by C. L. Gaber
Focus!
Deva’s hand flies up to her hair in a reflex and she flicks a blue-black section back as if to emphasize her utter amazement that on a hot summer day when no one has anything to do, Cooper Matthews, of all people, would be hanging at his home.
“We were just in the neighborhood and thought we’d stop by to, uh, say hi and to, uh, you know, uh, see what you were doing.”
Deva is stumbling in her response while nervously looking over her shoulder at Nat and me, almost mentally begging us to jump in and help her out.
This girl is a terrible liar and we, her friends, are of no help at all.
Finally, I find my voice to speak up.
“Hi, I’m Jessica and I’m just visiting for the summer. From New Jersey,” I say confidently, like one of the girls in the Miss Teen USA pageant.
“We’re sorry for frightening you,” I add. “You can actually call me Jex. No one calls me Jessi … ”
“I don’t scare easily,” he responds, narrowing his eyes.
I smile widely, channeling my inner Junior Miss New Jersey again. Maybe if he thinks I’m cute, he’ll forget about the trespassing charge. If there were ever a moment to have been born with dimples, this was it. Sadly, my face is pit-less.
“So, were you looking for me for a specific reason?” Cooper demands. “What is it?”
“Can we come in and get out of this heat?” Deva inquires. But he remains a solid wall of unfriendliness.
Then I speak up, because apparently I am the only one around here who knows how to break an awkward silence. “I could really use something cold to drink. I’m not exactly used to this oven you call the great outdoors,” I state, fanning myself with my hand to emphasize that heat stroke is developing within my East Coast system.
Before he can even answer, Deva sidesteps me and marches into the freaking house. Points for guts or total moronic stupidity! What if the murder weapon is in the kitchen?
Nat and I have no choice but to follow her inside. Cissy slinks past me with a nervous half smile and a little wave. Stealth.
“You want some water?” Cooper offers. “I don’t know what else we have. Probably some iced tea or Hawaiian Punch.”
“Hawaiian Punch from a can would be great!” I say a little too enthusiastically, like my entire life is brightened by a drink that stains your tongue and probably your liver.
He gets out four mismatched glasses from a gas-station giveaway and gets an ice cube tray out of the freezer. Then he reaches into a drawer and pulls out an ice pick—an ice pick!—and chops into the ice tray sitting on the counter. I notice him glance at us out of the corner of his eye. This is all for effect, but still Cissy’s knobby knees buckle a bit as he hacks away at that ice.
Cooper plunks chunks of ice into the glasses and then pours the bright red punch from a label-less can making me wonder how long it has been lurking in that fridge. Could I get food poisoning from punch? He hands us each a glass, which Deva waves off.
“I don’t drink my carbs,” she whispers as if the C-word is a bad one.
We stand there awkwardly for a second. He runs his hand through his longish hair and directs his laser stare and half head cock to me.
“Really Cooper, we were kind of bored and Jex here wanted to see the neighborhood, so we figured you might be the only other kid around from school who could help us entertain her,” Nat answers, having regained her usual cool demeanor.
“Jex? I thought I heard you use a different name?” he asks, turning his rather large frame in my direction. That handsome mug remains confused.
“Yeah, Jex Malone. It’s really Jessica—but no one really calls me that because I’m not much of a Jessica. You know what I mean?” I ramble, looking for an escape route. Real life should be equipped with those slides they have on planes. Never know when you might need to make an emergency getaway.
His expression darkens, like he knows something isn’t adding up here.
“So you’re just visiting for the summer? Nobody comes to Nevada to visit in the summer unless they go to Vegas and hang out at a fancy hotel pool all day,” he responds, clearly testing my flimsy explanation and me.
“Oh yeah, Jex is just visiting her dad. It’s a custody arrangement thing,” Deva interjects from across the room, where she has now made herself comfortable at the kitchen table and is absent-mindedly rearranging the ketchup and mustard bottles with the salt and pepper shakers.
“Don’t touch stuff,” he barks at Deva, turning back to me.
