by Holly Plum
“That's odd,” Mari said.
“Anyway, Robin is the boss around here." Christina shrugged. "She made due fine without me. Mornings are pretty slow around here, as you can tell.” She motioned to the nearly empty waiting room.
“I just feel bad that she had to be here alone with that reporter sniffing around and all,” she went on. “Man, I hate those press people."
“Reporter? What reporter?” Mari listened eagerly.
“Oh, someone from the local news came in here the second word spread about that supermodel being in town. The night before had been pretty hectic. One reporter, in particular, hounded Robin with questions."
"I bet she wasn't happy about that," Mari added.
“She hated it." Christina's eyes darted to the waiting room. "In fact, she was sitting just over there when the reporter said something that sent her over the edge. Robin threw a chair. Luckily, none of our actual customers were in at the time."
“Really?” Mari raised her eyebrows, wondering why Robin had never mentioned this before. "Any idea what the reporter said that made her so mad?"
"No." Christina shook her head. "Sorry. But I must say that I've never seen Robin behave that way. She is always so calm in the office. She is usually the one telling me to take a chill pill when I get backed up with customers and start to stress over it. That reporter must have hit a nerve or something."
"Did anything else happen?" Mari inquired.
"The reporter left pretty soon after that."
“Well, I would too,” Mari said. “I don't know why the press in this town likes to stir up trouble.”
Christina shrugged wildly. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Mari thanked her and left the pharmacy, her head a swirl of unanswered questions. She supposed it was too much to hope that Robin would explain to her why she had gotten so angry, but she had to keep trying. When Mari got home, she would call Robin, and she would keep calling her until she got through to her.
Sooner or later, the reason for Robin's meltdown would float to the surface.
CHAPTER TEN
That evening, Mari drove across town and knocked on Robin’s door. Robin had not been answering her phone, and Mari wanted to know about her encounter with the reporter. She stood nervously for what felt like an hour, waiting for Robin to answer. The lights were all off, and nobody appeared to be home. Mari sighed, hoping that she would eventually get some answers.
Mari returned home and had just finished leaving Robin a voice mail when she was startled by a knock on the door. Tabasco barked and sniffed around the door frame. Looking through the peephole, she saw Hazel standing outside.
Mari unbolted the lock and welcomed her in.
“Hazel, what’s going on?” Mari asked as she took Hazel's jacket. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m a little scared,” Hazel replied. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Robin all day. I couldn’t find her at work, and she’s not answering her phone. I’m afraid something might have happened to her. Oh, I knew the killer was targeting someone else. Oh, I just knew it.” Hazel gulped down air, trying her best to remain calm.
"Now, don't go jumping to conclusions," Mari reassured her. "Let me make you some tea."
Mari made some herbal tea and set out a plate of cheese Danishes that Tabasco kept his eyes on. Hazel sat at the dining room table cupping her mug in both hands. Tabasco sat at her feet, no doubt noticing that something was wrong.
“If you want to know the truth,” she said in a somewhat shaky voice, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between Karlie and Robin. I didn’t want to say anything because…well because I’m scared.”
“What can you tell me about their relationship?” Mari asked, instinctively leaning forward. Tabasco's ears perked up.
“I think I would feel better if we sat in the living room,” Hazel responded. Mari rose and escorted Hazel to the living area. "Can I trust you not to tell anyone what I’m about to tell you?”
“Yes, of course,” Mari said, without pausing to wonder whether or not she might have to break that promise.
Hazel sat on the couch in silence for a moment. She drew in a series of sharp, rattled breaths and turned the now-empty mug over and over in both hands.
“First of all,” she said, “I think you should know that Robin never liked Karlie.”
“Were they enemies?” Mari asked.
“I wouldn’t call them that, exactly. But they had a kind of rivalry between them. One always wanted what the other one had. If Robin had a new boyfriend, then Karlie would be dating him within a week. She couldn’t settle for just any other guy. She had to have that guy because she was always jealous of Robin. And, of course, it went the other way. Robin was furious when Karlie made it onto the varsity cheerleading team, and she didn’t.”
“Did either of them ever try to hurt the other?” Mari asked.
“Not physically, if that’s what you mean,” Hazel replied. “But they were always trying to sabotage each other. Robin spread those terrible rumors that Karlie had been caught making out with Principal Wells, who was just a teacher back then, of course.”
“I remember that,” Mari admitted, thinking that perhaps she didn’t know Robin as well as she thought she did. “Wow, that's pretty low. So, did they ever make up before graduation?"
Hazel shook her head. “Not as far as I know. When I met up with Robin before dinner the other night, she had some not-so-nice things to say about Karlie. Even after all of this time. I thought Robin would have moved on by now.”
"Then why did Robin show up?"
"I don't know." Hazel shrugged.
Mari leaned forward. Hazel instinctively shrank back, as though she had said too much. “Do you think that Robin might have done something to Karlie?”
For a moment Hazel was silent as if thinking how best to respond.
