Disclaimer: The Hardy Boys and all related characters, places and events, are the property of Franklin W. Dixon, Simon & Schuster, The Stratemeyer Syndicate and a whole lot of other people who aren't me.
Author's Note: This story is set more or less in the future of the Casefiles timeline. There is some mildly violent material.
Queen of Hearts
The summer after Frank Hardy turned nineteen, he had plans to spend time with Callie Shaw, go hiking with his brother and some of their friends, and spend most of the month of August camping in Maine, flyfishing, swimming, and spending time with his brother before Frank left for Stanford to start his freshman year of college.
What he planned ended up not mattering very much when his brother, still a few weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday, went missing.
And eighteen days went by with no word, no ransom and no leads.
Fenton Hardy was somewhere overseas, working for a government contractor in the Green Zone, trying to figure out how the company managed to lose something close to five million dollars and fifteen crates of weaponry including grenades and one shoulder-mounted rocket launcher before it happened again. The police sent word, but it took exactly nineteen days for the message to get to Fenton, a fact that resulted in two court-martials and a civilian dispatcher losing his job. Ultimately, in his absence, a very nearly obscene amount of government agencies involved themselves in the investigation, all of them trying to find Fenton Hardy's son and Frank watched with a growing sense of dread as they managed to do very little except repeat one another. They protested heartily when Frank cut out the middle man and started investigating himself.
The Bayport Police Department informed Frank that he was not to get involved, but Con Riley had a resigned tone in his voice and he didn't even bother repeating himself while Frank stared at him in stony silence. Six days in, and Con was watching the secret service and a woman who said she was from Interpol with a kind of weary bemusement.
The Network didn't bother showing up, but Frank didn't expect them to.
It was the FBI who managed to finally tie Frank down. They arrived early on, but on day three a new team arrived – a 'special investigative team' Frank was told – from Los Angeles. He checked up on their record and found they had a close rate that'd make most investigators salivate. His enchantment faded when two of them turned out to be Frank's babysitters.
Days seven through seventeen passed pretty uniformly. By the end, Frank even gave up slipping his guards. He'd found no leads, no clues. And by the time day eighteen, Joe's birthday, rolled around, all Frank had was a heavy weight in his chest that told him they were running out of time.
Callie had finally talked his mother and Gertrude into leaving the house, ostensibly to go shopping for Joe's birthday presents. Frank had seen the pained look on Callie's face when Laura announced what they would be doing and knew that Callie at least had given up.
His bodyguards, two pretty decent guys named Colby and David, were working in his father's office, as they had been for most of the week alongside some kind of research specialist who was trying to find clues in Fenton Hardy's case files. Frank had helped them for a while, but as the afternoon dragged on and the list of suspects grew longer, Frank broke away and went upstairs.
He found Joe lying in Frank's bed, his hands folded across his stomach. He could have been sleeping, except Joe hated to sleep on his back.
Frank hesitated beside the bed for several long moments, not calling for help, not checking for a pulse. Joe's lips were blue, and when Frank brushed a hand across his brother's cheek, the skin was cold and hard.
He sat at his desk with his face in his hands while the room swarmed with agents and medical examiners. It was a long time before they took Joe's body away. It was even longer before he let them lead him out of the room.
"Tell me something I don't know," Callie Shaw said. She waggled her eyebrows and bit a French fry in half.
Frank raised an eyebrow in return, but her emphasis was on 'know' not 'don't' and she was in a good mood, so he figured she meant it the way it sounded. "Huh. Okay. Did you know California tax laws-"
Callie laughed out loud, hiding her mouth behind her hand. "Frank!"
"All right, all right." Frank leaned back in his chair, considering his options. The truth was, his life was pretty uneventful those days, and aside from the day to day details of graduate school and the horror that was his position as a teaching assistant, there wasn't a whole lot to tell. "Give me a hint here."
Callie rolled her eyes at him. "How's school?"
"Good. Easy. Tedious."
"Of course," Callie said. "Harvard Law school would be a pale challenge for Frank Hardy. The geeks in Bayport still aspire to beat your GPA, you know that?"
He grinned into his glass of ice tea. "It's good I've left my mark on the world."
"Are you still investigating?" Callie asked. "Working a case? Give!"
Frank shook his head. "I haven't worked a case," he skipped over the words since Joe died and substituted "in years," so smoothly he thought Callie probably didn't even notice. It had been years since the last time they saw each other, and even though they had spoken and emailed a few times since then, she didn't know him as she used to.
She blinked at him, obviously surprised. "Well, tell me about the last case you worked."
"You know that case," Frank said. "You were there for most of it."
He could see his meaning sink in and she ducked her head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."
"It's all right." In the last six years, it hadn't escaped Frank's attention that no one talked about Joe in his presence unless he brought the subject up himself. He preferred it that way. If their friends had gotten comfortable, complacent with Joe's memory, it would have been like losing him all over again.
Frank was aware that keeping the wound so fresh wasn't particularly healthy, but it was better than letting it heal. If the pain was all he had left of Joe, it would be enough.
Callie rapidly changed the subject and they spent the rest of lunch talking about Chet Morton's fiancé, Tony Prito's misadventures trying to buy a house, and Phil Cohen's chances of winning a Nobel Prize before he was thirty. "How's Vanessa?" Frank asked and Callie rolled her eyes but didn't answer.
Later, after he walked her to her car and kissed her cheek, he said, "I'm seeing someone."
Callie blinked for a moment, then beamed. "Really? Since when?"
"Casey and I have been together a while," Frank admitted. "Almost three years."
Hurt and something else flickered across her face for an instant before she shook her head. "I guess I understand why you didn't tell me. But you're happy?"
"We're good." It wasn't an answer, but Callie didn't seem to notice.
"I'm glad." Callie hugged him tightly. "I'll call you after I get back to New York. Don't study too hard."
He watched her car pull out into traffic before he turned away and walked back to his apartment.
Six weeks later, Casey was dead.
Six years ago, the FBI had liked Callie Shaw for his brother's murder. Not seriously – they hadn't had a serious suspect. They'd had hundreds of possible suspects, and even more that they probably didn't even know about. Frank had spent more than a week with Colby and David watching them sort through his files, his father's files, the local PD and the FBI and everyone else they could find, trying to collect everyone that Fenton, Frank or Joe had pissed off over the years. Frank had been impressed mostly that they managed not to be reduced to tears.
Callie had been a suspect only after Joe was found dead, when they found out that he'd been dead for days, his body frozen, his heart and spleen cut out and replaced with two playing cards – the Queen of Hearts and the Ace of Spades, respectively. There had been a lot of pressure to come up with something and the FBI had tossed out the idea of Callie as a vengeful lover, removing an obstacle to gaining Frank's full attention.
Callie had been jealous of Joe in the past, perhaps, or at least irritated at how much time Frank had spent with his brother, but she wasn't a murderer.
And even if she was¸ she was too smart to think killing Joe would win her Frank's attention. None of their friends would ever think something like that could work.
"She's not stupid," Frank had finally said, startling the FBI agents who had all but forgotten he was in the room with them. "Callie knows me too well. She knows how-" he couldn't think of a word to describe his relationship with his brother, so he just shrugged.
