“I can’t believe social services would blame you for what happened to Ivy,” Veronica said weakly.
“She was out way past curfew. It had to be like, one in the morning or something. That kid. I mean, all of them were wild, you know. A kid doesn’t grow up without a real mom and not turn out wild, or at least hard. I always get them when they’re hard. But that’s okay, I get it. I know what it’s like.”
Veronica nodded, glancing at the door. She was finding it hard to muster sympathy for Janet, mainly because the smell of whiskey was making her feel slightly sick.
“But Ivy. Man. She was a hard case among hard cases, you know what I’m saying? You know she took my car out without permission that night? Wasn’t the first time, I can tell you. But now they have it impounded. Do you know when they’re going to give it back to me? I can’t walk to the store, you know.”
Veronica shook her head, putting her best sympathetic expression to work.
“She was always going out even when she was grounded,” Janet continued. “Always cutting class—I had another girl that cut class a lot, but she wasn’t so mean like Ivy.”
Veronica had known her fair share of hard cases in her classroom, and on one occasion, she’d even lived in the mind of a very tough girl off and on for a few weeks—the Carvers’ daughter, the one who’d almost been wrongly convicted of burning down the house and killing them. It had given Veronica a deep compassion for girls like her. Lola fought hard to survive the abuse and tragedy she lived through, and Veronica imagined Ivy was very similar. Only Ivy hadn’t survived.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that boy killed her,” Janet continued, and Veronica straightened. “But they said whoever killed her killed another guy, too, and almost killed some woman.”
She took a deep drag of the cigarette as Veronica watched, silent, afraid she would say the wrong thing and Janet wouldn’t tell her anything more about this boy.
“I mean, I always thought, man, that Ivy’s got to be driving that kid crazy. She thought I didn’t know where she was going all the time. I had a GPS in that phone, you know. I did it with all my girls. Kept tabs, you know. Ivy was always going after that boy. Always going by his house. And I’d hear her on the phone with him in her room, sometimes. She was always yelling at him. If anyone wanted to kill her, I bet that boy did. But why go and kill the other guy and hurt that woman?” She shrugged. “Naw.”
“Um, this boy, was he one of the friends? On the list?” Veronica asked.
“No,” Janet said, then squinted. “Well, maybe. But I doubt it.”
“You’re not sure? What was his name?”
“I never could make it out. It was almost like a game, trying to hear it when she was yelling. But she always called him by some nickname. ‘Roadie,’ like he wants to follow a band around.”
Veronica nodded slowly. “Uh… but you said she was always going to his house?”
“Going by it. She was always walking up and down the same piece of street, right? Like she was stalking him.”
“What street?”
“Alcott, between 25th and 27th. She’d take the bus over and then spend an hour walking around there,” Janet said. She sucked in more smoke. “When she wasn’t borrowing my car, anyway—then she’d just sit in the car, no walking. I don’t think she ever got to go inside his place. At least, not that I could tell with the GPS.”
“Did you… mention this boy to the detectives?” Veronica asked.
“They didn’t ask, and I figured, why get the poor little shit into hot water with the police. I mean, I’m telling you, he obviously didn’t do it.”
Veronica nodded again, more quickly this time. “Um, Janet, do you think I could maybe… have a look around Ivy’s room, real quick?”
Janet shrugged, then grabbed a silvered wrapper from the floor, bunching it up and using it to stub out the cigarette butt. “It’s the only one on the left in the hall.”
Giving Janet a quick smile, Veronica left her on the couch lighting another cigarette. She walked into the hallway and rested her hand on the door on the left, then let her hand drop to the knob, ready for an immediate vision. None came. She turned the knob and stepped into the room. It was a disaster area very much like Lola’s room had been, although the evidence of pot smoking was far more obvious, with a spilled bong in the middle of the floor leaking a dark stain into the carpet. Had Janet even come in here since Ivy’s death?
