The Dead Girls Detective Agency

by Suzy Cox

  Was I having actual fun with Mr. Oh-So-Serious?

  “That’s almost enough for today,” he said eventually. “We’ll wrap up with what I call the Lifesaver.”

  “Erm, isn’t it a little late for that?”

  I swear I saw him roll his eyes.

  Ed walked over and picked up my right hand.

  Pow!

  It felt like I’d been shocked by a thousand volts. I jumped back with a jolt and screamed. He dropped my hand immediately. What the hell was that?

  “Hey, calm down, it’s okay,” he said, sounding genuinely concerned. Edison put his hand up and took a step back so I could see he wasn’t about to come near me until I was okay with it.

  “I’m so sorry, I …” Boy, was I embarrassed. I pushed a black curl behind my ear and tried to get ahold of the situation. What had just happened? When I’d tried to make contact with David, it felt like running my hand through smoke. But that shock? I’d never felt anything like it before. Edison had only touched my hand. It wasn’t as if no one had ever done that before in my last life. But that was different.

  “It’s just that, well, I think that was the first time anyone’s spirit’s touched me since I … you know,” I said quietly. “I guess I’ve not felt anything since the … since the subway train … and I guess you, your touch, that was why it made me jump.” I was suddenly afraid to meet his gaze.

  “Subway train, hey? Well, that’s a hell of an act to follow, but I guess some ghost had to do it,” Edison said, shaking his head.

  He looked back at me, silently asking for permission to try again. What the hell. I needed to get over this somehow. I nodded. Ed picked up my right hand again and this time—even though I still felt a surge of weird rushing through me—I refused to react. It was so strange, freaking out like that just because someone—somedeadone—had touched me. Maybe being shoved under a speeding train by a psycho killer will do that to a girl.

  Sure I wasn’t about to go loco on him, Ed raised my hand in the air, putting my thumb and middle finger together. He motioned for me to keep them there, took his hand away and made it into the same shape as mine. “Shhh,” he said and winked. He lifted his right hand higher, way above his head, and clicked his fingers.

  It took me a couple of seconds to notice what had happened.

  The highway, the gulls, the water lapping on the pier: They all went quiet. I couldn’t hear a thing—not the bus of tourists being driven by behind us, not the couple walking their Labrador to my right, not the plane overhead making puffy tracks through the clouds on its way out of LaGuardia. Edison had somehow found a way to mute the world. I swear that if my heart was still beating it would have been pounding at that moment, but instead? Just this total silence. Neat.

  Ed smiled at me slowly. For the first time since I’d met him he looked somewhere near happy. It suited him way more than the perma-scowl he usually wore. Edison sat on the grass, his long legs neatly crossing under him and patted the spot next to him, silently asking me to do the same. So I did.

  And there we sat. For I don’t know how long. Just watching the river, and the birds and the lights and not feeling weird about the lack of conversation because, even if we tried, there couldn’t be any. For the first time since all the bad stuff, I felt … somewhere approaching Charlotte again.

  Then Edison took my hand again, put my fingers together, and motioned for me to snap.

  Click!

  It was like having water in your ears after a swim. The world sounded like it was happening down a long tunnel, not all around me. Then there was a pop! And just as quickly the volume turned back up on my life.

  “Now, don’t get all excited and be trying that trick too much.” Edison’s voice made me jump. “If you get all on!-off!-on!-off!-on!-off! you will give yourself an earache. Trust me, I speak from experience.”

  I looked at him, my mouth half open.

  “So all of your tricks, are they not breaking the Rules?” I asked.

  Edison shook his head. “We’ll talk about the so-called Rules next time, but suffice to say I don’t think any of what you’ve learned is technically a Rule break. We’re just enhancing your—what did you call them?—powers,” he said, his eyes laughing at me. “But hey, if you want to stick with the dull stuff, then go back to Nancy Drew, and the world will continue to be all hugs and puppies. Your call.” He shrugged.