When he did, finally, end things with Callie, it had nothing to do with the FBI's investigation. It had a lot to do with the fact that he hadn't talked to her in months, hunting down leads and clues across half the country and probably more to do with his failure to find anything. The truth was that Frank knew he'd never be capable of giving anyone his full attention again, not while his brother's murder went unsolved.
Callie hadn't been surprised. Frank suspected at the time that she'd considered things ended long before and was letting him decide it for himself.
Some of Casey's internal organs had been removed, the authorities told Frank after he identified the body. His heart, his spleen. Frank stood beside the medical examiner in the morgue and nodded, too tired, too resigned, to even be surprised. "Playing cards?" he asked, and the detective's eyes widened.
They gave him a few minutes alone to say goodbye, which Frank wasn't entirely sure he wanted. There was nothing he could say to Casey in death he hadn't told him in life, not even an apology.
The detective was waiting outside the door, a burly man who looked like he'd had quite a lot of muscle in his younger days and even now was hiding quite a lot of strength underneath a middle-age spread. "Detective Lawrence," Frank said.
Lawrence led him to an interrogation room and even extended the unusual courtesy of asking Frank if he wanted a lawyer. "Maybe later," Frank told him. "Am I a suspect?"
"Only so far as everyone is, this early in an investigation."
Which meant Lawrence had made some phone calls while Frank was in the morgue. Otherwise, his question about the playing cards would have earned him the position as main suspect instantly.
Lawrence had a notepad and pencil, and he had a crime scene folder closed at his elbow. "You found Casey Jennings' body?"
Frank had held a study session for one of the classes he TA'd. A criminal law class full of kids with lots of interest in criminals and very little interest in law – half the class would fail spectacularly if they didn't pass the exam on Thursday. He hadn't gone back to his apartment until after ten o'clock at night.
"Does Mr. Jennings live with you?" Lawrence asked.
Frank shook his head. "Casey had a roommate. Bill Weinstein. They rented an apartment just off campus."
"You were together for three years and you weren't living together?" Lawrence raised an eyebrow, the same skeptical expression everyone got when they asked Frank about it.
"I didn't want to," Frank said flatly. "Casey and I talked about it a few times. He was always all right with my decision."
"Is there anyone in your family who might have been unhappy about your relationship with another man?"
It was a fair question, but Frank could only shake his head. "My parents don't care about things like that," he said. "My friends – most of my friends know and don't care. I can't think of anyone close to me who'd be bothered enough to say anything, let alone do something like this."
"'Most' of your friends?"
"My ex-girlfriend, Callie Shaw. I just told her a few weeks ago."
"Any particular reason you put it off so long?"
Frank shrugged. "She and I don't really discuss personal things anymore."
Lawrence nodded. "But you're still friends?"
"We talk a lot. Email. Phone calls. Weather, classes and work, catch up on the old crew from high school. That's about it. I-" Frank considered his words carefully. "I don't really discuss personal things with much of anyone, Detective Lawrence."
"Except Casey?"
Frank shook his head. "Casey understood that there were things I couldn't talk to anyone about." At least Frank hoped Casey had understood that. He'd never been anything less than honest about it.
"Tell me about the crime scene."
Frank had returned from the tutoring session, let himself in and gone straight to his bedroom. He had hit the light switch as he walked into the room, and the first thing he had seen was the body laid out on his bed.
Casey had been lying on his back with his hands folded over his stomach. His lips had been pale blue. Frank had wanted to scream.
"My brother was murdered when I was nineteen," Frank told Lawrence. Saying it was always strange – like it was costing Frank something he didn't have enough of already just to get the words out. "The murderer took him for eighteen days, cut out his heart and spleen and replaced them with the Queen of Hearts and the Ace of Spades playing cards and froze his body until they somehow managed to get into my parents house, swarming with FBI agents and under heavy guard, to leave Joe lying in my bed."
Maybe it was the way he said it, maybe Lawrence was done with him anyway. Either way, the detective thanked him for his time, gave Frank his card, and walked him to the lobby. "I need you to stay in the area," Lawrence said finally, and Frank nodded. He wasn't going anywhere.
Casey's body was eventually released. The funeral came in a flurry of concerned ministers and overly-cautious friends and coworkers. It went with the vague flurry of talking to Casey's relatives who only barely knew who he was and friends of Casey's who knew all too well. Casey's parents were heartbroken, but polite. If they were blaming him for this, they were too kind to say so.
For the next few weeks everyone tiptoed around Frank, careful to watch their words, offering to take over his classes or to give him extensions on projects. The police called him once a day and stopped by his office – Lawrence pursing the investigation with the air of a man who'd been told to look the other way despite his better judgment.
Frank was pretty sure he was the only person on Earth that wasn't a suspect when Joe died. It seemed perfectly fitting that he was the only real suspect this time around.
He spent the first few nights in a hotel, because he couldn't quite face the idea of going back to the apartment and sleeping where Casey's body had lain and patiently answered every call from his mother, no matter how many times a days she interrupted his classes.
Chet Morton showed up at his office after his last class on the fourth day after Casey's funeral. Frank propped his chin in his hands and regarded Chet steadily as the other man leaned in the doorway.
"Your mom sent me," Chet said unabashedly. "She thinks you're moping."
Frank shook his head, but didn't bother hiding the grin Chet's comment caused. "Uh-huh."
"Oh, shut up," Chet said. "You're done here, yeah?" He wrinkled his nose. "I can't believe you voluntarily work in a school."
"First of all, I work here to pay for my tuition," Frank said.
"And that's another thing," Chet continued. "This whole grad school thing. Obviously your mom warped you horribly as a child, because no one else I know would willingly undergo even more school than is required by law. I mean – okay, college, you can't get a job without a degree, but seriously. Law school? You're just not right."
"Good to see you too, Chet."
"Bite me. Come on. I'm supposed to help you buy a new bed."
Frank paused in the act of standing. "Chet-"
"Or a new apartment. Whichever." Chet held his gaze. "It's up to you."
Frank exhaled slowly through his teeth. "There's a Mattress Discounter not far from the mall."
After Joe died, Frank slept in his brother's room until it was time to leave for Stanford. He left nearly all of his belongings behind that first year and if everyone wanted to think it was because he couldn't look at any of it without being reminded of how Joe died, then he let them think that. It was probably more than partially true anyway, but it meant that no one looked at him funny when he took Joe's things instead.
Chet did most of the work taking his old bed apart. It was clean – there hadn't been blood either time, the killer leaving both Joe and Casey immaculately clean. Chet piled the whole thing in his car, pillows, sheets and comforter included, and Frank sent him off to the Salvation Army while he set up the new bed.
He was done before Chet got back – knowing Chet, Frank figured he was probably horribly lost – and he sat back on his heels and looked around the room.
"I'm sorry, Case," he finally said. And if he was apologizing for not hurting as much as the world thought he was, then that was something only the two of them needed to know.
Chet found his way back eventually, minus the bed. Frank resisted the urge to ask if the bed was resting on the side of the road somewhere, or if Chet had actually managed to find the Salvation Army. "Dinner?" Chet asked hopefully.
