by Marc Jedel
“Nothing. I’m not hungry tonight.” I tried to avoid flinching when another car drove past.
“Well, you’re missing out. This is delicious. We have to go to this place sometime,” said Laney.
I tried to figure out how to discourage this idea without revealing why.
Samantha noticed my flinching. “There you go again, acting all scaredy-cat. Maybe some ice cream will chill you out?” She added, “I have to get some mint chocolate chip anyway. I’m superstitious that way. Always eat the same ice cream on the night before a skydiving competition starts.”
“What?” asked Laney.
“Skydiving?” I was puzzled. Maybe that was some weird psychology term, like generalized anxiety disorder.
“Of course.” She shook her head in exasperation, as if this were obvious. “I’m in town for the annual skydiving convention. I’m competing Thursday. Tomorrow afternoon’s a trial-run drop. Didn’t I tell you why I was coming to town?” Samantha scrunched her eyebrows as she looked between Laney and me.
“You just said a convention. I assumed it was some psychology convention,” I said.
The girls’ mouths had fallen open. Skye recovered first. “Mom, can we go watch?”
Megan nodded her head vigorously in agreement.
Laney consulted the calendar on her phone before her face grew long. In a disappointed voice, she answered, “I’m sorry, girls. I’ve got some client meetings before I leave town that I can’t skip—”
I interrupted, “I’ll take them.” Surprised that my mouth had engaged before I’d thought this out, I closed my lips before something else could leak out.
The thought of skydiving terrified me, but my girlfriend—that term still sounded weird in my head—had been encouraging me to stop being so anxious. Meghan would be impressed that I’d volunteered to go see this. I liked her and didn’t want to screw up our new relationship by continuing to act too much like me.
Besides, tomorrow was supposed to be beautiful. It was late October already, and winter, with its overcast skies and rare rain during this time of drought, would start any time. I’d miss the nonstop sunny days of the other nine months of the year. I’d also finished preparing my presentation for Thursday morning, and otherwise, things at work had slowed down while we waited for the Sirius acquisition to go through.
“Really? To a skydiving thing?” Laney’s eyes and mouth were wide open as she looked at me instead of Samantha.
“Yes, it will be fun,” I said to convince myself as much as her. “Let’s go get that ice cream.” I stood up.
Megan cheered.
I screamed, as much out of fear as joy.
We all screamed. We were going for ice cream, after all.
Samantha held out her hand to me. I reached to shake it, but she laughed and slapped mine away. Apparently, I was supposed to know how to do her complicated hand gesture thingamabob without any prior training, practice, or instruction manual.
The girls snorted at my failure to give Samantha the proper celebratory hand greeting, and, in mere seconds, I’d reverted from cool back to normal.
As we got ready to leave, Skye decided to stay home to shower. I asked her if she was sick, but Laney waved me off. Twelve-year-old girls perplexed me. I mean, ice cream!
At the ice cream place, Megan and I climbed out of Laney’s rental. We had taken hers, as I wasn’t about to squeeze into the back of Samantha’s sports car. A van next to us had a large “Zombie Response Team” sticker on the window and had its side door wide open. Even in the California suburbs, that was weird. Pointing the sticker out to Megan, I said, “They must have had an emergency situation to handle.” I could be brave when it was full daylight and I was teasing my niece.
Although reasonably confident that I was mocking her, nonetheless, Megan gave a nervous laugh and darted quick glances all around her as we walked inside the shop.
We got our cones and walked outside to enjoy them in the warm, late October evening. By the time we got to our car, the spot next to it was empty, with half-melted cups of ice cream and napkins scattered on the ground.
Pointing to them, I leaned over to Megan and whispered, “Zombies must have won this time.”
She screamed.
I chuckled, but Laney cast a glare on me that would have melted a zombie. She had just opened her mouth to chastise me when her phone rang.
“Yes?” She tried to put the other hand over her ear to hear better in the tumult of the crowded ice cream parking lot but only managed to smear ice cream in her hair.
