Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder: Special Edition, page 14
“So my name is Bethany,” she says. “And before Hailey came, Elizabeth was here—but obviously I like you a lot more than I liked Elizabeth,” Bethany adds quickly to Hailey. Then she turns back to me. “So Elizabeth thought since she was Elizabeth and I was Bethany, we should call ourselves the Betties.”
I blink at her. “Why not the Beths?”
“She said it didn’t have the same ring to it,” Bethany says sadly.
“Right,” I say. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t need to know. “Uh, I saw you guys at Homecoming. Outside, coming up the stairs from the track and field. Why weren’t you inside chaperoning?”
It’s not tactful. There’s no natural lead-in. But screw it; I’ve asked something I need to ask. All I can do is hope they answer.
“Uh,” Bethany says, her gaze darting to Hailey. The color drains from her face rapidly, something that spikes my pulse as my heart begins to beat faster. She shifts in her seat, looking more uncomfortable by the second. “Well. It was nothing. No reason.”
Hailey nudges her with her elbow, glaring. They exchange one more glance before Bethany digs into her salad, shoving more lettuce in her mouth than anyone realistically needs in one bite.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hailey says briskly. “We just needed some fresh air.” Unlike Bethany, she still has color in her cheeks—but her face is drawn, tense lines etched around her mouth and eyes. Then she, too, takes a bite of her food.
I stare at them, frankly dumbfounded. I don’t think they could be more suspicious if they tried. When I glance at Nessa, I can tell she’s thinking the same thing; her brows are drawn low over her eyes, her mouth turned down into a little frown.
“All right,” I say, because it doesn’t look like I’m going to get more of an answer than that, and I still have more questions. “Whatever. Did you guys have any absences today?”
The three of them look at me, each of them frowning slightly. Absences aren’t really something they sit and gossip about, apparently. I can’t help but notice, though, that both Hailey and Bethany visibly relax at the change in subject.
“I’ve had a couple,” Betty One/Hailey says. “Did you guys?”
“A few,” Betty Two/Bethany says with a shrug. Then she straightens up. “Oh,” she says, looking at Betty One with wide eyes. “But…Sandy wasn’t here.”
Betty One’s eyes dart from Betty Two to me and then back.
“Sandy?” I say quickly. That has to be Sandra von Meller, right? I clear my throat, trying to sound more casual as I ask, “Who’s Sandy? Is she a bad student or something?”
“No,” Betty One says dismissively after an awkward pause. “Her grades are fine. But she’s a stuck-up little rich girl, a beauty queen type. A complete snob.”
So…kind of like Betty One.
I do not say this.
Instead I say, “I think I know who you’re talking about. Blonde hair? Her name is Sandra, right?”
Betty One and Betty Two both nod. “Sandra von Meller.”
My heart stops; my skin crawls as once again I’m assaulted with the memory of the girl in the woods.
Sandra. Sandra von Meller.
That “stuck-up little rich girl,” as Betty One called her, is dead.
And I thought Juniper and I were the only ones who knew that, but…Betties One and Two are making me question this assumption. My mind flashes back and forth between the photo in the yearbook and the image of her on the forest floor.
And it hits me, suddenly, why she looked familiar.
She volunteered at the food bank. Sandra von Meller worked at the Autumn Grove Food Bank. Not often, I don’t think, but I’m almost positive I saw her there a few times. In fact—my stomach turns, my appetite vanishing—I think she’s the one whose shift I covered the other day.
“I have to go,” I mutter to the Betties. Surprisingly, all three of them seem happy to see the back of me; they really must not have liked the questions I was asking.
I shove my lunch back into the fridge and then hurry back to my office, walking as fast as I can without drawing attention to myself. As soon as the door is locked behind me, I collapse into my chair, pull out my phone, and dial Rodriguez’s number.
“Sandra von Meller,” I say immediately, before his greeting is even all the way out of his mouth. “High school student. Did she volunteer at the food bank? Do you know her?”