Frank performed a quick mental survey of his kitchen and decided he didn't have enough food in the house to feed Chet Morton's appetite. He let Chet play with the television while he ordered Chinese delivery.
When Frank returned to the living room with two cans of soda, Chet had abandoned the television in favor of poking around Frank's stuff. Frank leaned against the wall and watched him, amused. "Which one of us is a snoop?"
Chet grinned, completely unrepentantly. "You're a snoop. I'm just nosy."
Fair enough. Frank shrugged.
"Listen, I hope I didn't cause a problem for you with Callie."
Frank raised an eyebrow. "Callie?"
"Yeah, she called me a few weeks back. 'Did you know Frank has a girlfriend?'" Chet grinned a little sheepishly. "And I'm kind of slow on the uptake so I said 'really, when did he dump Casey?'"
Frank replayed his conversation with Callie. "I don't think I got around to mentioning the male lover part, actually. Don't worry about it, Chet. I doubt she cared."
"Well, she kind of sputtered for a minute when she realized what was going on, and then she said something about how you can't ever do things the easy way." Chet took the soda Frank held out and went back to examining the pictures on the entertainment center.
There weren't a lot of them. A photograph of his parents during their second honeymoon a few years ago; a photograph of Frank wrestling a laughing Joe into a headlock for some transgression Frank didn't remember anymore; a graduation photo from Stanford, another from Bayport High – Chet spent a minute picking himself out of the crowd, then looking for Callie, Tony and Phil; there were a couple pictures of the old gang from high school and a couple of some of his friends from Stanford; a picture of Frank, Casey and some friends at a cookout in Virginia Beach. "You realize only women put out framed photographs, right? Guys just grunt when people give them pictures and throw them in an old shoebox."
"Gifts, mostly." His mother had framed both of the graduation photos for him, and most of the group shots had been taken by – Chet had a point – female friends, framed and given to Frank as gifts. Callie had actually given him all of the ones of their old gang as a going away present when he left for Stanford.
"Do the police know anything?" Chet asked finally. "Did they find anything that they didn't find last time?"
"No leads. No clues. No suspects."
Frank honestly didn't know why Casey was killed. To hurt him, he imagined, but it was just so gratuitous. Frank wanted to tell the killer that it didn't matter, because losing Joe broke him and in six years he hadn't even begun to put himself back together. Losing Casey was just… It hurt. But there was really only so much you could do to someone.
And god help him, but Casey had never meant as much to him as his baby brother.
Chet hung around for a couple of days, sleeping on Frank's sofa and generally making himself at home. Frank left him to it, quietly pleased his friend was there, and a little amused at how little Chet had changed over the years.
Emily, Chet's fiancée, called once a day to wish him a good night and she always spoke briefly to Frank before hanging up. She was a nice girl, and Frank liked her a lot. She was good for Chet, always able to keep up with him and never afraid to pull on his reins when he needed it. She was cute, too. Short, dark-haired, with almond eyes and a full mouth, pretty much the exact opposite of Chet.
She reminded Frank more than a little of Chet's younger sister, Iola, a sweet, fiery girl who had died too young. Frank didn't say so though because he really had no desire to emotionally traumatize Chet. And anyway, he wasn't exactly in a position to talk.
Chet packed himself home at the end of the week, apparently deciding that his work was done. "I'll call you," Chet promised. "Em wants to get everyone together for a big dinner before the wedding craziness sinks in."
"Just tell me when," Frank agreed. He held out his hand and Chet clasped it enthusiastically.
"Hey." Chet held his gaze and his grip. "You find out who did this, or you even think you've found out who did this, you call for backup. I might not be much of a detective, but I can bust kneecaps with the best of them."
"If I find out," Frank echoed. "Chet I looked for this guy once and failed."
"So maybe he was sloppy this time. I don't know. But you call for backup."
"I'll call for backup," Frank promised. "And when Emily shows up to kick my ass for getting you involved in a homicide investigation, I'll tell her it was your idea."
Chet grinned as he lowered himself into his car, a hand-built classic hot-rod a far cry from his old jalopies. "She won't even blink. I'm telling you, she is just about the perfect woman."
Frank grinned, throwing his determination to spare Chet's mental health to the wind. "I ever tell you how much she reminds me of Iola?"
Chet snorted. "Whatever, Mr. 'I'm dating my brother's identical twin'."
Frank sputtered for a second, then burst out laughing, maybe the first real laugh he'd had in six years. "Go home! Get out of here!"
He watched Chet drive away until he turned the corner, then he stayed outside, hands in his pockets, watching the streetlights come on one by one.
Casey had been a lot like Joe, a fact Frank had never been blind to. Physically they were similar – blond hair, blue eyes, but Casey's hair was straight where Joe's had tended to curl and Casey's eyes were ice-pale while Joe's had always been dark. Casey was in good shape, but not the born athlete Joe had been. But Casey had a wicked sense of humor, a tendency to stick his nose in where it didn't belong and a smile that lit up his whole face and there had been times when Frank had watched Casey and the similarities had felt like a punch to the gut.
No one else had ever remarked on it, not even Casey himself. Frank had always wondered if it was just him, searching for similarities where there weren't any. It made sense Chet would have seen it. Chet had been Frank's friend for almost two decades, but sometimes Frank thought that losing their younger siblings was the one thing they really had in common.
We could make a therapist rich, Frank thought with a mental sense of resignation.
Frank saw three different therapists after Joe died. The first was at his mother's insistence, toward the end of summer when even Frank could admit he was starting to lose control of his grief. The second was recommended by the first, who felt he and Frank had gotten off on the wrong foot after the doctor had to be taken to the hospital with a broken nose – he declined to press charges. The third had been at the insistence of the second who declared Frank to be a sociopath with homicidal and suicidal tendencies.
"What did you say to him?" Fenton Hardy demanded once all the chaos and yelling was over.
Frank shrugged. "He's the trained therapist."
The third therapist, apparently wiser and more devious than his predecessors, lasted more than six months before he threw his hands up and surrendered.
The police found nothing.
Frank found nothing.
Eventually, people started to say Casey's name in his presence again.
Lawrence still made a point of keeping an eye on him, though.
Frank woke up one morning and realized, somewhat dully, that Joe had been dead for nine years. Frank had lived one-third of his life without his brother and that was only going to get worse as time wore on.
He called in sick, caught the train and was in Bayport cemetery before noon.
"I know, I know," Frank said. "I never call, I never write." It was a warm day, so he shrugged off his jacket and sat cross-legged on the grass. There was a bouquet of flowers resting in front of the tombstone, bright sunflowers, which told him his mother had been there at some point recently. "Get this. Chet's naming his kid after us. Poor, messed-up kid. I hope it's a boy. It'd be just like Chet to have a daughter and name her Frances Josephine or something equally horrifying. Emily says if the kid grows up to be an amateur detective she'll have my balls. I do believe she means it."
Emily would have liked Joe. Joe would have liked Emily a lot, and Frank thought the two of them would have made Chet's life very interesting.