“Okay, who’s your dad?” Cooper asks. “I didn’t catch your last name. Do you have two names for your dad or just one?”
Jerk.
“Malone. Like I just said a minute ago. The name is Malone. My dad is John Malone,” I answer, a deep red crimson now spreading across my cheeks. Why do I have to blush at the worst possible times?
The expression on his face reacts even as he doesn’t say a single word in response.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why didn’t I just lie or something and say Smith or Jones?
Coming here was such a bad idea. I have enough issues in my life and can’t afford any trouble like a call to my father, which will lead to a call to my mother and then God only knows what.
This Cooper, with his Beckham sculpted shoulders and serious arm muscles and dark tan and blonde-esque hair free flowing in messy waves, is standing here staring at me now, not saying anything. But he’s judging me. He knows what we’re telling him is total BS.
I can’t keep this up for much longer or my skin will burst out in flames.
I remember the cup of Hawaiian Punch in my hand—which is actually getting kind of shaky. I try to be normal and attempt to take a sip, but the next thing I know my hand convulses at the wrong time and suddenly the punch is pouring down my shirt.
Can this day get any better?
“Oh no! I am such a klutz!” I shout as the icy red liquid races down the front of my top, soaking both my shirt and my good pink bra. I pull it away from me and in the process drop the cup with the rest of the punch on the floor. The glass lands with a little tink, but to me it sounds like a cannon going off.
Great! First, my dad messes up the case and now I am totally messing up their kitchen. On second thought: Maybe it’s not the first time a big red pool of liquid has been on that floor.
There’s nothing to sop up the mess and now my red-juice soaked shirt is sticking/melding in a horrific way to my chest where I know you can see everything that I don’t want seen by men/boys. I see Nat check her budding buds even though she hasn’t spilled a drop.
Who knew I would combine breaking and entering with a wet T-shirt contest? Yes, that’s just what I was going for in a first impression. Score one for Miss Junior New Jersey.
Cooper finally finds the paper towels and rips off a big hunk. For a moment, he clumps the paper in his big fingers and it looks like he’s going to dab off my chest, so I take a step backwards. This freaks him out and he tosses the paper towel down on the counter.
“Uh, why don’t you head down to the basement bathroom, the one down the stairs; that way you won’t track juice on the carpet,” Cooper stammers as he flings open a door off the kitchen and flicks on a light over a narrow staircase. “It’s down there, just at the foot of the stairs. There are tons of old towels down there. It won’t matter if they get stained.”
I grab Nat’s hand and pull her down the stairs with me. When I look back, Cooper is standing at the top of the stairs, saying something about letting him know if I need anything. Yes, I do. A one way ticket back to Jersey.
The tiny bathroom is right there at the foot of the stairs and I flick on a light switch to illuminate our path. I see an old towel is hanging by the sink and I grab it and start working on the stain.
“Pat, don’t rub. Otherwise you’ll just rub the stain into your shirt and it will be ruined forever,” Deva says as she steps carefully down the steep stairs because girls always go to bathrooms in packs.
I look
at Deva desperately and Nat hisses at her: “What are you doing down here? Don’t leave Cissy up there with him!”
“Oh don’t worry, they’re just sitting there staring at each other,” Deva insists. “It will be fine. It’s not like she’s going to tell him anything. If she even lets out a whimper, we’ll hear it.”
I keep working on the stain, realizing that it’s completely pointless. The punch is even staining my skin beneath my shirt now and my bra, which looks like part of some terrible tie-dye camp project gone wrong. Glancing at myself in the mirror, I decide that’s not exactly it. It looks like I’m starring in a slasher movie, which is fitting because I’m also incidentally in the basement of the murder house.
“Gosh, this place is a mess,” Deva sniffs in a whisper as she stands in the middle of the dark, dank basement and surveys her surroundings. “Look at all this junk.”
