In the Pines

by Laura Lascarso

  I noticed her hands. The thick pads of her fingers were all pink and angry-looking, and her shale-like nails were bitten to the quick. Both were signs of a chronic nail-biter, but that didn’t mean she was innocent. A guilty conscience could easily trigger bad habits.

  “You bite your nails?” I asked, trying to sound only mildly interested.

  “Only when I’m stressed,” she practically hissed and clasped her hands together so I wouldn’t stare. “What are you doing here, Dick?”

  “Call him Charlie, Daniela,” Dare said like he was trying to be gentle with the command. Daniela scowled at me but nodded.

  “We have a few questions for you,” I said, determined not to be swayed by her big Bambi eyes and quivering lips. Girls were crafty that way.

  “I can’t really talk right now, Dare.” Her eyes flitted around to the shoppers walking past us. Something about her expression looked guilty to me. “If my boss sees me talking to you guys, he’s going to deduct it from my commission.”

  “That seems extreme,” I said.

  “Do you know what it costs to rent this kiosk?” she asked.

  I glanced around. Fair enough. “Do you have a break coming up?”

  She shook her head. “I just used it. I saw this guy walking through the mall who looked like Mason from the back, and I followed him, but then I realized….”

  Dare put a hand on her shoulder. “How about this? Charlie could use a facial, and I need something for the bags under my eyes. Why don’t you fix him up while we ask you a few questions?”

  “Dare,” I warned. I definitely did not want a makeover.

  Daniela’s mouth quirked as she assessed me. “That’s asking a lot, Dare. I’m no magician.”

  I glared at her. Dare nearly smiled. “I’m not asking for a miracle.”

  Before I had the chance to be incensed, Dare nudged me into the chair, and Daniela slung a silky black cape over my shoulders and kicked back the freestanding stool so I was reclined and at a definite disadvantage.

  “Do you moisturize, Charlie?” Daniela asked, studying my pores way too closely.

  “No.”

  She shook her head. “Well, that was your first mistake.”

  While Daniela prepared a warm towel for my face, I launched into my questions. The sooner this was over, the better.

  “What was the fight between you and Mason about on Friday afternoon?”

  Daniela’s eyebrows pointed downward as she slapped the hot towel on my face and held it there.

  “Ouch, that burns,” I said, my voice muffled by her steady hand.

  “That’s the feeling of your pores opening up and expelling all the nastiness that’s been accumulating over the years.”

  “They’re screaming,” I told her.

  “For joy.”

  “So, the fight?”

  “Couples fight all the time,” she said evasively.

  “Did you and Mason fight a lot?”

  “Not that much. We had our ups and downs.” She pressed on the edges of the towel, which intensified the heat and the burning sensation.

  “What were some of the things you fought about?” I pressed.

  “Mason wasn’t always the most reliable person. He couldn’t keep a calendar to save his life.”

  “That’s true,” Dare interjected.

  “How long did your fights go on for?”

  “I don’t know. A day or two. Long enough for him to realize he was being a….” She stopped without finishing the thought.

  “A what?” I asked, my voice still muffled by the towel.

  “Nothing. I’m not going to say anything bad about him now. There’s no sense in it.”

  There was if it meant I could get at why he was murdered.

  Daniela removed the towel and started working a cream into my cheeks and forehead. It smelled minty and tingled a little. “This is a light moisturizing cream with an SPF base to protect your skin from sun damage.” Daniela squinted at me. “You need to pluck these eyebrows, Charlie.”

  “Nope.” I squirmed in my chair.

  “She’s a genius at it, Charlie. You should let her.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Come on, Charlie, there’s, like, five that really need to go. They’re like distant planets to the rest of the solar system that is your eyebrows.”

  “Did you and Mason ever break up as a result of one of your fights?” I asked, growing impatient with her dodgy answers.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Close your eyes,” she said, coming at me with a pair of tweezers.

  “I said I don’t want my eyebrows plucked.” I started to get up, and she placed a firm hand on my chest.

  “Don’t be such a baby.” Daniela looked to Dare imploringly.

  Dare laid a hand on my arm. “Just shut your eyes, Charlie. It will only take a minute. It’s a little pinch. That’s it.”

  I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut.

  “We broke up once over the summer,” Daniela said. She yanked at one of my eyebrow hairs, and it stung so bad I thought I was going to start crying.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry, hon. That one was hanging on for dear life.”

  “Was it because of a trip to Café Risqué?” I asked while wincing in pain.

  “That was part of it.”

  “What was the other part?”

  “He was getting really jealous. We’d be out having fun and some guy would look at me wrong and he’d get all worked up about it. One time we were at the downtown market, picking up food for dinner, and this sweet little homeschooled kid asked me for my number. I didn’t give it to him, but Mason overheard and threatened to beat the guy’s ass. And then when I found out he’d been going to the strip club, I was like, oh hell no.”

  I could understand that. I was almost sympathizing with her when she plucked another one of my eyebrow hairs.

  “Surely, with all the practice you’ve had, you could be a bit gentler,” I huffed.

