A Hard Day's Fright

by Casey Daniels

  The tips of Ella’s ears were pink. “Even back in high school, the girls talked about how Mr. Monroe paid too much attention to them, honey. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to talk to him.”

  “You think I can’t take care of myself?” Ariel snapped.

  I hadn’t signed up for family drama night; I groaned. “Nobody said that.”

  “But it’s what you were thinking.”

  “I wasn’t. OK, I was,” I admitted. “And I’m also thinking that I’ve about had it with you, Ariel. Your mom says you can see Gonzalo again when you prove she can trust you, so start acting like a grown-up. That’s the only way you can convince her.”

  “Yeah, I’ll act like a grown-up, all right.” She grabbed her legal pad and stormed past me and out the door that led into the front part of the house. “This grown-up is spending the rest of the night in her room.”

  The last we heard from her was her footsteps stomping through the upstairs hallway.

  “Well…” Wiped out, Ella collapsed back into her chair. “I’m sorry about that, Pepper. You shouldn’t have had to put up with it. Ariel’s made such great strides these last few weeks, I thought she’d understand when I said I wasn’t ready to let her go out again without supervision. I told her she could talk to Gonzalo on the phone. I never thought she’d react like that when I said she couldn’t see him yet.”

  “Except I don’t think that’s what she was reacting to, do you?”

  Ella reached for the pizza that was getting cold on her plate. She took a bite and chewed.

  I knew a dodge when I saw one.

  “You’re not really dating Will, are you?”

  Luckily, she had a glass of Diet Dr Pepper close at hand. Otherwise, she might have choked on her pizza. “Dating?” Ella coughed and pounded on her chest. “Of course not! Ariel can’t possibly think that’s true.”

  “Who knows what a teenaged girl thinks.”

  She acknowledged this with a tiny nod.

  And I saw an opening. I’d been meaning to talk to Ella about Will since the day of Janice’s funeral, and there just never seemed to be time. “What about him?” I asked her. “You haven’t said a word about that dinner you had with Will at the Academy Tavern. What was he talking about, Ella, when he said that thing about how he hadn’t murdered anyone, not this time?”

  She set aside her pizza and got busy with the newsletters again. “It wasn’t exactly something I could bring up in casual conversation,” she said and added quickly, “I know, you would have done it. But the way you investigate and the way I investigate—”

  “You’re not investigating.” I don’t know why I bothered to even mention it.

  “Will is just too fragile. I didn’t have the heart to put him on the spot. I tried to keep things light. I asked about his mom. I asked if he’d seen anyone else from school.”

  I fed a stack of papers into the shredder. “You didn’t happen to ask why he disappeared from the rehab center and where he was the day Janice died, did you?”

  Even when Ella scowled, she looked like a huggable gnome. “Like I said—”

  “Fragile. Yeah.”

  The shredder groaned, and I turned it off and took a moment to pull out the strip of paper that had jammed it, then sat back and stared across the table at Ella.

  She’s the sensitive type. It didn’t take long to get her attention.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I was just wondering. About Will. About what Ariel said. What she was thinking. Do you still have feelings for Will?”

  “Don’t be silly.” Ella got back to work. “Will was a great kid back in high school and yes…” She thought if she concentrated on the newsletters, I wouldn’t see that her cheeks were flushed, and this time, it had nothing to do with trying to reason with Ariel. “Back then, I did have a crush on him. But as you no doubt noticed, life hasn’t been easy for Will. He’s a kind, sensitive soul. And if things were different, yes, we might still be friends. But really, Pepper, I hope you realize that’s all he could ever be. I’ve got the kids to worry about. And my job. And yes, you, too, since I think of you as one of my girls. I don’t need to complicate my life with a man who has serious problems.”

  “And one of those problems could be that he killed Lucy.”

  “He feels guilty about Lucy’s death, that’s for sure,” she said. “I’m no psychologist, but I think that’s why he turned to alcohol and drugs in the first place. I think he just couldn’t handle Lucy’s disappearance any other way.”

