Novel - Half Moon Investigations (4 page)

MY MOTHER WORRIES about me. She worries that I’m not going to grow, or that I’m going to hit a spurt and cost her a fortune in new clothes. She worries that I don’t have many friends, and she worries about my fascination with crime.

I try to smile when she’s around to show how happy I am, but I’m not really a smiler so she knows I’m faking. So then I don’t smile and she follows me around asking what’s wrong.

That day, when she came to my room to check homework, for once I was able to tell her something that made her happy.

“I’m going over to April Devereux’s house after dinner.”

Mom was ecstatic. “Oh my God. April Devereux. April and May are the cutest names. It takes a lot of guts, as a parent, to give your children names like that, but if they turn out pretty then it’s worth the risk. What are you going to say?”

“Nothing. I’m going to listen. April wants to talk to me.”

Mom waved her hands in the air in thanks. “April Devereux wants to talk to my little Fletcher. She’s so pretty. Perfect. You have to say something, honey. You can’t sit there nodding for the evening.”

I was beginning to wish I hadn’t mentioned my appointment.

“I will respond to the situation, Mom. Whatever comes up.”

Mom drew a horrified breath. “Oh, no you don’t. I know how you respond to situations, Fletcher Moon. You make one of your observational deductions. You told your cousin Eve that she had a calcium deficiency.”

“She did. There were white spots on her nails. I was just trying to help.”

Mom shook me by the shoulders, then squeezed me tight. “Trust me, honey. That isn’t what girls want to hear. Just tell us we look fabulous as often as possible.”

I frowned. “Even if it’s not true?”

Mom pulled three of my shirts from the closet. “Especially if it’s not true. Now, which one?”

I pointed to a plain black shirt, which I would wear with plain black jeans. Be invisible.

“Mom, you should maybe calm down a little. It’s not a social call. April wants my help. She’s a client. And she’s only ten.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Men. Such simpletons. Honestly. Do you think I told your father that I thought he was handsome? No. I told him I needed his help with physics.”

“And Dad fell for that?”

“Of course he did. He wanted to fall for it, and I didn’t even take physics.”

Mom was an interior decorator who ran her own business from the garage. Dad was a computer engineer with a local company that made memory boards. They were an unlikely match. Art and science. Heart and hand.

My sister, Hazel, stomped into my room, not bothering to knock. She was fifteen, an aspiring writer, and a full-time drama queen. Hazel could be found at any given hour either hunched over her antique typewriter or fending off the droves of adolescent boys that she attracts with her fine features and blond hair. Fending off all except her beloved Stevie.

Hazel took a sheet of paper from her bag.

“I need your professional opinion, Fletcher,” she said, handing me the folded note. Hazel was perhaps the only person in the world who took my profession seriously. Except perhaps April Devereux, now.

I unfolded the paper and read a note from Hazel’s boyfriend.

Dear Hazel,

I am so sorry about the movies last night. Dad made me stay in and write my history assignment about the Battle of the Somme in World War II.

I will make it up to you. Next weekend let me take you for dinner at Le Bistro. My treat.

XXXXX

Stevie

I rubbed the page between my fingers, then smelled it.

“Well?” demanded Hazel. “What do you think?”

I scratched my chin. “I would have to say, dump him.”

Hazel stamped her foot. “I knew it!” she whined. “How do you know?”

“There are several clues. First he blames his father, which is classic transference. Then he refers to the Battle of the Somme, which took place in World War One, not Two—something Stevie would know if he had actually completed his assignment. Also specific references such as the essay title are commonly woven into false stories to make them sound real. In fact they provide the detective with more ways to trip up the subject.”

“This is all pretty circumstantial.”

I took a pot of graphite filings from my desk. “I’m not finished yet,” I said. “Stevie offers to bring you to Le Bistro, which is gross overcompensation. That has guilt written all over it. The letter smells faintly of perfume, Happy by Clinique, which is not one of yours, which leads me to believe he has been holding hands with another girl. Finally, I feel indentations in the page. I suspect that our Stevie made more than one attempt to write this letter. Perhaps he was even going to tell the truth before he lost his nerve.”

I laid the page flat on my desk, shaking graphite filings over its surface. After a slow count of ten, I tipped the filings into the wastepaper basket. Not all the filings ran off, some caught in the indents.

“This is what was written on the page before this one in the pad. Only two lines are legible. I think you will find that the handwriting is the same.”

Hazel took the sheet, reading the faint black writing aloud.
“Dear Hazel, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have met some . . .”
My sister ripped the note into shreds, tossing it into the air like confetti.

“He’s met someone else, has he?” she said, pulling a cell phone out of her pocket. “Someone who wears Happy. It should take me about five minutes to find out who.” She handed me a Mars bar. “Thanks, little brother. For that I won’t tease you for an entire day.”

“I’d prefer actual money,” I said.

“I can’t pay you,” said Hazel, skipping across the hall to her own room. “It would be exploitation of child labor.”

The door closed behind her.

Mom sighed. “We won’t see her for days. Hazel will get at least a one-act play out of this.”

I knelt to gather the shreds of paper. “Do you see how complicated things become when people get involved in relationships, Mom? My business is just taking off and I want to concentrate on that, so I think I’ll give the relationships a pass for a few years, if you don’t mind. April Devereux is a client, that’s all.”

“Okay,” said Mom. “But wear something with color. Think ahead. You never know.”