I grabbed her cone as she tried to listen.
“There’s what? … Now? At my house?” Her voice rose as she started to panic, and the crowd nearby quieted as her tension spread.
“Let’s go. Right now,” Laney yelled as she jumped into her car.
We raced back to encounter a fire truck, ambulance, and police car parked outside her house with their lights flashing. Laney’s neighbor hovered on the porch near the front door. Inside, Skye sat on the couch, wrapped in a towel and looking mortified as firefighters tramped through the house checking for any danger.
Despite her foot in the boot, Laney practically flew to Skye’s side and hugged her. Between Skye and the firefighters, the story came out. Skye had put Buddy in his crate before taking an extra-long shower, but she’d only closed the latch, forgetting to use the combination lock. Buddy should have been named Houdini. He’d escaped and somehow turned on the gas stovetop again. The new alarm did its job, calling the fire department. Skye had wrapped a towel around herself and run out of the house. The firefighters must have expected Buddy to cause trouble again and been cruising in the neighborhood because they showed up within a few minutes.
“This time wasn’t as bad as the last one. Still could have had an explosion,” said the same fire crew chief as last time. He must have kept close tabs on their frequent customers.
The shrill voice of Laney’s neighbor came from the doorway. “Would the explosion destroy neighboring houses too?”
As everyone turned to stare at her, she fluttered her hands. “Should I call the police?”
Then, she noticed the cop standing next to her and began making little strangling noises.
To no one in particular, Laney muttered, “I’m going to make some calls.”
I hugged the girls and got out of there with Samantha before Laney started blaming me for Buddy again. There was always tomorrow for that.
10
Wednesday
My conversation with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies didn’t rank high on my list of most successful meetings. I did avoid arrest, though, which counted as a positive outcome in my book. The deputies didn’t appreciate my suggestions, or my sense of humor. Sergeant Mace Jackson kept his feelings under wraps throughout the meeting, barely saying a word. Since the deputies didn’t seem to like me, Mace probably wanted to keep them from learning how well he and I worked together.
Afterwards, on my way to pick up the girls from school, I called Raj to tell him about my meeting. “I got to see the inside of the police station and everything. It was cool.”
“That is great.” Raj’s flat voice didn’t match my level of excitement.
“Well, you missed a cool meeting. Did you have any more ideas about how Larry died?” We had—okay, I had—spent the morning in the office brainstorming ideas to bring to the police.
“I have been at work, unlike some people …”
Ouch. Normally laid back, Raj seemed high-strung today. In the background, I heard him typing. He was writing code while talking. There were plenty of days that I couldn’t write code even in complete silence.
Raj continued, “Is that all? I have to complete this before I leave on holiday.”
How could I have forgotten about his upcoming three-week vacation to visit his family in India? Without Raj, the office would be boring, even though I now had the monthly cake days in my calendar. We sang a lame “Happy Birthday” song and then everyone g
ot free cake.
I tried again. “Well, take a break. Let’s come up with more ideas for the investigation. The police are stuck. They’re waiting for the autopsy results before they do anything else.”
“I think the police will know what to do.” The typing sounded louder as his voice faded.
I was losing him. “Come on, Raj, work with me here. Larry needs closure.” On a whim, I threw him a curveball. “Do you think Sean Peters killed Larry?”
This grabbed his attention, and the typing stopped. “What? Why would he wish to do anything to Larry?” He paused before adding, “You should not upset Sirius’ chief of staff. He could be our boss soon.”
“Not if he’s in prison for killing Larry!” I didn’t like Sean. He was too young and too fit.
“Maybe your friend just died. No murder or anything suspicious. Sometimes people die for no particular reason. It is very sad.”
It wasn’t time to be sad. It was time for action. “Can you do a search online for Sean Peters and Larry? Maybe there’s something weird about them.”
There was a pause before Raj spoke again. “I see many articles about Sirius.” After a longer pause, he said, “These biology terms are confusing. They are unfamiliar words to me.”
