A Hard Day's Fright Read online

  “Why? She liked them handsomer? Older?”

  “Well, not older certainly.” She made a face. “Not like Mr. Monroe. Handsomer? Maybe. She dated a guy her junior year who was really handsome. A chiseled chin, dark hair, eyes the color of oak leaves in spring.”

  She made him sound like Quinn’s way older brother, and I batted the thought away before it could take root.

  “Lucy liked guys with class, and that’s not to say Bobby didn’t have any. He was just…just a guy, just a buddy. He was always telling corny jokes and using puns so bad, they made us all groan. He was fun and funny. At least until…” Her expression clouded.

  It didn’t take a detective to catch on. “Let me guess. Until Lucy disappeared?”

  Ella shook off the thought. “Well, that doesn’t mean anything. We were all upset.”

  “But some of you were more upset than others. Like Bobby, for instance?”

  She got up and fussed over putting the chair back where she’d found it. Since I was never all that worried about what my tiny office looked like, it wasn’t a big deal to me, but Ella straightened and re-straightened, lining up the chair just right. When she was done, she stood behind it, her hands curled around the back. “Truth is, I can’t tell you,” she said, and call me psychic (I’m not, and believe me, it would come in handy more than this goofy Gift I did end up with), I knew Ella was embarrassed. And upset, too. Considering we were discussing something that had happened nearly fifty years earlier, this was odd. And interesting.

  She turned away from me and walked to the far side of my office, and since that took, like, maybe five seconds, she flipped around and came back the other way, her hands clutched where the waistband of her denim skirt met a white peasant shirt embroidered at the neck and cuffs with bright flowers. “Like I told you before, Pepper, I was never really part of the group. I went to the concert with them that night because Lucy invited me along. I was younger. I didn’t really fit in.”

  “What you’re saying is that once Lucy was gone, the rest of them dumped you.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly put it that way,” she said, but the look of misery on her face told me otherwise. All these years, and the rejection still hurt. “I was young, and probably too sensitive. I really didn’t expect them to somehow suddenly welcome me into the group with open arms just because of what happened to Lucy.”

  “But…”

  “But after the night of the Beatles concert, they didn’t even acknowledge that I was alive. I’d see them in the hallways and say hello and be all set to ask how they were coping, and they’d just walk right past me. It was like I disappeared when Lucy did.”

  “And Will?”

  “Will?” Her smile came and went. “After that night, when I ran into Will…well, at least he wasn’t as cold as the rest of them, at least he’d say hello. But when I tried to talk to him…you know, really talk?…it was like meeting a brick wall. I was a kid, and I didn’t know a thing about psychology, but even I knew not talking about what happened to Lucy wasn’t going to help any of us. After a couple months of trying to get through to Will, I finally gave up. And it wasn’t like it was just me he was ignoring,” she added. She hurried around to the front of my guest chair and sat down, suddenly looking tired. “Will cut everybody off. Even Darren and Janice and Bobby. He stopped drawing. He got into all kinds of trouble at school. There was talk of him drinking and doing drugs. I know it was all because of how worried he was about Lucy. If only he’d realized that talking about it might have helped.”

  There was a stack of old employee newsletters on my desk that I’d been asked to recycle by removing the staples and reusing the paper. Been there, done that, and I wasn’t going to get conned into it again. With nervous fingers, Ella reached for the papers. I didn’t stop her. Hey, if she was willing to do what I didn’t want to, bless her!

  “They closed ranks,” she said, pulling out a staple, setting that newsletter aside, and reaching for another one. “That’s as simple as it is. The kids who were with me at the concert that night closed me out and kept to themselves. Their relationships with Lucy were different than mine. To me, Lucy was the big sister I never had. To them, she was a friend. They handled her disappearance the only way they knew how.”

  “And the cops…did they see what was happening? Didn’t they think Lucy’s other friends were acting fishy?”

