Ice Cream Corpse

by Stacey Alabaster

  “Well, they need plenty of room for their activities,” I said, double-checking my phone to make sure I had the info right. I’d gotten the meeting times from the club’s Facebook page. They wrote that new members were welcome to come along, so I supposed that Pippa and I were just going to have to pretend that we were new potential members.

  “What is LARPing, anyway?” Pippa asked, a little uncertainly. Even on a day this hot, the sports field was filled with a dozen young guys—guys about Harry’s age—collected under the trees on the far side. Some of them were wearing armor and a few of them held swords and shields, which they were making a halfhearted effort to swing. Mostly, they just looked like they wanted to go home.

  “It stands for Live Action Role Playing,” I murmured, stumbling onto the stands where there was a bit of shade. There were also public bathrooms and a couple of vending machines. Harry had listed the local LARPing club on his resume under his extracurricular activities. At the time he’d sent in his resume, he’d only been playing with the club for a couple of months. And less than a year after he’d handed in his resume, he’d been killed. I didn’t know how well any of these guys would have known Harry, but it was our best shot at finding any friends of his to talk to.

  “Apparently, this is where the members meet for their…games,” I said as we climbed up the stairs into the stands. Was that the right thing to call them? Games?

  Pippa sat down underneath some shade that was receding and after a few minutes, had to scooch back a seat. I watched the group assemble. There seemed to be a leader, a large guy with rust-colored hair, who was directing the rest of the group and telling them what to do. I felt a buzzing in my pocket.

  I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?” I said, listening for a second. Then I stopped and pulled the phone away from my ear. “Pippa. Why is Marcello calling me?”

  “Oh.” Pippa reached for the phone. “I told him to call me on your number if he really needed to.”

  I pulled the phone away so that she couldn’t grab it. “Nope. That is breaking the rules.”

  “What if it’s an emergency! I have a baby, Rachael!”

  “Then that’s a very good reason for you to have a phone on you.”

  I put the phone back to my ear and listened to Marcello. He wanted to know how many boxes of oranges Pippa wanted him to pick. So, not really an emergency then.

  I hung up.

  “What did he say?” Pippa asked, wide eyed.

  I put the phone back in my pocket. “I guess you’re just going to have to find a payphone or a landline and call him yourself.”

  She stood up and stomped off down to the bottom of the stands like she was about to head out onto the field, then slowed down when the heat stopped her. “I can’t believe they didn’t cancel on a day like today…” she said, puffing.

  I pointed to a vending machine. “Come on. Let’s get a soda before we talk to them.”

  We approached the young guy with thick auburn hair after the group had decided to take a break. No one wanted to be running around in armor when it was over a hundred and five degrees. He was ridiculously tall—probably at least 6’6’— and he was pretty wide as well. He introduced himself as Jack, but he seemed suspicious about our presence there on the field that day. I couldn’t see any other women in their group, and I wondered if new members were really as welcome as it said they were on their website.

  “We’re just here to do some research about your club…for an article that we’re writing,” Pippa said.

  Jack was sweating.

  “Oh yeah?” Still didn’t sound convinced.

  “It’s awfully hot to be roleplaying today, isn’t it?” Pippa asked. “Hey, it’s even a bit hot to be a reporter. I’m thinking about hitting the pool after this.” She let out a nervous laugh. She was just trying to play the roll of the friendly reporter, I supposed. She even had a small notepad and a pen that she produced from her pocket. “I write everything down the old-fashioned way,” she said. “No recording devices for me.”

  “I’m not really one for going to the pool,” Jack said, switching from foot to foot.

  “Well, I’ll be there a lot this week, I think.” She offered him a wide smile and he smiled back. “Hey, it would be great to see you there.”

  I knew that Pippa was only trying to win him over, but I was starting to get the feeling that Jack actually liked her and maybe thought she was flirting with him. I cut in.

  “Did you know a Harry Daddo?” I asked.