Nat has lost interest in my cleanup effort and has stepped out of the bathroom. We both notice that the basement is filled to the rafters with boxes and old exercise equipment, old appliances, broken TVs with the backs off of them, and furniture from decades ago, including a gold couch wrapped in plastic covers. Nat inches toward the piles, using her height to get a good look at all that’s stored there.
“It’s like they have another house down here,” she whispers back, now being purposely careful to not speak loudly enough for Cooper and Cissy to hear us upstairs. “Don’t they ever throw anything away?”
All of a sudden a voice booms down the stairwell. “How’s it going down there? Are you doing okay?” Cooper shouts.
“Spiffy. Fine. She’s perfect,” Nat shouts back with a devious look in her eye. “She’s just got her blouse off and needs to rinse it a few times so it doesn’t stain. We’ll be up in a minute.”
Nat holds her finger to her lips to hush me and then points to a different pile of furniture. I trail her finger and see she’s directing me towards one dank corner of the room that’s not as well lit. As we make our way over there, I see a white bedroom set that looks like it came from the room of a little girl. It has carved legs and tiny pink roses painted on the headboard. It’s also worn, scratched, and very, very dusty.
Weirdly, it looks exactly like the bedroom set I have back at home in New Jersey, which apparently is a lot more common than I knew.
Nat leans over to whisper into my ear: “That’s Patty’s bed.”
“How do you know?” I whisper back.
“Don’t you remember in the police report, there were those notes on the search of her room?” she answers. “The officer wrote down a quick description of the bed. That’s it. I just know it.”
Inching closer to the bed, I touch the dirty brownish comforter with sickly yellow faded tulips on it. This was the bed where she slept, did her homework, and hung out with her friends. Pressing the mattress gingerly, I watch a small cloud of dust rise into the dead air.
“It’s too bad it’s been so long or I’d dust it for fingerprints,” Nat whispers.
Moving around to the side of the bed, I wiggle the mattress, lifting it slightly. I don’t know why, but it just seemed like the thing to do. I set the mattress back down and then notice a small white nightstand next to the bed with the same white paint and small painted roses. It’s piled high with old books and magazines circa the year 2001.
Carefully, I pick up the books—paperbacks. The covers are drawings of women and men in old-fashioned costumes locked in passionate embraces. One of the guys on the cover looks like Fabio. Oh, it is Fabio.
So, Patty liked to read Harlequin romance novels in her spare time. The bedroom is so oddly familiar to me that I feel at home standing next to it. Absent-mindedly, I pull open the small drawer in the nightstand to look inside.
A stack of unused stationary sits on top of an old teen magazine with the cast of Beverly Hills, 90210 on the cover. A George Michael mix tape is in there, next to what looks like an ancient roll of dusty Life Savers and an old pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. And I thought I was the only one who kept that stuff around forever.
The top drawer is shallow, but wide. I do have this same set at my house in New Jersey, but I wouldn’t dare admit it to Deva because the fake wood with flower stickers is not exactly bedroom chic.
Instinctively, I pull the drawer all the way out and carefully wedge my hand in the back. My stuff is always getting stuck back there and I’m forever taking the drawers out to find what’s missing. It’s almost second nature to do a search mission at least a few times a week. Nat and Deva are looking at me with curious, wild expressions on their faces.
“What are you doing?” Nat mouths to me in a silent scold.
I shake my head. My fingers are reaching toward the back of the cabinet and eureka! I feel something: the thin, paper edges of an envelope.
Carefully and quietly, I pull the first drawer from the stand and then the second to make a little bit of space. The drawers are warped and only come out a bit, but enough for me to get a grip on the envelope with my now aching, dirty fingers. Slowly, I pull it out of the back of the nightstand where it has been hiding—or should I say was hidden?
The envelope appears as if it’s been in a time capsule because it’s relatively unwrinkled. Written on the cover in big, bold letters are the words: PRIVATE. Property of Patty Matthews.
I look at Nat, whose eyes are now as wide as mine were at that window. Without saying a word and before I can do anything, she grabs the envelope and shoves it under her second sweatshirt and tucks it into the waistband of her shorts. Pulling her shirt down, she yanks me away from the nightstand as she pushes the drawers back in.
