In the Pines

by Laura Lascarso

  “Can you come over this afternoon?” I asked Tameka. “I got into a bit of trouble, so I’m grounded. But I’d like to see your notes, unless you think it can wait until tomorrow.”

  “This can’t wait, Dick,” she said with a twinge of worry in her voice.

  “I’ll text you my address, then.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I ended the call and followed it up with a text.

  “What are the notes on?” Mom asked.

  Lying was never easy, especially to my mother, but I needed Tameka’s information, anything that could lead me to Dare. “We’re reading Macbeth. So much betrayal.” I cringed inwardly and waited for Detective Mom to poke holes in my story, but she only yawned. She hadn’t gotten much rest these past couple of weeks. I supposed one advantage of being kicked off the case was that she could catch up on her sleep.

  I texted Tameka Remember to bring your notes for Macbeth, hoping she wouldn’t respond with something snarky and blow my cover. She texted back with a winky face and that was all.

  Mom held out her hand for my phone. I made one last attempt. “What if Dare texts me and I’m not there?”

  “I’ll answer it.”

  “But what if you’re sleeping?”

  “I’ll keep the volume on.”

  “Mom….”

  “No, Charlie. Enough is enough.” Her tone told me not to argue, so I reluctantly passed it over to her. It felt like I was cutting off my own hand. “Keys too,” she reminded me.

  I dug them out of my pocket and placed them in her other open hand.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I haven’t slept in two days. Make it quick with your friend. I don’t want you going anywhere, not even into the woods to walk Boots.”

  I kneeled down to properly greet my best friend. Boots was a little out of sorts, not having seen me for almost twenty-four hours. I tried not to stress about Dare, but it was impossible. What if he was being tortured at this very moment? What if he was dead? I didn’t want to imagine it, so of course my mind was flooded with all kinds of terrible scenarios. I had to keep a level head. That was the only way I could find Dare.

  I waited for Tameka out on the porch so as not to disturb my mom or have her know what we were discussing. Soon enough I saw Tameka coming up the road. I met her in my driveway. She climbed out of the car carrying her laptop with the cord dragging like a tail. I took the laptop from her arms so she could fend off Boots’s affections. She knelt down to give him a quick pet and then strode with purpose to my front porch.

  “My computer’s dying. You have someplace we can plug it in?”

  I grabbed an extension cord and ran it outside from the living room. Tameka powered up, explaining as she went. “There’s this whole subReddit, Who killed Mason Chalmers? I discovered it in Techno this morning, and I’ve been going over it ever since school got out. Charlie, they think Dare did it.”

  She hadn’t called me by my nickname, which meant she was too worried to tease me.

  “Do they have any evidence?”

  “Take a look at this.” She angled her computer screen toward me. “It’s a screenshot from a posting on Vent, dated minutes before Mason’s murder.”

  I angled the screen so the sunlight wouldn’t obscure it and read the message:

  My brother is the most selfish, self-centered bastard I’ve ever known. He’s always ditching me and canceling plans last minute. Our parents think he’s Mr. Perfect and I’m the bad one because I don’t conform to their social-climbing, vapid lifestyle. They’re all phonies and fakes. My brother is far from perfect, and one day I’m going to prove to them he’s no better than me. Phantom4eva 7:27 p.m.

  “Is this Dare?” I said aloud to Tameka.

  “Mmm-hmm. It was posted on the night of Mason’s murder but deleted the next day. One of the drama kids at Gainesville High took a screenshot and posted it here.”

  I scanned over the upvoted comments, most of them theories as to how Dare did it and with what weapon. There were so many pictures of Dare posted to the thread, showing his array of characters over the years, ranging from his debut role as Tiny Tim in a community theater production of A Christmas Carol when we were still in elementary school to his most recent performance as the Phantom. The most popular theory as to why he did it was for the inheritance, of course.

  “Tameka, this is just gossip and hearsay,” I said, not wanting to give too much credit to armchair sleuths.

  “There’s something else, Charlie.”

