Chapter 11
Frankie
“Hot, hot, hot!” I spit out a bite of chicken finger into the red plastic basket between us as Alex starts laughing so hard, I worry Diet Coke’s going to shoot out of his nose.
“That’s what you get for not being patient,” he says, blowing on his French fries.
“If you wait too long, they taste like garbage. Everyone knows that.” I lean back and cross my arms over my chest, tapping my foot up and down.
Alex and I are sitting outside Hot Diggity after work, our first shift back since they found Billy.
The whole day had been weird and creepy, like everyone who came through the Club gates was looking over their shoulder, waiting for a masked man with a knife to burst out from behind a sand dune.
All anyone can talk about is how the police think that Billy’s death wasn’t an accident.
Millie said as much when she got home from the police station the day she found him, and Mom made us turn on location sharing yesterday, started locking the doors and insisting we use the alarm system, even though I’d never seen her turn it on.
But it’s hard to imagine that something actually bad could happen here on Pelican Island, where the police are basically glorified traffic cops and the last real crime was insider trading, though I’m pretty sure the Vreelands only paid a fine for that one.
Everyone’s imaginations are running wild because it’s easier to think Billy was killed by someone else rather than admit he was an idiot and made some stupid mistake in the same water we’ve all spent our entire lives enjoying.
“What do you want to do for the rest of the day?” Alex asks, crumpling his garbage into a ball.
“I dunno.” I lean my elbows on the picnic table, my gaze settling on the building across the street.
It’s a little white-brick structure with wide windows and flower pots outside.
The only way you’d know it was the police department was the massive shield on the sign out front, the few cop cars parked around the corner. “We could take your kayak out?”
Alex shakes his head. “Nah, I think I’d rather do pool time.”
“Fine by me.” We stand and head for the bike rack, but I don’t look where I’m going and walk right into something tall and hard, slamming to a stop. “Owww,” I whine, gripping my shoulder. “What…”
“Watch where you’re going.” I jerk my head back and realize I’ve walked right into Justin Vreeland as he exited Hot Diggity.
He’s staring at me with his mouth pinched and a baseball cap casting a shadow over half his face.
Even though he’s wearing navy shorts with whales embroidered on them, which is definitely the least threatening item of clothing on the planet, a nervous hum begins in my stomach. I take a step back, bumping into Alex.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“You should be.” Justin scowls at me, then hurries across the street.
“God, he’s creepy,” I say.
Alex winces. “I can’t believe his family owns this place.” He throws his thumb back at the hot dog stand.
“Oh, please. It’s probably a tax front.”
“You don’t even know what a tax front is!”
“Didn’t his grandparents just open the place for fun?”
“I am so not debating the ethics of owning the establishment that makes my favorite French fries in the world.” Alex rolls his eyes. “Come on.”
We pick up our bikes, but before we take off, I twist my head over my shoulder.
Justin’s standing in front of the police station, and a tall Black woman walks toward him.
She’s wearing a well-tailored suit and has a briefcase in her hand.
Standing next to her is Justin’s mom, Mrs. Vreeland, who I last saw at the Club on Saturday.
She grips Justin’s arm and practically drags him through the door, disappearing inside the station.
“Did you see that?” I ask.
“See what?” Alex says, buckling his helmet.
“Justin. Police station. Looking suspicious.”
Alex glances back, and his eyes flick wide for just a moment. “Ethan said they’re talking to everyone who was at the party. He was probably there.” He waves his hand toward the bike lane.
I follow Alex all the way back to our side-by-side homes in silence, not really listening as he explains the rules to the new board game he got for his birthday.
All I can think about is the fact that if Billy was murdered, then there has to be a reason—a person—behind what happened. Basically, there has to be an answer.
Just like our logic puzzles.
When we reach his driveway, I’m practically buzzing.
“Pool?” Alex drops his bike and tosses his helmet into the grass.
“Better idea,” I say. “Hear me out.”
“Okay?”
“You know how our logic puzzles start with clues that hint toward the answer?” I say. “Like the one we finished this morning.”
It was about flight delays at an airport, and we had to figure out which plane took off first. The clue that nearly stumped us turned out to be the easy one once I realized what it was really saying. That was the key with these types of puzzles—to search for hidden meanings.
“Duh,” Alex says, reaching for the side door to his house. “That’s the whole point.”
“What if Billy’s death is like a logic puzzle?”
Alex stops in his tracks and shakes his head. “I don’t like this.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think anyone likes murder. But if something sus is going on, what if we’re the people to find out what happened?”