“I noticed something yesterday, but I don't know if I should say anything,” Hazel responded. “It didn’t make a lot of sense at the time, but I haven't been able to get it out of my head."
"Go on," Mari encouraged her.
Hazel took a deep breath. "Robin asked me to meet her outside the back door of the gymnasium before the memorial service. I got there a few minutes early, and I stood there waiting and waiting. I went inside the school without Robin, and it turned out she was already inside. She said she was just coming to look for me. I didn't think much of it.”
“Hazel,” Mari said, her eyes illuminated by the lamplight. “I think you should go to the police.”
“Mari, I—”
“You need to tell Detective Price exactly what you just told me. All of it. This could break the case wide open.” Mari eagerly nodded, but she knew that getting Hazel to talk would be tough.
“But I don’t want to get a friend in trouble,” Hazel responded. “I’m just worried. I don’t want to believe that Robin has done something horrible. I want to believe there’s some better explanation. I wish I could talk to her about it.”
“I don't want to believe it either.” Mari sighed as she went over the details of her trip to the pharmacy. "Can you believe Robin threw a chair?"
“Mari, I’m scared,” Hazel responded. “Who can I trust if not my own friend? Apparently, Robin's issues with Karlie run much deeper than I realized.”
“We’re going to figure this out,” Mari said, though she realized even as she said it that she didn’t know if it was true. “I have a lot at stake here, though. My family's restaurant might take the fall for this one if Detective Price doesn't catch the person responsible. I know you don't want to hear this, but I think we should talk to the police.” Mari stood up, and Tabasco trotted over to his leash.
“Fine,” Hazel agreed, rising wearily from the sofa. “I guess if they can’t protect us, then maybe we’re better off dead.” Hazel glanced at her cell phone. "Robin won't even text me back. She always texts me back. What is going on, Mari? I thought we escaped all of this drama once high s
chool ended."
"For some people, high school is never over," Mari answered.
***
Mari and Hazel drove to the police station together with Tabasco in tow. It was a dark and windy night. Hazel gazed out of the window in a persistent state of panic, as if afraid that they might skid off the road at any moment. Her expression remained unchanged when they walked through the front entrance.
“You must be cold,” Detective Price said, eyeing her thin jacket and even thinner sweater. The police station was empty except for the three of them and a secretary stationed at the front desk. “I’ll get a fresh pot of coffee going.”
“Thank you, that would be great,” Hazel said as he ushered them into his back office.
There, still visibly shaken, Hazel repeated everything she had told Mari about the rivalry between Robin and Karlie, her suspicion that Robin had vandalized the display at the memorial, and her fear that Robin might have committed the murder. Detective Price folded his hands under his chin with a thoughtful expression, slowly absorbing all that had just been said.
“I wish you would have told us these things sooner,” he said after a lengthy pause.
Hazel nodded tearfully. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t worried about her. Robin is my friend, but something is going on that she's not telling me."
“And Mari convinced you to come clean,” Detective Price responded, glancing at Mari out of the corner of his eye. Below her, Tabasco shifted restlessly. “Well, I think it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. What you’ve told me is insightful, and much more than you realize.”
“What do you mean?” Hazel asked with a loud sniff.
“This gives me a window into what Ms. Lam’s teen years must have been like,” said Detective Price went on. “You would be surprised how few people have been willing to go on the record about what they know of her as a teen. Many of them seem to be afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Mari asked.
The detective chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. “I'm not sure, but Ms. Lam was a beloved celebrity. No one wants to be the one to tear down the golden child, not when so many townsfolk admired her."
“I can understand that,” Mari replied. She took a deep breath. The office was chilly, and she just wanted to go home and bury herself in a comforter and watch her usual cooking shows. But right now she didn’t have that luxury. A killer was still on the loose, and it could turn out to be a friend.
“It’s been so hard to mourn for Karlie,” Hazel added. “Because on the one hand, she was so young. On the other hand, she wasn't as nice as people thought she was.”
Detective Price kept his gaze level, and it was impossible to tell from his expression whether he agreed or not.
Tabasco chose that moment to break free from his leash. By the time Mari realized what had happened, he had already run out of the office. Mari yelled and went running after him, but Detective Price watched the proceedings with a twinkle in his eye.
“If I were you,” the detective said, “I would think about buying a better leash or collar. Or maybe invest some money in a dog trainer.”
Mari found Tabasco curled up at the feet of the secretary, who had just sat down to listen to some voicemails.
“We’re going to need to send someone out to see a Mr. Rex Jones,” she said.
“Why, what happened?” Detective Price asked as he came striding out of his office.
“There’s been a break-in at 1135 East.”
“Very interesting,” Detective Price answered, already moving in the direction of the front door. “Did he call this in himself?" His secretary nodded. "I'm going to talk to him myself."
The detective was gone before Mari even had a chance to ask if she could follow him out there. She turned to Hazel, who was still shivering.
