Right then and there, I decided to be a neologist. My new smack-dab in the middle of love and like word was slike, which I got by combining the word super with the word like. I mean how easy was that? Other than the fact that it sounded weird, which didn’t worry me too much (since I figured all new words had probably sounded weird at first), it seemed like a pretty appropriate, even obvious choice. I remember wondering why nobody else had thought of it. I also remember thinking that since I had, I was obviously a natural at this neologism stuff. I rolled my new word over and over my tongue, said it out loud, and made it into sentences. I slike Ryan Anderson. I slike walking home with Ryan Anderson. I slike spelling. I slike my dictionaries. The possibilities were endless.
Now, obviously I was a big fan of dictionaries. In what other book could you read something and know with certainty that it was one hundred percent accurate? Even the Bible fictionalized stuff, mainly because it made for better reading. Dictionaries were not only stuffed with cool words but included descriptions of the nature, scope, and meaning of those words, also known as definitions. But even with all their positive features, I had to admit to myself that there were some not so small problems with dictionaries. They didn’t include any practical instruction or advice on how to apply either the words or the definitions in real-life situations, and they didn’t provide links or references to places that might offer further information. The words boyfriend and girlfriend were good examples. They both had pretty lame definitions that didn’t include any information on how to get or keep one or the other. I mean at the very least the definition of girlfriend should have referenced the words self-sacrifice, modesty, and pretense. If it had, then maybe I would’ve been able to avoid the series of events that led to the ultimate demise of my first boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.
It started with Mr. Dork. One day, he told us about this hunting trip he took to Canada and how he saved a bunch of his friends from certain death by shooting an arrow straight into a bear’s heart. Most of the kids listened intently, even nodded now and then. As usual, I got annoyed. I couldn’t figure why the kids in my class were always acting all interested in Mr. Dork’s lies, laughing at his jokes, and raising their hands to answer his ridiculous questions, even though they said they hated him. I asked Ryan Anderson about this phenomenon on the way home from school.
“They think he’ll give them a better grade if they do,” he said.
“That’s moronic,” I said. “All they have to do to get a better grade is study.”
“Easy for you to say.” He sounded irritated.
“What does that mean?”
“Not everybody is as smart as you, Picasso Lane.”
I must admit that at the time I thought that was a compliment, I even thanked him, but he got kind of weird after that, and when we got to my house, he said he couldn’t stay. The next day at school, he was back to normal Ryan again.
Then, a week later, something else happened. It was the regional spelling bee, and Ryan and I were the last kids still standing, which I thought was a good thing but, as it turned out, wasn’t. It was Ryan’s turn.
“Mr. Anderson, are you ready?” the pronouncer asked.
“Yes, sir,” Ryan said.
“The word is chrysalis,” the pronouncer said.
“May I have the definition?” Ryan asked. I figured he was just asking that because he could. Who didn’t know the definition of chrysalis?
“A quiescent insect pupa especially of a butterfly or moth,” the pronouncer said.
Ryan thought for a while. The room was so quiet you could’ve heard a bug crawling.
“You have thirty seconds, Mr. Anderson,” the pronouncer said.
Ryan cleared his throat. “Chrysalis, C—R—Y—S—A—L—I—S, chrysalis.”
I was stunned.
“I’m sorry,” the pronouncer said. “That is incorrect.”
All at once, the people in the room let out a moan of disappointment.
Ryan sat back down. I felt really bad for him, but at the same time I felt really good for me.
“Miss Lane,” the pronouncer said.
I stood. A really weird feeling came into my belly, kind of like I was afraid, but I knew there wasn’t any reason for me to worry because I knew how to spell chrysalis, and I was pretty certain I’d be able to spell the next word right too. If I didn’t, Ryan would get another word. It wasn’t until later that I realized that somewhere in the back of my brain I probably knew that Ryan coming in second place to my first place would be a problem, but like I said, I didn’t know that then. I rattled off the correct spelling of chrysalis. The crowd clapped and cheered. I looked at Ryan and smiled. He not only didn’t smile back, he didn’t even look at me.
“Miss Lane,” the pronouncer said, after the noise from the crowd had died down, “the word is supercilious.”
Ryan was all nice to me after I won, he even congratulated me, but he didn’t walk me home the next day, or the next, and before I knew it a whole week had gone by, and I was strongly considering making a big show of breaking up with him so everyone would think that us not speaking to each other was all my idea, but the truth was, I didn’t want to. I still liked him.
Now, I had hated the All That Girls since before I could remember. I had vowed never ever to talk to any of them, but I was desperate. The next day at lunch, I filled my tray with only healthy food items, because that’s how they ate, walked boldly toward the table where they were sitting, and asked if I could join them.
They stopped talking and stared at me. Kelly Morgan, the self-appointed group leader, was the first to say something.
“Where’s Ryan?” It was hard to believe that someone could sound snotty when they said only two words.
I shrugged and tried to act as if I didn’t care one bit where Ryan Anderson was. “I don’t feel like eating with him today. I’m mad at him.”
Ashley Adams, who had been part of the All That Girls for more than a year by then, flipped her ponytail and said, “Isn’t that just too bad.”
