by Lee Strauss
Twinkle Little Star
A Nursery Rhyme Suspense
Lee Strauss
Summary
When you’re dead wrong.
Sage Farrell regrets missing her chance to be more than friends with Marlow Henry. But being alone and lonely in her sophomore year at Detroit University is the least of her problems. On a dark, quiet forest road something jumps in front of her truck, literally from out of nowhere. It wasn’t a deer or elk that she hit, but the beautiful media star Crystal Morrisette.
Marlow and Sage are pulled into yet another unexplainable mystery. Who killed the media star and how did she just appear out of thin air? And how are they going to prove to the police that Sage is innocent of this crime?
There’s a madman on campus getting crazier by the day and now his sight is set on Sage and Marlow. They have to put their heart issues aside until they find a way to stop him, because there’s no sense falling in love if you’re dead.
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Chapter One
Sage
I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life. Most of them in the last year and a half since I registered for classes at Detroit University. Running for a seat on the student government council was my latest one. What was I thinking? Maybe that it would look good on my resume? Maybe that it would help me recover from the social drop I’d inexplicably experienced this last year.
“You can’t beat me, you know.”
Stella Flowers, brunette, hour-glass figure, head cheerleader, and over-confident snob, watched me from behind her table. She stood tall, head cocked, lips pursed with a hand firmly on one bony hip.
“Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.”
That was my best response? I groaned inwardly. I deserved to lose to her. Moving around my table, the standard school issue kind with metal legs and a faux wood-grain top, I handed out small flyers to students who meandered through the large lobby of the student resource building. It had high ceilings and tall windows that cast long streams of light. The floors were brown subway tiles and between them and the height of the room, it created an echo chamber effect. I could hear snippets of conversation from across the way.
“Vote for Sage Farrell,” I said with feigned confidence. My flyers had my yearbook picture, slightly grainy with a strained smile, and bullet points as to why I should be elected for the sophomore representative over Stella Flowers:
conscientious
hard-working
people-person
With this splashy slogan: You talk—I listen
Stella stepped into the crowd in front of me and handed out larger flyers, pink actually, with the bold message, “Vote for Stella!”
Apparently she was so popular, she didn’t need a last name.
She also had an assistant, her sidekick Minji Park. I’d met Minji before. She used to share a room with Zed’s crazy old-girlfriend. Minji had a shiny black bob and dark brown eyes, was cute and sweet, but she withered under Stella’s flamboyant personality. I wondered how Stella had gotten her claws into her.
I had to concede that it would be nice to have an assistant. My heart contracted at the thought of my best-friend Teagan who’d passed away the year before. If she were here, she’d be helping me. She was an artist so she would’ve made me great posters and my table display would be fit for a show-room window rather than being the sorry blank canvas that it was. Teagan would’ve gushed her belief in me to everyone she knew. I missed her.
Stella stage-whispered to Minji, “Get me a bottle of water.”
Minji’s shoulders slumped and she shuffled away to do Stella’s bidding.
I continued my efforts to distribute flyers and talk to people, most of who waved me off and kept walking. My head jerked toward the sound of Stella’s high-pitched laugh. A small crowd had gathered around her. Was she actually signing autographs? Seriously?
Then I spotted Marlow Henry. He was another stupid thing I had done, or rather hadn’t done. With my head in a cloud of conceit, I’d repeatedly pursued the wrong type of bad news guy while Marlow, an actual awesome guy, was right there, waiting for me.
Until he wasn’t. Every guy has his limits, and suddenly he had a pretty, petite, pink-haired girlfriend. You know how they say, You don’t know what you have until it’s gone? So true. Marlow and Dakota looked adorable as they chatted and I watched them from across the lobby with a sense of regret.
Marlow and I had been through some crazy times together over the last year. Always just as friends. It’d been a while since something bizarre had pulled us together, and the fact was, now that he was attached, we rarely spent time with each other. When we did manage to be in the same room, conversation was stilted and uncomfortable.
Minji came back with Stella’s water and took over the job of handing out her flyers. Stella returned to her seat behind her table just as a gorgeous guy claimed Minji’s empty chair. He hugged Stella’s neck and gave her a long passionate kiss.
Of course I knew who he was; all the girls at DU did—Wyatt Banks, a good-looking junior in the advanced track, the only son of a powerful political family. He wore his dark hair shaved close on the sides and longer on top, with a half-inch-long beard that covered the lower part of a ruddy, lightly freckled face.
Not that I noticed.
I sighed. Stella definitely had all the advantages. Popularity, an assistant, a boyfriend.
But even though Wyatt’s hand massaged Stella’s neck, his hazel eyes peered over her shoulder and landed on me. He smiled crookedly as his gaze scanned me from head to toe and back, finishing their trek with a wink.
I didn’t smile back.
