Novel - Half Moon Investigations (12 page)

I smiled. “You’re learning.”

In the Bernstein manual there is a short chapter on undercover work. The first line says, in capital letters, AVOID UNDERCOVER WORK. Bernstein goes on to say that an undercover assignment is the most difficult type of detective work. This is because it often forces the detective to go against his nature and pretend to be something he isn’t, i.e., a normal person. If the criminal under investigation suspects that the undercover operative is not “a stand-up guy” and is possibly a “rat fink stool pigeon” then statistically the undercover operative has a mere fourteen percent chance of survival.

Encouraging stuff. Especially since I was undercover as a member of a criminal family. Double whammy.

Our next stop was another recent crime scene. Mercedes Sharp’s house. I needed to find a connection between my assault and the missing mini-disk. If there was a link, then I would know we were after a single perpetrator. Or a single group of perpetrators.

As we passed through Lock’s housing developments, I tried to imitate Red’s swagger, become a Sharkey. Red had a way of walking that made him look cool. Everything he did, from opening a can of cola to running his fingers along a rail, looked cool. It would take me several lifetimes to perfect that. When
I
opened a can of cola it looked as though I was afraid it would explode, which it often did.

“What are you doing?” Red asked. “Did someone kick you in the behind?”

I decided, foolishly, to tell the truth. “I’m walking cool. Like you.” I wiggled my fingers theatrically. “Being a Sharkey.”

Red raised an eyebrow. Just one. “Being a Sharkey? Listen, Half Moon. Being a Sharkey is not something you can learn in a day. You might fool an adult, but not a kid. Just stand behind me and hope nobody notices you.”

I shot Red with a finger gun to show that I understood.

“What was that?”

“It was, you know, a finger gun. It means loud and clear. Ten four.”

Red sighed. “Thank goodness for that. I thought you were about to start picking your nose.”

I stopped trying to be cool after that.

Mercedes’s house was empty. Her father owned the local paper, and her mother was editor-in-chief, so both were probably out beating doors to find me. The house was an old detached building with wild ivy scaling the walls and weeds clawing their way through cracks in the flagstones.

“Nice place,” commented Red.

“If you like jungles,” I said. “Lucky for us, the Sharps like a natural-style garden.”

“Why is that lucky for us?”

“Because the crime scene should be relatively uncontaminated, except by the weather.”

We slipped down the side path around to the back of the house.

“I wonder which is Mercedes’s window?” said Red.

It didn’t take long to figure out. There were six windows at the rear of the house, but only one had the word
Mercedes
spray painted on the glass.

“I’m guessing that one. Whoever took the mini-disk must have been grateful.”

“Mercedes has a sister, you know,” Red pointed out.

“Your point being?”

“My point being, Half Moon, that the sister probably lifted the mini-disk. That’s what sisters are for.”

“Good point. We’ll check on that later. Somehow.”

There was a flower bed at the base of the wall. Just a bed. No flowers. It seemed as though they had been ripped out.

“Signs of a search,” I noted, scribbling it down in the notebook that the Sharkeys had thoughtfully stolen from my room. “Someone really went through this.”

“Maybe a gardener?”

“No. We’ve got rose stalks here, and ferns. These aren’t weeds. Someone was looking for something.”

I pulled back a sheaf of withered ferns. Below it was a second giant footprint. A connection. For a moment I felt light-headed. Here was the first concrete proof that there was a link between the crimes. And where there was a link, there was a pattern. Bernstein. Chapter six.

“Red. Can you photograph this?”

Red held the phone at arm’s length. “This guy is big, Half Moon. Maybe too big.”

Red was right, but I didn’t care. I had the scent in my nose. There was a connection and I was right. The truth might hurt, but it was the truth, and I would find it.

“We have no choice,” I said. “Either he’s the criminal, or I am.”

I swept the area for more clues, but in all honesty we were lucky to find the footprint and evidence of a frenzied search. We were about to pack it up when something scraped on the gravel behind us.

“Red Sharkey?” said a voice. “What are you, like, doing?”

I knew who it was before turning. A private detective does not forget the voice of his first cash customer. April. I kept my head down, using Red’s frame as a shield. Through the crook of his arm, I could see her. April was dressed as perfectly as ever, in a pastel pink tracksuit, a matching lunch box dangled from one hand.

Red was calm under pressure. I got the feeling he was used to being under pressure.

“Hey, April. I was walking past, thought I saw someone suspicious coming around the side. Me and Watson, my cousin, thought we’d check it out.”

April didn’t swallow a word of that. “I was right about you and your family. Here you and your little friend are snooping around Mercedes’s garden. Maybe you were snooping around May’s garden, with a torch.”

I stepped into the open. It was time to find out if I still had an employer. “Red wasn’t there, April, but I was. The torch wasn’t mine, though.”