  Jacked looked a little flummoxed. He blinked a few times before gaining his bearings. “Why are you asking about Harry?”

  “He’s part of…the article we are writing,” I explained. “We heard that he was an expert role-player.”

  Jack shrugged his considerably large shoulders. “He came to a few sessions maybe a year or so ago…” He shrugged again. “Maybe two years now. I can’t really remember. I wouldn’t really call him an expert.”

  “It would have been two years since you’ve last seen him?” I asked, jumping all over that. I sounded less like a friendly reporter and more like an aggressive detective. “Do you remember the last time you saw him? Was he acting strangely at all?”

  Jack took a step back and Pippa shot me a glare to say well done for undoing all my good work buttering him up.

  “Look, we never knew what happened to Harry,” Jack said. “He suddenly stopped coming to the group. No warning. But he only turned up suddenly as well. He’s a drifter, I guess. He travels from town to town.” Jack stopped and thought about it. “I guess, before he stopped coming, he was a little stressed. But I didn’t think it was that strange at the time.”

  “Stressed?” I asked. “Was it because of work, do you know?”

  Jack shrugged. “It might have been money stuff. I-I’m not really sure.”

  I sighed. Pippa poked me in the side and shot me a meaningful look. Back off.

  Pippa gave Jack her brightest smile. “And did you hear from Harry after he left the club?” she asked.

  Jack shook his head. “None of us heard from him afterwards… Hang on…” There were sweat beads dripping from his forehead as he turned to one of his friends. “Andy!” he called. “You got a letter from Harry a few months after he took off, right?”

  I turned toward Pippa. “A letter?”

  “How is that possible?” she whispered.

  “It’s not,” I said. “Unless we have Harry’s time of death completely wrong.”

  Andrew, a young man with curly dark hair and a slight limp as though he’d been hurt during the roleplaying, stumbled over to us. “These ladies are asking about Harry,” Jack said. It was getting so hot that I was starting to feel a little lightheaded. I’d already finished my grape soda and was starting to feel dehydrated. I was slowly swaying. I tried to focus my eyes on Andy so that he wasn’t just a dark-haired blob.

  Andy nodded. “Yeah, it was kind of weird. I mean, who writes these days, right?”

  Pippa couldn’t resist jumping in. “Actually, I’ve started writing letters again,” she announced proudly. “Keeping it all old school, you know. I think it’s so much better than emailing or sending instant messages.”

  “Yeah, anyway,” Andy said, turning back to me. “It was kind of weird. I think I kept it somewhere.”

  Jack’s face turned a little dark, but he didn’t say anything.

  Yes. Now we were getting somewhere. I tried not to look too excited, though. “I’d love to have a look at it,” I said. “You know, for the…article we are writing.”

  Andy narrowed his thick eyebrows. “Why are you really asking about Harry Daddo?”

  Pippa reached out and took Jack’s hand before Andy pressed us for an answer. “Thanks so much for your time, Jack! Hope to see you soon!”

  We turned on our heels, eager to get away. I looked over my shoulder and shouted out to Andy.

  “If you could find that letter and let us take a look at it, that would be great!”

&n
bsp; “Oh my goodness,” Sue groaned, putting her feet up on the coffee table and an ice pack on her head. “When is this heat wave going to be over?” She took the pack away for a second and peered at me. “The gallery I work at is not air conditioned, and it’s so small that as soon as there are more than two people in it, it overheats just from the body heat. I swear, I can actually see some of the paint on the artworks dripping off.”

  I nodded and sat next to her. “It’s like that at the bakery too. We tried to call the air conditioning repair and installation place, but they are totally booked out.”

  Sue groaned a little again. “I guess there’s no point even trying to get an air conditioning unit installed this week then?”

  “You could always buy a portable unit?”

  Sue shook her head and returned the ice pack to her forehead. “Totally sold out. I already checked.”

