Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1)

by BG Archer

  "Who get's married in late September?" Katie asked.

  "They are apparently obsessed with the changing of fall, it was almost Russian themed with all the ice sculptures, but then all the place settings had an orange glow. Frankly it felt a little bipolar in terms of themes, but they didn't ask me to coordinate the wedding, they were paying me to sing and have a free dinner. The catering was phenomenal," the taller girl replied, taking a drag on her Clove.

  Katie had originally moved over to the taller women because while she couldn't stand smoking them she adored the smell of Cloves.

  "Anyone have an extra smoke?” a familiar voice asked from behind Katie.

  She turned to find that the Greek god had joined the party.

  Katie tilted her head to the side as though she was considered the question but then reached into her mini purse (Tiffany had convinced her to leave her messenger bag at home,) and pulled out her half empty pack of American Spirit's.

  "Here you go," she said, handing him a cigarette.

  "Why, thank you," he said, smiling at her.

  Fuck. His teeth were perfect and white, and it was almost as if his eyes sparkled in the reflective light of the pool behind them.

  "Here," said the Amazon, offering him a lighter. He flicked it and the end of the white stick flared with fire before withdrawing to a cozy ember of orange.

  Amazon looked at Katie, then at the Greek god.

  She smoothly moved away from them, with the grace of well, a princess.

  Katie barely noticed her leave, but that had more to do with how drunk she was than the fact that her attention was laser-locked on him.

  "Where have you been?" she asked after a moment of silence as both of them just puffed away.

  The Greek god flicked the end of his cigarette and shrugged. “You ran off.“

  “You didn’t want it to be that easy, did you?”

  Then he smiled again, sheepish this time, like a kid getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “Are you really going to make it that hard?“ he asked, still smiling at her with those perfect white teeth of his.

  Katie wasn’t entirely sure how she had gotten there, but one moment she was at the party, and the next they were back at his place, in his room. They were on his bed, although still wearing their clothes.

  She vaguely recalled still wearing the skirt, but her shirt was off yet what was remarkable was how he seemed to be everywhere she liked at once. The word “natural” came to mind and even though moments were bleeding together, the general feeling of it all was quite good.

  After, (and it was a while later because it had not been particularly rushed, even though there had been an urgency when he had first jumped on her on the bed, though more from her than him really) they both lay next to each other for a moment, and Katie realized how relaxed she was.

  She slipped out of bed and looked around the dark room. Lucky for her, her skirt was easy to find on the floor. Katie slipped it on and went through the automated motions of putting her bra and top back on as well.

  The Greek god had not moved, and was still very much naked.

  She inspected his body and her suspicious had been wrong. Katie had vastly underestimated just how good of shape he was in. His muscle tone not just of someone who worked out, but someone who conditioned himself to be in excellent shape, perhaps even to the point of it being a bit of a mini religion.

  She blushed in spite of herself, suddenly feeling happy all over again, partly because of how he had already made her feel (only once, but that was fine), but also that the whole experience had brought her slightly out of her drunken stupor. She was still drunk, but the room wasn't spinning anymore, which was good. (Sweating a lot will do that to you).

  "Thank you," she said without thinking and then covered her mouth with her hand. She didn't mean to sound like some silly schoolgirl with a crush on an older cuter boy, (though she realized through the drunken haze with some self-depreciating amusement that was, in fact, exactly what she was).

  He looked at her with one eye closed and smiled, a very self-satisfied smile. Many people (certainly anyone who didn't like him) would have called it the epitome of smug. “You’re welcome,” he said and started to get up. "I guess I'll see you Monday."

  She nodded. "Yeah. Right."

  14

  11:32AM Sunday, Sept 30th

  Katie woke the next morning with her head pounding. It wasn’t just her head though, her whole body felt like she had been thoroughly thrashed.

  Katie groaned as she tried to sit up but found herself wanting to do nothing more than to lie there and suffer. Which she seemed to be doing a pretty good job of. The sun slashed through the window and hit her face like a low dose of acid and Katie winced and rolled over, away from the window.

  She did not know how long she lay there, but to Katie it felt like hours before the noise of the dorm room door opening caused her to roll back towards the door.

  Tiffany entered, holding two coffee cups. She was for once dressed relatively low key, a pair of very light skinny jeans and a black long-sleeved V-neck shirt, and her hair was back in a single bow.

  Tiffany smiled at Katie and set one of the sixteen-ounce cups down on her desk.

  "How you feeling, darling?”

  "Shoot me."

  "I've been there before. How about some tea instead?"

  Katie looked at the cup and groaned. "I would throw that up so fast you wouldn't even believe it."

  "I doubt it, it's peppermint tea. When I've been so bad that I couldn't even keep water down I can still drink that. The beauty of peppermint tea is it's got this lovely little enzyme in it that settles the stomach. I swear, you'll thank me later."

  With great effort and an even greater degree of will, Katie propped herself up on her arms and picked up the cup. She took a single sip and winced. The liquid was hotter than she had expected but still she managed to swallow, the liquid warming her insides with a similar kind of fire to the way the tequila had earlier in the week.