  Now it was my turn to look at the floor and kick the grass. Which—by the way—I could so now do. Which was kinda awesome.

  “Nancy’s been teaching you basic apparition, right? How to appear to the Living as you did just before you died?”

  I nodded.

  “Good, well, keep practicing that and the next time we have one of our little tutoring sessions I’ll show you some more … intense materialization tricks. That is if you’re man enough?”

  “Girl enough,” I said. “And always.” Ed smiled at me again. And for the first time, I felt okay about smiling back.

  “Well, until next time then …”

  Just as before the world swirled. The asphalt gray of the highway, mixing with a yellow taxicab, and the Hudson, which was now almost black. Then suddenly it all stopped and I was back in the Attesa again.

  And Edison was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter 11

  YOU KNOW WHEN YOU READ THOSE LAME quick-fire interviews with “stars” in gossip magazines? They always ask them the same dumb questions. Like, “What’s your diet secret?” “What advice would you give to the teenage you?” or “What song would you want played at your funeral?” As if it’ll give us some serious, deep insight into the celebrity’s soul. And cover up the fact they’re actually about as interesting as waiting for your nail polish to dry.

  But there’s one thing I know: If I’d lived long enough to get famous and some lamebrain had turned to me and asked, “Charlotte Feldman, what song do you want to be played at your funeral?” I know what I would never have said.

  “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence.

  “Cool church, but the music sucks,” Jamie, dressed in something very tight and very black, said as she strutted past the spot where Nancy, Lorna, and I were watching my friends and family walk down the aisle and take their seats for the big event. My funeral.

  So I’d been in limbo for, like, almost three days now (I figured) and, porting aside, there weren’t a whole lot of upsides to it. But getting to watch your own funeral? That seemed kinda neat. To see who turned up, how upset they were, find out who really cared for me and who was faking it …

  Of course the downside was that I had nothing to do with the planning. Which meant my parents had been allowed to include Evan-freaking-escence on the playlist.

  I mean, really? Could they have come up with more of a teen funeral cliché? This was the song that everyone here was going to associate me with forevermore? Like, if in twenty years time, one of the guys from my math class was old, married, and on vacation with his kids in Cabo—if this pumped out of a passing car stereo, he’d think, “Ah yes, ‘Bring Me to Life’ …. this reminds me of Charlotte Feldman, that girl from school who fell under a train.” Then he’d give his children a lecture on platform safety and say, “Charlotte: She always lent me a pen if I forgot mine, but she did have the worst taste in music.”

  What an epitaph. I may have actually preferred Avril Lavigne.

  “This was her favorite song. Her favorite,” Mom told my grandparents, who were sniffling in the front pew. Yeah, like FIVE YEARS AGO. “Charlotte played it constantly in her bedroom. She loved it. I was always asking her to turn the volume down.”

  Jeez. You’d think David could have gotten involved and made this entire event sound less like something from the soundtrack of a substandard vampire movie. This is the kind of thing you should talk about with a guy before you start dating them. Like, “Do you promise to love, honor, and respect me. And, just in case I die in a freakish subway accident while we’re together, can you make sure that my musical taste is fai
rly represented at the funeral?”

  “Guyliner music aside, your parents have done a good job,” Nancy said cheerfully, like she’d been to a million of these things before and oh! aren’t they just so much fun.

  Looking around, I kinda had to admit she was right. Mom and Dad had chosen the church just around the corner from our apartment. It was a beautiful gray building with spires and buttresses—which make it Gothic in a good way. It wasn’t too big, so I looked more popular than I’d been.