Eventually he stopped talking, and just sat in silence. It was a warm day and he wasn't alone, other mourners passed him frequently, some pale and obviously still grieving, others paying their respects to people long gone. Frank tried to imagine what he looked like to them, and what category they would think he fit in. Sometimes Frank himself couldn't tell.
Nine years was a long time to grieve. But Frank wasn't quite ready to let Joe go.
Callie Shaw caught up to him at his parents' house, later that day. "I saw you at the cemetery," she confessed. "But I thought – well, it wasn't my place to interrupt."
His parents invited her to stay for dinner and the four of them talked about work; Callie was a community outreach director for a local mall, Frank had been offered a position with the FBI that he was planning to turn down, Laura Hardy volunteered at the library and substituted for the local elementary school. Fenton Hardy was retired, but still contracted out his experience and advice when people needed him. Gertrude Hardy, Frank's aunt, was on a cruise for senior citizens in Alaska. "Senior citizens," Laura Hardy said, skeptically. "That woman will outlive us all, just you wait and see"; and the second ("You mean sixth?" Frank teased) honeymoon to South America the Hardys planned to take later that month.
After dinner, Frank offered to walk Callie home. She lived downtown, so it was a bit of a distance to go, and they spent most of it in silence. "Tell me something I don't know," Callie said finally, and Frank remembered the last time he'd seen her, just before Casey was killed.
"The FBI thought you might have killed Joe," Frank said, and it wasn't at all what he meant to say.
Callie stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, her face pale. "Frank, you - I didn't – how long-"
He waved a hand in front of him. "I didn't believe it. No one did, not even the FBI really. They just needed a suspect and they didn't have anyone likely."
Callie heaved a heavy breath and put a hand over her chest. "Jesus, Frank. Why did they suspect me?"
"The cards. The Queen of Hearts. They thought it might be the calling card of a jealous lover."
"Oh." Callie's voice was small. "And it wasn't a secret that Joe and I fought more than we got along."
"No one really believed it, Callie. Like I said. They were getting desperate for suspects."
"Did this – these suspicions, have anything to do with why you and I-"
Frank didn't let her finish that sentence. "No. Callie, you know that."
She nodded. When she spoke, her voice was soft, sad. "I know."
In retrospect, Frank always felt a little bad about the way he ended things with Callie. It wasn't that he regretted ending the relationship itself, just the way he went about it. Callie had been there for him through the long eighteen days of searching, practically living at his house, supporting his mother and Aunt Gertrude, helping cook and clean and distracting the women from the unbearable limbo they were trapped in. It was Callie who had bullied his mother and aunt out of the house the very day they found Joe's body, which Frank had always been grateful for.
That Frank had neglected Callie after his brother died wasn't exactly a secret. He had essentially ignored her as he hunted his brother's murderer, and with every dead end he hit, Callie was knocked that much further back in his thoughts. By the time he finally returned to Bayport, battered and at the end of his rope, he hadn't called her or written her or even thought of her in so long that when he realized she had been waiting for him he'd been honestly surprised.
He'd been unfair to her. He knew that then, he just hadn't cared.
Frank turned down the job at the FBI, which pleased his mother and Aunt Gertrude and made his father throw his hands up in the air.
"You never even wanted me to be a detective," Frank pointed out without rancor. "You said it was one of your worst fears."
Fenton Hardy regarded his son. "I just don't want you to give up on something you used to love, because of one failure."
"I failed at least twice," Frank told him. "And that's not why I gave it up."
His father's voice gentled. "Joe wouldn't have wanted you to give this up for him."
Frank shook his head. "We can play that game forever. I'm not going into detective work, Dad."
Frank worked for an environmental protection agency called the Department of Parks, Resources and Waterways. The budget was tight, they were understaffed, had little funding and most of the public had never heard of them. It had an inconvenient acronym too, but that was definitely the least of the challenges.
Frank's job – and his mother loved this – was suing the pants off people who violated environmental regulations. Mostly big corporations, which meant they spent a lot of time settling out of court. But every now and then they'd take it all the way and then Frank and his coworkers got to duke it out like David and Goliath.
"I should name my kid Erin Brokovich," Chet said.
"You should name your kid something original," Frank retorted. "You really think I haven't heard that one before? Phil keeps sending me novelty items with Julia Roberts' face on them."
It was a decent job, paid well, though not as well as he could have gotten if he'd gone and worked for the corporate polluters. It also had the benefit of very rarely involving people trying to kill him, except for that one time with the mechanic who had apparently been inhaling too many of his own fumes and decided that killing the lawyer suing him would end his problems. The guy had gone to the wrong house at four in the afternoon with a gun and started screaming for "that Jew lawyer fag" to come out and face him. The guy had been arrested before Frank even knew his life was supposed to be in danger.
Sometimes he thought about disarming a nuclear bomb in Halifax, or stopping smugglers in India and his job came out kind of boring in comparison. But Frank wasn't interested in deluding himself. He'd never been strong enough to do the investigator thing alone. And he definitely wasn't interested in learning how to have a different partner.
Marcie Whalen, the DPRW's overburdened and embittered receptionist, leaned against the doorway to Frank's office. "Hardy, you have a visitor."
Frank didn't bother looking up from his computer screen. "You can tell the FBI to go hang themselves."
Marcie snorted. "Okay first of all, those guys carry guns. Tell them yourself. Second of all, not the FBI. Some guy, odd name. Says he's an old friend of yours from Hickville, New York."
"Bayport," Frank corrected absently. "Yeah. Fine. What's he want?"
"He's handsome," Marcie said. "I know that much."
"You're not going to go away and let me finish this are you?"
"I'll send him in right away, Mr. Hardy." Marcie crinkled her nose at him and vanished back around the corner.
"We have intercoms for this sort of thing you know," Frank called after her.
Of all the people Frank Hardy was expecting to turn up in his office, Biff Hooper wasn't even on the list.
It took a minute for Frank to even realize that was who it was. He hadn't seen Biff in nine years and the man had changed. Still a walking mountain of a man, his hair was shaved along the sides and he carried himself with an attitude Frank hadn't expected from the Biff Hooper he knew – authority. "I didn't think this was possible, but it looks like you're even taller than the last time I saw you."
Biff looked startled for a moment, but when he grinned it was the same slightly sheepish expression Frank remembered from their teen years. "Frank. Good to see you, man."
Frank had stood as soon as he recognized the man, he came around the desk and gestured for Biff to sit. "You too. It's been a damn long time."
"Yeah. I'm sorry about that."
Frank waved the apology away. "How have you been? The Marines?"
"The haircut gave me away, didn't it?" Biff grinned, but didn't accept the seat. "Frank, listen. There's a reason I'm here."
"I figured," Frank said dryly. "If you just wanted to catch up, you'd have called first."
"I wasn't sure you'd want to see me," Biff said. "I figured catching you at work…"
"Gave me nowhere to run?" Frank lifted an eyebrow. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
"It's about Joe," Biff said. "And Frank, I need your word that – I just-" He sighed. "Can I just be blunt here? I was never any good at being all politic and roundabout."
"Just say it," Frank said.
"Joe worshipped the ground you walked on, man. Your regard meant more to him than anything. I don't want that to change because of anything I'm about to say."