  She stopped mid-pull and looked at me. “We didn’t have such things as grief counselors then, Pepper. Not like they have at schools now when something terrible happens. Lucy disappeared, and her friends…” Ella got back to work. “Well, we were pretty much left on our own to deal with it. The teachers at school didn’t talk about it, and I remember there was a big to-do when the yearbook editor insisted on putting that picture of Lucy in what would have been her senior yearbook. Like it was some kind of stain on the school’s reputation to admit one of its students was missing.” Still not understanding, she shook her head.

  Finished with one pile of papers, Ella reached for another. “I was lucky,” she said. “My mom and my dad were great, especially my mom. She’d sit and listen to me cry, or we’d talk for hours and come up with scenarios that would explain what had happened to Lucy. I don’t know if she ever believed any of them. I think she was just trying to make me feel better. The other kids…” Her shrug said it all. “I have no idea what kind of support they got from their parents. Maybe none. Maybe they were all each other’s support, and maybe the only way they could deal was to lean on each other.”

  “But the cops did talk to them, right?”

  “Of course.” Ella was getting good at this recycling stuff. Finished in no time flat, she tapped the papers into a neat pile and set them back down where they came from. “The police talked to all of us. When they found out Lucy had been to the concert and who she went with, they brought us all down to the station and talked to us separately and then all together. We told them about the ride home on the rapid.” Since those old newsletters were in the most perfect of perfect piles, they didn’t need to be lined up again, but that’s exactly what Ella did. “I was the last one off the train. Before Lucy, that is.”

  “And the other kids?”

  Ella’s thoughts had drifted off, and she snapped to. “They told the police the truth, of course. Janice, Darren, Will, and Bobby got off the rapid together and they went to Darren’s house. He lived in a big mansion and there was even a third-floor ballroom. Can you imagine? That was where Darren always took his friends. They all told the police the same thing, that they were listening to record albums on Darren’s stereo.”

  “And the cops believed them?”

  “Well, of course they did.” Apparently, I was treading on thin ice by even suggesting that the kids knew anything. But though Ella’s voice was edged with exasperation, she refused to meet my eyes. My detective senses tingled; there was something she wasn’t telling me, and believe me, I intended to find out what it was. I settled back and waited for the right moment.

  “And they had Mrs. Andrews’s word to back up their story,” Ella added while I was planning my strategy. “Mrs. Andrews said they all came home and trooped upstairs and she heard those albums playing and playing for hours. Besides…” She tugged at the cuffs of her blouse. “There was never any reason to think the other kids had any information that might have helped. They got off the train first. They were home listening to records by the time Lucy got off at her stop.”

  “They got off first. Then you got off the train.”

  My well-timed comment confirmed my suspicion. It was when she mentioned the train and how she’d gotten off before Lucy that Ella had gotten a little tweaky. Now, she tweaked some more. She stood up, then sat down again, her fingers laced together and her eyes bright.

  “I’ve never told anyone,” she said, her voice wobbly. “I suppose I never wanted to admit it.”

  I sat forward. “You saw what happened?”

  “Oh my gosh, no!” She stood again, and sniffled
. “It’s just…” She paced over to the door and swallowed hard before she said, “Lucy wanted to get off the train when I did so she could walk me home.”

  Call me slow, I didn’t get the connection. “So…”

  A single tear snaked over Ella’s cheek. “We’d been talking on the train, you see. About her secret boyfriend and about how she’d never told me about him because I wasn’t old enough to know everything. So when my stop came up, I told her I didn’t need her to walk me home.”

  “Because you were trying to prove how grown-up you were.” The pieces chunked into place, and sure, it had happened long before I was born, but my heart squeezed in sympathy. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  Ella swiped her hands across her cheeks. “Of course it wasn’t. I know that now. I think I knew it then, but—”

  “But you felt guilty, anyway.”

  “If I had let her walk me home—”

  “Then whatever happened to her that night would have just happened another time.” I wasn’t sure I believed this, but I said it to make Ella feel better. “You can’t change the past.”

  Ella sniffled. “You can wonder how things might have been different.”

