep breath. I can tell she’s close to losing it too.

  “This is a really good opportunity for us. Jobs like this don’t come around often.”

  “Tammy will never come around again for me.”

  “Fine, Greg. If this is how you’re going to act.”

  “You’re angry I’m acting like a father?”

  “No. I’m angry you’re acting like yourself. You arrange this crazy life for yourself and make it impossible for everybody else.”

  “My crazy life? It’s because I don’t work a typical nine-to-five soul-sucking gig that I’m able to come to every game, every dance recital, every track meet, every everything. I’m always there. Do you know any other fathers like that?”

  “Forget it. I knew trying to reason with you wouldn’t work.”

  She hangs up.

  “That went well.”

  I’m all fired up and can’t concentrate now on reading about Warren John Fereday’s many and wretched crimes, all of them against young women, some of whom were minors at the time. Bottom line, though, is this:

  Julie Stein fits the guy’s victim profile.

  While my mind goes round in circles, I check email. Junk, junk, chain, then a couple messages from two addresses I don’t recognize.

  The first:

  If you don’t stop, we’ll hurt you.

  Immediately I click on the profile of the sender.

  First Name: John

  Last Name: Doe

  Address: 69 Sex Drive

  City: Intercourse

  I don’t bother going any deeper there. The message has me spooked. I have to admit its brevity is impactful and the use of “we” is effective.

  It makes me feel like there’s an anonymous band of vigilantes in town, ready to come for me if I keep sticking my nose in the wrong places.

  All the more reason to turn this over to the police.

  The second email from the other address I don’t recognize is the list of close friends Molly agreed to send me. I scan them quickly, most of them sounding familiar either because everybody knows everybody around here or because I just encountered these people in the police case file or news articles.

  I type Molly a quick thank you note, then think better of it and call her.

  “Hi, Greg.”

  Today she is polite, the roughness around the edges sanded down a little bit.

  “Molly, thanks for sending this list.” There are around thirty names on it. Might have been easier just to send me the listing of the entire graduating class. “Of these people you sent, who do you think I should start with?”

  “Nobody on that list would have hurt Julie.”

  “Okay. Who was hanging out with Julie the most that night?”

  “Not me.” She laughs but it’s forced. And painful.

  “Then who?”

  “Well, Henry. But he was always hanging all over her. Next would be Alana and Deanna.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Alright, goodb—”

  “Hang on.” How far do I go with this? “Did you see anything suspicious that night?”

  “I was wasted.”

  “Did any adults show up? Think about people that shouldn’t have been there. Or maybe vehicles?”

  “There were four hundred kids there. Parents kept their distance but they were around too.”

  Nothing. If a creep like Warren John Fereday showed up and was seen, people would have noticed then and everybody would have recalled these days, especially n
ow that he’d been convicted of very disgusting crimes.

  “Any adults there that didn’t have kids in the school?”

  “I’m sure there were, Greg. But I don’t really remember.”

  Do I come out and just ask her?

  “Did you ever see Warren Fereday around your school?”

  She guffaws. “Only like a million times.”

  I’m on high alert right now.

  “When?”

  “He’d come to the games. The girls’ games. Whenever they put out the call for volunteers, he was there. God, the sick bastard used to chaperone dances.”

  “Did he show any interest in certain girls?”

  “He didn’t want anything to do with me. I wasn’t a size four.”

  “Come on, Molly. You know what I’m asking.”

  “Julie? Nothing sticks out in my mind.” She pauses. “There’s one time, now that I think about it, we were making fun of the guy. He gave off such a creepy vibe, most of us were in tune with it. Anyway, we used to say really mean things about him. The joke was he snuck into the locker room and looked to see if anybody left their gym bags so he could sniff our underwear. One day, some girl wanted to call the cops and make up a story about him because he was always hanging around and skeeving us out. But guess who stuck up for him?”

  “Julie.”

  “Yep. Sweet Julie. She never saw the bad in anybody. Not ever. She had those blinders on when it came to people. Just like with Nick.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She shamed the other girl. Shamed us all, really. Said that we shouldn’t say things like that about the guy we didn’t know were true.”

  God.

  “Only we were right. It was true.” Molly is getting worked up. “But maybe if we had said something, then the police would have caught him sooner. Goes to show you that being polite never works.”

  I decide to leave that alone. Maybe because I’m inclined to agree.

  “Did she say anything about talking to him?”

  “That was part of the reason she stuck up for him. Julie said she had spoken to him a few times and that he was just socially awkward. She felt bad for guys like that. You know, just like Henry.”

  “Henry was part of your group, though. From my understanding, you and Julie were with the popular clique.”

  “Clique?” She laughs. “Who says that anymore?”

  “Us old farts.” Except I’m not old.

  I’m not.

  Damnit.

  “Yeah, I guess we were. Henry was more Julie’s friend than anybody else’s. He really only talked to her, sometimes to me, maybe to a couple of the guys. But he was more with the theater group.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Anyway, is there anything else? I’ve got a class coming up.”

  “Not right now. Thanks, Molly.”

  I give myself fifteen minutes to decide what to do. Mechanically, I grab a table and go through a couple drills to work on my cut shots and leaves. Master the fundamentals, like Pop always told me. Three balls and the cue. Shoot and position. Shoot and position. Two shots ahead.

  You always have to think two shoots ahead.

  Then I decide what to do.

  Twenty-One

  Having my property inspector and experts lined up is paying off right now. Because I’m able to move so quickly, it puts me in a better position with Jason Shaw to purchase the Commodore Apartments.