An idea struck me as my Rover car neared the girls’ school. “What about Gloria? Do you see her name in there?”
“Biology is not simple like engineering. Have you ever read some of these papers? If we will need to read such papers as part of Sirius, then perhaps we need to study biology.”
I was still stuck on Gloria. “Maybe she’s involved too. She could have been part of that secret project that Sean wouldn’t tell us about. Maybe they were researching some dangerous biology project, like cloning humans.”
“It is like another language. I am unable to read all these Latin words quickly. I will have to access a biology dictionary on the airplane to complete this translation.”
I was on a roll. “But it all went wrong and the clone escaped from the secret lab in the middle of the night. Maybe Larry had to go chase him and got killed.” My heart was racing now. This idea hung together. Movies were made with sillier plots.
Raj abandoned his confusion over biology vocabulary to focus on a more familiar form of illogical nonsense—me. “So now a clone killed him, not Sean?”
Raj’s skepticism snapped me out of my crazy line of thought.
I answered Raj’s question. “Okay, you’re right. That could have been a movie I watched recently. But maybe Gloria is involved too.”
Raj started typing again. “I do not see anything with all three names—”
“I’ve got it,” I interrupted Raj. “Sorry.” I’d been working on not interrupting people, but when I got excited it was hard to hold back. “I think Gloria and Larry were secretly dating. What if Sean was interested in Gloria too and he tried to break them up? Sean could have lured Larry into the woods, where they got into a fight, and then he accidentally killed Larry before trying to cover it up by stealing his EpiPen.”
“Was this another movie you watched?” Raj asked in a dry voice. Sometimes he lacked sufficient imagination.
“No, I don’t like romantic flicks,” I said, dismissing Raj’s skepticism. “This could be it. Gloria acted strangely on Monday when I asked her about Larry. Yesterday, Sean acted weird too.” I snapped my fingers. “You know, her house isn’t too far out of the way. I think I’ll stop by and see if there’s anything suspicious going on.”
“I do not think that is wise.” Raj always advised caution.
But caution was not getting us any closer to ending this investigation, although I realized Gloria was unlikely to be home in the middle of a work day. Plus, stopping by would make me even later to pick up my nieces for Samantha’s skydiving practice. “Okay, I’ll call Mace. He can investigate this angle while we’re waiting for the autopsy results. He’s probably bored sitting around anyway.”
Raj tried to rein me in. “Perhaps you should leave the police alone. It is possible Larry died from a heart attack.”
“No, that doesn’t make as good a story. These sorts of things always get complicated.” I knew because I’d watched lots of mystery shows. It was never the simple, obvious solution.
I hung up with Raj and was about to call Mace when my friend’s words sank in. He was planning to spend his flight home to India studying biology terms to understand the documents he’d found in his internet search. What a great friend. I sent him a text to thank him for his help and told him not to worry about reading the scientific papers. Then, I called Mace.
“Now what?” he grumbled. “You know, I already drew the short straw once today.”
I quickly outlined my love triangle murder scenario to him.
Mace cut me off before I could finish explaining the theory. “I’m only going to suffer through one crazy conversation per day and I reached my limit with you at the station.”
He hung up.
My shoulders drooped in disappointment as the Rover car stopped at the school entrance. This wasn’t the way partners should treat each other. Then I realized that the deputies were probably still in the room with Mace, so he had to act that way. He’d probably call me later to apologize. On the positive side, he basically gave me permission to call him once a day to discuss new theories.
Shaking off my momentary flash of distress, I got out of the Rover car in a happier mood and told the car to “stay.”
That new “Stay” feature had become so popular Rover had to restrict customers from using it during busy times. I was proud to have helped turn Raj’s idea into reality. Now that he was getting more attention as a great engineer, I also wanted to stand out by coming up with a successful new product feature all by myself.