“Hazel,” she said in a quiet voice, “I think this town has gone mad.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day, Mari went to work early. She could hardly concentrate on her tasks, and twice she got her orders mixed up. Not that it mattered much because one table had ordered two plates of rice and beans, and the other had ordered three plates of rice and beans. Even so, one of the customers raised a terrible fuss until Mr. Ramirez came out and offered to refund him the full price of the meal.
Mari was able to focus when Rex Jones showed up. He rarely ate at the restaurant.
“Is this place always so busy on Saturdays?” he asked when he was finally seated at an open booth.
“Sometimes,” Mari replied. “Do you already know what you want to order?”
Rex looked through the menu thoughtfully for a moment. “I’ll have a breakfast burrito and a soda,” he said.
Mari could have hugged him. “You’re the first person in a long time who hasn’t ordered rice and beans.”
“Is there nothing else on the menu?” Rex asked.
Mari explained how Karlie had ordered a vegetarian dish just before she died. “And so every day more people are coming in wanting to know where she was sitting, what she was wearing, and what she was eating.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” Mari said. “Some even have the guts to ask for a re-enactment of what happened. My brothers, Alex and David, have gotten pretty good at it. Karlie's death gets more and more dramatic every time they rehearse it.”
“You sound like you could use a break,” Rex commented.
“I could go back to my old teaching job, but then this place might fall apart,” Mari said, sweeping her hair out of her face. "Someone has got to keep my dad from cutting corners just to save a few pennies, my Abuela from giving away all of the stock to her book club friends, and my brothers from burning the place down."
Rex folded his napkin and placed it on his lap. “For me, teaching used to be pretty fulfilling until recently. I mean, somebody broke into my house yesterday.”
"Did they take anything?" Instead of taking Rex's order to the kitchen, Mari sat down across from him.
“No. At least, I don't think so.” Rex shrugged. “But they did destroy all of my furniture. My entertainment center is in pieces, and my TV is smashed up. Can you believe that?”
“Who would go through the trouble?” Mari asked though she had her suspicions.
“No idea." Rex hung his head. "Druggies maybe? I thought I lived in a nice enough neighborhood, but now I'm considering moving. Anyway, what did you do last night?"
“I was with Hazel." Mari cleared her throat. "We were looking for Robin. Neither of us has seen her lately. Have you? She waited eagerly, hoping for answers.
Rex shook his head. “Robin and I don’t talk. Not since high school, anyway. She’s been giving me the cold shoulder ever since graduation and I’m not really sure why.”
"That's too bad."
After Rex had left, giving her no new information about Robin or Karlie, Mari decided to go home during her break and take Tabasco for a walk. The sky was a gray, and a brisk breeze blew past them. Tabasco barked at a leave that rushed by.
Later, she would insist it was only by chance that she had ended up in Robin's neighborhood. However it had happened, Mari realized that now was a better time than any to see if Robin was at home. It took her about ten minute to reach Robin’s front door.
It was a quaint one-story brick house with a bird bath in the front garden. Mari rang the doorbell. No answer. Growing impatient, Mari glanced through the front window. A bookshelf against the wall was all she could make out. Mari maneuvered to see more, but Tabasco yanked at his leash. Mari shouted as he ran off toward the backyard.
Mari ran after him, thinking of Detective Price's advice of investing in a new leash. She reached the back of the house just in time to see Tabasco leap through a doggy door. Tabasco was inside Robin's house, and Mari was stuck outside.
“Tabasco, you get back here!" she shouted through the doggy door, though she knew he couldn’t hear her. Bending down on the concrete patio, she pushed one arm through the doggy door. I
t wasn’t nearly big enough to let her through. She tried reaching up and unlocking the back door, but her arm wasn't long enough.
There were certainly going to be questions if Robin came home to find Mari’s dog pattering around her house. That is unless she could get him out. It would be a risk, but her brothers were unusually good at this sort of thing. She closed her eyes and asked herself what Alex and David would do if they had been standing right beside her.
With a reluctant sigh, Mari tried every window she could reach until she found one that wasn't locked. Getting in through a window was what her brothers tried first when they broke curfew. A curfew was always in effect as long as they were living under Dad's roof. She yanked the window open. A second later she was inside Robin's house.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was with a growing sense of fear and anxiety that Mari crept through the dark house. Although it was only midafternoon, the gray light filtering in through the half-opened window made it hard to see. But she dared not switch on a light.
As Mari looked around, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Robin's house had the unkempt, slightly dusty look of a house whose owner had been gone for a few days. A thin layer of dust was on the bookcase, and there was a vase of flowers on the kitchen table that were beginning to wilt.
Mari heard a scuffling sound from inside one of the cabinets. An investigation of the pantry revealed a bag full of dry cat food. Mari managed to find the cat’s bowl lying near the kitchen sink. It was empty, and so was the water bowl. Mari debated whether or not she should fill them. If Robin came home and saw that her cat had been fed it would raise questions. But then again, it looked as if Robin hadn't been home in a while. Mari filled the cat's bowls with food and water.