“What do you mean?” asked April. Then the penny dropped, from a great height and with a loud clang. “My God, Fletcher. Is that you? What happened?”

I tried to get in the essential information. “It’s me, April. I just want you to know that I had nothing to do with May’s dress.”

But April was still trying to get to grips with my appearance. “But your hair. It’s gone, and red. And your nose, my God, your nose. And you have an earring now! And a tattoo!”

April stepped closer, completely forgetting that I was definitely a fugitive and possibly an arsonist. “Is that food coloring in your hair? Tell me that’s not a real tattoo. And that tracksuit. Those colors are all wrong for you.”

Then it dawned on her that she was sharing space with two dangerous criminals. Her mouth formed an ‘O,’ but no sound came out.

Do not spook a scared animal
, says Bernstein. The same principal applies to humans on the edge. No loud noises, no sudden movements and no big gestures.

“April,” I whispered, keeping my hands by my side. “Red and I. We’re both innocent. Red broke me out so that I could prove it. There’s something going on in Lock, and I have to find out what it is. You, Mercedes, May, Red, and I. We’re all victims. And there are more. I don’t know how many yet. You know I could never set a fire at May’s house.”

“So what were you doing in her garden in the middle of the night?”

Good question, and difficult to answer without sounding like a lying criminal.

I chose my words carefully. “There was a bruise on my arm after the attack. It spelled out Red’s name, backward. I needed to photograph it with May’s digital camera. The dress was on fire when I got there.”

This was so preposterous that April took a step backward. “You wanted to photograph your bruise? Is that the story you’re going with?”

I shrugged. It was the truth. What else could I say?

“And you two are working together. Red Sharkey and Fletcher Moon are a team? I’m not paying any extra.”

“I’m not taking the blame for any of this,” said Red, kicking a pebble. “If Half Moon can get me out of trouble, I’m prepared to put up with him for a short period.”

Obviously we weren’t best friends just yet.

“So what did you find out?”

“We established a link between the assault and the robberies. The same person was responsible for both.”

April snorted. “I already know that. So which of you was it?”

“Not us. Someone bigger than us. A lot bigger.”

A car crunched over the gravel driveway out front.

“That’s Mercedes and her Gran, home for lunch,” said April. “Right on time.”

Red grabbed my arm. “We have to go. Now.”

I looked pleadingly at April. “Don’t say anything. Just for one day.”

April was in control and she liked it. I knew from the smirk on her lips that she wouldn’t turn us in, just yet. Having us under her thumb would be too much fun.

“One day. Though you’re going to feel pretty stupid when it turns out that Red really did take Shona’s hair.”

There were doors slamming now. I could hear Mercedes complaining at the front of the house.

“April. We have a contract. You can trust me.”

April spent half a second thinking. “I doubt it.

There’s a hole in the hedge on the left. It brings you out behind the school.”

I nodded, then bolted for the hedge. Red was already a shadow on the other side of the branches. As I squeezed through the foliage, I heard Mercedes squeal as she came around the corner. For a moment I thought she had seen me, then I realized that this was how Mercedes said hello.

BACK AT CHEZ SHARKEY, Herod had a car door propped up against the garden wall.

“Go!” shouted Genie, clicking the button on a large stopwatch.

Herod pulled a flat metal ruler from the leg of his jeans, sliding it between the window and frame. He jiggled the ruler for a few moments and the car door lock popped.

“Clear,” he shouted, stepping back.

Genie stopped the watch. “Fifteen seconds. Not bad. Keep practicing.”

She noticed us coming through the back gate.

“Ah, will you look who it is. Well, boys, any developments in the case?”

“We’ve established a link between the assault and the robberies,” replied Red. The exact words I had used with April.

“Well put,” I said.

Genie held out the stopwatch. “The clock is ticking, boys. Better get back to business. Red, you haven’t rehearsed since this mess started, and we have a title to defend.”

I followed Red into the house.

“Title?”

“School talent show. I was Elvis last year. The Early Years. This year I’m doing Vegas.”

I remembered. Another reason why the girls loved Red. He could sing, and even more important, he
would
sing.

When we reached the bedroom, my iBook’s browser was open on an Internet shopping page.

“Were you on the ’Net?” I asked Red.

Before he could answer, Genie pushed into the room past us.

“I was—just buying some clothes from Paris,” she explained, quitting the site.

“Don’t you need a credit card for that?”

“I have one,” she said, tossing me the plastic rectangle. “Maxed-out, I’m afraid.”

This didn’t bother me much, until I noticed the name on the card.

“That’s my dad’s!” I blurted. “You stole it from my room.”

“Hey, we’re family now, Watson. What’s yours is mine.”

“But this card is for emergencies only.”