That was almost humorous. "Biff there's not a damn thing you can say. There never has been. So whatever it is you think I need to hear, just say it."
Biff latched his hands behind his back and dragged in a deep breath. "I keep in touch with Chet, you know? And he heard from Callie and I guess she heard from you, but anyway, it got back to me."
"Heard what?" Frank asked.
"About the Queen of Hearts."
Frank crossed his arms and leaned back against his desk. "The FBI's suspicions? Biff that's old news."
"Hey, not to me. I just heard about it. And they might have had a point."
"You think Callie killed Joe?" Frank didn't bother sounding skeptical, because they both knew that if Biff had proof or some new lead, Frank would take it and be grateful, no matter who it incriminated.
Some days, Frank thought he'd send his own father to jail if it meant finally having an answer for what had happened to Joe.
"Not Callie. Listen Frank, I've got no proof. But something happened, the day before Joe disappeared. I don't know if you ever heard about it. I always thought you had – trying to keep something secret around you guys was like trying to wrangle greased cats." Biff was staring straight ahead over Frank's shoulder, and his stance was straight and unmoving. Whatever he was trying to say, wasn't something he expected Frank to like very much. "Frank, you can think whatever you want of me, but I'm not saying a word unless you can promise me that this won't affect your memory of Joe."
"My word on it," Frank said impatiently. There were things Biff could say, yes, but they were all things Biff would never say. Joe was a murderer, rapist, thief, card-carrying Nazi or raging bigot – Biff could say anything he wanted, but there were some things Frank would know to be lies. "Spit it out, Hooper."
"I was in love with your brother." Biff still wasn't looking Frank in the eye. "And I told him so, the day before he disappeared."
That hadn't been something Frank was expecting. "No he didn't tell me," Frank said. "I didn't see him at all the day before. I was at Barmet Bay with Callie until late – he was asleep by the time I came back."
"I kissed him. He let me down easy. There wasn't a lot more to it than that, although at the time I certainly managed to make it into a drama in my own mind. But Vanessa saw us, Frank. She came in just as I kissed him and she ran off. I didn't see her, but Joe did, and after he and I talked for a few minutes, he went after her." Biff finally met Frank's gaze again. "He wasn't interested in me that way, Frank. I don't want you to think-"
Frank snorted indelicately. "If you've been talking to Chet and Callie, then you know about Casey. I'm not a raging hypocrite, Biff. Joe could have been dating his way through the football team and I wouldn't have cared." It was his turn to look away, the dull ache he felt all the time becoming sharp again. "He could have done a lot worse than you, Biff. I'm sorry if you thought you had to keep this a secret from me."
"At the time I was embarrassed about being shot down, but afterwards I just didn't want to hurt you or your folks. I asked Vanessa not to say anything, either. She told me you wouldn't care," Biff added, "but I guess I was convinced that I'd wreck your memory of him or something. I don't know, Frank. I really just didn't want to hurt anyone."
"You haven't," Frank said. "Is this why I haven't seen you for almost a decade?"
Biff exhaled slowly. "In part. I was kind of selfish. Joe was my best friend, Frank. I was hurting, and I wasn't strong enough to stay around and watch everyone else hurt. So, military school, Marines, Iraq. It was my three-step recovery plan."
"I'd suggest something a little less life-threatening in the future, but I just got done saying I'm not a hypocrite."
Biff shook his head. "I heard about you, that summer after. Chet thought you were trying to get yourself killed."
He hadn't been trying, but if it had happened, Frank didn't think he'd have minded.
"Vanessa?" Frank said instead, letting the subject of that summer drop.
"I'm not saying I think she did it, Frank. But when Callie told me what the FBI said, it all just came back to me." Biff shrugged, looking remarkably more at ease than he had while spilling his big confession. "If nothing else, I figured it might give you a new angle to look into."
"The FBI questioned Vanessa just like they questioned all the rest of us."
"Yeah, but they questioned us as witnesses, Frank." Biff tipped his head to the side. "Even Callie, who they apparently suspected, was never really questioned. They didn't think we did it. So maybe something got overlooked."
"I'll talk to Vanessa," Frank said. Callie kept in touch with her, she could get Frank an address. "Biff. Thanks."
Biff shook his head. "For throwing suspicion on an old friend?"
"No." For that too. Frank didn't care who he took down if it meant solving this case. He never had. "Because you just told me something about my brother that I didn't know before. This might sound fucked up, Biff, but that's better than Christmas."
"You're right," Biff said. "It does sound kind of fucked up. But you're welcome."
"Vanessa?" Callie said skeptically. "We're really thinking Vanessa is a suspect?"
"Not really," Frank said. "But do you have any better ideas?"
They were in Bayport, standing on the roof of the Barnes & Noble at the Bayport Heights Shopping Centre, an open-air mall where Callie worked as a public relations and events manager. It was warm, even for mid-July, and Frank was wishing for a breeze.
"I think it's kind of a stretch," Callie said doubtfully. "But – Biff?" She shook her head. "I never would have thought he was gay."
"People very rarely come with disclaimers," Frank said. Callie blushed bright red, and he knew she was remembering his relationship with Casey. "Anyway, I'm not sure I buy it. Even assuming, for a minute, that Vanessa killed Joe out of jealousy, why not kill Biff too? Why kill Casey? Did she even know he existed?"
"She did." Callie's voice was small. "I sort of told her about him. I was… surprised, when I found out."
"Still." Joe had been kidnapped eighteen days before his eighteenth birthday. That implied a fair degree of planning beforehand – either that or a huge coincidence. "Casey didn't mean anything to her."
"Say, for a minute, that Vanessa snapped." Callie pushed her hair back from her face. "She was upset when she saw Joe and Biff together, she goes home and stews for a while, and when Joe finally catches up with her, she just loses it."
"Joe and Vanessa talked that night, according to Biff. Joe didn't go missing until the next day."
"Biff didn't see them talk," Callie said. "So maybe Joe didn't catch up to her, or decided to let her cool down first. The morning he disappeared, your mom said he left the house before nine. Joe willingly up that early on vacation? Come on. So he got up early to go see Vanessa and talk things over."
That morning was the last time any of them had seen Joe. He hadn't come home that night, and their parents had reported him missing at five the next morning, when it became obvious he wasn't just breaking curfew.
"I was at Vanessa's the next morning," Frank objected. "I woke her up at six. Do we really believe she has the cold-bloodedness to lie to my face about that?"
Callie crossed her arms over her chest. "What's that old saying? 'Hell hath no fury, something something'?"
"I get your point." He didn't see it. Vanessa Bender had not been an ice queen – she felt things and she felt them strongly and honestly. She hadn't been one to keep her feelings under wraps. "I still think it would have been more her style to let Joe have it with both barrels in a public place, if she was that upset."
"Okay, listen." Callie planted her hands on her hips. "I'm not – I'm not trying to hurt you or speak badly of Joe-"
Frank snorted. "That never stopped you before."
She colored. "I mean it. But Frank, Joe was – he could be kind of insensitive. And he was a bit of a player. He liked to flirt and play around."
"But he didn't mess around. Vanessa knew that."