  She took another sip and set the cup down, rolling onto her back.

  "Seriously, I've been drunk before, but this is like somebody buried me alive, dug me up and then beat me with a baseball bat till all my bones shattered, then dragged me behind a car back here.”

  "Is that what it's like?" There was amusement in Tiffany’s voice, and Katie resented her for it.

  "Pretty much."

  Tiffany took a seat on her bed and sipped at her low-fat chai.

  "So, how was your night?"

  Katie opened one eye and swerved it towards her beautiful friend. "Other than poisoning myself half to death, it was…" she closed her eyes, images of the Greek god flooding through her mind. "It had its moments."

  She opened her other eye.

  "You should probably wash this skirt before wearing it."

  “You’ve beaten me to it.”

  “I didn’t know it was a competition.”

  Tiffany grinned. “It’s not. I thought you smelled like sex.”

  Katie sniffed and shrugged. "All I can smell is booze."

  "That too."

  She took another drink of the tea and closed her eyes again. It appeared as though Tiffany was correct, she was starting to feel a little better.

  "Thank you for the tea."

  "Of course."

  Katie was silent for a moment. Tiffany sipped her tea then got up and went to her computer.

  "It's all a little blurry, but he was good. I'd give you more details later, but I think I might go back to sleep."

  Later she woke up to find Tiffany writing on her computer with headphones on, humming to herself. Katie felt significantly better and got up, yawning and stretching as she sat up.

  Tiffany didn't notice and kept typing and humming. The lights were off in the room and the only light came from the glow of Tiffany's Macbook Air's screen, and it took her a second for her eyes to adjust to the light.

  When they did she saw her cup of
tea. Katie grabbed it and drained the cup. The cold peppermint was delicious and the cool liquid soothed her parched throat.

  Tiffany must have heard the commotion behind her because she took off her headphones and turned around.

  "Look who's awake, sleepyhead."

  "Morning," Katie said setting down the empty cup.

  "You feeling okay?"

  "Better." There was a pause. "Actually kinda hungry."

  "Oh good, I am too. The cafeteria is closed I think cause it's after nine, but we could still go down the street."

  "I'm hungry for breakfast. There's an IHOP by the south freeway entrance. You game?"

  Tiffany smiled. "Of course."

  15

  7:45AM Monday, October 1st

  Week two proved just as boring as week one. By the end of the week professors were just starting to assign real classwork, and Katie chose to spend her second weekend on campus mostly hanging out with her roommate. They wandered; they smoked solid weed and some pretty weak hash with a drum circle. They randomly jumped into the back of a Toyota pickup truck around ten and drove up to the reservoir and skinny dipped with half a dozen sophomores, and they killed a bottle of bottom shelf vodka mixing it with Minute Maid orange juice. Twice Katie had considered trying to contact the Greek god, but Tiffany had taken her phone away from her both times, and whenever Katie had been sober next she had thanked her roommate.

  Monday morning Katie got a run in before she went to class. She discovered that aside from the vastness of the campus, the actual classes were … not anything for her to be scared of. If anything it was all a bit boring, considering that each class spent a good portion of their first hours droning on at length about their syllabus.

  Tiffany was not in the dorm room when Katie returned and she hit the bed fully dressed. She had lost sleep to go on the run, and her backpack barely hit the floor before she was lights out.

  Katie awoke later, tired and trying to remember for a second where she was and her phone was ringing which had brought her out of her sleeping trance and she answered without looking at the number.

  Luke, wanting to see how school was going. They talked for only a few minutes as she was still half asleep, but her alertness returned quickly as she heard his voice, remembered how one of her favorite things used to be taking naps with him and waking up with her head on his arm, sleepily feeling him roll over and kiss the back of her neck. No matter how many times he did, it never failed to make her get goosebumps on her arms, but the good kind, the kind that she could have repeated every day and never grow tired of. That basic yet fundamental wondrous physical reaction to the most basic but necessary of human needs, touch.

  In the end, he wanted to see her again and they agreed to meet on Wednesday night at a favorite Mexican joint of theirs which was about a twenty-minute drive outside of the city and much closer to Katie. A half-hour drive was still a half-hour drive, but those tacos were worth it, and besides it would be good to see him, Katie thought as she hung up the phone.

  Katie realized she hadn't heard from her father since Friday, so she decided to call him. But first she needed caffeine, something to make her sound at least halfway awake and present for her father. She considered another cup of coffee but instead went to her study desk and opened the bottom drawer. One of her various errands over the weekend had been going to Safeway and picking up a four pack of Red Bull. The pack was un-opened, but Katie quickly changed that, yanking a can free and downing about half the eight-ounce container’s contents before calling her father.

  They talked briefly and he sounded distracted, saying he was still in the middle of the case though it did appear they had caught the bad guy yet again.