  “But you can’t feel guilty. You were a kid.”

  “And she was my best friend.”

  “And you couldn’t have known that she’d step off the rapid and get kidnapped.”

  Ella’s head came up. “Did she? How would you—”

  I was saved from answering when my office door banged open and Ariel sauntered in—in a sweet little denim miniskirt, a black cami, and three-inch heels.

  While my mouth was still hanging open, she sashayed over to the desk, set down a leather portfolio, and slipped off her backpack. “I’ve been investigating,” she said. “Pepper, darling, you never mentioned how tough it is for us detectives. Talking to people, retracing our steps, library research!” She could only maintain the blasé attitude so long before her face split with a grin. “This is the coolest job ever!”

  “It’s supposed to be my job.”

  As protests went, it wasn’t much, but it didn’t matter since neither of them was listening to me. Ella was just about to burst, that’s how happy she looked when she shot forward, wiped the last of the tears from her eyes, and beamed, “Did you hear that, Pepper? Ariel’s been investigating. Isn’t that interesting? She’s been using her free time to do research.”

  “And boy, did I find plenty!” Ariel unzipped her backpack and pulled out a book. “Exhibit number one,” she said, sounding like one of the characters in a courtroom TV show. “An autobiography of Patrick Monroe.” She slapped it down on the desk. “I read it, cover to cover.”

  Something I never would have done, so I was actually impressed.

  “Unfortunately…” Ariel lifted the book and dropped it on the desk with a splat. “He doesn’t say anything about the night of the Beatles concert, and nothing about Lucy, either. Dead end there!” She tossed her head. “But not to worry, you know how we redheads are. We’re not about to give up easily. I also talked to”—she flipped open the portfolio she’d left on my desk—“the six other teachers he worked with in the English department at Shaker.”

  Ella looked over Ariel’s shoulder at the list, her head bobbing. “She made a list!” Ella was so impressed, her voice warbled. “That’s a wonderful skill,” she added. For Ariel’s benefit, I hope, not mine. “It’s the kind of time management technique that really pays off once you get to college. Don’t you think so, Pepper?”

  I had been known to make lists myself a time or two. Mostly of murder suspects. Or wardrobe essentials on my must-have list. Since they were so involved in this Ariel-as-detective lovefest, I didn’t bother to point this out.

  “Nobody liked Patrick Monroe,” Ariel said. “Not one of them had anything good to say about the creep.”

  “Did they have anything to say about Lucy?”

  When she looked at me, Ariel wrinkled her nose. “They say they always suspected Patrick Monroe had something to do with her disappearance. But…” She slapped the portfolio closed. “Close but no cigar. Nobody’s talking, and if they are, they’re not saying anything that will help us nail our perp.”

  There was that word again. Our. I had to tread carefully for fear of trampling on Ella’s excitement or Ariel’s ego, but tread I did. It was that or risk having my investigation whisked out from under me. I pulled back my shoulders. Even in her three-inch heels, I was taller than Ariel, and I intended to make the most of the advantage. “I really appreciate your help,” I told her. “I really do. But it’s probably time for me to just take over and—”

  “Have you made lists about anything else?” Do I need to point out that the question came from Ella? Or that she wasn’t talking to me? She looped her arm through her daughter’s and they headed for the door. “You could try the same technique for homework assignments. You know, day of the week, what homework you have, when it’s due. Then you could take that list and transfer it all to a master list and…”

  They were still talking about it when they walked out into the hall.

  And I was left—finally—to my own thoughts. It didn’t take me long to put them in order because, let’s face it, I hadn’t learned much that was new.

  Ella felt guilty for not allowing Lucy to walk her home.

  OK, I got that. But it had nothing to do with Lucy’s murder.

  And was it true that Bobby Gideon felt guilty, too? So guilty he allowed himself to be slaughtered in combat in Vietnam? And if this was true, what was it that Bobby felt guilty about?

  I didn’t have the answers. But I intended to find out.