  “Beauty is pain, Charlie. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  Back to the agenda. “So, this fight you had with Mason on Friday. Why didn’t you tell my mom about it?”

  I peered up at her, half-afraid of getting an eye stabbed out.

  “Who’s your mom?” she asked, bewildered.

  “Detective Schiffer.”

  “That’s your mom?” She seemed fearful and also a little impressed. Most everyone knew my mom was a cop, since I was often picked up in elementary and middle school in a police cruiser, but Daniela had gone to different schools from us until high school.

  “Yes, and?”

  Daniela sucked in her bottom lip and chewed on it. “I didn’t think it would help them find Mason. I felt bad about it too.” She stopped then and had to dab at her eyes again. Dare patted her shoulder sympathetically.

  “Which brings me back to my original question,” I continued. “What was the fight about?”

  Daniela licked her lips and furrowed her pruned brow in concentration. I felt another pinch in my brow line. I was letting her torture me for answers.

  “I overheard Mason on the phone with someone. I saw him come out of the wrestling room, and I was sneaking up behind him to surprise him when I heard him talking to….” She stopped and collected herself. I could see that she was trying to get her temper under control. I did something similar when I was mad. My therapist helped me come up with ways to calm down. Most of the time it worked.

  “I don’t know who he was talking to, but it sounded like a hookup.”

  “For that night?”

  “That night or some other night. I know what I heard and I just… I went off on him.”

  I glanced over at Dare and wondered if he realized what this meant—Daniela had a motive. I decided to trust her with a bit of information in order to get a better answer. “Dare found a baggie of pills in Mason’s room. Do you know if he’d been taking anything?”

 
Daniela’s eyes went wide. “No, I don’t know anything about that.”

  “The conversation he was having… do you think it could have been with a dealer?”

  A look of horror passed over Daniela’s face. “God, I hope not. I made him feel like complete shit.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Dare said, wiping his face with his hands.

  “So, you had this argument with Mason. You gave him back his jacket and—”

  “Wait, how do you know about the jacket?” she asked, looking surprised.

  “Charlie’s good at what he does,” Dare said. “He didn’t get the name Dick Tracy for nothing. That was my idea by the way.” He turned to me. “I didn’t intend for it to go viral, and I meant it as a compliment.”

  I couldn’t find it in me to be sore at him now. Knowing it was Dare’s idea actually made it a whole lot better.

  “So, when did you leave school?” I said to Daniela. The two of them were really good at getting me off track.

  “Around six forty-five.”

  “And where did you go?”

  She looked from me to Dare. “I’d rather not say.”

  I was getting frustrated. If she had nothing to hide, then there was no reason for her to be so circuitous. “I’m trying to help establish your alibi, Daniela. Joey said you arrived to the party late, that your makeup was a mess, and you were still wearing your cheerleading uniform, which means you definitely didn’t go home.”

  “No, I didn’t.” She thankfully put the tweezers away and pulled out a small jar of cream-colored liquid.

  “No makeup,” I told her.

  “This is just a bit of concealer to blend. Your face is quite unevenly colored, Charlie. I’m doing you a favor.”

  Because I wanted more information, rather than argue with her, I let her continue her ministrations. “So where did you go?” I persisted.

  She set her mouth in a determined line and focused all her attention on my face. It seemed she intended to ignore me altogether. Dare gently grabbed her arm, interrupting her, and gave her puppy-dog eyes. “Come on, Daniela, I know you’d never hurt Mason, but we need all the information so we can find out who did. You want to help us find the sicko who killed him, don’t you?”

  Her lower lip trembled again, and she nodded.

  “Then just tell us where you went. We’re not going to judge you. We’re on the same side. Mason’s side.”

  She set down the jar and sponge. “I drove out to Café Risqué. I thought I’d find Mason’s truck there, but I didn’t. Then I felt bad… really bad, so I went back to the high school to see if he was still there, but he wasn’t. I tried calling him, but he didn’t pick up….” She shook her head. “It’s all my fault.”

  Dare hugged her. He looked over her shoulder at me, as if to say Let me handle it. I wondered if Dare had only been pretending to be her ally in order to get her to talk. Maybe he was a better actor than I thought.

  “It’s okay, Daniela,” he said in soothing tones while petting her hair. “Whatever it is, you can tell us.”

  She shook her head, and I was certain there was going to be an abstract impression of her eye makeup on Dare’s shirtfront when this was all over. “I did something bad, Dare,” she snuffled.

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me.” His words were soft and soothing, but his eyes were hard as flint. I realized what a vulnerable position Daniela was in, her soft, supple neck cradled in his arms, his large hand cupping the base of her skull.

  “You’re going to hate me for it.”

  “I couldn’t hate you, Daniela. I promise.”

  She pulled away, her face a mess, her breath coming out in hiccups. “I was so angry at him, Dare, and I thought he was going to meet another girl, so I….” She gulped and tried again. “I slashed his tires.” She was full-on bawling now. “I did that to him on his birthday. And now because of it, he’s dead.”

