Adventures In Funeral Crashing (Funeral Crashing #1)

by Milda Harris

  “Well, yes, it’s a definite possibility,” Ethan said.

  My mind was awhirl with information. If Ethan was right, there had been at least two other overdoses that were potential murders. That would mean that there was a potential serial killer on the loose at Laurel Community College. It was only a hop skip and a jump over to Palos High School, my high school. What if the murderer struck there next? Had the police been fooled by a drug trail, when instead all the girls living around Palos Community College were really all in mortal danger from a serial killer? Or was Ethan just a totally distraught brother unable to deal with sister’s death?

  I made a snap decision as my mind continued to go over the puzzle. There really might be something to his questions, “I want to help.”

  I wasn’t thinking about the benefit of alone time with Ethan either. I really did want to help. He was so sad and I know how that felt. I’d want to know the truth too. Okay, at least, I wasn’t thinking about the benefits of Ethan time when I originally offered my help. Although now, I couldn’t stop thinking about it – being alone with him.

  Ethan raised his eyebrows in surprise, but then said, “Okay.”

  It took me a moment to process Ethan’s agreement. He was even kind of smiling at me. I mean, it isn’t every day that the most popular guy in school talks to me, learns I’m a funeral crasher, and then accepts my help investigating his sister’s murder.

  Chapter 5: Investigating

  The two other deaths had happened in the last couple of months, both girls, and all the dead girls had attended Laurel Community College. Hopefully I was safe, being still in high school, since the killer had not veered from his pattern…yet. I had watched way too many horror movies for free from work to seriously want to contemplate being stalked and killed by a serial killer.

  The first was Olivia Reynolds, twenty. Olivia was found dead in her apartment by her mother, a needle still in her arm. She had been there for a few days before they found her. The second was Melissa Kent, nineteen. A teacher found Melissa dead in a bathroom stall at Laurel Community College. The syringe had fallen to the floor. In theory, she had shot up just after a math test. She was found within two hours of taking that test. She had gotten an A. And, then there was Liz. A policeman found her in her car on a Sunday night in a nice suburban neighborhood. A stranger had called the police upon seeing a girl passed out over the steering wheel. She wasn’t passed out, though, Liz was dead.

  Three girls were dead from an overdose of heroin in just over two months. Stupid kids, drug ring, or murder? And why had they all been girls? Wasn’t heroin “in" for guys too?

  I was leaning toward a verdict of murder or at the very least foul play, which is why I agreed to meet Ethan on Saturday morning. He was taking Friday off from school to spend it with his family. It turns out a lot of family flew in for Liz’s wake. It had literally shocked the family into a reunion. Ethan had snuck out on Thursday night, in order to get to me since he thought I was a potential lead in his sister’s unsolved murder, but he was stuck hanging out with family again on Friday. It sounded like he was looking forward to it now that the funeral was over.

  Friday flew by for me as I did my own research and counted the seconds to hanging out with Ethan. We planned to meet at a local coffee shop, Wired, bright and early at 9 am on Saturday. Wired had the best peanut butter banana milkshakes on the planet. They served those in addition to the ice-blended coffees and believe me when I say the words – heaven on earth when referring to them. Wired was also an after school hangout and high school and college bands played there on weekends, but nobody was going to be there at 9 am on Saturday morning. I briefly wondered if Ethan was afraid to be seen with me in public, but maybe he just wanted to get a jump on his sister’s murder investigation, being that the murder would have happened a whopping six days earlier, as of Saturday, and that’s eons in murder investigation time.

  I wanted to help Ethan find out what happened to his sister and not just because he was hot, but because Liz really seemed like the kind of girl who deserved to be remembered as the great girl she was and not a druggie. She had a dog named Paws for goodness sake, how cute is that? Plus, her killer (her alleged killer, I guess, since it was still only a theory) should come to justice! So, Ethan and I were meeting to go over the details, before going to the police. His family thought he was bereft with grief and in denial, and he didn’t want the police to think the same. I was basically going to be his unbiased helper in going over the facts of his sister’s and the other girls’ deaths.