“Yeah, I know Sandy. She comes two weekends a month,” Rodriguez says, sounding confused. “Why—”
“Do you know what kind of car she drives?” I’m flying by the seat of my pants with this hunch, but I fire the questions off anyway. “Have you seen it? Do you remember color or anything?”
“Eh, I don’t know,” Rodriguez says, and he sounds a bit impatient now. “Why are you asking this? It’s some little white thing, I think.” He pauses. “Weird bumper stickers.”
My heart freezes in my chest. It freezes right over, glassy ice halting all operations.
“Thanks,” I say, sounding dazed. “See you later.” And then I hang up, cutting short Rodriguez’s questions but leaving me with more of my own. That’s the car that was following me, I’m almost sure.
Why was Sandra von Meller following me?
I pull out my phone and send a text to Sheriff Garrity: I looked in the yearbook, and I think the girl we saw was named Sandra von Meller. She’s a junior at the high school.
He doesn’t respond.
When I get home, I’m tired, grumpy, and full of half-baked ideas that won’t let me rest. But one thing does get a smile out of me: a note on the refrigerator that reads Caroline was happy to oblige, and under that, an old photo of me with an earring.
* Maybe it’s just because I’m an author, but there’s something magical about libraries and dusty books, isn’t there?
* Listen to Little House by The Fray here!
* One of the hardest parts of writing for me is coming up with names I haven’t already used. My mind always goes to the same five names until I’m stuck looking through baby name lists.
* There was a time when Nessa was going to have her own story, but that didn’t pan out, unfortunately.
12
IN WHICH JUNIPER ADDS TO THE MURDER BOARD
Downward-facing dog is my least favorite yoga pose.
It’s not that it’s difficult, necessarily—it requires strength and flexibility, yes, but really I just hate the feeling of blood rushing to my head. I also hate feeling like everyone is staring at my butt in the air.
Which is ridiculous. No one is staring at my butt in the air, because everyone else’s butts are in the air too. We all have blood rushing to our heads right now, and the only things we’re staring at are our yoga mats.
I dislike it anyway. But I do it, because I am being paid by one perpetually smiling man to teach yoga classes every afternoon.
And look. The smiling thing?
It’s getting a little weird.
I don’t have a problem with happy people. In fact, I like them. I like happy people. It’s just…Gus smiles all the time.
All.
The.
Time.
I bet when that man wakes up in the morning, he’s already grinning from ear to ear. At this point I just don’t see how that wouldn’t be true. I watched him get a drink from the drinking fountain yesterday, and the only time that smile stopped was when his lips actively had to close to swallow the water. Never fear, though; those pearly whites showed right back up afterward.
And they stayed. They stayed for the rest of my shift, they were there when I arrived this afternoon, and they’re still there now.
Extra pearly. Extra white.
“All right,” I say, wiping sweat from my forehead with the hem of my shirt. I let it drop and then look at Gus, jumping when I see that he’s already watching me. “That was my last class. Am I good to go?”
“You’re good to go,” he confirms. He’s still smiling, of course.
I get everything back in my bag, rolling up my yoga mat and slinging it over my shoulder. Then I refill my water bottle. You can never be too hydrated.
I stand there at the drinking fountain, staring aimlessly around the small studio while my bottle fills up. The music playing in the background is soft and nondescript, but I like it; I sway along as I listen.
My entire body freezes, though, when my eyes catch on one of the photos on the wall.
It’s a picture I’ve seen every day since I started working here—a group photo taken here in the studio and featuring about fifteen smiling faces, all crammed into this little space. Gus is kneeling in front, but he’s still as tall as some of the other people surrounding him. Everyone is sweaty and pink-cheeked, much like me at the moment.
It’s none of these things that catch my attention, though. What catches my attention is the smiling blonde on the far right. She’s as sweaty as the rest of them, and she looks just as happy, too.