  She didn’t rouse again for half an hour. During that time, I made us a jug of iced tea and brought it back to the living room, which disturbed her again. I poured her a glass, with extra ice cubes. “Oh, you got a letter,” Sue groaned, rolling over to fetch a pile of mail from the coffee table. “An actual letter by the looks of it. Kinda strange. It’s not your birthday, is it? I didn’t forget, did I?”

  I shook my head. “No, not for another three months.” I turned the envelope over in my hands. It was strange to receive a letter that wasn’t a bill or a birthday card. “Maybe they’re coming back into vogue. Maybe Pippa is actually on to something after all…”

  I stopped speaking and almost dropped the letter when I saw the return sender on the back.

  It was from Rocky Morlock.

  We had contact.

  “Oh my goodness!” I jumped up and spilled Sue’s iced tea all over the carpet. Then I stood in the soggy patch with bare feet. I barely even noticed, though. My heart started beating faster. This could only mean one thing. He knew Harry’s body had been found, and he knew that we were onto him.

  I picked up my phone and started to call Pippa. Her voicemail picked up. “Hi! You’ve reached Pippa! I’m currently on a digital diet so you’ll have to stop by my house if you want to talk to me! The address is…” Oh great, of course. I threw the phone down. I still didn’t have her landline number. I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. I was going to have to go to her house.

  Chapter 6

  Pippa was outside, wearing a large floppy sun hat, up on a ladder, plucking oranges from the tree with a look of intense concentration.

  She waved to me as I approached, a pair of clippers in her hand.

  “Oh, I’m getting worried about these oranges, Rachael. Levon was right, they’re about to go out of season.” She picked one up. “Does this one seem hard to you? Gosh, I have tried to pass myself off as some kind of expert farmer, when really, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.” She climbed down her ladder and glumly sat on the ground. “I guess I’ll have to go back to the library and borrow some more books.”

  The oranges did look a little small and hard, but surely everyone would have the same problem at this time of year? There were still three apple trees on her property and so many lemon trees that she’d never be able to run out of them. “I’m sure it will be fine.” I was distracted by something that seemed a little more important.

  “What is it?” Pippa asked, suddenly noting how wired up I was.

  “You are not going to believe this, Pippa,” I said, pulling the envelope out of my bag. “Rocky Morlock has written to me.”

  She jumped up and snatched it out of my hand in disbelief, totally forgetting about the oranges for the moment, the sharp clippers in her other hand dancing around precariously. I had to swerve to dodge them and prevent myself from getting stabbed in the shoulder. “Do you want to put those shears down?” I asked. I was panting like a dog from the heat. “We should go inside anyway.”

  “All right, but I warned you, it’s no cooler in there.”

  She was right. It wasn’t. In fact, it was possibly even worse inside because there was no breeze at all. There was the slight scent of mold in the air, and of lemons, like Pippa had been making lemonade. My mouth watered and she offered to make me a glass while I waited on the sofa.

  We both just stared at the envelope, still sitting on the coffee table after ten minutes had passed and we’d both finished off our lemonade.

  “Why haven’t we opened it yet?” Pippa asked, still staring at the envelope.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should tell Jackson about it.”

  Pippa turned to me. “It’s addressed to you, you know. You have a right to open it. It is your property.”

  “How did Rocky even know where I live?” I asked, reaching toward it with my foot. I pushed it away from us a little. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so exciting to get the letter. It seemed dangerous.

  “You drove all this way to show it to me,” Pippa pointed out.

  “I drove all this way because I had no other way of contacting you. A phone call would have done just as well.”

  “Well, I’m glad you brought it here. I want to know what it has to say just as badly as you do.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to open it, though. “What could it even say?”

  Pippa sighed. She was starting to grow frustrated. “Well, you’re never going to know if you don’t open it. Come on, Rach, this is what we’ve been searching for. Rocky Morlock.”

  I took a deep breath and leaned forward, gingerly picking up the envelope. Then like an animal, I tore it open. Better to just rip the Band-Aid off.

  I read it silently first, and gulped.

  “Rach?” Pippa asked. “What does it say? Does it give us any clue as to where he is living now?”