Genie hopped up from the chair and grabbed my waving hands. She waltzed us both around the room. “It
is
an emergency, Watson. The autumn-winter season is upon us and I’m still wearing spring-summer clothes.”

I was still twirling when Genie sneaked out the door.

“You need to watch my sister,” commented Red, steering me to the chair. “She’d steal the ham out of your sandwich.”

I ran a quick virus sweep on the iBook and found that Genie had managed to infect the hard drive with a minor virus. I ran the disk repair program, hoping that none of my files had been corrupted. Red sat, watching the program run for about four seconds before his natural energy began bursting out through his extremities. First his knee began jittering, then his toes, then his fingers drumming a beat on the desk.

“Red, please.”

“What?”

“I’m working, here.”

“I’m not stopping you. Anyway, what work? You’re looking at a screen. How long are you going to be?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Why don’t you go play a game of hurling?”

Red elbowed me. “Someone stole my hurl, detective.”

I unstrapped my cast and laid it on the desk. “That’s right. How could I forget?” My arm was still bruised, but the pain only flared if I clenched my fist. So, I avoided clenching my fist.

Red’s entire being was eager for action. “There must be something I can do.”

I pointed at the mass of files on the floor. “Those are the September case files I have to go through. If you could weed out a few red herrings that would save us a lot of time.”

“Red herrings?”

“Our criminal is in there somewhere, but so is every other criminal in Lock. We’re looking for unusual crimes with no obvious motive, possibly teenage or young victims.”

Red thought for a second. “Okay,” he said, scooping the files into his arms. “Give me a few minutes.”

A few minutes? It had taken me hours to get through the first half of the pile.

“Good luck. But investigation is slow work. It could take a while.”

“We’ll see, Half Moon,” said Red, pulling the door closed behind him with his foot.

Red seemed to take the energy out of the room when he left. I suddenly felt incredibly tired. I felt as though I’d been beaten inside and out. Which of course I had. I put my head in my hands and tried to fend off thoughts of home. At the very least my family would be feeling as bad as I was. Was this what being a detective entailed? Where were the lightning flashes of intuition that I had expected?

The computer beeped and I sat up. All clear on the hard drive. I selected Office Works and began to work up profiles of each victim. Maybe once they were in print, then I could find some connection between them—assuming that Red wasn’t the connection.

I dedicated a page to each subject, filling it with every scrap of information I could find. I topped each page off with a photograph, which was surprisingly easy to find on the school Web site or local paper archives. I didn’t bother with a photo of myself, as I know what I look like, and I knew I wasn’t guilty.

I got one of Red from an Elvis impersonator competition publicity photo. I downloaded a photo of Maura Murnane from the local paper’s online archive from when she won Slimmer of the Year. MC Coy had his own Web Site, featuring blurry shots of himself in various tracksuits. And there was a lovely one of May and April on the school fun page.

Red barged back into the room. He had been gone less than twenty minutes. Poring over files was not for everyone.

“I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Red pulled my chair away from the computer. “I think you better come now. Papa is solving your case for you.”

That got me out of my seat fast. I did want the case solved, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t particularly want anyone else to solve it. At the risk of sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger, this one was personal.

I spoke to my computer. “I’ll be back,” I said, then chuckled at the joke that only I understood. Which, I believe, is one of the first signs of insanity.

Papa was seated at the kitchen table with the files piled high in front of him. In one hand he held a statement, in the other a cell phone.

“Petey,” he said into the phone. “That tire job below in Doyle’s garage. I’m presuming that was you and the boys, was it?” Papa winked at me, which looked pretty much like a bear winking at a salmon. “I thought so. Why? Oh, nothing. I might be in the market for a few radials, that’s all. Talk later.”

Papa hung up, tossed the file into the garbage, and moved on to the next one. There were already several files in the garbage.

“Has Papa already phoned those people?” I asked Red.

Red seemed almost embarrassed. “No need. Papa knows exactly who committed those crimes. He was nearby at the time. Very nearby, if you know what I mean.”

I could guess. After all, some of those were the Sharkey files.

Papa was on the phone again. “JoJo. I see you’ve been up to your old tricks again. What do you mean what do I mean? The fruit truck in Wexford. You’re the fruit man in this county and everyone knows it. How about a few boxes of kiwis? I’m very partial to kiwis. Good man. I’ll be over tomorrow.”

Another file in the trash. Some files didn’t even merit a phone call.

“Jimmy. Bob Hooley. English Ned.”

All files in the trash.

This was not how Bernstein said things should be done. There was no proof, no secondary confirmation.

“Do you have a shred of proof?” I asked Papa. “Eh . . . No offense.”

Papa ripped a file in half. “Proof, Half Moon? Proof? Do you want proof, or results?”