“Hey,” I call, my eyes never leaving the photo. “Gus. Come here for a minute.”
Despite Gus’s colossal size, he actually moves quietly; he’s very light on his feet. So I don’t hear him approach; I just jump when he answers me a few seconds later, his voice coming from right behind me.
“Yeah?”
“This girl,” I say, pointing at the blonde. “You know her?”
He leans forward, his head craning over my shoulder just a bit. “Yes,” he says after a second. “That’s Sandy.”
“Sandy,” I repeat. There’s an uptick in my pulse at the sound of her name, a flurry of motion from that muscle in my chest cavity. “Did—” I break off, correcting myself quickly. “Does she come here a lot?”
From the corner of my eye, I see Gus nod. “She was a regular. I haven’t seen her in a week or two, though.”
A red flag begins waving in my mind, subtle but unmistakable, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. It flutters just out of my grasp, taunting, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
I clear my throat and try to sound normal as I ask another question. “Were you guys close?”
“Uh,” he says uncomfortably. “We weren’t…not close, I guess?”
I blink, frowning. What kind of answer is that? It was a yes/no question. I turn around, intending to clarify, but my words die when I see Gus.
He’s not smiling.
I repeat: he’s not smiling.
“Gus?” I say, my voice hesitant.
This is brand new territory. Nothing I learned when I got certified to teach yoga prepared me for a non-smiling Augustus Flanders. And I get it now—I get why he’s constantly smiling.
Because he’s terrifying when he’s not.
This mountain of a man—I’d put him at probably six-six, honestly, with muscles in places I didn’t know muscles existed—is staring at me, his brow furrowed, his mouth set in a tight line.
“Gus?” I say again. My voice squeaks a little, but I’m past the point of caring. I just want to get out of here and come back tomorrow when hopefully Gus’s smile has returned.
“Sorry,” he says gruffly. He rubs one massive hand over the top of his head. “There was just a bit of an incident. And I would have brought it up with you if Sandy had returned, but…well, she never did.”
“What kind of incident?” I say as my heart continues to thunder along. We’ve entered a bit of a Twilight Zone area, where I’m not sure which way is up and which way is down or what’s even going on. Gus knew Sandy? He isn’t smiling? There was an incident? It’s too many things for my brain to make sense of at one time.
“She—it wasn’t—I never—” he stutters, and strangely it makes me feel better; stumbling over his words makes him feel more human and less like an iceberg-sized muscle monster. Then he sighs. “Frankly, it’s not relevant to your job here. If it comes up again, I’ll inform you of anything you need to know,” he says.
What? That’s it? That’s all I’m getting?
“Because maybe I could help—” I say tentatively.
But Gus shakes his head, his face is still pulled into that tense, scary expression. “No need. Appreciate the offer, though.”
I nod my defeat, suddenly feeling very tired. “I’m leaving,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I guess I need to put Gus on the Murder Board when I get home.
Aiden and I have fallen into an easy routine in the last week since we learned the name of the girl in the woods. The second half of this week was when Harvest Break began, so he hasn’t been at the school; he’s been helping at the food bank instead, throwing himself into his work there with a restless fury.
Meanwhile I write every morning while he’s doing his own thing, or I try to; yes, my characters keep killing each other, but it turns out there’s a lot more to writing mysteries than just murder. There are logistics I know nothing about, and it’s slowing me down.
It’s more than the logistics, though, really. I’m brainstorming ways to figure out that stuff, but the biggest problem I’m having is that the book is feeling so…mechanical, I guess. Lifeless. I’m hitting the beats, but everything feels robotic, and I can’t figure out why.
So I spend a lot of time staring at the screen and shotgunning chips and guac.
Then in the afternoons I teach yoga and fitness classes until six. After that I go home, and we eat dinner together, usually on the couch while watching something. Recently it’s been a series of World War Two documentaries. I complained about this at first, but honestly, it wasn’t long until I was completely engrossed, booing whenever footage of Hitler came on the screen.