  The way Arthur talked though was as if he was trying to convince her, which only made Katie sure that he wasn't convinced of whatever was going on in the case. He was being frustratingly vague with the details, though that did not surprise her in the slightest. It was after all what he was supposed to do by normal conventions and since she wasn't there at home every night to pester him about details, his willpower was stronger at a distance. Over the phone at least.

  They hung up and Katie finished her drink before going to her computer and signing in on Facebook and Pintrest.

  As is often the case with social media, the next time she looked up it was two hours later, or just after eleven and the only reason she had been pulled away from the screen was because Tiffany had returned.

  She seemed strangely nervous as she took a seat on her bed and waved awkwardly at Katie. She didn't have to smell it to know Tiffany was higher than a kite and Katie started laughing.

  "You must be so high right now."

  “I'm so high right now," she started to giggling. "Like I've been high before but damn, I am so fucking baked right now, I could cook cookie dough.“

  Tiffany spontaneously got up and hugged her roommate.

  "Listen, I know both of us should probably get to bed right now, but do you want to watch something funny or something on Netflix?”

  “You okay if it's cartoons?”

  "Sounds good.”

  They watched on Katie's laptop with Katie sitting at the desk chair and Tiffany lying on Katie's bed, feet up and making both of them feel like they were thirteen again and at a slumber party.

  Tuesday and most of Wednesday were more of the same, although by the end of Psychology 101 on Wednesday, Katie was sure it was going to be her least favorite class, considering just how utterly boring the whole affair was. It appeared the teacher was more satisfied listening to himself talk than he was actually teaching. He was a short thin man who wore faded dad jeans two inches too high and various dress shirts tucked neatly into them along with white New Balance court classics. He looked like he had been directly plucked out of an episode of some long forgotten and bad mid-90s-sitcom.

  The class ended and Katie left the building headed to the coffee shop. The weather was already beginning to be a bit more fall like, the sky was overcast today and the temperature had dropped to the low seventies.

  She sipped her latte and thought about her schedule. So far the most challenging class would clearly be her required introduction to academic studies class. It was your standard freshman affair class on basic research skills, which under normal circumstances would be Katie's easiest except for a few factors. Earlier in class as the teacher was droning on about how to do basic MLA and APA research citations, she had been messing around on a school computer. While the teacher went on and on, Katie had been doing some quick research into Egyptian tombs, just for the hell of it. The TA, a short troll of a women with thick glasses and a curved nose who smelled like dry sweat and tea tree oil spotted what she was doing. The TA didn’t say anything, however she did whisper something to the teacher, Professor Nick Browning.

  It took her half the class to place him, because he seemed so familiar. He had been the man that had passed her the first day at Everwood, when he had been wearing a suit.

  After the class had ended he had called out, pointing at Katie, beckoning her to him.

  Katie was annoyed that he had gestured at her but tried to let it go. He was busy cleaning off his glasses with a white silk handkerchief as she approached his desk.

  Professor Browning wore a brown suede blazer, well-fitting jeans and casual brown loafers, as well as a pale blue oxford shirt that he had tucked in but did not look ridiculous in. As he looked at Katie he tucked the glasses into his blazer's breast pocket and began to fold his handkerchief.

  "You know how to research."

  It wasn't a question, and Katie felt obligated to simply nod. Professor Browning continued. "Good. Every quarter I get one or two of you in the class, someone who's well ahead of the game and could, how shall I put it, coast through the class. When I spot them I'm always happy because it means fresh minds to expand. Your casework for the quarter is going to be a little more intensive than the others. You'll be writing a twenty-page properly formatted paper for me to be presented by t
he end of the term. Starting next week I'll give you five different topics to chose from so you can pick your preferred assignment."

  "What if I'd prefer to just do what the others are doing?"

  "That's fine, but I'll be giving you a B, no matter what kind of regular paper you turn in."

  Katie folded her arms across her chest. "I don't feel that this is particularly fair."

  He smiled at her, his expression kind. "This isn't about what's fair, this is about getting the best possible results from those who are willing to apply themselves. I see potential in you. The question is, are you willing to meet that challenge? Of course if you want to drop the class and add it through another teacher, you are welcome to do so, no hard feelings."

  He had her and he knew it. Katie's course load was full enough that she couldn't switch a general class, especially when everything was so neatly placed together.

  "Okay, fine. I'll do it."

  "Good. I'm happy to hear that. Have a good day, Miss Bell."

  Later as Katie sat at her new favorite cafe thinking about the day and drinking her latte, she once again saw the cute guy from her intro to psychology class, except this time he busy scribbling in a Moleskine reporter’s pad and drinking from a Styrofoam cup.

  Katie continued to consider for a moment and then finally made a mental screw it and headed his way.

  If he noticed her approach (and she had a feeling he did) he made no indication of it and suddenly it was like her one disastrous time as an actor in a play in high school and she took a seat across from him at the table.

  He continued to scribble for a moment before looking up at her and pausing, his pen's nib still on the tiny white page.

  These actions all spanned a timeframe of maybe five seconds but there was a smoothness to them, a fluidity that Katie was amused by, especially considering his eyes were now only on her, and had not left her when he had been doing said actions.