  Bunches of flowers in my favorite colors—blue and purple—spilled off the windows and were arranged in neat clumps down the aisle. My coffin was black and so shiny that, when she apparited, Lorna could see her reflection in it. (I totally caught her checking out her hair before the guests arrived.) Even the picture of me that Mom had picked to put at the altar wasn’t too shabby. It was taken on my sixteenth birthday. Before I danced like a mad woman at a Killers concert and Mom shook her head at me and said, “Oh, Charlotte, what have you done? You looked so … neat.” I was wearing my favorite American Apparel navy T-shirt dress, my eyeliner was on my eyes and not heading cheek-ward for once. And my straggly dark hair had been tamed into smooth waves by Mom. I was smiling because I knew I had a whole night ahead where Mom and Dad were taking me for a fancy meal in the Village, before letting me and David go and see a band (even if they were going to wait in the bar while the show was on—the shame). I looked happy. Like I had everything to live for.

  Would I have done anything differently if I’d known then what I did now?

  “And even though you don’t have as many people at your funeral as I had at mine, it’s not a bad turnout. Better than at Nancy’s anyway,” Lorna said, a teasing glint in her eye. “There were more empty seats than full ones at that, weren’t there, Nance?”

  Nancy rolled her eyes. “We’re not here to talk about the turnout, we’re here to look for clues. Clues about who killed you. Charlotte, your murderer could be in this very room.”

  That made me stop goofing around.

  “Guys, I’m serious,” Nancy said. As if she was ever anything but. “We need to stay alert.”

  Everyone was seated. Evanescence stopped. Thank God, my eardrums said. And the vicar guy at the altar started to speak.

  If you’ve ever seen a funeral in a movie, you pretty much know the score. There was lots of stuff about how sad it was that I’d “passed away so young” but how everything “happens for a reason” even if, right now, we didn’t understand “God’s great plan.” But, hey, on the bright side, everyone could rest assured I’d be with “the Lord now” and “in peace at his side and in his kingdom.”

  As if. I wanted to apparite there and then and tell them that, no, actually, there were no kingdoms or plans going on here. Kingdoms, I’d be happy with. This, not so much.

  “And now,” said Vicar Dude, “one of the people closest to Charlotte would like to say a few words.”

  Uh-oh. Who? Mom hated public speaking and Dad always said he was better on paper than in real life. Which was why he’d become a sports journalist. That, and all the guaranteed tickets to games. My grandparents weren’t getting up on that lectern without a crane to help them. Who else could it be?

  “David?” Vicar Dude looked down to the front row, where David was nestled between Mom and Kristen.

  Wait a second. Mom and … Kristen? Erm, hello, what was she doing here? Stroking David’s arm in a “there, there” way. Kristen wasn’t even my friend on Facebook, so how had she gotten herself on the front row at my funeral? This was not Fashion Week. She might be Miss Popularity, but she didn’t deserve one of the best seats in the house. Especially not when Ali and her parents were crammed into row three.

  David walked up to the lectern. He wobbled on the steps and swallowed awkwardly, like he was going to throw up, but was trying super-hard to keep it down. His eyes were red and puffy. I didn’t know who he’d borrowed the black suit he was wearing from—because it was most definitely not his—but it was about half a size too small. The trousers were way too tight and the jacket too slim fit for such a “somber occasion” (as Vicar Dude called it).

  On any other boy it would have been what Lorna called a fashion faux pas, but David didn’t look stupid. He looked hot. Seriously hot. Like he was the newest, blondest member of the Strokes. All ready to rock a sweaty room in some bar in Brooklyn, rather than make a speech in a dusty old church.

  “Whoa, he was your boyfriend?” a sarcastic voice said.

  I turned to my right to see that Tess had ported beside us. What was she doing here? First Jamie, then Kristen, now Tess? I thought funerals were meant to be for loved ones only? Instead, there seemed to be an open-door policy for mean girls.

  “Yes, we dated for a year and a half,” I snapped back. Why was I trying to defend my relationship? I knew Tess was just messing with me. And that David loved me completely—get a load of the eye puffiness. If I was going to be stuck with Tess for who knows how long, I really had to learn to ignore her when she put her Queen Bitch crown on.

  “Er, I’m not very good at standing up and talking to people,” David said nervously. The mic screeched and he took a step back from it, eyeing it suspiciously. “In fact the last time I did, it was when I, erm, played Joseph in the fourth grade Christmas nativity … Those of you who were there that day will remember it didn’t go so well.”