"But – but still. Iola knew that too and it still – there was still a breaking point, right? That night at the mall, Joe wasn't doing anything he hadn't done before, but she just had enough. So maybe this was Vanessa's breaking point. I mean – another woman is one thing, but a guy? Some women would find that a lot harder to overlook." She hesitated. "That might – that might explain Casey, too."
"How? Casey wasn't anything to Vanessa. How could she possibly blame him for something Biff did three years before I even met him?"
"No, but you were Joe's brother. I mean, it wasn't any secret that you had more influence over him than Vanessa did." Callie smiled, a little sadly. "Just like he had more influence over you than I ever did. And maybe Vanessa, finding out that you were – were with a guy – maybe she blames you for it. Like, maybe Joe never would have done it if you weren't that way."
Frank shook his head. It didn't hold up. "Biff started it, not Joe."
She paced back and forth, her heels crunching against the loose rocks and pebbles on the rooftop. "Vanessa might not know that. If she came in at just the wrong moment all she would have seen was the kiss. And, we're not talking about a logical series of events here, Frank. Whoever did this was – fucked in the head isn't even close. She sees the two of them together, looses it, takes it out on Joe. Biff ran off to military school just a few days after the funeral and never came back to Bayport – and it's not like Vanessa could have wandered off to Iraq just to take him out. So she lets it drop, goes back to her normal life – until years later when she finds out about Casey. And I don't know – maybe she just looses it again. Maybe she made some kind of connection between you and Casey and Biff and Joe. I don't know, Frank!" She threw her hands up in the air. "We're talking about one of my oldest friends like she's a sociopath, and I just don't know. But it's the only damned lead you've had in nine years. So are you going to take it, or not?"
Vanessa Rhys nee Bender lived in Los Angeles now, along with her husband of three years and their two-year-old daughter. She did post-production editing work for one of the major film companies and was, according to Callie, hard to get a hold of. "Expect to spend a couple days playing phone tag," Callie warned him. "She works a lot of strange hours."
Frank left her a message on her cell phone and Vanessa called him back within the hour. "I'm going to be in LA this week for business," he told her. "I was hoping you'd have lunch with me?"
Vanessa agreed with a cheerful promptness Frank hadn't expected and two days later he was knocking on the front door of a small, three-story townhouse with a brick façade and a porch somewhat over-laden with plants. It gave him the distinct impression he was back in the rainforest. The door flew open and Vanessa was beaming at him.
"Oh my God," she said. "Callie was right – you're even better looking than you were in high school. Come in!"
Her husband and daughter were in the living room, building something massive and asymmetrical out of blocks. "Frank, this is my husband, Gerald Rhys and our daughter, Mara."
Gerald Rhys was a pleasant-seeming man in his early thirties, with thinning hair and dark eyes. He was handsome and welcoming and his grip, when he shook Frank's hand, was strong. "Pleasure to meet you, Frank. Vanessa has told me about some of the interesting situations she found herself in with you."
Frank grinned. "I continue to be astonished anyone believes those stories are true. Chet's wife thought he was just a skilled storyteller until he started showing her newspaper clippings."
"Chet is a skilled storyteller," Vanessa laughed. "That boy could lie like a rug."
Mara looked up from her tower. "Story?" she asked hopefully, and Vanessa and Gerald both laughed. "Now we've done it," Gerald said. "I'll deal with the little lady, Van, you and Frank catch up."
Vanessa led Frank into the kitchen where she poured them both glasses of ice tea. "Gerald is in charge of cooking," Vanessa told him with a grin. "I never considered myself a bad cook, necessarily, but I would seem to be in the minority. I think he's planning steaks and grilled vegetables out on the back porch."
"It sounds great," Frank assured her. "Your daughter's adorable."
"She's an absolute terror, don't let appearances fool you. She behaves in front of witnesses, though, so no one ever believes us."
Frank laughed and they began to trade stories, catching up on the last several years. Vanessa hadn't kept in touch with anyone except Callie, so Frank filled her in on Chet's new hobby, Tony's new job and Phil's new house. "And Biff's doing well," he added. "I just saw him the other day."
"God," Vanessa said, leaning back in her seat. "I haven't seen or heard from Biff in a long time."
"He's stateside for now," Frank told her. "Seems to be doing well." He let a note of amusement slip into his voice. "You'll never believe what he told me the last time I saw him."
Vanessa propped her chin up on one fist. "Tell. I love good gossip."
"I know you do," Frank said. He tapped his finger against the side of his glass. "That's why you and Callie got on so well with Liz Webling."
Vanessa giggled. "She works for TMZ now, did you know that? She's their Brangelina expert."
Frank rolled his eyes. "That explains the headlines a few months ago about Angelina Jolie funding guerillas in Central America."
Vanessa laughed. "It's the perfect media for her. But spill. What did Biff tell you?"
Frank raised an eyebrow. "It involved him. And you. And Joe. And Biff and Joe."
Vanessa clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh, my god. He didn't. He told you that story? He told me Western Civilization would come crashing to an end if I ever told anyone and he told you?" She laid both palms flat against the table. "Give me his phone number," she said. "I'm going to call him and laugh at him."
"He told me he swore you to secrecy." Frank put just enough humor into his voice to make it sound like a joke, and not the earnest plea he knew Biff had meant it to be. "I'm not sure which one of us he was trying to protect, though."
"I told him you wouldn't be mad," Vanessa said. She ran her fingers over her glass, collecting condensation on her fingertips. "But, I don't suppose any one of us was thinking all that clearly that summer."
It was always referred to that way – "that summer". Frank wasn't sure exactly how much each of his old friends knew about what happened after Joe was found. Chet knew most of it, if only because he dragged the truth out of Frank over the course of one of the most vicious and violent arguments Frank had ever had with anyone. But the rest of them, Frank was pretty sure, only heard things second hand and through the rumor mill. Which might actually have been worse than the truth.
"He was afraid it would disgust me," Frank said. "Sully my memory of Joe or something."
The look on Vanessa's face said clearly what she thought of that. "Well, like I said. No one was thinking very clearly."
Frank shrugged and sipped his iced tea. "I'm surprised I didn't hear about it at the time," he said. "No offense, Van, but I'm kind of surprised Joe didn't come home with two broken arms and a fat lip that night."
That startled her into a laugh. "Thanks a lot. I'm not the physically violent type, thank you." She shook her fist at him and narrowed her eyes, but never lost the wistful, fond smile. "Anyway, it wasn't like Joe started it or anything."
"Biff said he was never sure how much you saw."
"He makes it sound scandalous, doesn't he?" Vanessa lowered her eyes. "I was in the other room, heard them talking. And, well, let's just say I walked in just in time to see Biff make his move." She sighed. "I kind of froze up for a second – didn't expect that – but Joe was handling the situation, so I made myself scarce. For a while I kind of hoped Biff hadn't seen me at all. I didn't want him to be embarrassed or, well, I don't know. But when he asked me not to say anything, I knew he had."
"I'm glad you two were still able to talk to each other afterwards," Frank said. "I know it would have made Joe happy to know that it didn't ruin your friendship."