The walls were painted dark blue and there were two posters of Debbie Harry over the twin bed. The gray striped sheets were balled up at the foot, the mismatched brown fitted sheet coming loose from the upper left corner. The glass in the window—painted shut from what Veronica could tell—was fogged with many years without cleaning.
What to touch? The bong? Veronica wrinkled her nose. She nudged it with the tip of her toe.
~~~
A flurry of images. They blurred together, one face and then another touching their lips to the end of the glass pipe. Several times, the face wore dark-rimmed glasses.
~~~
Veronica stepped away from the bong. Well, she knew that Ivy and the young man had smoked pot together. Would that turn out to be a useful detail?
There was no dresser—Ivy’s clothes lay all over the floor, sometimes in somewhat neater piles that were more or less folded, but sometimes balled up or strung across like she’d thrown them. A closet, ajar, with shoes and pairs of jeans spilling out of it. She had a lot of clothes, Veronica thought. Janet didn’t deprive her in favor of pocketing the money for her care, at least.
Nudging one small stack with her toe, Veronica noted that everything looked faded and worn. Thrift store purchases, no doubt. As she looked around, Veronica tried to spot something meaningful that might give her a useful vision.
Her eyes returned to the posters. One showed Debbie Harry’s face surrounded in lightning, her hair pulled tightly back, a coronet adorning her forehead, and four strange, large, knife-like needles piecing her face from one side to the other. The other was highly contrasted, Debbie Harry’s high cheekbones and arched eyebrows in black and white. Veronica frowned. Wasn’t one of Blondie’s famous singles about stalking someone? Had Ivy admired Harry because of the song?
Stepping carefully over the bong and two stacks of folded clothes Veronica rested a knee on the bed and reached out, allowing her fingers to touch Harry’s cheek in the contrasted picture.
~~~
Veronica sat behind the wheel of a car, tapping her fingers on the rim, looking at a Seven Eleven across the street. It was evening, and the light was fading. The young man with the dark rimmed glasses exited the Seven Eleven and got into a large, older sedan with a long scratch in the tan paint on the passenger side. Veronica felt Ivy’s heart rate quicken when she saw him. A flush heated her cheeks. As he pulled out, Ivy waited for a moment, then put the car into gear and followed, careful to stay far behind.
By the time the young man’s car stopped, night had fallen. They were in a residential neighborhood, but Ivy hadn’t checked the street signs, so Veronica didn’t know where. She came to a stop several yards down from where the boy parked. He left his car and went across the street into a home with a high wooden fence all around it.
As she watched him disappear, Ivy clenched her jaw, her teeth grinding. An awful ache washed through her body, and her hands clutched the wheel, twisting in opposite directions as if to give it a burn. With a frustrated moan, Ivy thrust herself back into the seat, releasing the wheel. Reaching over to a black case next to her, Ivy fumbled with the zipper and then brought it to her lap. She opened it like a book—its pages were sleeves of CDs. She flipped through and selected one, slipping it into the car stereo. “One Way or Another” by Blondie began to play.
Although the vision blurred and skipped, Veronica knew, the way one sometimes knows in dreams, that the stereo played through every song on the CD twice and was halfway through another set when the gate opened, slamming back against the fence. Ivy p
unched the off button on the stereo.
The young man reappeared. He was carrying something very large, very dark, and apparently very heavy over his shoulder. Dim streetlamps were spaced too far apart along the street. Veronica wasn’t sure what she was seeing—it could be a body. Ivy leaned forward, hands gripping the wheel. Her heart began to thump quickly and painfully in her chest.
The young man approached his car. Ivy ducked down low so she wouldn’t be visible and waited. Veronica could hear movement, the sound of the trunk slamming shut, and then the engine of the boy’s car started.
Ivy peered up over the dash. When the other car’s taillights came on, she sat up completely. After waiting until he’d pulled out and was nearly a block away, she started her own car and followed him again.
“What are you doing?” she whispered as she drove, her heart still hammering. “What was that?”
