Sweet 16 to Life

by Kimberly Reid

  “That wasn’t all you did, MJ. You threatened her, too. Before I go to Lana, is there anything else I should know?”

  By now, I know MJ well enough to know there is always something else—whether of her own doing or because of circumstance, that will undermine my investigation.

  “It’s pretty bad, Chanti. I don’t have an alibi for the time they say I hurt Lux.”

  “You were home when they arrested you. They said it looked like Lux hadn’t been gone long from his apartment when they got there.”

  “Yeah, but that was two hours before they actually came to get me. You know how cops work. They had to check out the witness, talk to my probie, all that. So I had plenty of time to get home.”

  “You mean they could say you had plenty of time to get home. If Big Mama was home, she can vouch—”

  “That’s just it. I ain’t got no alibi because I wasn’t home. The same time they claim I was jacking up Lux, I was in the middle of nowhere waiting for him.”

  “Waiting for him?”

  “Early this morning, I get a call from Lux saying to meet him outside this town called Limon.”

  “That’s about an hour and a half southeast of here. There’s nothing outside that town. There’s barely anything inside.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I found out. I waited nearly an hour for him on some dirt road that looked like it ain’t seen a car in years, then came back to Denver. I wasn’t home ten minutes when Five-O knocked on the door talking about they need to question me.”

  “What made you go all the way out there? You should have known Lux was up to something.”

  “Lux said he was going to set me free of all this, that he had some proof he could give me to clear my name with Tragic. But he was on his way out of Colorado, heading east.”

  “He couldn’t give it to you here, before he left?”

  “He was worried too many eyes might be on us in Denver. Plus he said he felt kind of bad about me getting arrested for the drug charge, said he wanted to clear that up before he dropped off the map.”

  “Right, Lux suddenly got a conscience after setting you up. You sure it was him on the phone?”

  “Yeah, I know his voice. For the last few weeks, he’s been calling me 24-7 threatening me about staying away from his box, so I definitely know his voice. It did sound a little different this morning though, but it was him.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know, like he was nervous maybe.”

  “Probably because he was lying to you,” I suggest. “At least we know he was alive this morning. He’s probably still alive right now, even if that blood comes up as his. I heard it wasn’t enough blood for him to be dead.”

  “You think this is just more of his trickeration?”

  “This could be his way of putting everything on you, including his disappearance. Probably the only truthful thing he said was the part about getting out of town. Neither the cops nor Tragic will come looking for a dead Lux, especially if you’re charged with killing him.”

  “A murder charge? Aw, damn, Chanti.”

  “It’s gonna be okay. We’re getting you out of this thing. Did you tell your lawyer what you told me?”

  “He ain’t come yet, but I will unless you think I shouldn’t.”

  “No, tell him everything. Be completely straight. You’ve told me everything this time, right?”

  “There’s one more thing,” MJ says, clenching her fists open and closed on the table between us.

  “What?” I say, my stomach already starting to twist in knots.

  “Remember how you was blowing up my voicemail the day Lux came for his box?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What had happened was I had went over to his place to try to talk some sense into him.”

  “Talk some sense into him, MJ?”

  “Talk . . . whatever. But he wasn’t there, I guess because he was busy breaking into my house. Anyway, I didn’t answer my phone because I was out looking for some protection from Lux. I knew if I talked to you I’d end up telling you what I was up to and you’d talk me out of it.”

  “What do you mean protection—like a gun?”

  “Naw, I’m not stupid. That would violate my parole. But I know I guy who knows a guy. . . .”

  “Oh, so you thought hiring someone to put a hurt on Lux was smarter than buying a gun? They’re both felonies, MJ. I don’t care if you hire someone to do it or if you do it yourself.”

  “I swear that’s exactly what I heard you say in my head when I finally read all your texts and listened to your voice messages. I said to myself, ‘Chanti would say this was a real bad idea.’ That’s what I said.”

  “And you were right.”

  “So I backed out of it, told the dude who knows the dude I know to leave it alone. I’m pretty sure he didn’t do anything.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “I never gave an order and I never paid him. Them kind of dudes never do anything for free.”

  “Unless he had beef with Lux, too. They weren’t connected in any way, were they?”

  “Not that I know of. Either way, I never told dude to kill Lux, just to scare him away.”

  “You could have done that yourself. That’s what the witness and I pretty much saw you do.”

  “Okay, so I wanted to scare him with a little pain, make him think I had people. But just a little.”

  “You do have people—me and Lana and Big Mama. You should have come to us instead of looking for protection.”

  “I know, I know,” MJ says, looking completely hopeless and not like she needs any more piling on from me. “Do I tell the lawyer this part, too?”

  “Tell him everything. He can’t help you unless he knows the whole story.”

  “Yeah, like that public defender helped me into a two-year juvie stint.”

  “Not all PDs are weak, and besides, Mr. Chatman isn’t a PD. He’s big-time lawyer Lana used to work for. Now he’s her friend. He’ll help you.”