  And, the sooner the police started investigating Liz’s murder, the better. I mean, according to that A&E show, The First 48, that I watched as I was internet surfing obituaries and news articles, the case is already cold and only getting colder. Still, helping the police realize it was murder and not an overdose would be a great start. Maybe they could save someone else.

  If Liz and the other girls were murdered there had to be clues. Even the most calculating of killers, has to make mistakes. So, every spare moment I had on Friday and early into the hours of Saturday morning, I scoured the internet. I found news articles on the drug problem at Laurel Community College, as well as the obituaries of the three dead girls.

  I read, copied, and pasted information from their Facebook pages. They were still up there, even though Olivia had been dead just over a month and a half. They were really sad to look at and read, though. Friends had posted sympathy “I’m sorry you’re dead,” comments and everything. There had to be clues there somewhere.

  Ethan looked tired when I spotted him sitting in a dark corner of the coffee shop, drinking a steaming cup of coffee.

  I ordered my usual, super yummy, heaven on earth, peanut butter banana milkshake and went to sit down across from him with my stack of articles, “Hey, so I found lots of articles yesterday. I was up all night looking through them.”

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Ethan was slumped over his coffee and obviously having doubts. Grief will do that to you. Up close, it was obvious he hadn’t slept. He was in the same Green Day T-shirt from two nights before. Was it possible that he looked even cuter on no sleep and in dirty clothes? “I mean, I just have to face it, Liz is dead and I need to move on. Live my life.”

  I looked at him incredulously, “I don’t think you’re wrong at all! None of those girls seem like they were the heroin using type. They all got good grades. Everyone loved them. They had never been in any trouble, of any kind, in their lives. None of them had so much as a speeding ticket. It’s weird.”

  “So, why would anyone want to murder them?” Ethan asked, tiredly.

  I looked Ethan straight in the eyes, “That’s the question we need to ask. Ethan, you were right about this. I know you are. Liz was murdered. Those other girls were murdered. If we don’t do anything about it, someone else is going to die. The police need to start investigating these deaths as murders.”

  “So, what do you have?” Ethan asked pulling the papers I had printed toward him.

  I hesitated a moment, before I slid from the seat across from him, to the chair next to him. It’s a little weird sitting next to the hottest guy in school at a coffee shop, even if you’re only helping him investigate his sister’s murder and not on a date.

  I took the papers and spread them out over the table in front of us. I had already organized them. I pointed to the first pile, “These are about Olivia Reynolds. She was the first, so there isn’t much, just an obituary and a local column about college kids and drugs. Her Facebook page says it all, though, she was a crafty.”

  “A what?” Ethan’s eyebrows arched at the question.

  “A crafty. She liked to make crafts. Her Facebook page had tons of home made items. She was a knitter – she made tons of scarves, hats, and sweaters. There’s even a link to her knitting blog. Olivia was also getting into making jewelry from some art class she was taking. She could sew too. She would so not be your typical drug user. I mean, her favorite singer was Taylor Swift, for goodne
ss sake.”

  Ethan cracked a smile, “Did you just say goodness sake?”

  “Yes,” I smiled back at him.

  “You’re weird,” Ethan said, but he was still smiling at me.

  “Thanks,” I replied and I think he meant it as a compliment.

  We sat in silence as Ethan looked over the papers on Olivia Reynolds. It was all there and plain to see. Olivia Reynolds may have been the type to do pot in a hippie sort of way, but not heroin.

  I went on, “Okay, pile two is about Melissa Kent. There was a little more about her in the news because she was the second overdose in two weeks from Laurel Community College, but this time, they focused on what the school was going to do about the obvious drug problem, so again, I turned to her Facebook page. And, Melissa was a good Catholic girl, unless her Facebook page was lying. Her Facebook page said the words, “I love God” and everything. Her groups listed were church youth groups and volunteer services. She was so not a heroin addict type either.”