Keeping her distance, Ivy continued following the young man’s car through each turn he took. Veronica began to recognize the streets—they were nearing the alley behind Appleby’s, where Ivy would die.
Far up ahead, the sedan turned into the alley. Ivy parked a block away, careful to shut her door without a slam. She trod quietly as she hurried to the mouth of the alley. As she turned the corner, she peered into the dark—one light shone far in, probably over the back door of the restaurant, from what Veronica could tell. The trunk of the young man’s car was wide open, and he had already retrieved the large form from it. He was prowling over to the dumpster, which also was open. Ivy came to a halt, watching him, her heart rate only increasing, a ringing starting in her ears.
He grunted and hefted the body—because what else could it be—and it tumbled into the dumpster with a low thud. A cry burst from Ivy’s lips, and she clapped her hand to her mouth. The young man whirled around. She took several steps forward, into the gloom of the alley, almost as if she was stumbling, almost as if she didn’t mean to.
“Is that—is that—did you—” Ivy gasped.
“Fuck. Ivy?” the young man growled. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Ivy shook her head, her eyes widening, looking over his shoulder at the dark block of the dumpster, then searching for his eyes in the dim. She couldn’t find them—his face was in shadow, even as he approached, even as he reached out for her throat.
~~~
Veronica pulled her hand back from the poster and pushed away from the bed. She pressed her fingers to her cheeks—they were cold, but her cheeks felt hot. Poor kid, she thought. Poor, poor kid.
So there were several things to do now. She could check the address Janet had given her and see if it matched the house from the vision. It must—Ivy was following the young man, probably thinking he was seeing some girl, and then on the last night of her life she realized there was something much more sinister going on. But it was possible that the address Janet saw on her GPS was another location, like the young man’s own home. Either way, if Veronica could find more information about the GPS location, it could only help.
Then there were Ivy’s friends. Someone had to know who she was stalking. Maybe several of them did. If Veronica could get a name—Antoine Jossey?—well, that would really make a difference in Daniel’s investigation.
First the friends, she decided, still standing in the center of Ivy’s room. Better to get as much information on the murderer as she could before she went to check out this place where he hung out, whether it turned out to be his home, or the location of the first murder.
~~~
Without a cell phone Veronica realized she would have to find another way to track down the first name on her list of Ivy’s friends. She drove to McKinley Library. Using one of the computers, which luckily she didn’t have to wait for, she did a search for Emily Porter on Facebook, cross-referencing Eleanor Roosevelt High. She found her right away, and in Emily’s “About” information, there was a cell phone number.
Veronica repeated the process for the rest of the names on the list, finding numbers for five out of the eight. The process got easier as she went along, because they were all friends with each other, and she could confirm she had the right name that way as well as using their friends list to find the next name.
Once she had the numbers copied down on the sticky note, she left the library and walked around the building to the duck pond. Veronica watched ducks crowding to snap up bread tossed by a little girl with a woman who was probably her mother. Where to go next? The scene brought Melanie and Angie to mind. She sighed. She couldn’t stay mad at Melanie forever, and Melanie’s phone charger was the same as her own. Her options now were either to return home to make her calls, drive to the GPS address and check it out, or go over to Melanie’s and see if she could smooth things over while charging her cell. She opted for the last choice.
Ordinarily she would have called Melanie first to make sure she was home, but it was almost five on a Monday—where else would she be? But just as Veronica pulled up to her friend’s house, she spotted Melanie locking her front door behind her, and heading for her car.
Veronica parked and hurried out, jogging over to intercept Melanie before she reached her red SUV. Melanie must have noticed Veronica’s approach in the corner of her eye. She stopped and turned to face her.
“Oh,” she said, her eyebrows raised.
Veronica came to a halt a few feet from her. “Did you think I was someone else?”
“I just saw movement, like someone was rushing me. You surprised me.”
“I’m sorry,” Veronica said.