  Like I conjured him up, Mr. Chatman arrives and that’s my cue to leave. Before I go, I make sure he hears me tell MJ to tell him everything or I will, just so he doesn’t worry she might be holding out on him because she’s been talking to me. On my way out of the interrogation room, I run smack into a woman walking down the hall toward the exit. When I back up and apologize for almost mowing her down, I realize I know her. It’s the witness whose testimony the police will probably use to charge MJ with murder. Instead of pointing me out to the nearest cop as the “woman” who broke up the fight between her and MJ over the parking space, she gives me the most sinister and knowing smile I’ve ever seen.

  Now I get it. A real witness, one who clearly recognizes me, would have turned around and pointed me out. But she’s headed for the door. She’s working with Lux to set up MJ and I’m probably next. They’ll tell the police I was with MJ that day making threats right along with her even though I tried to stop her. For whatever reason, they’re playing a game of cat-and-mouse, dangling me by the tail like they’re Tom and I’m Jerry. I have to move fast before they make their next play. Otherwise, Lana is right about me being implicated—as an accessory to murder, even if it’s a staged murder that never really happened. Instead of looking forward to my birthday this weekend, I could be looking forward to sweet sixteen to life.

  Chapter 27

  I get home from the visit with MJ to find another mystery package leaning against my front door, this time a box instead of an envelope, but the labeling looks the same. Lux would have to be the boldest man on the planet to still be dropping these packages off “from the grave,”so I call Marco to make absolutely sure he isn’t behind this.

  “I don’t know who’s sending the movies,” Marco says when I question him, “but it isn’t me. I told you Hitchcock is the director that made me think about going to film school. I’d never rip him off like that.”

  “Rip him off? What do you mean?”

  “The DVDs I saw at your
house the other day are bootlegs. I only knew they were Hitchcock films from the titles and the cover art. The art isn’t original, either. Looks like someone just pulled stuff off the Net to make the covers.”

  Lux may be in hiding somewhere, playing dead, but that just means he’s got someone else doing his dirty work. And he isn’t just using me to taunt MJ.

  “Marco, are you busy right now? And I mean right now.”

  “No, but—”

  “Then I could really use your help. Can you come over?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “MJ’s case. This morning I thought it couldn’t get much worse, but I was wrong. I think I might be the bad guy’s next target.”

  While I’m on the phone with Marco, I realize the DVDs are part of whatever twisted game Lux is playing with me. When Marco gets to my house seven minutes later (I timed it and I have to say it’s impressive—it’s good to know I can count on him when my life is about to be totally screwed), I skip the small talk and tell him about the case as I make a pitcher of iced tea.

  “That’s why I need your help,” I tell him after I’ve given him the quick version of everything, going back to the fire at MJ’s house. “I think Lux is a film buff and he’s using these DVDs to send me some kind of clue of how he’s setting me up. I really hope you won’t give me a hard time about the whole playing-detective thing.”

  “Of course I’ll help you. But I won’t lie, Chanti—I think it’s dangerous what you’re doing and I think you need to call the police—”

  “But I know the police... I mean . . .”

  Lana’s secret is one I need permission to tell, so I tell him the part that I can.

  “My mom, she’s a paralegal and she knows a lot about the law and crime and stuff. And the attorney she works for has agreed to be MJ’s lawyer, so the police are involved. I’m just trying to help MJ and—”

  “Chanti, if you’d let me finish, it’s dangerous and better left for the police, but I won’t let you get hurt, either.” Our hands touch when he takes the glass of iced tea from me, just like the time with the mug of cocoa.

  “Yeah?” is all I manage to say.

  “Yeah. I’ll be your backup. No matter what.”

  I know it’s crazy that I have a bad guy trying to railroad me and my friend is about to be charged with murder, but right now I want nothing more than to throw my arms around Marco and let him hold me until all the crazy disappears. I wish it were that easy. I wish he didn’t have a girlfriend, or that I wasn’t a menace to his family. From the way he’s looking at me, I’m beginning to wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. Then he steps away from me suddenly, taking his drink into the living room, where we left the DVDs.

  “What I don’t get is why play this game?” Marco says as he looks through the DVDs. “I mean, if he’s faked his disappearance or death, and it’s looking bad for MJ, why do this? Why help you out by sending clues? You’d think he’d be spending energy on making sure the case against MJ sticks.”

  “Maybe that’s what these DVDs are for—the nail in the coffin for MJ. Or for me. What if they aren’t clues and he just wants me to have them when the cops come knocking and find my fingerprints all over them the same way he set up MJ when he switched these movies out for drugs?”

  “No, I think you were right about them being clues to something. If he was trying to plant evidence from the grave or wherever he’s hiding out, he’d have sent them all at once. He’s sending some kind of message by doling them out like this.”

  I smile at him, completely impressed. “You’re kind of good at this, you know.”

  “Well, I can’t let you go to jail. Who else would I hang out with at Langdon?”

  “Unlike me, you’ve made a lot of friends at school. I’m the social outcast, remember?”