They all laughed.
“What? The two of you ran out of words to spell together?” Ugly Cindy asked. Unlike me, Cindy Schneider had never grown out of her fat and, really and metaphorically, had a big mouth. How she ever got in with the All That Girls was a mystery to me.
More laughter.
“Yeah, cut the shit, Picasso,” Kelly said. “We all know that Ryan was the one who stopped talking to you, not the other way around.”
I was busted. But it didn’t upset me all that much because I was still reveling in the fact that Kelly Morgan had referred to me by my real name, and that she hadn’t placed an unflattering descriptive adjective in front of it.
“Look,” I said, “I need some advice, and you guys are the only ones that can give it to me.”
Nobody said anything, which was awkward. I thought about all the things I wanted to do right then and there, like stick my nose in the air and walk away, tell Gillian George she had some salad dressing on her chin, which she did, drop my tray accidentally on Kelly’s head, and there were a bunch of others. I mean of all the things I wanted to do, not a one of them was resort to groveling. But what choice did I have?
So I said, “There seems to be general agreement that the four of you are very savvy, about boys that is, so I figured I may as well test that assumption.”
“Savvy?” Gillian George asked.
“Knowledgeable on the realities of life,” I said.
They all looked at Kelly Morgan, as if they’d run out of insults and expected her to figure one out.
“Why do you know this stuff?” Kelly asked.
“I know a lot,” I said. “Like I know how you can pass the social studies test tomorrow.” I was pretty sure this statement would pique Kelly’s interest since her grades were so bad she was close to getting kicked off the cheerleading squad.
“How?”
“I know exactly what’s on the test.” And I did, because I was late to school the
previous day and had to stay after. Mr. Dork said that since I was there, I could help him do some filing, and then he fell asleep at his desk, which wasn’t unusual, so I figured, well, why not take a peek at the social studies test. And guess what? He’d already made a bunch of copies, probably the ones he intended to pass out, so I folded one up and stuck it in my underwear. “How about we consider this a trade. You tell me how to get Ryan back, and I’ll share the test answers with you.”
Four sets of eyes widened. They all started talking at once. It was pretty hard to decipher their exact words, but the gist of it was they were considering it. Then they stopped talking, again all at once. It was like they’d rehearsed. There was a long pause.
“We accept,” Kelly said. “We’ll tell you how to solve your problem.”
“That’s not enough,” I said.
“What else?” Kelly asked.
“It has to work.”
“Believe me,” Kelly said, “it’ll work. Unfortunately the idiot still likes you.”
“He does?” I waited for one of them to call me Pitiful Picasso.
“You are so inept,” Kelly said.
Wow. A big word for Kelly. “All right. Tell me.”
“First, you have to apologize,” Kelly said.
“For what?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just say you’re sorry and you miss him.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” she said.
She’d said first, which implied there was a second. “Then what?”
“Do you have any idea why he’s mad at you?”
“No,” I said.
Kelly rolled her eyes. “Maybe you’re the idiot. He’s upset because you won the stupid spelling bee.”
“Why would he be mad about that?”
“Because he didn’t win.”
“But that’s not my fault.”
“Do you want him to be your boyfriend or not?”
“I guess,” I said.
“Then you need to act like a girlfriend,” Kelly said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Girlfriends let their boyfriends win. Girlfriends are never ever smarter than their boyfriends.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I can’t help it if I’m smarter.”
“You’re lame,” Kelly said. The other All That Girls nodded. “Don’t you get it? It is a widely known fact that girls are really the ones in charge of relationships, but since boys have fragile egos, we need to let them think they are. All we have to do to keep them happy is pretend. Pretend we aren’t as smart. Pretend we can’t lift things or open doors. Pretend you, Picasso Lane, don’t know how to spell every single word.”
I’m certain I must have looked as stunned as I felt. I mean, that was the most illogical thing I’d ever heard. Why would I pretend I didn’t know how to spell?
“Trust me on this,” Kelly said. “If you do what I said, you’ll get him back, but if you lose him again because you’re not willing to pretend, that’s not on me.”
Kelly Morgan was the last person I’d ever trust, but I knew she wanted that social studies test bad, and what did I really have to lose, other than my pride that is, so I did exactly what she said. I apologized to Ryan and told him that I missed him. At least that last part was true. He immediately got nice to me again and resumed the practice of walking me home. I gave Kelly Morgan and the other All That Girls copies of the test. They all got A’s. I got four new friends.
This was what I learned. One: I needed to find out how to get a job as one of those dictionary editors. Two: Or better yet, I could write a new, holistic dictionary. Three: Having a boyfriend was a lot more difficult than I thought. Four: In order to keep a boyfriend, on top of being nice, sweet, and a good listener, you had to practice self-sacrifice, modesty, and pretense; in other words, you had to be an expert liar. Five: Self-sacrifice just wasn’t a strong enough word. Losing an entire spelling bee? That was martyrdom. Six: The All That Girls, especially Kelly Morgan, weren’t that stupid after all, at least about some things.