Melanie let out a breath and gave Veronica a weak smile. “You know, I’m sorry too, V.”
Veronica sighed and stepped closer. “I’m sorry I made such a big deal out of it. I guess this whole Eric thing just—I don’t know, I didn’t really feel like I had a handle on it, and then when you told Daniel about the dress—it was just another thing I couldn’t seem to keep a lid on. But I know you were just trying to help.”
“Have you guys talked?”
“Not yet. I sent him an email about the case a couple of days ago. He hasn’t answered.”
“He’s being such a pig head.”
“Yeah, especially since Eric left for LA and I’ve decided not to—I don’t even know what I was considering doing. But nothing’s going to happen.”
Melanie smiled. “I’m glad, hon. I didn’t like the sound of that guy.”
“No? No eleven thousand dollar gifts couldn’t buy you off so easily?”
“It wasn’t the gifts… although, it does seem excessive! But hey, maybe not for him. I can hardly imagine. But no, it’s the stuff you told me about him, you know, when he was dating your friend. I mean, I know you were saying people change, and maybe they do…”
“It’s okay, Mellie. I get it. I’m not saying I’ll never have another lunch with Eric Huette, but I realized something at that dinner. We’re just not from the same worlds, and I don’t really enjoy his world all that much, outside of the designer clothes.”
Melanie grinned. “Oh, hey! I’m going to be late. You want to come with?”
“Where?”
“To yoga!” Melanie exclaimed. “It’s Monday!”
“Oh!” Veronica said. She smiled back at Melanie. “Sure.”
Chapter 17
On the drive to the studio, Veronica tried not to ruminate over the interruption in her investigation. The trail she was following would still be there in an hour, and she was so relieved to be done fighting with Melanie, she really wanted to make up for missing the last yoga class by attending this one. Still, her fingers slid along the edge of her dead cell in pocket of her shorts, and she wished she could at least charge it while she was in the class.
It was not to be. They joined the other women, several who were visibly pregnant, as they entered the studio. Veronica put her cell in her purse, placed it with her shoes in one corner of the room, and took one of the mats. Melanie lined another mat on Veronica’s left.
The yoga class was ve
ry similar to the first one they’d taken together the week before, and Veronica enjoyed the feeling of stretching and breathing, twisting her torso and arms in one direction as she planted her feet in another, and balancing in ways she wouldn’t have thought she could. Even as she continued to puzzle over the visions she’d had, she couldn’t help but relish the sun salutations, the cat and dog poses, and taking on the child pose every so often throughout. Only when they did the final relaxation did she stop thinking about the case for long enough to lose herself completely in the luxurious enjoyment of the moment, however. Ten minutes went by too fast.
“Oh, I love that,” Melanie said when the lights came back on and everyone slowly sat up.
“It is nice,” Veronica agreed.
“This is my first time,” one of the visibly pregnant participants said. She was sitting on the other side of Veronica. “Is there always a relaxation at the end?”
Veronica nodded. “I’m pretty sure that’s just standard yoga,” she said.
The woman smiled, her cheeks dimpling. She had a dark, short, layered bob and wore a teal shirt with pink leggings. “Wow. Well, I am really glad my boyfriend insisted on this, then.”
“How many weeks?” Melanie asked as they all stood.
“It feels like fifty,” the woman joked. “But it’s thirty-six.”
Melanie smiled.
“I’m Allie. It’s nice to meet you,” said the woman said.
Melanie and Veronica introduced themselves.
“I hope I see you again next week,” Allie said as she scooped up a small pile consisting of a purse and a hoodie. “I’d better hurry, though. My ride.” She gestured towards the front door of the building and exited the studio.
Veronica recovered her own things and as she straightened, Melanie slipped her arm through Veronica’s. “See what you did? You got me started on this amazing new yoga-thing, and we’re meeting nice people and making new friends.”
The Plane and the Parade (Veronica Barry Book 3) Page 17