  I turned to her with a heavy look on my face. “No, but it does give some clue as to what he’s going to do to me if I don’t stop investigating this case.” I gulped. “And to you.”

  “W-what do you mean?” She snatched the envelope from me and read it out loud.

  “…You don’t know what you’re getting yourself involved with, Rachael. Take this as a warning to back off. Quit your little adventure. And don’t tell that policeman friend of yours unless you want something to happen to your best friend and that young daughter of hers.”

  She dropped the letter.

  “It’s a threat!” Pippa said. “We need to tell the police about this.”

  “Pippa, he’s threatening you and Lolly. We can’t do that.”

  I looked out through the window at the road outside, heat coming off it in waves like steam. “It also means he’s out there, watching us.”

  All this time, we’d thought we’d been hunting down Rocky Morlock when he had been the one hunting us. I climbed into my car and shivered even though it was still 95 degrees outside. I must have double-checked my review mirror twenty times before I finally started the car. Had he followed me to Pippa’s? Would he follow me now?

  “It’s for you,” Sue said, placing the handle of the landline down the following morning. I’d barely gotten any sleep, I’d been tossing and turning all night, wondering what to do about the letter. Luckily, it was Sunday so the bakery was closed.

  It was Pippa on the other end of the line. She didn’t sound half as concerned, nor as tired, as I did.

  “Rachael, I think it’s time for a Sunday fun day…trip to the pool!”

  I usually avoided the pool. It was generally full of screaming children and it always seemed a little unhygienic. Not to mention I couldn’t stand the smell of chlorine. But even the library was closed on a Sunday. There was nowhere else to go if we wanted to keep cool for the entire day, so I agreed. I headed to my room and packed a bag with a beach towel and sunscreen. Always keeping an eye turned toward the window and over my shoulder and always with one ear trained for anyone trying to break into the house. Rocky Morlock knew where I lived, after all. It was going to be difficult to enjoy a day down at the pool knowing that I was being s
talked.

  I had a plan, though. I was going to keep going about my usual business, not act like anything was wrong. And I was going to have to dial back the paranoia and the looking over my shoulder all the time. I wanted Rocky to think that everything was normal, that his letter hadn’t thrown me or scared me. I wanted him to think that maybe I didn’t even get the letter. Then, hopefully, he’d get more desperate. Make another move. Not a letter this time. Maybe next time, he’d approach me in person, and then we’d have him.

  Maybe he’d even make his move at the pool. I had to be ready. And I had to not give myself away.

  So I exited the house with confidence and placed a pair of red-framed sunglasses on my face, grinning like I was excited for a fun day. I wasn’t rattled. Nothing had gotten to me.

  The pool was crowded. Overcrowded. I was surprised that the lifeguards and managers had even allowed it to get that overcrowded. We were shoulder to shoulder with people as we lined up at the gate and Pippa yelled with outrage when we got to the gate and were told it cost ten dollars per person to enter. “But usually it’s just a donation!” Pippa shouted. She almost didn’t pay the fare. “Even for a baby?” she asked, holding up Lolly. The woman on the gate shrugged. “Five dollars for a baby.”

  “Unbelievable…” Pippa grumbled. Twenty-five dollars for her, Marcello, and Lolly did seem like a lot.

  “At least we’re in now,” I stated, but the pool itself was so full that you could hardly even see any blue water.

  There were food trucks around the edge though and plenty of ice cream stands. “Well, looks like we’ve got no chance of getting one of those chairs by the poolside,” I said. “Lucky I brought these beach towels.” We found a tiny spot of grass under a large umbrella and set up.

  Pippa applied sunscreen to Lolly’s arms and legs while Marcello lay back on the towel with a hat over his face. Was he asleep?

  I was just considering heading into the water when I spotted a familiar face down at the edge of the pool, stumbling toward the diving board.

  “Hey,” I said, lowering my sunglasses and squinting. “Isn’t that Jack?” I pointed to a large guy with red hair.