  Tameka clicked on one of the top-rated comments titled “Kiss and Tell.” It expanded to show a short, grainy video of two boys kissing. Even though some of the furniture was different, I recognized it as Dare’s bedroom. One of the guys was clearly Dare, and the other…

  …the other one was Peter Orr.

  “This isn’t possible,” I said to Tameka, unable to tear my eyes away. The video was playing on loop, so that as soon as the clip ended, it restarted from the beginning. Judging from their body language and the soft moaning sounds I recognized as belonging to Dare, both of them seemed to be enjoying it.

  “Peter Orr is gay?” I said aloud. It probably shouldn’t be the most alarming piece of information, but it made me stumble. I also didn’t care to see evidence of Dare’s affections for another man. “Do you know when this video was taken?” I asked Tameka.

  She studied the clip of their exchange with a scientific eye. “Must be from last year. Dare does his hair differently now.”

  She was right. Sometime around the Phantom production, Dare changed his hairstyle. The exchange between Peter and Dare when we questioned him suddenly made sense—the two had history. This must be the “prank” Peter was referring to and the reason Peter and Joey got into a fight last spring. Before I could come up with any reasonable explanation for what she’d shared with me, Tameka presented a theory of her own.

  “They did it, Charlie, and they’re pinning it on you. The two of them are going to sail off into the sunset with the Chalmerses’s fortune and let you be the fall guy.”

  Tameka’s face blurred, and I recalled every shy look, every vulnerable plea and tender gesture from Dare in the past two weeks. Had Dare Chalmers played me this entire time?

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Tameka said gently. “To go from hardly knowing each other to friends with benefits in such a short amount of time? I’m not saying you don’t have it going on, Dick, because you do….” She continued boosting my ego, which was nice of her and completely unnecessary, while I drifted into the tragic theater of my mind where I was the foolish mark and Dare Chalmers the murdering seducer. It was practically Shakespearean in its design.

  But you know Dare, said a tiny voice. You know he didn’t do it.

  Was two weeks long enough to really know someone? Even though we’d gone to school together all these years, I’d only ever admired him from a distance. Could I have been so blinded by my affection for him that I ignored the evidence of his guilt as it was piling up around me? Was he really that good of an actor all along?

  “Shit, Tameka.” I handed the laptop back to her and collapsed into the lawn chair on our front porch. It felt as though I’d taken a soccer ball to the gut. She sat down beside me, giving me some time to collect myself. “There has to be a reason for this. Why would Dare kill Mason? Was it only for the money?”

  People have killed for less.

  “Maybe he was worried his inheritance would go to Mason, or maybe Mason didn’t agree with his sexuality and who he was dating. Or maybe he’s just a psychopath, Charlie. You never know with people.”

  But I’d seen him at his very worst. I’d been his shoulder to cry on while he grieved. I’d felt the pain in his voice when he spoke of his brother and how much he missed him. It had to be real because it felt so much like my own feelings of loss for my father.

  Dare may have been faking his affection for me, but I couldn’t believe he was faking his love for Mason or that he could be so callous as to mu
rder his own twin in cold blood.

  Maybe that’s where Peter came in.

  A new scenario took shape in my mind, like a blob of clay being molded on a potter’s wheel. Dare, bitter about not getting his inheritance and fed up with competing with his beloved brother for their parents’ affection, linked up with Peter Orr, who was also sick of Mason getting all the glory. Together they planned the perfect murder and executed a coordinated attack. Dare followed Mason to a desolate, deserted road, where he dropped Peter off to do the deed and then returned later to pick him up. That would explain the lack of a second set of tire tracks on the side of the road.

  But if they were working together, it would make more sense if they acted as each other’s alibis. And there was no way Dare could have known Mason was meeting Ms. Sparrow because they were communicating on a second phone. Unless Mason told Dare himself. But even Mason didn’t know his tires had been slashed. Daniela did that on her own, independent of Dare and Peter, so the only way Dare and Peter could have been working together was if Daniela was in on it too. But Daniela had only just found out about Mason’s affair with Ms. Sparrow, and ten minutes later she was slashing his tires—not exactly enough time to plot his downfall with Dare elsewhere and Peter suiting up to run the track.