  Ethan picked up the papers on Melissa. I watched him look through them, his brain furrowed as he read. He was really cute. I felt myself staring at him in full crush mode and shook myself out of it. What we were doing here was more important than my crush. After reading so much about Melissa and Olivia, I really felt like I knew them. I didn’t think they had overdosed. Even if one of them, somehow had, the combination of them didn’t make any sense.

  Ethan nodded, looking up from the papers, “And, then there’s Liz.”

  I nodded back, looked at the third pile that was all about Liz. I had read up on her already too. Still, I looked back at Ethan, “So, what happened the night she died?”

  Ethan took a deep steadying breath and said, “We don’t know exactly. She was home in the morning, in her room. Then she went to go work at an animal adoption for the Palos Animal Shelter at the park on the corner of 135th street and Moorpark. A lot of people saw her there. She was walking with a really cute scraggly dog. Everyone said she seemed totally fine. She was trying to get the dog a home.”

  “So, she wasn’t on drugs then?” I asked.

  “No. Everyone said she was just Liz. Nothing weird,” Ethan shrugged. “They’re all floored she’s gone.”

  “Where did she go after that?” I asked.

  “Well, she left there a little after seven. She helped get the animals loaded back up to go to the pound and she spent a little while talking to this couple about the dog. After that, we don’t know where she went,” Ethan said.

  “What time did the police find her?” I asked.

  Ethan was solemn, “About two and a half hours later. Nine-thirty about. She was in her car about two miles away from the park and about a mile from our house. It looked like she was on her way home. At least that’s what they think.”

  “What time do they think she died?” It was a hard question for me to ask Ethan.

  Ethan paused, “They think it was within the hour that they found her. Between eight-thirty and nine-thirty.”

  “So, where was she for the hour and a half or so before she died?” I asked.

  Ethan shrugged, “We don’t know. Nobody was with her that we know of. All of her friends said they hadn’t seen her that day. At least the ones we know about. And, all of them said they knew nothing about the heroin.”

  I frowned, “Well, the heroin thing isn’t a surprise. What teenager would confess to that? Seriously, though, nobody knows where she was for the last hour of her life?”

  Ethan shook his head, “No. We even checked her cell phone and there were no calls.”

  “Were there any calls at all that day on her phone?” I asked.

  “Just the usual ones. A couple of her friends and I talked to them. They said nothing was wrong or weird,” Ethan said.

  “Texts?” I offered.

  Ethan frowned, “No. She deleted them. My mom once read through her phone in high school and ever since then she never saved them.”

  “That sucks,” I felt discouraged. “Her phone and its texts may have given us a real clue.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan sighed.

  “And, nobody at the park saw her leave with anyone?” I asked.

  “No. The last people she talked to at the park was the couple adopting the dog,” Ethan said.

  “Huh,” I said, thinking. “Was she friends with any of the other Animal Shelter people?”

  Ethan shrugged, “Not good friends that I know of, but I mean, she saw them a few times a week, so they were on okay terms.”

  “But none of them said they were with her?” I asked.

  Ethan shook his head, “No.”

  “And, the police didn’t find anything in her car?” I had to ask.

  “No,” Ethan frowned. “Just the needle. Everything else was the same – just the stuff that was usually in her car.”

  “No finger prints?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. They just ruled it an overdose. I didn’t see a report or anything,” Ethan said.

  “Not that they’d give us one,” I smirked.

  “That’s probably true, but if we can get them to open the case back up, maybe they’ll re-look at all of that evidence. We just need to get something that they missed. Something that seems really weird,” Ethan said.

  Liz was the only victim we had a detailed time line on. Ethan knew all there was to know about it because he was family. It still didn’t help us, though. We needed more to go on. Where was Liz the last hour of her life? Was someone with her?

  “We’ll find something. I know we will. So, do you want to tell me about her?” I asked. “What was she like? Anything that might help?”