  And I better now that I might have to fight things out in court with Lorelei. I want to be able to show a judge or arbitrator that we don’t need Lorelei to take this better-paying job in Maryland, because I’ve just invested locally and the equity alone will drastically improve our collective financial situation.

  I touch base with the inspector. He’s about seventy percent of the way through the units. So far, so good. The soil guy is out there now, the water guy is coming later. We’re looking good. I’ll ping Shaw later tonight.

  I call the laundromat to check in. A-okay. Then the convenience store. The glass guys are done, the storefront already replaced.

  Okay.

  As I’m driving, though, I see a car behind me. At first I don’t think anything of it, because it’s the middle of the day, but the car looks familiar. Very familiar.

  I slow down to try and get a better look at the driver. But the driver slows in turn, keeping a healthy distance between us.

  Is this anything?

  Where have I seen this car before?

  I make an unplanned left, into a strip mall parking lot. The car goes past. I park and wait. It comes back the other way a moment later, easing its way into the lot and then going to the far end.

  I can’t see the driver, but it’s a tan Ford, the model about ten or fifteen years old.

  I keep the car running and hop out. There’s a pizza shop and a beauty store and barber shop in this strip mall. I pretend to go into the barber shop at the end farthest from the car that just might be following me.

  But really I slip around the back.

  I dodge the dumpsters and hustle around the other side of the building. The tan Ford is still there, engine running, driver behind the wheel. It’s light out but the glare off the windshield prevents me from seeing who it is.

  That’s okay. I’m better with the direct approach anyway.

  I walk right up to the driver’s window. He was looking the other way, keeping an eye on the beauty shop where he thinks I went, and his head snaps around when I knock on the glass.

  The young man behind the wheel makes a who me expression. I signal for him to open the window. He continues to play dumb, smiles like we’re good buddies, then powers the window down.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asks.

  “What’s your name?”

  His eyes grow suspicious.

  “Aw, come on,” I say. “You didn’t give up already, did you? Because you were acting so well. I was almost ready to buy that you weren’t following me.”

  “Following you?”

  “Yeah. So tell me your name.”

  He balks.

  “Look, kid, I’m a PI which gives me access to a lot of the databases the police use. Now that I’ve got your plate memorized, I can run it through the system and find out who the car is registered to. So I’m going to find out anyway.”

  His eyes harden. “I’m Julie’s cousin.”

  “What a coincidence!” I slap the roof of the car like I’m overjoyed when really I want to slug the guy. “Another one of Julie’s cousins just so happened to drive by my store last night and notice it was vandalized. His name is Joe Goldfarb. Which one are you?”

  “Fuck you, asshole.”

  I suck in air through my teeth like he’s really hurt me. “The witty banter. How do I come back from that?”

  I bend at the waist, so our faces are close. He tries not to flinch.

  “You keep following me, you and I are going to have problems.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “And you tell your cousin I know it was him that busted up my store.”

  I push away from the car and head back to mine.

  “He killed her.”

  I turn and see the idiot has worked up the courage to get out of his car. I can see his head over the roof.

  “Nick killed Julie, you asshole. If he goes free because you … then you are going to have problems. With our whole family.”

  “Even if he’s innocent?”

  “He’s not.”

  I get back in my car and pull out. For all his bravado, which came too late anyway, the soon-to-be identified driver of the tan Ford does not follow me.

  “Kids aren’t tough these days,” I say, trying to make myself feel better.

  But really, I’m nervous. I don’t like looking over my shoulder. Nobody does. I’m going to have to put an end to this by going straight to the top of the Stein family.

  That has to wait, though.

  I head back to the police station. My buddy Shawn
isn’t around, so I have to talk to Minghella and Barnes. The desk sergeant reaches out because they’re on the road, and the detectives promise to be back in half an hour.

  It’s more like an hour.

  They come in carrying takeout containers too.

  “Greg, we got some pizza leftover if you’d like some.”

  Fucking guys want me to know they stopped to eat, knowing I was waiting. I just keep cool.

  “Thanks for seeing me. Can we talk in one of your offices?”

  “Office?” Minghella snorts. “I work for a living. I don’t get an office.”

  They lead me back into a conference room. Barnes shuts the door.

  “You have something to tell us?” Minghella asks.

  “Couple things, but first I was wondering if you guys heard about the break-in at my store.”

  “Yeah. We were real sorry to hear about that.”

  His voice drips with sarcasm.

  Barnes sits across from me. “We heard you went on a little trip this morning.”

  “I know Fereday was busted in Willow Grove, but I also know several towns worked together to identify him. How involved were you two?”

  Minghella and Barnes engage in mental telepathy again. Minghella plants himself against the wall opposite me.

  Barnes nods. “We were involved.”

  “Fereday says there were more.”

  Minghella makes a noise that manages to capture the feelings of both disgust and disbelief.

  Barnes responds, “He talked a big game. He wanted everyone to think there were dozens, if not hundreds out there.”

  “Why?”

  “It was the only bargaining chip he had to cut a deal.” Barnes folds his arms. “You seem to be very impressionable, Mr. Owen.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “First, the Carlisle kid spins you a story about how he’s innocent and was coerced into a plea deal. Next, you go talk to Warren John Fereday and you come away thinking he conveniently killed Julie Stein.”

  “Not so convenient for her,” I say.

  Barnes grunts. “Neither of these two people are, what you’d call, entirely trustworthy. And yet here you are, eating up their shit like it’s pumpkin pie.”

  “I do like pumpkin pie,” I say. This is going nowhere fast. “Fereday knew something about Julie.”

  “Yeah, what?”