  “Which might explain why Bobby felt so guilty, too.”

  In agreement with me, Ella nodded.

  “But it doesn’t explain why someone would murder Janice,” I said, only since I had a mouth full of pepperoni and mushroom pizza, it didn’t sound as authoritative as I’d hoped. I swallowed and wiped a string of mozzarella off my chin. “Janice must have known something about Lucy’s murder—”

  “Disappearance,” Ella corrected me.

  I took another bite of pizza, the better to keep myself from telling her how wrong she was.

  Ella took a sip of her soda. “Maybe Janice’s murder has nothing to do with Lucy,” she said, and yes, I’d thought of this myself; I just wasn’t willing to believe it. “Maybe Janice sold somebody a bad house, or made a neighbor angry, or had an ex-boyfriend with an ax to grind.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’m right, and Darren’s the one who really did it. Or Ariel’s right, and it was Patrick Monroe. Or—”

  It was just as well that Ariel’s phone rang; I was fresh out of theories.

  Ella jumped up and grabbed it. “It’s Molly,” she said. “Ariel’s best friend. Why don’t you run the phone up to her, Pepper? You know, as a little peace offering. Talking to Molly will cheer her up.”

  I doubted I could run fast enough for her to take the call, but I made the effort.

  I got to Ariel’s bedroom door just as the phone stopped ringing and made the little twinkling sound that indicated there was a voice mail message.

  “Hey, Ariel!” I tapped on her door. “You left your cell downstairs. Molly called.”

  The kid didn’t answer.

  And I knew what I was going to find even before I pushed the door open. But then again, like I said, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a dramatic fifteen-year-old.

  The room was empty.

  Ariel was gone.

  15

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what Ariel of the Nasty Mood had in mind.

  She wanted to prove she was a better detective than me, of course. Poor thing was too young to realize that was never going to happen!

  No matter, I would have bet my next manicure that she was headed out to find Patrick Monroe.

  Fortunately—for me, anyway, since I couldn’t take much more of Ella wringing her hands and moaning about what a bad mother she was one moment, and the next about what an ungrateful child Ariel had turned out to be—it didn’t take me long to locate Monroe. The guy had an ego the size of Arizona, remember, and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, a blog to celebrate it. One of the things he talked about on that blog was how poetry lovers in northeast Ohio were in luck—he was doing a reading that evening at a tavern called the Barking Spider, a funky little place near the campus of Case Western Reserve University.

  Notice my use of the word funky. That’s a kind way of me saying it is not the sort of place I hang out. Ever. The Spider is located in what looks like an old garage. It features folk and jazz entertainers, serves about a million different kinds of beers, and doesn’t pay as much attention to its decorating scheme as it does to what’s charitably called ambience. Hello, picnic tables outside the back door do not qualify as atmosphere. But that, as they say, is a discussion for another day.

  For now, I had one teenaged fugitive to worry about.

  Keeping that thought in mind, I talked Ella into staying home on the pretext that if Ariel did happen to show up before I got back, it wouldn’t look like Ella
had run out looking for her because she didn’t trust her. Alone and grateful for it, I paused just inside the door of the Spider, and since it was dark, I had perfect cover and the chance to look around. I was just in time to see Patrick Monroe finish one of his so-called poems, take a bow, and down the amber liquid in the rocks glass someone handed him. It was apparently intermission. The fifty or so literary types gathered around clapped like crazy.

  Go figure.

  I was not fast enough to stop Ariel when I saw her dash out of the crowd and approach the stage.

  I elbowed my way through the people streaming toward the bar and the restrooms, lost sight of Ariel, then picked up her trail again. I watched her wait for Monroe to sign a few autographs, then step forward and introduce herself. Monroe leaned back against the bar stool near the microphone. He smiled down at the kid.

  Yeah, like the big bag wolf licking his chops at the sight of one of those delicious little piggies.