Putting two fingers to her lips to silence us, she grabs Deva’s hand and mine and almost shoves us back up the stairs.
Again, there are four of us.
Me.
Nat.
Deva.
And Patty.
Chapter 11
Famous Girl Detective Quote:
“How do you hide a gun in a bikini?”
—Kelly Garrett, Charlie’s Angels
Once we hit the top of the stairs I can see the white hot anger on Cooper’s face. His expression seems to say, “I didn’t know John Malone had a daughter. And now she has really overstayed her welcome after virtually breaking into my house.”
I can’t help but wonder in the last thirteen years since his sister disappeared if he talks about it with his mother. Do they ever say, “Remember when Patty was here … ?” or, “Remember that thing Patty would do? Patty always said … ”?
It has to be out of control. A family member just disappearing … well, I guess that’s something we actually have in common, although my dad technically has always had an actual mailing address.
Does he miss her?
Still?
When we emerge from the stairs with the envelope safely hidden, I feel a sudden case of the guilts hit me hard, but I mask it with a casual “what’s up” kind of face. Cooper is sitting at the kitchen table with Cissy, who is busy wringing her hands while he stares with a frown in the general vicinity of the basement, waiting for us to emerge.
“Oh gosh, thanks for the drinks, but we gotta run,” Deva says hurriedly as she grabs Cissy by the hand and physically rips her out of her chair. “Lots to do today. Very busy! Gotta go.”
What the …
My top is still soaked in that sticky red juice and my face is still the color of Hawaiian Punch, too. With my flaming red hair, there’s a whole lot of red going on here. I’m sure my blue eyes look a bit frazzled and scared.
I smile weakly at Cooper and give him a small wave on my way out. For some reason, I see something visibly change when it comes to his mood.
“You have a nice smile,” Cooper abruptly says to me. “Unlike your father. He just frowns a lot.”
“So true, Cooper—and thanks for the drink,” I stammer and then stifle a laugh when I look down at my shirt. “Okay, so maybe next time I’ll just have water. Much safer.”
I sm
ile again. Wait. Did he just say I had a nice smile? My heart is pounding loudly.
“Okay. Water. Was that a joke?” Cooper asks, his eyes crinkling just a bit as he attempts an actual smile.
Then his frown returns.
Maybe he thinks this was all just a dare. Maybe they dared me to survive the freak house where the girl went missing.
“Why is it that all of a sudden I’m so popular with you girls?” Cooper shouts to us as we cross his yard. I stop for a moment and glance back at him as he states the not-so-obvious.
“Must be a full moon rising,” Cooper mutters to the universe. “Freaks are always popular during full moons.”
There is absolutely no time to do a rewind of all things Cooper. For starters, the weather is about to go off the charts. I spy the lightning rip across the desert sky in our neighborhood as all four of us race out of Cooper’s yard. Maybe it’s the smile comment, but I’m not even paying attention when I practically fly across the lush green grass of the house next door.
“Get the hell off my property!” a raspy voice barks at me, followed by a wet, throaty cough.
I look down at my feet to see why they are not moving, only to notice they are unfortunately smack in the middle of an island of white and purple fat petunias that are somehow beautifully surviving the summer heat.
“Girly, you take one more step, and I’ll get my shotgun!” he bellows at me.
I blink hard and see that Nat, Cissy, and Deva are already across the street, each motioning me hard with their hands in constant fluttering motions to keep going and get the heck out of there.
When I blink again, I see a man who must be close to seventy, but he’s far from frail. He’s actually tall, maybe six foot two or three, and burly, like maybe he used to work on a ranch or something. He is wearing a long-sleeve drab gray shirt—Who puts on long sleeves in the summer in Las Vegas?—and frayed gray pants hitched up high, almost to his armpits.
His hands are hidden by huge gardening gloves, and his face is partially obscured by a tattered, old canvas hat that looks like something an old man would wear fishing on a lake. A lake somewhere normal, somewhere with water, that is.