Vanessa shook her head. "Maybe," she said, "if things had been different it would have. He was trying to break us up, I suppose. But after Joe dying, anything else was just not as important anymore." She propped her chin on her hand and met Frank's gaze, looking sad and just a little wistful. "If losing Joe to anyone, even Biff Hooper, meant he would still be alive right now, I'd go back in time and make it happen. So how could I hold a grudge for something as small as a kiss?"
Vanessa's mother still lived in an old, renovated farmhouse outside of Bayport. She wasn't in the house when Frank stopped by, so he pushed his hair out of his eyes and walked out to the barn.
Andrea Bender was a computer animator and the studio in the barn was usually full of sketches, prints and posters of movies or television shows and commercials she had worked on. It looked more like an office at Pixar than a barn, especially since Andrea had rebuilt it after a fire her first year in Bayport.
"My goodness," she said thoughtfully. "You really think something might have happened here?"
"There's a chance Joe was on his way to see Vanessa when he disappeared," Frank explained.
Andrea mused thoughtfully on the events of the night and morning before Joe had been noticed missing. "Biff and Chet were here the night before, of course, with Joe and Vanessa. They watched movies all night and cleaned out my cupboards pretty thoroughly."
"Did the guys all leave together?"
"No, as I recall, Joe stayed after the others had left." Andrea offered him a little smile. "For an hour or so, then he left as well."
"Were they fighting?"
"Not that night, no." Andrea didn't seem surprised at the question, but then Joe and Vanessa had both been pretty passionate, hot-tempered people. They had bickered and squabbled all the time. It almost never meant anything; just the two of them poking and pushing at each other. Joe didn't argue with people he was genuinely angry at – he either stormed out or threw a punch.
"Biff mentioned that Vanessa might have been upset by something Joe did," Frank said. "Was she quiet or crying at all that night?"
"No." Andrea seemed surprised at the question. "They were all in a good humor – well. No." She paused, tapping her right index finger against the edge of her keyboard. "Now that you mention it, Biff was rather quiet toward the end of the evening. I didn't think anything of it at the time, it was late and I wrote it off to him being tired, but Biff was almost subdued when he left that night."
Frank raised an eyebrow. "Angry?"
Andrea chuckled. "When Biff was angry half of Bayport heard about it. No. Just quiet. Like I said, I just thought he was tired. Chet seemed fine and Joe and Vanessa were acting normally."
"Did Joe and Biff act like they had been fighting?"
"Well they weren't beating each other up and neither one of them was bleeding copiously, so I'll go out on a limb and say no."
Considering Biff had just been shot down – however gracefully – that explained his mood. "And the next morning?"
Andrea shook her head. "I'm sorry Frank. There was nothing at all unusual. Vanessa slept in, then went out with some friends from school – Liz Webling as I recall." She sighed. "I can't find my car keys nine days out of ten but I can remember a morning that happened ten years ago."
A lot of witnesses said that, in Frank's experience. They talked about what they saw so many times and to so many different people – police detectives, lawyers, prosecutors, juries and judges – that even if they stopped remembering the actual event, they remembered talking about it even years later. "Joe never came by?"
"No. Vanessa came home around dinner time, we ate together, she stayed home that night and we were both in bed before midnight. And no one else came by the house until you woke us up the next morning."
He'd pounded on their kitchen door at six in the morning, hoping that he'd be getting Joe and Vanessa in a lot of trouble with Vanessa's mother. He'd known even before Vanessa had blinked at him through the screen door, sleepy and disheveled, that something had happened a lot worse than Joe breaking curfew. He'd been prepared to be proven wrong – he thought, in retrospect, that he'd give just about everything, to have been given the chance to wring Joe's neck for worrying them all.
A thought tugged at Frank's mind all the way back to DC. Vanessa didn't seem to be angry and she had an alibi for the whole day – a phone call to Liz Webling had netted Frank a minute by minute account of what Vanessa and Liz had done that day, plus more information on Hollywood celebrities than Frank had ever needed to have – which pretty effectively eliminated her from the suspect list.
But.
Biff Hooper had reason to be upset – just as much as Vanessa had. Biff Hooper had been acting strangely the night before Joe went missing. And Biff's statement to the police years earlier had stated that he'd gone for a long ride on his motorcycle just a short while before Joe disappeared; he'd not come home until long after dinner. And he had no alibi, no one to witness the fact that he'd driven halfway to New Jersey on back roads like he said.
Callie's discovery that she had been a suspect could have planted the seed in Biff's mind, a way, finally, to point the finger at a plausible suspect. But after almost ten years, Biff had to know that there was no evidence against him. Why would he risk dragging it all open again when he wasn't in any danger of discovery?
And why on Earth would Biff come to Frank with this if it was a frame-up?
Biff had always had an ego and a taste for risk, but in pointing the finger at Vanessa as a suspect, he was also pointing the finger at himself. He had to have known that. He'd worked with the Hardys often enough to know how easily a suspect could give themselves away.
"Marcie, I need you to do me a favor."
If his receptionist thought it was strange that he would show up on his day off with his luggage slung over one shoulder, still rumpled and tired from traveling from LA to Bayport to DC, she didn't show it. "Does it in anyway involve confronting armed federal agents?"
"Not this time."
"I'm in. What do you need?"
Frank grinned. "I need you to confront armed military personnel."
"Yeah," Marcie said slowly. "Because that's better. Have you read my job description?"
"Never," Frank assured her. "You remember Biff Hooper? The Marine?" he elaborated when she just blinked at him. "Came to the office about a week ago?"
"Oh. Weird-named guy from Hickville. Yeah. I remember. What, he's part of a vast polluting scandal?"
"Nothing would surprise me anymore, Marcie." Frank ran a hand through his hair and abruptly decided he was overdue a shower and a full night's sleep. "It's something personal. From a long time ago. I just need to know what this guy's been up to for the last nine years."
He could see it in her eyes, the exact moment she decided not to ask any questions. She just uncrossed her arms and nodded. "Okay. That should be easy enough – if he's a Marine than his whole life should be down on paper. Well, unless you want to know what kind of strip club he visits on his shore leave, that might require some extra legwork."
"I'll settle for general whereabouts. And," he added, "I really need to know where this guy was three years ago. Mid-March."
"I'll look into it."
"Marcie." Frank hefted his bag and gave her a genuine smile. "Thanks."
"Yeah, yeah. Remember this on Secretary's Day."
"I thought you weren't a secretary?"
She hefted her stapler and eyed him thoughtfully. Frank made his escape promising roses.
The phone rang at about three in the morning. Frank had answered the phone with a grunt before he even fully woke up.
"March 2nd through March 23rd," Marcie said. "Three years ago exactly. Biff Hooper was on leave."
Frank rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. It was dark, but he'd left the curtains open and streetlights painted shadows on the walls. He felt oddly indifferent to the news. "Where?"
Marcie hesitated. "He was in LA. I've got no record of a hotel room or a car rental, no airplane tickets or Amtrak or anything else that I could find. He literally vanished into the city for three weeks."
Or left the city by bus or some other means of transportation. Cash didn't leave a trail like credit cards did. Or he could have borrowed a car from a buddy or a shipmate.