  “Something’s not lining up for me, Tameka.”

  Tameka, however, was engrossed in her phone and some exchange happening via text. “Daniela needs to talk to you. It’s important.” She handed me her phone with Daniela’s number already loaded. I pressed the Call button.

  “Charlie, have you heard?” Daniela said, breathless. “Dare’s missing.”

  “I know.” I didn’t have time to go into everything that had happened since that morning. I cut to the chase. “Do you know anything about it?”

  “No, but I got this really weird text last night.”

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know. It was an unknown number.”

  “What time?”

  “It says 2:21 a.m. but I didn’t see it until this morning.”

  That was about an hour after I’d fallen asleep, when Dare was supposed to still be in my arms.

  “Read it to me,” I said.

  “It says ‘I know you did it. Meet me at Waffle Kingdom at 8 a.m. with five thousand dollars or I’m going to the cops.’”

  Now that was a legitimate threat of blackmail.

  “Did you go?” I asked her.

  “No, I just thought it was someone playing a cruel prank. Joey got the same text, only with a different time. A couple other people got it too. Nobody knows who it’s from.”

  “Was Peter Orr at school today?” I asked.

  “Yes. At least, I think so. Charlie, what’s going on?”

  I knew who sent that text. Only one other person wanted to find Mason’s killer desperately enough to do something so reckless and stupid. Dare, assuming GPD had the wrong guy in custody and impatient with how the investigation was going, had gone out in the middle of the night and purchased a burner phone. He sent all of our suspects an ultimatum with the hopes that one of them would present themselves as the killer. I’d bet Ms. Sparrow had received the text as well.

  With Dare missing it meant that one of them—the guilty one—must have met Dare this morning at Waffle Kingdom.

  Dare was innocent.

  And he’d been kidnapped by Mason’s murderer.

  “Where are Peter and Joey now?” I asked Daniela impatiently.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen them since school got out.”

  “And where are you?”

  “I’m at work.”

  “Don’t go anywhere. Have someone walk you to your car. Go straight home. Understand?”

  “Yes, I will. What are you going to do?” she asked desperately.

  “I’m going to find Dare.”

  I ended the call and turned to Tameka.

  “Whatever you need,” she said.

  “Take me to Waffle Kingdom.”

  IN ADDITION to breaking the terms of my grounding, I did something else I felt bad about. I snuck into my mother’s purse and lifted some of her cash. Hanging around Dare had taught me you get answers faster with a little green to grease the wheels, and we had no time to waste. I was glad I’d made that decision when Tameka and I approached the counter of Waffle Kingdom. I was wired and stressed as I forced myself to sit down and act normal. We had to get the servers of Waffle Kingdom to trust us if we wanted answers.

  “What’ll you have?” said a woman not much older than us. Her name was Juliet according to her nametag. I slid a twenty across the sticky counter. “I need some information.” Juliet glanced between Tameka and me and slipped the money into her apron.

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  “Were you working here this morning?”

  “No, but Shelly was.” She pointed to a middle-aged woman who was pouring cups of coffee at a four-top.

  “Could you ask her to come over here?”

  “Hey, Shelly?” Juliet called across the restaurant.

  Shelly came over, thinking we wanted coffee, and seemed put out when we didn’t. I showed her a picture Tameka had taken at Mason’s funeral. In it were Dare, Daniela, Peter, Joey, and me.

  “Did you see any of these people come in here this morning?”

  She studied the photo, somewhat impatiently. “Nope.”

  “Are you sure? Take another look.” This was the key to finding Dare. She had to have seen something.

  “Look, honey, I just got sat and I’m a little busy right now. I didn’t serve any kids this morning. I’d have remembered.”

  She walked off. Meanwhile, Juliet was still studying the picture.