Kyle
They say timing is everything. That’s certainly the case with a murder investigation. It’s also the case with lovemaking. Usually the two don’t go together.
I’ll start with the murder investigation.
Remember Julie Lane’s solid alibi? She was at a design charrette in Philadelphia the day of the murder. We’d done our job. We’d verified that she had checked in and boarded both of her flights. We’d verified that she was at the charrette. In the event that she’d been able to sneak away, commit the murder, and return undetected, we’d verified that no cars had been rented and no flights had been reserved in her name. End of story, right? Wrong.
It was like my mentor back in Detroit had said, a cop should always be looking for the world he doesn’t know exists. It was all there right in front of us, and yet we didn’t even think to look for it.
Mack and I were at the office filing our monthly reports. “It’s impossible to keep these names straight,” he said. “I know I keep saying that, but it’s not getting any easier. There’s the first Mrs. Lane, the second Mrs. Lane, and the third Mrs. Lane, better known as Ms. Miles. I get all that, but I keep mixing Diana and Julie up on these reports. I say Diana did or said something when it was actually Julie and vice versa. I even get the women themselves mixed up, Diana and Julie especially. There’s the hair thing, they both have blue eyes, and they’re about the same height.”
“I don’t think they look that much alike,” I said. “Diana’s a little taller, and …” I paused.
“More attractive?” Mack said.
“Well, yeah.”
“To you maybe,” Mack said. “I’m betting the average Mary or Joe wouldn’t notice that big of a difference. Geez, they could probably take each other’s places. You know, like those twins in that movie.”
“The Parent Trap?” I stopped writing and looked at Mack. “Wait a minute. What did you say?”
“I said it’s like they’re twins.”
“No, I mean before that.”
“They could take each other’s places?”
“Yeah, that,” I said.
“Wow,” Mack said.
“Didn’t you say something about not finding Diana Lane’s driver’s license at the beach house that day?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Mack said. “She said she’d misplaced it. Shit. Why didn’t we think about this earlier? I’ll get Bonnie to search all the airline databases.”
“No, have Klide do it,” I said.
It didn’t take long for Klide to find a reservation in Diana Lane’s name for a one-way flight from Norfolk, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the morning of Oliver Lane’s murder. She also found a reservation for a rental car in Diana Lane’s name that was picked up in downtown Philly at 11:03 the night of July 2nd and dropped off at Norfolk International Airport at 9:28 the next morning. Assuming we were right about Julie Lane orchestrating this entire thing, which I would’ve bet my meager life savings on, that left plenty of time for her to drive to Cooper’s Island during the night, do the murder, drive to Norfolk, drop off the car, hop on a 10:15 a.m. flight back to Philly and make her scheduled 11:50 a.m. flight home to Raleigh.
The next morning, Mack and I headed back to the mainland. It wasn’t a Sunday, but we didn’t need to worry about catching anyone at home. We’d decided to make this an official visit, and Captain Mercy had been more than willing to loan us one of his interrogation rooms.
Julie Lane didn’t look as in control in the small, spare room as she had at her condo. She wore a gray silk blouse under a charcoal suit that looked like it had been tailored specifically for her, which meant it was, and looked, expensive. Mack asked her to sit across the table from him. I was leaning up against the wall behind her chair with my arms crossed. She looked at me briefly as she sat, but then focused her eyes on Mack. She didn’t wait for any formalities.
“Why am I here?” she asked
.
Mack set the airline and rental car reservations down in front of her. “Take a look at these, Mrs. Lane,” he said, “and tell me what you see.”
She looked, but didn’t touch them. “Some sort of list from US Airways.”
“What else?”
“A Hertz Rent-a-Car statement.”
“What name is on them?”
Without checking the paperwork again, she looked straight into Mack’s eyes and said, “Diana Lane.”
Mack stared back at her and didn’t say anything.
“What does this have to do with me?” she asked. “I don’t even know Diana Lane. Why would I know anything about her future travel plans?”
“Past travel plans,” Mack said.
“Whatever,” she said.
“Did you note the date?” Mack asked. “Why don’t you take a better look?”
She looked at Mack defiantly. “I don’t need to take a better look, Detective. I saw the date just fine.”
“Don’t you find it interesting that Diana Lane was in two places that day? At the beach house and on a plane?”
“That’s the wonder of air travel, I suppose,” she said. “If you’re resourceful, which I’m assuming this woman is—Oliver wouldn’t have been attracted to a neophyte—you can get places pretty quickly these days.”
“In this case, resourcefulness wouldn’t cut it, ma’am. Detective Kennedy and I, along with ten other people, can attest to the fact that Diana Lane was in a beach house on Cooper’s Island when that plane took off. Are you implying she’s a magician?”
“I’m not implying anything, Detective. I don’t care what that woman is. Nor do I care whether or not she was on some airplane.”
“Mrs. Lane,” I said. She seemed startled by my voice but didn’t look at me. “Detective Jones is being polite. What he’s trying to say is that we know it was you.”
She twirled a lock of hair. “What do you mean, me?”
I walked around the table and faced her. “You used Diana Lane’s name and identification. You rented that car. You were on that plane.”
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