  By the time I made it over to where they were chatting it up like long-lost friends, the last thing I cared about was civility.

  “Where’s Gonzalo?” I asked Ariel, because let’s face it, she must have had an accomplice to make her getaway, and it was no leap of faith to figure that the Clyde to her Bonnie was good ol’ Gonzalo. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he had been outside Ella’s place all night waiting for the perfect opportunity to swoop down and scoop up his ladylove.

  I did another quick scan of the bar. No emaciated underagers. Except for Ariel, of course. I swung back her way. “Where did you leave him?”

  “He’s…” Ariel’s face was the color of the nearby crimson neon sign that advertised some brand of beer I’d never heard of. She spun around so that Monroe couldn’t hear her. “He’s back at the car,” she said out of one side of her mouth, and in a stage whisper, “You know, so that it’s easier for me to question the perp. Which I can’t do with you here.” Just in case I didn’t get the message, she added a sneer like the one I’d seen from her back home. “What kind of detective has a babysitter hanging around, anyway?”

  My question exactly, and we’d discuss it when we were home and I had a chance to lecture Ariel in private. For now, I was more concerned about the fact that Gonzalo actually let her come into the bar alone. It looked like Ariel’s mother wasn’t the only one in the family who knew how to pick a loser.

  Since it was not the time to talk about Ariel’s father, either, I gritted my teeth and greeted Monroe. He remembered me. But then, I’m pretty hard to forget. The skinny jeans, the emerald scoop-neck tee, and the open-toed sandals helped. Until I realized that when Ariel had disappeared into her room, she’d put on almost the exact same outfit.

  That was just downright embarrassing.

  “How nice to see you again.” When Monroe stuck out his hand, I shook it. Maybe if he was busy looking at me, he wouldn’t notice Ariel was my clone. “How’s that thesis of yours coming along?”

  “Oh, I’m working as hard as ever,” I said, even though it wasn’t true. “This reading tonight, this is really wonderful.”

  “And how nice that you brought your little friend.” He patted Ariel’s shoulder.

  She didn’t like that one bit, and I couldn’t say I was crazy about the touchy-feely familiarity, either. I clamped a hand on her shoulder and dragged her over to stand beside me and out of Monroe’s reach.

  He took the not-so-subtle message in stride, yanked a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, and moved toward the back door. Even though he didn’t ask me to, I walked along with him, and since I wasn’t about to let Ariel out of my sight in a place she shouldn’t have been in to begin with, I tightened my grip on her shoulder and hauled her with me.

  Outside at one of those unatmospheric picnic tables, Monroe sat down, stretched his legs out in front of him, and lit up. “Still looking into every little nook and cranny of my past?” he asked on the end of a trail of smoke. “Find out anything interesting?”

  I have a rule about picnic tables in public places. I broke it this one time, dropping down onto the seat next to Monroe. While I was at it, I tugged Ariel into the empty seat on the other side of me. “I found out you don’t have an alibi for the night Lucy disappeared.”

  Monroe smoked in silence.

  I didn’t have much time. Intermission wouldn’t last forever. Though I would rather play it cool and pretend I didn’t care, I couldn’t afford not to push. Just a little. “I guess that doesn’t worry you,” I said.

  “Why should it? I didn’t do anything to Lucy. Before or after she disappeared.” He slid me a look. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

  Before I had a chance to tell him I wouldn’t be sitting at a picnic table with a smoker if I was as sure of myself as he seemed to think I was, a middle-aged woman approached. She had a copy of Monroe’s Collected Works in one hand, and a pen in the other. “Please!” She handed him the pen and opened the book to the page she wanted signed. “You changed my life, Mr. Monroe…er…Patrick.” The woman grinned like a homecoming queen. “Your work is so profound. So intense.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it is.” He scribbled his name and offered the book back along with a smile that was so world-weary there was no doubt that the life of an artist was not an easy one.