Another guy meandered through the thinning crowd, one of the science geeks that hung out with Zed and Marlow. Brandt something. He hovered around Stella’s well-presented table, but his eyes, with a look that flashed with a mix of both fear and affection, were locked on Minji. I noted how he kept back from Minji’s peripheral vision, so she wouldn’t notice him looking. I wondered if she knew she had an admirer.
I glanced back at Marlow and Dakota in time to see them kiss quickly and part ways. Dakota strolled in my direction.
I had an idea—probably another stupid one. On impulse, I jogged impulsively toward Dakota and tapped her arm. She looked up at me with wary eyes. I smiled to reassure her.
“Hey, I’m wondering if you’d like to help me with my campaign? If you have time.” Her brows furrowed and I added quickly. “It’ll look good on your resume.”
“Why me?” she asked.
“Because we’re friends, aren’t we? And Marlow is my friend and your boyfriend, so we have him in common.”
Dakota frowned and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. One thing Dakota didn’t want to do was share Marlow with me in any way.
But then she surprised me by saying, “Okay. I’ll do it. Do you need help now?”
I nodded and led her back to my table, wondering if we were both thinking the same thing: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Chapter Two
Crystal
Crystal Morrisette added another layer of fire engine-red lipstick to her gel-infused lips and smacked them together. Her newly-dyed hair shimmered like a bonfire in the bathroom light. She’d been a blond for the last three months, but with profile views waning she had to do something— nothing like a change in hair color to stir up
new interest!
She tugged down her black tankini—one size too small, forcing her assets up and out. These were the money shots—cleavage plus puckered red lips. Crystal stretched out her arm and tilted the phone until her image filled the screen. She clicked the button, quickly examined the image, then frowned.
She looked like a duck.
Retake.
The image was blurry.
Retake.
Her arm tired.
Retake.
The lighting was wrong, casting shadows under her eyes. Damn—she looked thirty years old!
Retake.
Crystal moved to her bedroom and opened the curtains, letting natural light into the cramped space. Traffic moved briskly along the street, and she watched a guy with dark hair swept over his forehead enter the pawn shop underneath her apartment. Crystal was familiar with most of Lambert’s customers, but she hadn’t seen this one before.
He must have felt her staring because he glanced up and caught her eye. Crystal smiled at him, because that was what she did with men. Smile, smile, smile.
The guy froze, and stared like he’d never seen a pretty girl before. He wasn’t scrawny or anything, but his face was unremarkable. Square. Squinty eyes half-hidden by windblown fringe.
Crystal finger-waved and stepped out of the man’s view before he could respond. She dodged piles of discarded clothing that littered the floor, and positioned herself once again in front of the mirror. It took twelve tries, but she finally got a shot she could post.
With five million followers, Crystal could sell caption space to advertisers—lingerie and cosmetic companies, mostly. Today it was the hair product brand that she used to change her hair color. On a good day, she could make three hundred dollars from a single post. Three hundred bucks!
She was hoping for a good day.
#newhair #redheadsrule #endofsummer #stepintofall #autumncolors
There was nothing quite as exhilarating as uploading a new photo and watching for follower engagement.
Crystal practiced her poses while she waited. Hmm. Slow day. Usually she got responses within seconds praising her beauty and her bravery. Finally a comment:
“So sick of seeing your ugly mug!”
Then another.
“Get a life, loser.”
Crystal scowled. Dumb trolls. Jealous middle-aged women, probably. That didn’t stop her stomach from twisting with a new surge of anxiety. She wasn’t getting any younger. How long before she’s a has-been?
Then the good ones rolled in.
“Hey beautiful!”
“You are so gorgeous.”
“Can I have your number?”
Crystal finally smiled. See? The people loved her! Most of them, anyway.
Still, she wasn’t getting the comment frenzy she once had. Not even with the change of hair color. She clicked over to her competition—Violet Vee, from Chicago. Detroit and Chicago were natural competitors in everything from sports to tourism to who got the most snowfall. Social media starlets were no different.
Starlet wasn’t her word. A fan had called her that. Crystal liked it. Starlet to actual Star - that was her plan. She was saving her money to go to Hollywood next summer.
Violet Vee had posted recently too. But wait. What was going on with her numbers? Look at all the comments and likes! This couldn’t be happening. Violet Vee’s post wasn’t anything special. Same hair. Same body. She was taller than Crystal, but Crystal had the curves.
Crystal’s gut churned anew. If she didn’t beat out Violet Vee, she might lose her sponsors. She gripped one of her many crystal figurines—this one an owl—between her manicured fingers. She’d bought the first few as a gimmick, a play on her name, and before long her fans were mailing them to her. Dozens and dozens. Her apartment was filled with tiny, sparkling animals, astronomy symbols, and fantasy characters. She paced back and forth in a small area free of shoes and other sundry items as she pressed the owl to her lips. Think, think, think. She had to do something. Something more than a shot of her breasts and her hair. Some kind of stunt. Something outrageous to get the people talking about her.