“We don’t know it was murder, Franks. Besides, even if it was, the last thing anyone needs is two freshmen trying to figure out what happened.”
“We’re going to be sophomores,” I say. “There’s a difference.” Alex scoffs, but I persist. “You really don’t want to?” Alex has never once said no to any type of game or puzzle, is always down to solve any sort of teaser.
He pauses but then starts up the stairs. “We don’t have the clues. We don’t have suspects. We don’t have anything that could help us solve something like this.”
I take that as a maybe.
“You guys smell like Hot Diggity.” Trevor’s leaving his room, a duffel bag over his shoulder. “What’d you bring back for me?”
“Nada,” I say, stopping on the landing.
“Where’re you going?” Alex asks.
“PT appointment,” Trevor says, his hand moving to his shoulder absentmindedly.
“You good?” Alex asks, his voice dropping.
I glance between them, an invisible string connecting their gaze, and for a moment they remind me of Millie and Lucy, speaking in their annoying silent language. At least with them, I’ve decoded some of it by now. But the boys…they might as well have ESP.
“Yeah, just overdue,” Trevor says, moving past me. “What’re you guys up to?”
“Solving a murder,” I say.
Trevor spins around. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t mind her.” Alex moves in front of me and gently shoves me inside his room. “Ever.”
“Hey!” I say, craning my neck so I can see Trevor shake his head as he takes the stairs two at a time.
“Stay out of trouble, you two,” he calls, then heads out the front door.
Alex follows me inside his room and flops down on his bed, but I make a beeline for his closet where he keeps the erasable markers. “What are you even doing?” Alex asks.
I move to the whiteboard hanging on his wall. “I’m laying out the facts.”
“I thought we were going swimming.”
Outside, the wind picks up, batting a branch against the window, and the natural light in Alex’s room grows a shade darker, the weather taking a sharp turn. “Mother Earth has other plans,” I say. “Come on. You know you want to.”
Alex sighs behind me, but he doesn’t protest.
My heart rate picks up as I start constructing a story, writing the words down as they come to me, speaking them out loud. “Billy Godwin was found dead in the Long Island Sound on Saturday.”
I tap the marker cap against my chin and stare at the board. A tiny zing shoots through my limbs, the same one that starts when I’m faced with a problem to solve, when that problem actually has a solution that can be figured out with a little brainpower. “We need clues.”
“This is pointless,” Alex says. “We are not detectives.”
“But we could be.” I boop his nose, and he frowns, swatting my hand away. “Let’s use our powers for good.”
“When have we ever used them for evil?” he mumbles, annoyed, but I power through.
“Who else was at the party? That’s our list of witnesses. And suspects.”
Alex falls back against the bed, bouncing slightly.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Now you have to. Was Ethan there or something?”
Alex rests a hand over his face but speaks through his muffled fingers. “Yes.”
“Well. Yeah. Shit.” I push my curls off my forehead. “He’s not a suspect. I mean, it’s Ethan.”
“Obviously.”
“Who else was also there? Not Lucy. I was still awake when she came home and heard her close the door to her bedroom. But I’m gonna guess Justin Vreeland was there since we literally saw him walk into the police station,” I say.
“If Ethan was there, Dylan definitely was too. Probably the usual party crowd. Like Erica—”
I stop, an idea forming quickly. Erica.
“She was on yearbook with you, right?” I ask Alex.
“She was the editor of the yearbook. You know this. That’s why she was always carrying around that digital camera, taking photos of everything.”
I point finger guns at Alex, waiting for him to realize what we have to do. It takes a minute, but then his eyes go wide. “You think she took photos of the party on that thing? Yearbook’s over.”
“I mean, everyone took photos of the party, I assume. But they’re all on their phones. Erica’s might be on that camera. Which would be much easier to—”
“Steal?” Alex’s voice rises one octave.
“I was going to say borrow. Don’t you think she’d want to document every party just for herself? That thing was practically glued to her face all second semester.”
Alex considers this. “I don’t know. Maybe. But if she did, she probably deleted them by now.” He sucks on the inside of his cheek, which he only does when he’s trying to tamp down his frustrations.
“You okay?” I ask, perching on the bed beside him.
“Yep. Just thinking about how a lot of people didn’t really like Billy.”
“Well, he was kind of a douche,” I say.
“Also means a lot of people may have wanted him gone.”
“That’s true. But only one person actually did it. And I want to find out who.”