  I found myself hoping the woman wasn’t there alone, because the way she hyperventilated, I was pretty sure she was going to faint, and she’d need somebody to drive her home. “‘Girl at Dawn’…” She whispered the words like a prayer. “That poem changed my life. I was a senior in high school that fall when it was published, 1967. My friends and I, we read it every single day after school. We talked about what it meant. And what it meant to us.” She clutched the book to her ample bossom. “Thank you.” Tears filled her eyes. “Thank you for helping me grow up.”

  Monroe stood and gave her a peck on the cheek.

  And it was a good thing that I had to sit there and put up with all the gushing and blubbering the woman did after that.

  It gave me time to think. And what I thought knocked my socks off. Maybe I was way off base, but what the hell. If I was wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d embarrassed myself in the name of an investigation. If I was right…

  I waited until the woman walked away. When the great poetry guru sat down again, I was ready for him.

  “Remember what I asked you about last time we talked?” I didn’t wait for him to answer, because of course he didn’t remember. Patrick Monroe’s brain was so full of himself, there was no room in his memory banks for anything or anyone else. “I asked if you’d written ‘Girl at Dawn’ for Lucy. You said you hadn’t. One of the things I’ve learned recently is that you were telling the truth about that.”

  “Of course I was.” I think he would have patted me on the head if he thought he could get away with it.

  I waited for the right moment, poking Ariel as I did. Just so she didn’t miss the master at work.

  “It wasn’t for Lucy. But it was about Lucy, wasn’t it? The girl at dawn was Lucy and nobody knew better how she thought and felt and what growing up was all about to her. That’s because Lucy wrote that poem.”

  I don’t think people are supposed to be the color of gray Monroe turned. He hopped off the bench. “You can’t possibly know that. Your notes—”

  Too late, he’d given himself away, and realizing it, I jumped to my feet, too, as fighting mad as I was that day I realized someone had kicked in the door to my apartment. “You’re the one who trashed my apartment. You son of a—” It wasn’t like I thought Ariel had never heard the words before, but I bit my tongue, anyway. There were lots of people around, and if I pissed off Monroe too much, he’d walk away. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not until I had all the facts, anyway.

  I controlled my voice and my temper. “I had my portfolio with me when I went to your poetry reading so, of course, you figured I kept my notes in it. It was the only thing missing from my apartment because that was the only thing you ca
red about. Oh, you looked through the rest of the place, but you didn’t find any notes stashed anywhere else. How surprised were you when you saw there weren’t any in that portfolio, either? You were hoping for a clue, right? You were thinking that when I asked about Lucy and the poem, I must have discovered something that proved that she wrote it. That’s what you were trying to get your hands on. The proof. So you could destroy it.”

  “I…I…” Monroe stuttered into an explanation I knew was going to be lame. That’s why I didn’t give him a chance to even get started.

  “I’ve got news for you,” I told him. “You wasted your time with the whole breaking and entering thing, because I didn’t know about Lucy and the poem then. I just figured it out. Right here. Right now. Right when that lady reminded me that ‘Girl at Dawn’ was published in 1967. Lucy died in ’66, see, and she knew enough of the poem to recite some of the lines. She shouldn’t have because when she died, it hadn’t been published yet. There’s no way she could have read it. Except if she was the one who wrote it, of course.”

  “She could have…she might have…she couldn’t…” It was kind of fun to watch him sputter. Too bad he finally shook his head and scratched a hand through his shaggy hair, settling his thoughts. A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. “You said Lucy knew the words. Are you telling me she…” He swallowed hard. “Had she kept a copy? A dated copy? You found it?”

  It would have been far more fun to tell him I’d heard the poem from the horse’s mouth, but I thought Monroe had had enough surprises for one night, and besides, a guy as scummy as him doesn’t deserve the truth. I went along with the lie he’d put into my head.

  “Found it? You bet. And the paper and ink she used is being authenticated even as we speak. You know, so the experts can tell that it really is forty-five years old. They’ll find out it’s not a copy, it’s the original. And you’re going to have to explain how you ended up getting your hands on it. And—”