I had an idea percolating. In fact, more than percolating. It was fully baked. I wasn’t sure if I got the analogy right because I didn’t drink coffee, but tomorrow was my big day. My boss had scheduled me to present a proposal to the Rover executive staff for approval. I was shocked that my boss admitted to liking an idea of mine.
Distracted by daydreams of tomorrow’s big presentation, I pushed on the door to the school office and slammed right into it. I backed up, this time noticing the attached sign on the front that read “Pull.” Hoping no one had noticed, I reached for the handle, pulled the door open, and walked inside.
“Mr. Golden, we would appreciate it if you would try not to break school property.” As always, Mrs. Quarles, the school secretary, greeted me in her warm and pleasant fashion. She stood erect behind the counter, straightening the already neat stack of papers in front of her.
“Hello, Mrs. Quarles, nice to see you again too.” I greeted her with a wave and a smile, which I hoped didn’t look too much like a grimace.
She responded with a loud sniff.
“I need to pick up Skye and Megan early today to take them to see their cousin.” I held my breath, hoping this would work. I had maintained a firm yet polite tone of voice, stated what I needed from her in a clear and concise manner, and plastered a smile on my face to boot. Just like that internet article had suggested for influencing others.
Mrs. Quarles harrumphed. Crossing her arms over her chest, she added, “School isn’t over yet. It is important for the girls’ education that they remain in school for the full instructional period.” She picked up some papers from the counter, then turned her back to me and walked away.
Stymied, I didn’t know what to do next. I’d tried my best and failed. The article hadn’t covered what to do if the other person refused to listen to your reasonable request. I pulled out my phone and called Laney.
“I can’t believe you. You can’t even handle a simple situation.” Laney sounded disgusted. “Put her on.”
Easier said than done. It took me a minute to get Mrs. Quarles’ attention, as she remained resolutely facing away from me. Eyeing me with disdain, she returned to the counter at the slowest possible pace. She took the phone from me and said, “Hello, M
rs. Tran. Is your foot doing better?” She managed to frown at me while maintaining a friendly phone voice. To Laney’s response, she replied in a solicitous tone, “Good. I’m glad.”
Pausing again while Laney spoke, she responded, “Oh. Well, why didn’t he say so? Of course. Yes, yes. I’ll take care of it right away. Okay then, take care.” She started to hang up and then added, “Yes, I’m looking forward to seeing you at the PTA meeting tomorrow too.”
Without glancing in my direction, Mrs. Quarles pulled an old-fashioned wired microphone on her desk close to her mouth, flicked a switch on the equally old-fashioned switchboard, and instructed Skye and Megan Tran to come to the school office right away. At least that was what I thought I heard over the howl of the microphone feedback.
After she ended her announcement, she slid my phone across the counter and turned the full force of her attention back to me. Pulling in her chin and lowering her brow, she shook her head in stern rebuke. “Why didn’t you tell me the girls were going on an independent field study project today?”
I was impressed. Laney wasn’t usually the sneaky one in our family. She must have been taking lessons from me.
*****
As the girls and I got out of the Rover car down south in Hollister, we craned our heads up to watch the skydivers drifting down into the fields around the small air field, stretching out the kinks from the ninety-minute ride while we took in the scene. Most parachutes were white, but different colors dotted the bright blue skies. The sounds of small planes taking off and landing echoed all around us. The surroundings were as pretty as a postcard, as long as I avoided thinking about the parachutes.
A small crowd had gathered on portable bleachers in a field to the side of the landing strip. In front of the bleachers were several targets on the ground. Skydivers drifted all around as they aimed for the targets. We headed in that direction too.
A small clump of skydivers clutching their wadded-up parachutes laughed and chattered with excitement as they walked past us. They wore a variety of helmets that looked little better than many bicycle helmets. How could something so flimsy keep people from smashing their heads in if their parachutes didn’t work? Would they be thinking, “Oh, too bad my parachute failed, but at least I have this awesome helmet so I won’t die when I hit the ground.” There was a reason that scientists referred to the maximum speed of falling to earth as “terminal velocity.”