  “I recognize these three,” she said, pointing to Dare, then Joey, and then Peter. “They’re regulars.”

  I switched tactics. Instead of starting at the end, I started at the beginning. “By any chance, were you working Friday night, two weeks ago?”

  She narrowed her eyes and thought about it for a minute. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I ended up covering a shift for someone who was sick.”

  “Did any of them come in?” I turned Tameka’s phone toward her to help jog her memory.

  “Yeah. Both of them did.”

  “Can you point to the two you mean?”

  She pointed to Dare and then Peter.

  “Were they together?” I asked as my stomach sank.

  “No, separate.”

  I glanced again at the picture. “When did they come in?”

  She pointed to Dare. “He came in around 8:30 and he….” She pointed to Peter. “He came in around eleven, right before closing.”

  I tried to temper my enthusiasm. This could be the breakthrough I’d been looking for. “Can you tell me what they ordered?”

  She tilted her head and gave me a quizzical look. I slipped her another twenty. “Fine, but it’s going to take me a minute,” she said and sauntered away. I should have given her another twenty and told her to hurry.

  “What does it matter what they ordered?” Tameka asked in a hushed voice. I explained to her about Peter having to lose weight for the upcoming wrestling tournament and how he’d claimed to be running the track that whole night to burn calories.

  Juliet came back a few minutes later with printed receipts. Dare’s order was just as he said it was: waffle fries with a side of bacon and sausage and a two-egg breakfast.

  “He ordered all that food,” she said, pointing to Dare’s receipt, “but he didn’t eat a thing. I had to throw it all out. What a waste.”

  I pointed to the other receipt. “And this one, did he eat everything he ordered?”

  She nodded. “Every last bite.”

  I produced another twenty. “Thank you so much for this, Juliet. You are an angel.”

  She grinned. “So, did you all want to order anything or what?”

  “Nope, this is all we need.” I stuffed the receipts in my pocket and motioned for Tameka to follow me outside.

  �
��Can I use your phone again?” She produced it for me and with shaking hands, I dialed my mom’s number. I waited while it rang, but she didn’t pick up. I also couldn’t leave a voicemail because her mailbox was full. She was probably still sleeping with the ringer turned off. In as few characters as I could, I laid out my theory in a text. I glanced at my watch. Nearly 7:00 p.m.

  A receipt wasn’t going to cut it, and I couldn’t rely on a hunch. I needed proof to bring Mason’s killer to justice. I needed to find Dare.

  “Where to now, Dick?” Tameka asked, already sensing my next move.

  “Eastview High.”

  Chapter 17

  IT WAS dark by the time we reached the high school. An ominous fog obscured the building. That meant the cameras might not pick up footage as well, a mixed blessing since I planned on breaking in if I had to. There were only a few vehicles in the parking lot and none that I recognized. I instructed Tameka to park outside the scope of the surveillance cameras and told her to wait in her car.

  “But it’s dark out here,” she whined, looking a bit fearful.

  “Lock the doors. If you see anything suspicious, call 911.”

  I left her there with the windows up and the doors locked and headed straight for the Athletics building that housed the wrestling room. The exterior doors were unlocked, but the door to the wrestling room held fast. Inside the lights were off.

  “Damn.”

  Above the knob was a small, narrow window. I glanced around and spotted a camera aimed in my direction. I could wait for Hartsfield and the rest of GPD to catch up, but by then it might be too late for Dare.

  I’d have to take the risk.

  I found a nearby fire extinguisher and used the butt of it to break the glass pane, then carefully reached through to unbolt the lock from the inside. I waited for an alarm to sound but heard nothing. Gundry’s classroom was pitch-black as I ran my fingers over the rough cinder block wall, looking for a light switch. There it was. Once illuminated, I headed straight for the wrestling room, intent on finding those sauna suits. I searched through the closets, pushing past warm-up outfits and singlets, stacks of mats, and piles of ear guards. I was sweating, out of breath, and frantic as precious seconds slipped by. They had to be here somewhere.