And then, once we’re done eating and booing fascist dictators, we go stare at the refrigerator, which is the home of our Murder Board—just like in the detective shows.
Only this isn’t a detective show, and we aren’t detectives. So instead of lots of pictures with connecting lines and ideas, we pretty much only have two things: Sandra’s name—though it seems clear she went by Sandy more than Sandra—along with what we know about her, and a list of people who knew her or interacted with her at all. That’s as far as our combined investigative prowess has gotten us.
We spent Monday and Tuesday after the dance waiting for Sheriff Garrity to call and say that we were right, that a girl had been reported missing—but he didn’t. When Aiden finally called him Tuesday night, Sheriff Garrity said Sandra von Meller isn’t missing, despite what Aiden told him Monday about her being the girl we saw.
“Are you absolutely certain it was Sandra von Meller?” Garrity said, sounding frustrated as his voice echoed over the speaker. “Can you guarantee that’s the girl you think you saw?”
“I—I can’t—I can’t guarantee anything,” Aiden replied, scrubbing his hand down his face. “But she’s been absent, and I really think it was her—”
But Sheriff Garrity wasn’t having it. He talked to Sandra’s mother, apparently; according to her, Sandra is spending Harvest Break on a solo road trip, looking at colleges. Her mother did admit that Sandra left early Sunday morning, several days earlier than planned, and that she didn’t see her before she left—but she says she’s been in touch through text since then, sending updates and even pictures.
Which means that someone has Sandra’s phone and is pretending to be her, sending photos that were either photoshopped or already on the phone. That will probably give me nightmares until I die. Plus, what kind of parent lets their teenager go on a road trip by herself?
So from Wednesday on, we’ve just been trying to learn more about Sandra.
We don’t know a ton about her or what she was like, but everything we do know is thanks to Aiden’s position as guidance counselor at the school. He was able to get a hold of some files and learn a bit more. And honestly? It doesn’t paint a great picture.
She was in pageants since she was a little girl; I looked up photos, and all of them involved big hair and blinding, vacant smiles masking disturbingly dead eyes.
Probably related to the pageant life was the eating disorder she was working through when she was in middle school; Aiden says there are no additional details on that one. He does know that she went to the nurse’s office every afternoon between lunch and fourth period to get her depression medication.
Her grades were good, and she was planning on applying to four or five Ivy Leagues. Among her extracurriculars were student council, cross country, and twice-monthly volunteer shifts at the food bank.
“And you’re sure Rodriguez said her car was small and white with bumper stickers?” I asked Aiden when we first started getting all these details figured out.
“Yes,” Aiden said, sounding annoyed—and, admittedly, it wasn’t the first time I was asking that question.
I asked again anyway. “And that definitely matches the description of the car you saw in front of our house, and the one that was following you?”
“For the millionth time, yes. I checked her intake paperwork, too. The handwriting matches. She’s the one who wrote the note to you.”
So that’s what we know about her: that she had good grades, iffy mental health, a beauty pageant past, and Ivy League ambitions.
And that she died right before she was supposed to be telling me what she knew about my parentage.
To be fair, we have been trying to figure more out—it just hasn’t been working. Garrity said his hands were tied if there was no body and no evidence from their search of the woods. And I guess I get that, but also…does he think we just imagined it? Both of us? A dead body? That’s not something that usually happens to me. I don’t normally see dead bodies where there aren’t any.
Regardless of my rock-solid logic, though, Aiden says this argument will not work on Garrity. So for now we have to wait a few more days until school starts up again, and we’re stuck with our Murder Board in the meantime.
In order to make room for the Murder Board, I did have to find a new home for the photo of Aiden wearing an earring. It’s now taped to the microwave. So far he hasn’t moved it, which I consider a real win, because it makes me laugh.