  Ethan took a shuddering breath and continued anyway, “Sure. She loved animals. Her grades weren’t the best so she was going to Laurel Community College to get them up, so she could get into a good school that would get her into a veterinary college. They can be really hard to get into and she wanted it more than anything. She volunteered at the Palos Animal Shelter a few days a week after school and she had a job at Petsmart. Animals were her drugs, if anything. She had lots of friends and she had just started dating this guy she really liked, so there was no reason for her to…”

  “Wait. What guy?” I asked, interrupting Ethan.

  “Uh, I’m not sure. I mean, I think his name was Mark. No, that’s totally not it. That was the guy before this one. Uh, Travis? Or, was it Brent? Don?”

  “You really have no idea, do you?” I asked.

  Ethan was really concentrating. “I can’t remember. I just thought it was another guy and it was a sorta new guy.”

  “We could check her phone,” I offered.

  “Yeah, but she has like three hundred contacts. Everyone she’s ever met is in her phone. I checked. Maybe if I saw him. She did show me a picture on Facebook. They only went out for a couple of weeks before she died. It wasn’t super serious or anything yet.”

  A thought was forming in my brain, “Was he at the funeral?”

  Ethan thought for a moment, “No, I don’t think he was. At least I didn’t see him there. The whole funeral thing was a blur for me, though. The only person I remember being there is you, actually, because you ran away from me.”

  I grimaced, “Thanks. So, do you think there’s any way he could be involved in this? Her semi-boyfriend?”

  Ethan shrugged, “Sure, if he knew all of the other girls.”

  Chapter 6: Sleuthing

  That is how I ended up at Ethan Ripley’s house, with nobody home, on a Saturday afternoon. Any normal girl would have been beside herself with nerves at being alone in Ethan’s house, in his room, on his bed…

  It was a large bedroom actually, bigger than mine, at least. I was surprised to see that he had a large bookshelf filled with books. I knew Ethan was smart and such, but he actually read for fun? Cool. There was a lot of science fiction on the shelves. I saw Dune and Ender’s Game and Stephen King’s The Gunslinger series. He reads! It was super sexy to me. Other than that, there were no posters on
the wall, just a few framed records spaced out decoratively – a Beatles album, a Clash Album, a Bob Dylan album, and a few others. There was a guitar lying against the bookshelf. Did Ethan play music too? Wow, I was impressed. He really was the perfect guy. Sigh.

  I was struck again by being alone in his house with him. To even be close enough to him to see the inside of his bedroom was amazing. I never would have thought I would be here. And, I mean, butterflies were jumping around in my stomach, but come on, we were investigating a murder, romance wasn’t going to happen. I’ll admit to being slightly disappointed about that.

  It’s not like I planned it or like he even planned it, being alone in his house. His whole family was spending the day at his uncle’s in a sort of get out of the house day. Since he had spent the day before with the family, Ethan had claimed plans and declined going. I was just excited that I had made the list of Ethan’s plans.

  The plan, as we were sitting together in his room alone (I loved being able to say that!), was to break into Liz’s Facebook account and see if she and the other victims had any friends in common, most particularly Liz’s boyfriend Ted or Brent or Travis or Bob or whatever his name turned out to be. We hoped to find that out from her Facebook emails as well, since her status was a non-committed “In a Relationship” without the subject of the relationship’s name.

  Ethan was lying on his bed, eyes trained on the Facebook computer password screen that was visible on his laptop. I was lying next to him, trying not to think about how close his entire body was to mine.

  I distracted myself by looking through Liz’s phone again. She did delete all of her texts and her contacts list was an eon long. Her missed, received, and dialed calls were mostly girls that Ethan said were her good friends. He didn’t think they had anything to do with it. There were three guys, though. One of them was probably her boyfriend – either Troy or Dylan or Max. None of them rang a bell for Ethan. I wanted to call up one of her friends or the guys, but Ethan had nixed that idea. Her friends were all really upset and nobody wanted to talk about murder. So, he wanted to hack into her Facebook instead. If we could get in, I was all for it. Besides, it meant I got to hang out with Ethan a little longer, in his house, alone.