  DANIELA, UNFORTUNATELY, was in no shape to continue her shift. To make up for it, Dare bought an obscene amount of cosmetics and told the cashier to put it all on Daniela’s commission. Then we took her to Swift Soup, and the three of us sat together over steaming bowls of soup and bread. Dare and Daniela talked about how Joey was handling it, which was not well. He’d not left his house since finding out about Mason’s murder, and the only person he was answering his phone for was Dare. I got the impression that while Joey was a friend to both brothers, he was much closer to Mason. Perhaps he knew something about Mason’s drug use or had a suspicion as to who Mason was going to meet Friday night. I had so many questions.

  I drove Dare home through the gloom of twilight with the windows down, a cool breeze on our faces. The bats would be waking and setting out for their nightly feasts. My dad used to take me to the bat house on the UF campus at sunset to watch the bats come out—thousands of them. It was both terrifying and awe-inspiring to see them swooping overhead, so close it seemed you could reach out and grab one. I thought they were scary and gross until my dad explained to me their role in the ecosystem and how important they were as pollinators. My dad was always really good at getting me to slow down and observe things from different angles. Sometimes he’d bring up a topic for debate and convince me of his side, so that by the end we’d both taken opposite positions. The whole argument changed when you looked at it from another perspective.

  I checked in with Dare to see how he was doing. He looked completely drained.

  “I’m sad as hell, but at least it feels like we’re getting somewhere.”

  I needed to get all my thoughts down on paper, because at that moment I felt a bit discombobulated. “We can’t write Daniela off just yet,” I told him. “She could be lying about her trip to Café Risqué, and since she didn’t go inside, there’s no way to prove she was there, which means she doesn’t have an alibi.”

  “Neither do I,” Dare said. He wasn’t wrong. “And your mom thinks I did it.”

  I thought about how to frame it in a more positive light. “Not conclusively.”

  “That’s good, though. If she didn’t suspect me, she wouldn’t be doing her job, right?”

  “That’s right. But if I thought you did it, I wouldn’t be helping you.”

  “I have a motive.” His luminous eyes searched mine. “We both know I do.”

  I nodded slowly, focusing back on the road while the weight of his admission settled in around us.

  “Mason was good at being good,” Dare said, studying his clasped hands. “Know what I mean?”

  “Tell me.”

  “He played the game. He figured out the easiest way to do what people expected of him and he went with it, even if it was wrong. Mason realized early on that he could buy his way into or out of pretty much anything, like the SATs, and so he did. And my parents just… let him.”

  “Did that bother you?”

  “Yeah, it did. But only because he didn’t need to. He was smart enough to ace his SATs. He was strong enough to go up against that senior his sophomore year. He’s always doubted his ability or thought he needed to cheat to get an edge, but he doesn’t. He’s just….” Dare shook his head, eyes shining. “And I keep thinking that’s why this happened. He pissed off the wrong person or cheated the wrong dude and they came for him, and I….” Dare looked out the window. “I wasn’t there to protect him. I failed him, Charlie. I wasn’t there. And now he’s dead.”

  I parked the car at the end of his winding driveway, pulled him into my arms, and let him rest there for a few minutes, until he felt strong enough to face the world outside my T-shirt again. Finally, he pulled away and scrabbled at his eyes with his knuckles.

  “Anyway, I always respected you for that. For taking Mason down a notch. He needed that kind of lesson. Our parents and teachers, even me, we were always giving him a pass. But not you.” He shook his head. “I only wish Mason would have learned his lesson then, instead of now.”

  I studied our hands clasped together, his slender fingers twined with my thick, sturdy ones. “
I know you feel guilty, Dare, for what you think you should have done to prevent this, but the blame lies with just one person. That person is out there, and we’re going to find them and bring them to justice.”

  Dare squeezed my hand, a hard, determined look in his eyes. “Yes, we are.”

  And in order to do that, there was someone I needed to talk to.

  Chapter 9

  WITH MY mother it was always best to take the honest approach.

  “I’d like to review the case files,” I told her later that evening. She was in her office, poring over the files in question when I made this request. The remnants of what looked to me like a sandwich and bowl of soup were on her desk, which meant I hadn’t caught her on an empty stomach. That was good.

  She took off her reading glasses and laid them on the desk.

  “We talked about this already, Charlie. You’re off the case.”

  “I’ve been asking around at school. I have some good information. If we joined forces, we could be that much stronger.”

  “Is that where you were all day? With Darren Chalmers?”

  “You don’t have to use his first and last name, Mom. That’s weird. Just call him Dare.”

  “I’ll call him Public Enemy #1 if it suits you better.”

  Boy, she could really get to sniping when she felt like it.

  “No, it doesn’t.” I plopped down in the chair across from her. It had been a long day, and I wasn’t in the mood to argue. She closed the manila folders so I wouldn’t see anything accidentally. Boots waddled into her office and put his front paws on the edge of the chair. I lifted him the rest of the way into my lap, even though he was really too big for it.