  “Those are just people I know, they aren’t friends. Besides, I think you know you’re more than that to me, even if we did agree—”

  “Okay, so maybe we should start watching these,” I say, jumping off the sofa to put a DVD in the player. I don’t want to hear what he has to say or deal with another awkward moment of looking longingly into his eyes knowing I can’t have him or what to do with him if I could.

  “Hold up before you put the movie in. I was so worried about checking on you, I completely forgot I have food in the car. I was on my way home from picking up a pizza when you called.”

  Is it weird that with everything going on, I’m kind of tingling like this is a date? Even worse, I’m glad it’s happening. Not the Lux and MJ part, but the part where Marco and I are about to share a pizza on the same sofa to watch movies for clues. Yep, I’m officially crazy.

  “We gotta eat,” Marco says, apparently reading my mind.

  “That’s true. I’ll walk out with you. The cold air might clear my head a little and help me think.”

  When we get out on the street, I don’t see his car.

  “Where’d you park?”

  “In front of a house a few doors down. I couldn’t find a space any closer.”

  “That reminds me of something I’ve wanted to ask since the last time you dropped by. I’ve never given you my address and you hadn’t been here before, so how’d you know where I lived?”

  “Okay, so I creeped on you a little. I looked you up in the student directory the first week we were at Langdon.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say, trying to sound nonchalant when really I remember coming home the day I met Marco and spending three hours online finding everything I could on him. The student directory is the one thing I didn’t check.

  “I hope I get points for telling you that. It isn’t something a guy likes to admit.”

  “You get points, but I don’t know what you’ll use them on. It isn’t like we’re together, or anything.”

  “I’m here. You’re here. If you look it up, that’s probably the definition of together.”

  The way he’s looking at me makes me think he might be breaking the rules of our platonic agreement and there’s more going on between us than solving a case. It also makes me feel like a boyfriend thief, so I break our gaze

  We’re walking back from his car, the pizza still warm enough to create a little cloud of steam around the box, when we see a kid on a bike pull up in front of my house, throw his bike down, and run up to my porch. Under his arm is a familiar-looking package.

  Chapter 28

  By the time we reach the house, the kid is moving fast and already back down the stairs and about to mount his bike.

  “He must be Lux’s courier,” I say quickly.

  Marco hands me the pizza box and grabs the kid before he can ride off. Good thing because Marco needs both hands free to block the small fists being wildly thrown his way. He packs a punch for a kid I guess to be about eight or nine.

  “Hey, little man, I’m not going to hurt you. We just want to know who gave you that box to drop off.”

  The boy stops hitting and squirming long enough to point at me.

  “I know you. Sometimes I see you waiting at the bus stop on Center Street when I’m riding my bike. You live here?”

  “I do. And that’s my name on the package. So you want to tell me who my secret admirer is?”

  This seems to relax the kid enough to trust we don’t plan to do him any harm, though Marco still doesn’t let go of the boy’s bike.

  “A man up the street.”

  “He lives up the street?” I ask.

  “No. He was parked on the corner a minute ago, near the dry cleaner’s. He gave me ten dollars to deliver this package and the other ones, too. My mom works at the dry cleaner’s, so I hang around there. I told him my mother only lets me ride my bike on the sidewalk, and I have to stay on the block.”

  I pull my phone from my pocket and search for the photo I took of Lux the day I caught him taking the box out of MJ’s house.

  “Was this the guy?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. He was bigger and taller. More like his size,” he says, point
ing to Marco. “Wait, one time he was with another guy, and I think that might be him.”

  “Do you remember what the car looked like?” I ask.

  “Uh, I just saw it a minute ago,” the kid says like I must think he’s stupid. “It’s nothing special, ’cept it had a rental car sticker on the bumper. I noticed ’cause the sticker was neon green, like my bike.”

  “But the smaller guy wasn’t with him today?” Marco asks.

  “Nope. Big dude was with a lady this time. She was real pretty, with a funny tattoo under one eye, like she was crying.”

  I thank the boy and Marco gives him his bike back, along with ten dollars not to mention our conversation if he ever sees the man again.

  “What do you think?” Marco asks as we watch the boy pedal away.

  “I only ever saw Lux drive a car once—when he switched out the DVDs with drugs and got MJ busted the first time. It also had a neon-green rental car sticker on it. I have no idea who the mystery man is driving the car today, but I know who the pretty lady with the funny tattoo is.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “The alleged witness to the altercation between Lux and MJ. The kid just confirmed for me that she’s working with Lux.”

  “You kill me how you talk like you know this stuff. Then again, history proves you actually do know this stuff.”

  “I told you, I watch a lot of cop shows. And now I guess I’ll be watching a lot of old movies.”

  On the way into the house, I pick up the latest DVD shipment the kid left at the door.

  “Where do we start?” Marco asks.

  “I think you were right about him having a reason to dole them out to us like it’s part of the game, so he probably wants us to watch them in the order we received them.”

  “That’s a problem because I think I mixed them up when I was looking through them.”

  “That’s okay. I have a great memory,” I say, taking the packages into the dining room. “I’ll just group them on this table based on which package they came in, the order they were stacked inside the package, and the time I received each group.”