I thought about the accusations painted on my head like a target. I imagined the hourglass of time running out, and I thought about my family, worried sick.

“Results,” I said.

“Good. Give me five minutes.”

Red threw together some sandwiches while Papa worked. We stood at the sink eating.

“What’s next, Half Moon?”

I chewed this over, along with a strip of chicken. “Next, I suppose, we find our mystery giant.”

“Shh, moron,” hissed Red. “Do you think Papa is going to let us run around town after a giant? Keep that to yourself.”

“Keep what to yourself?” asked Papa, who apparently could hear a whisper at the other side of the room.

Red tossed out a quick lie. “His bad language. Half Moon has a foul tongue on him. You wouldn’t believe it.”

I smiled apologetically. “I’ll watch what I say.”

Papa pointed a finger the size of a Mars bar. “You better, kiddo. There’s a lady in this house, you know.”

I almost asked
who
, but remembered Genie just in time.

“Sorry.”

Papa spun a file along the kitchen table.

“One left. All the rest are accounted for.”

I was flabbergasted. “One? You cleared the entire month of September in ten minutes?”

Papa shrugged. “No court would convict, but they did the deeds, all right. This other one is a new player.”

I opened the first file and read the single typed page.

Incident Report

Subject: Isobel French (details below)

Miss Isobel French is a dance teacher from the town of Lock. On the evening of August eighteenth, at approximately eight PM, Miss French was returning home after a dance class in the community center. As per usual she had her personal CD player in her bag for the walk home. When Miss French put on her headphones and switched on the music, her head was immediately filled with noise of an unusually high volume. Miss French describes the sound as “like feedback, only a million times louder.” The sound was sufficiently loud to partially deafen Miss French for three days. Her sense of balance has also been disrupted. Miss French’s doctor advised her never to wear a personal CD player again, and to avoid loud noises for a period of eight weeks.

Miss French decided to sue the manufacturers, and took her CD player to an engineer. The engineer discovered that the headphones had been tampered with. The volume inhibitor had been removed and powerful micro speakers had been added. He concluded that person or persons unknown must have taken Miss French’s headphones and replaced them with this extremely dangerous pair. It was at this point, 5 September, that Miss French and her father, Mr. Frank French, reported the incident to the police.

I closed the file. A dancer unable to dance. The victim was older, true, but it was the same man, I could feel it. Our mysterious giant. But even though I knew this, it brought me no closer to him. He was out there, somewhere close, manipulating our lives with his unfathomable crimes.

I looked up. Red and Papa were looking back at me.

“What?”

Red patted my shoulder sympathetically. “You were talking to yourself, Half Wit, sorry, Half Moon.”

“I was not.”

Red allowed his eyes to glaze over. “It’s the same man. I can feel it.”

Papa’s shadow fell over me. “You said something about a giant, too.”

I thought fast. “It’s a quote from Arthur Conan Doyle. A metaphor for our problem.”

Papa squinted down from a great height. “So there’s no real giant?”

“No. This is some kid picking on smaller kids. A smart bully, that’s all. When we find out who it is, we ring the police. End of story.”

Papa folded his arms across his chest “Because I don’t want you boys putting yourself in harm’s way. Red can handle himself, but you, Half Moon, would be knocked over by a gentle breeze.”

Red hustled me out of the kitchen. “Harm’s way,” he scoffed quite convincingly. “Don’t worry about us, Papa. We’re not tackling anyone. As soon as Half Moon charts this new file, then he finds the connection and we’re on the blower to the police. Then he’s out of your hair and everything’s back to normal.”

“Back to normal,” sighed Papa wistfully. “I like the sound of that.”

Back down to the bedroom.

Red propelled me inside. “Okay. You’ve got everything you asked for. The files are sorted, you visited a couple of crime scenes, and you have your computer. So how long will you need, half an hour?”

I got the feeling I was beginning to outstay my welcome.

“Red. It’s not that easy. We’re not connecting the dots here.”

“Well, you better do something, Half Moon, because I don’t have a single clue what to do. Not one. If you can’t find something in those files, we’re up the creek.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re not sunk yet. I have a few ideas.”

Red ballooned his cheeks, blowing out a breath. “Good. I was beginning to worry that you weren’t as smart as you’re always saying you are.”

I shot Red with two finger guns. “Hey, don’t worry about it.”

“I thought we talked about the finger gun thing.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll give you an hour then. I know you brainy types like to be alone.”

“Appreciate it.”

The door closed and I was alone. Alone with my ideas, of which there were exactly none.

Alone in a strange room. With strange people outside the door. With Lock’s police force outside the walls. The future was bright.

I stood in that room, dizzy with failure. Everything I had learned had brought me to this moment, and now I felt useless. The badge in my pocket was just a lump of metal. It meant nothing if I couldn’t solve this mystery.