  David dropped “Jesus” (some other kid’s rag doll) on the floor and its head rolled off. I wasn’t there, but I knew it had gone down in elementary school history because the story had even reached my school downtown. It was the reason that, after that, every Joseph in the city had Jesus attached to their hand with some string and tape.

  Some of the kids in the congregation giggled. David’s shoulders unhunched a little and he carried on. This time with more confidence in his voice.

  “I don’t hang around a lot of churches,” he said. “But I hoped that one day I would be hanging around one with Charlotte. Well, not hanging around as such … That didn’t come out right. I … let me try again.”

  Tess sniggered. I shot her my best Nancy stop-being-sooo-immature look.

  “What I meant was that—I know we’re only sixteen and have a lot of growing up to do …” He looked down at the lectern as if hoping to find someone else had left a speech there that he could read out. “But I sort of thought that if I was ever in a church in a suit with Charlotte, it would be for a reason that would make my mom happy—like getting married one day. Years and years away, of course.”

  He looked down at my coffin. “Not like this. Not with her in there.” He sighed unevenly. “I can’t even begin to tell you what a hole Charlotte has left in my life. I’m just going to miss her so much.” He looked over at my parents, who were properly sobbing now, then Ali, who’d fixed her stare on the flowers at the end of her pew. “We all are … I don’t know how I’ll get through this. That’s … that’s all I wanted to say.”

  Wow. Forget what he said about me to Jamie in the library, that was amazing.

  The church was totally silent. I think every single person was a little bit in love with David at that second. Except for my dad and the vicar. Because that would just be weird.

  “That,” said Lorna, who was quietly making sobbing noises next to me, “was the most beautiful thing I have ever, ever heard. Beat my eulogy hands, feet, and elbows down.”

  “It wasn’t half bad,” Tess admitted, refusing to make eye contact with me.

  Wow. She actually said something not nasty.

  David stepped off the lectern and went back to his seat hiccuping with a little sob. Even Nancy gave me a he’s-very-lovely, lucky-living-you look.

  Kristen stroked his arm fondly, gently running her nails over his skin. Mom gave her a stare so evil Kristen actually took her hand off David’s and put it back on her electric purple Mulberry Alexa bag (could she not have found a black one, just for today?). I had to admit that, even though I’d probably never get a chance to tell her, my m
om could be pretty cool.

  After a couple more hymns and some readings, Vicar Dude dismissed everyone. The choir behind him sang some kum-by-ya-yas and everyone filed out. It still wasn’t my kind of music, but at least it wasn’t you-know-who.

  “How are you holding up?” Nancy gave my arm a supportive squeeze. I jumped a little—not as badly as I had when Ed touched my hand, but still enough to hope Tess hadn’t noticed—and tried to smile.

  “Okay, I’m sure I should make some it’s-my-funeral joke, but I’m feeling kind of beat,” I said. “Shall we get out of here? I didn’t see anyone acting weird, did you?”

  Nancy’s face went all detectress again. Of course.

  “We need to look out for anything strange. Is there anyone here who you’re surprised to see? Anyone you weren’t friends with in life?”

  “Nancy has this theory that murderers always turn up at their victim’s funerals,” Lorna explained. “She saw it on some Agatha Christie drama on the I’m-Pretty-Much-Geriatric Channel once.”

  Nancy sighed. I scanned the crowd. Aside from my family, it was pretty much all the people I’d expect. Kids from my school, most—like Ali, Parker, and Kari—I’d known since kindergarten, others—like Alanna and Mina—weren’t my BFFs, but we talked, a few of my teachers who probably thought being here was preferable to grading the mountain of essays they had sitting at home, Mr. Millington (excellent—so that did very little to disprove Why Charlotte Died Rumor 3, then), the Tornadoes, and …

  “Actually there is someone who shouldn’t be here. Well, three someones actually,” I said. And one of them—the one I was most worried about—was nowhere to be seen.