She let out a defeated sigh. Despite her growing anxiety and desperation, her mind drew a blank.
Chapter Three
Marlow
I’d been ruined for the ordinary.
Half-way through the first semester of my sophomore year at Detroit University, even with a full course load in science and math, I actually felt kind of bored. After the crazy, and I admit, exciting things that happened with Sage Farrell over the last year, I was finding it hard to accept life as a regular student. A regular guy.
I spotted Sage across the foyer in the student building. I was careful not to let Dakota catch me stealing glances. There was something about Sage that called to me. She looked tired. Vulnerable, without her usual spunk. Still beautiful though, with her long dark hair pulled back in a wavy ponytail that shimmered under the florescent lights.
Snap out of it, Henry!
I was with Dakota not Sage, and if I was going to think about a girl, it had to be the one with pink hair.
Fall in Detroit could be chilly, and the October landscape was filled with half-naked trees that shivered under lingering drizzle. The skies were gray and dismal, with only the red brick of the campus buildings adding color to the gloom.
I pressed into the biting wind, tightening my arms against my chest. Another month and my nose hairs would start freezing. Note to self: don’t let short girlfriend see frozen nostril hairs.
Finally arriving at my dorm I welcomed the blast of warm, slightly smelly, testosterone-filtered air.
I shared a room with my best friend Zed Zabinsky. His first name was Arnold but nobody called him that. His nickname Zed was a nod to his Canadian roots. He and I have been best friends since grade school. We went through all the dorky, awkward years together—a phase that only just started to diminish minimally last year. Zed didn't have a girlfriend currently—I told him he should shave that scruffy beard—but he hung out with Dakota and me a lot. Too much in my opinion, but hey, I wasn’t the kind of guy to ditch his best friend for a girl.
They were assigned according to the kind of faculty you were part of, so all the guys in this building were in some sort of math and/or science track, from Freshmen to Senior.
Zed and I co-existed in a little closet-sized room where I could stretch my leg out and touch his bed. I tossed my jacket on the foot of my bed and dropped into my desk chair. I needed to study for a midterm exam in physics, which was my major. The door to the hall stood open, I’d forgotten to close it when I came in, and I could see into the common area where the guys gathered to play video games as they sat on the old couch in the corner or hung out in the kitchenette-type space along the opposite wall to make bad pots of coffee.
Today several of the guys huddled together in the middle of the room including the geek brothers who weren’t really brothers, Steve and Paul were a nerdy version of Simon and Garfunkel, minus the talent. I could see Wyatt Banks with his head of hair swooped off his forehead, and Zed, who’d just blustered in from the cold, joining them. Curiosity got the better of me and I dropped my textbooks and sauntered over and stood beside Harland Payne, a senior.
“What's up?” I said.
Zed stepped sideways to let me in the circle where Wyatt Banks held his iPad for all of us to see. I let out a sigh, not sure why I was surprised. On the screen was a photo of a half-naked girl looking over a pearly white shoulder and smiling with bright red lips. Same old, same old, but these guys were enamored by the image.
Except apparently, for Brandt Rheinhold. “She's not as hot as she used to be.”
Wyatt protested. “Are you kidding me man? She’s a babe. Totally hot I’m in love.”
Isaac Cavanaugh punched him in the arm. “Dude, you have a girlfriend.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
Isaac’s head swiveled to me in astonishment. “You don't know who Crystal Morriset
te is?”
I took another look at the image on the screen. “I guess she does look familiar.”
Steve laughed. “Man, you’ve had that little girlfriend for too long.”
Paul snickered, agreeing. “Crystal Morrisette is da bomb.”
I prickled at that. “What's so special about this one? She's just another pretty girl.”
“That may be,” Isaac said, “but this one has five million followers on Instagram. She's a media star. Like a Detroit Kardashian.”
I lifted a shoulder, not caring in the least.
“Don't tell me you don't know who the Kardashians are?” Paul said loudly. Seemed there was always a good time to mock someone.
Steve snorted in my defense. “At least he has an actual girlfriend. You can't kiss Crystal Morrisette.”
“Oh yeah?” Paul said. “Watch this.” He snatched Wyatt’s iPad and smacked his lips against the dirty screen to a chorus of riotous laughter.
Chapter Four
He’d answered an ad: Shed for rent—private location— for storage or other use.
The property, which had a pawn shop on it as well, wasn’t far from Detroit University campus—a definite bonus—and the rent was reasonable. Lambert, the plump and friendly old man of Lambert’s Pawn Shop showed him the unit. Pale blue paint chipped off the graying weather worn wood exterior, but the inside was in decent shape. Plain walls painted white, vinyl flooring that looked like oak hardwood. A simple arrangement of sink, fridge and hotplate.
“My nephew needed a place to crash for awhile,” Lambert explained. “He renovated in exchange for rent. Put in that kitchenette.”
The nephew had left a kitchen table with two chairs and a six-foot long plush sofa dotted with dusty stains.