How do you know if you’re a detective? What sets us apart from the everyday people? My theory is that most people like to dwell on the brighter side of life. They want to concentrate on the rug, and not on the dirt swept underneath. Not detectives. We want to pull back the rug and put the dirt in a forensics bag. Then we want to run over the floorboards with a sticky roller just in case some of the dirt got away. We are social scientists. We like to take people apart to see what makes them tick. You don’t have to be particularly smart to be a detective, you just have to want to do it.

April lived on Rhododendron Road. A name that must have started out as a joke and then stuck. It took twenty-five minutes to walk along Lock’s historic wooden works and across the town bridge, and with every step I thought about my badge.

April’s house was a large manor-style building, complete with manicured lawns and a tree-lined avenue. The drive was covered with raked white gravel, and flower beds swirled along both sides drawing the visitor toward the front porch.

I crunched down the drive only to be told by the gardener that April was next door at her cousin’s, but had left a note for me. The note was on scented pink paper with a unicorn watermark. April Devereux was printed in dark-pink flowing script across the top.

Dear Half Moon,

Follow the yellow brick road.

A (April)

It was not very encouraging, I decided, if your employer thought you were too thick to figure out that A stood for April. Especially at the bottom of a note from April, on April’s personally monogrammed paper.

The yellow brick road was a sandstone path that wound through the white gravel, leading to a gate in the wall between April’s and May’s houses. The gate was unlocked and I pushed through to a house pretty much identical to the first one.

April’s cousin May ran down her side of the yellow brick road, just as I closed the gate.

“Fletcher,” she said. “You came. I was just coming to check.”

It was generally acknowledged that May Devereux was the nice one of the pair. She was dressed in full Irish dance costume, including hard shoes. Gold and green were the prominent colors. This, I have to admit, was a surprise.

“Practicing?”

She grimaced. “Yes. I want to do better this year in the school talent show. Only a few days to go.”

“I’m sure you will,” I said kindly. May’s chances of doing well in any show were about as promising as mine of going on a dream date with Bella Barnes. It was well known in our class that May was the worst dancer in this universe and perhaps any parallel ones. When May tapped out a hornpipe on a wooden floor, it was like listening to a toddler trying to crush a spider with a hammer.

“Nice costume,” I said.

“It’s my lucky dress,” said May. “Nice shirt.”

Mom wouldn’t let me out of the house dressed completely in black; she felt I would be broadcasting negative vibrations. So I agreed to wear a Hawaiian shirt given to me by an uncle who didn’t really know me as a person.

I shrugged apologetically. “My mother . . .”

May nodded. No further explanation was needed. Everyone in Lock knew about my mother’s flamboyant taste in color.

May’s father appeared behind her, in full gardening regalia, including leather kneepads and thorn-proof gloves. He was tall and lean with a farmer’s tan. In fact, he looked exactly how TV said a father should look, right down to the checkered sweater. He seemed the perfect dad and husband. My mother and her art appreciation group had been genuinely shocked when May’s mother had walked out on the family a few months earlier.

“Mr. Devereux,” I said, extending a hand. “I’m Fletcher Moon.”

May’s father shook the hand, smiling. Perfect white teeth, of course.

“Call me Gregor. Ah, yes, the young detective. May tells me you have qualifications.”

“That’s right. I’m certified to practice in the U.S. Washington, to be precise, when I’m twenty-one.”

Mr. Devereux nodded seriously. “That’s very impressive, Fletcher. Maybe you can help April and May solve this crime of theirs. Or you could, if the girls weren’t completely loopy and imagining the whole thing.”

May’s father winked at me, rotating his index finger by his temple. International sign language for completely loopy.

“Dad,” said May, elbowing her father in the ribs.

Mr. Devereux groaned theatrically, clutching his side. “Okay, okay. There
is
a big conspiracy. Everyone
else
is loopy, except the two cute cousins.”

May grabbed my hand. “Come on. April is in the Wendy house.”

I was happy to find myself dragged through a garden by a pretty girl from the pink set, but I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about sitting in a Wendy house. That’s the kind of thing that can get you killed if it leaks out to the boys in school. We followed the path past a seashell fountain complete with frolicking cherubs, which looked like it hadn’t worked in decades. But this Wendy house was no plastic hut crammed with dollies and toy tea sets. This was an actual mini-house with electricity, Internet access, and running water.

When we entered, April was at a laptop, poring over a world economics Web page. It was a nice system, linked up to a scanner, printer, and digital camera.

“Fletcher’s here,” said May.

April started, then shook a tiny fist at the computer. “Just a sec. I’m trying to check out the latest red carpet gossip, and this educational junk keeps popping up. Honestly, market strengths in Asia. Like, who cares?”

“A few billion Asians,” I said.

April scowled at me. I was starting to feel very unloved. That didn’t bother me much. Detectives had to get used to negativity. One of our main functions is to bring bad news.

April shut the computer’s lid and faced me. If she had been pink in school, now she had gone into pink overdrive. She was wearing so much pink that it cast a glow onto the walls.

“Pink!” I blurted.

I was treated to a twirl. “I know. Isn’t it fabulous? Us girls love pink. It’s the essence of femininity.”

I was starting to feel that at least some of this pinkness was for my benefit.

May took two bottles of chilled water from the fridge, handing one to me.

“Nice place,” I said.

“Dad built it for me so that I can practice my dancing. He really wants me to win a medal or something.”

“I’m sure you will. Someday.”

How could I say that? What a phony.

April changed the subject. “We should talk about my case. How much of your valuable time do those ten euros buy?”

This was it. The big time. “I charge a fee of ten euros per day. Plus expenses. But because this is my first real case, I’m going to waive the expenses. And because of school and homework, it generally takes me about three days to put in a full day’s work. So I’m all yours until Sunday.”