  It took me longer to find Dr. Sharon Gideon than it did for her to throw me out of her office.

  But then, I suppose a dentist with patients waiting can’t be expected to be all that excited about answering questions from a woman who wasn’t even alive when her brother died in a jungle on the other side of the world. Especially when those questions involve suicide and a girl who disappeared so long ago Sharon barely remembered Lucy’s name, much less the circumstances surrounding the mystery.

  She was accommodating enough to ask where I’d even heard such bullshit (her word) about Bobby’s death, and I was shameless enough to lie and tell her I was writing a book about local soldiers who had served in Nam and that I’d interviewed one of the guys in Bobby’s platoon. He’d told me that Bobby walked into the middle of a firefight and never once tried to defend himself.

  Sure, I was elaborating on the slim facts Patrick Monroe had provided me, but I could tell from the way Sharon flinched when I told my story that there was some kernel of truth in it. I took a chance and asked if Bobby might have had any reason to feel guilty about what happened to Lucy. That’s when Dr. Gideon unceremoniously showed me to the door. With the caveat that I’d better not ever come back or she’d call the cops.

  I may be persistent, but I am not stupid. I understand the meaning of the words restraining order and the concept of jail. I left and sat in my car out in the parking lot, thinking.

  It was obvious that Sharon might know the truth about Bobby’s death, but she was never going to talk.

  It was just as obvious that when it came to Bobby, Ella couldn’t help, either.

  And that left me only one place to turn.

  Well…let me correct that statement.

  It left me with three places to turn.

  It was time for me to track down Janice, Darren, and Will.

  11

  OK, I admit it, as places to live go, Cleveland often gets a bum rap. And some of that is well deserved. Our region’s economy is in the dumps. Some of our public school systems are way less than stellar. Our river once caught on fire, but that was a long time ago, and it’s been cleaned up since then so that doesn’t actually count.

  But there are good things about living in northeast Ohio, too. Sometimes the weather is spectacular. When it’s not snowing, that is, or so humid it’s like walking
through a wet wall. We have great parks, fabulous museums—as a former art history major, I can say this with some authority even though I never go to them—and a sense of pride and history that is as appealing to some people as our relatively low cost of living.

  People who are born here tend to stick around, and that’s a real plus for me. It means that investigating in my home-town is a tad easier than I imagine it would be in places like New York or L.A. Yes, the shopping opportunities in those cities would more than make up for the inconvenience, but shopping aside, never let it be said that I don’t look on the bright side.

  It took some digging, but remember, I had an assistant. I put Ariel to work, and just like I found Bobby Gideon’s sister, she found Will Margolis’s mother. When I went to visit, I discovered a teeny, silver-haired woman with dark eyes, and thank goodness, none of the attitude that made Dr. Gideon so impossible.

  Oh yeah, Will’s mom wanted to talk. And talk. And talk. She was just about ancient and a little fuzzy when it came to reality. She thought I’d gone to school with Will. In spite of the fact that I am about thirty years younger than him, I didn’t take this personally. In fact, I played it up for all it was worth.

  That old school connection I had with Will, that’s what got me his current address.

  So there I was, just a couple days later in a part of Cleveland known as the Flats, the area immediately on either side of the Cuyahoga River. Back in the day and thanks to easy access to both the river and Lake Erie, this was where the first pioneers settled. In later years, all that water meant cheap and easy transportation, so the Flats became an industrial hub. That river fire I mentioned? It happened in the Flats.

  That incident was something of a wake-up call, and since then, the Flats has undergone an ebb and flow of transformation, from nightclub central to gentrification, from down-on-its-luck to hopping party town and back again. These days, it’s stuck somewhere right in between. There are still some restaurants and bars down in the Flats, but there are empty buildings, too, as well as newly built condos and a whole lake’s worth of promises that never seem to get fulfilled. Developers are always itching to get their fingers into the pie that is the Flats, and from my research (OK, Ariel’s research, but since I was in charge, it was like it was mine), Darren Andrews was one of them.