"So," Marcie said, "I'm kind of hypothesizing here. But this guy officially has no alibi to either murder."
Marcie hadn't known about Joe. Well, Frank was pretty sure she knew he'd had a brother – Frank had mentioned Joe before, if not in any real detail. But the murder and Casey, well, he probably should have warned her. But if she was seeing the same thing he was, and she was going in blind, with no preconceived notions of guilt or innocence…
He glanced at the clock. "Do you know where he is right now?"
"I contacted Quantico – made up some story about needing his testimony on an old pollution case, for which I will doubtless be arrested by Homeland Security and thrown in prison for the rest of my life, thank you very much – and get this: Biff Hooper was on a two-day leave when he came to see you. Two days later, he was supposed to report to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina for amphibious assault training. He never showed up."
Biff had come to see him five days ago. Frank had left for Bayport the next day, had been in LA visiting Vanessa under false pretenses two days after that. "That's a hell of a coincidence."
Marcie snorted. "You think?"
"Did you sleep at all tonight?"
"I fell asleep around midnight while I was running a credit card check of LA airports and hotels. I spent the rest of the night reading through old police files and this guy's military record. Your life is kind of like a suspense novel, only without the car chases."
Frank shook his head and kicked the blankets off. "There have been a couple of those, too. Thanks, Marcie."
"Yeah, yeah. Roses, Hardy. And chocolates. And some expensive electronics would not go amiss, either." She hesitated. "So, you didn't ask me to investigate anything else, but I did a little poking around. Hooper was in LA, and, well, that's where your brother's ex lives too, right?"
"Yeah." The coincidence had not escaped him.
"So she was getting married right around the time Hooper was in LA. Which makes her kind of hard to track down. She'd taken time off work, so technically she could have gone anywhere. But I ran a check on her credit cards. It's like an itinerary of the bride-to-be's day."
"And?"
"So, on March 2nd, the same day Hooper arrives in LA for his leave, Vanessa Bender suddenly takes a break from her mad round of last-minute shoe shopping to have lunch for two at a sandwich shop not five blocks from LAX. And according to the time on the credit card charges, she was having lunch less than an hour after Hooper's flight got in." Marcie made a sound like she was sighing through her teeth. "Which doesn't really prove anything, but if you're looking for a conspiracy theory, well. They both had motive, right?"
"Any chance you know where Vanessa is right now?"
"No recent credit card charges. Hold on."
He could hear her typing while he flipped on the lights and started pulling clothes on.
"Are you a crazed kidnapper?"
He paused with his shirt half over his head. "Repeat that please?"
"Cause Vanessa Rhys has been reported missing."
He yanked the shirt on and grabbed the phone in both hands. "What? When?"
"Yesterday. Her husband says she went to work and never came home. The police wouldn't normally have reported her missing so early, but they found her car abandoned outside a hotel."
The day after he'd gone to see her.
It was raining outside, the lights were flickering, and he was missing something.
He was missing something, the same goddamn something that he'd been missing for nine years and if he couldn't figure out what it was then he'd never live anything like a normal life. Nine more years of waiting to see who else this bastard killed just to hurt him, nine more years of wondering what the hell he could have done that would make this happen, nine more years of living with the memory of Joe lying still and cold in his bed.
Biff's disappearance only made him look more guilty, which couldn't be an accident. Biff wasn't an idiot. If he had been trying to frame Vanessa, then he should have just gone on about his business and let Frank take the bait. Disappearing like this would only bring the suspicion back on himself.
Unless he was running? Was he guilty and he thought Frank had seen it? Frank discarded that thought as soon as he had it. Biff hadn't acted like a man confessing to murder, and he hadn't seemed at all wary of Frank once he'd gotten his big confession out. There was the possibility he'd gone vigilante and had decided to take Vanessa down himself. So then, was Vanessa missing because Biff had gotten to her? Was she running from him?
Vanessa had an alibi for Joe's murder. She'd been getting married when Casey was killed. She wasn't the murderer.
He paused on the stairs as the lights flickered again. Vanessa and Biff could have been working together? But it still didn't explain why Casey had been killed. Vanessa and Biff's motives only held up as long as someone assumed this was all about them being mad at Joe and this wasn't about Joe. It had always been about Frank.
He picked up the phone again and dialed Chet's number.
"Dude," Chet groaned into the phone. "It's, like, three in the morning."
"Did you know about Biff and Joe?" Frank asked.
There was a brief pause. "You mean the whole unrequited, slightly juvenile man-crush thing?"
"Yeah. That thing."
"Yeah. Why?"
"Who else knew?"
Chet hesitated. "Listen, Frank, if you're gonna go smite Biff in some kind of super-delayed older-brother vengeance smackdown kinda thing-"
"Biff's missing. He went AWOL three days ago."
There was a pause and Frank could hear Chet moving around, then a door closing. "What the hell? Was he kidnapped? Or is he on the lam from your unholy fury?"
It wasn't even a little funny, but that was Chet for you. "He came to see me a few days ago. Told me about the whole thing with him and Joe and Van. Then he dropped off the face of the earth."
"And we think this has to do with Joe?"
"He came to see me because of the Queen of Hearts. He thought I should investigate Van." He spoke over Chet's indignant sputtering. "He didn't believe it, Chet. I think he just wanted to get it off his chest. The point is, he went missing right after. And now Vanessa's disappeared. She vanished on her way to work yesterday morning."
"What the hell is going on, Frank?"
"I don't know. But all this happened after Biff told me about that night. So I want to know who else knew about it."
"I don't know, Frank. Honestly. I only knew because I was there that night – well, the man-crush bit was kind of obvious, I was always surprised you never noticed. I mean, dude, Joe couldn't brush his teeth a different way without you noticing, but his best friend is jonesing for his bod and you didn't even-"
"Chet. Focus."
"I don't know, dude, really. Biff sure as hell didn't tell anyone – he didn't even talk about it afterwards as far as I know. And if Joe didn't tell you then he sure didn't tell anyone else. I doubt Vanessa would have told anyone besides Callie and-"
"Callie knew?"
"Yeah. Don't sound so surprised, dude. I'd eat my shoes if there was anything Vanessa and Callie didn't tell each other back then."
"She said she didn't know."
"Who didn't?"
"Callie, Chet. She said she didn't know." Frank replayed the conversation back in his mind. "She acted like she'd never heard it before. And she was- Chet, I have to go."
Callie had acted surprised by the whole Biff-Joe thing, when she'd known all along.
Callie had known Biff came to see him. She'd known he'd talked to Van.
Casey had died right after Callie found out about their relationship.
Callie had been in his house, day after day while Joe was missing. Looking after his mother and aunt, helping them cook and clean, quietly supportive while Frank chased dead-ends and fought the Secret Service.
There was a freezer in the basement.
His phone rang when he was halfway to Bayport. "Callie Shaw is on vacation," Marcie reported without preamble. "I called the mall and they say she took two weeks personal time very suddenly because of the death of a friend. She left the same day you went to LA. No record of plane tickets, but she could have driven."
"Her parents," Frank said.
"Called them. They were half asleep, but they said they haven't seen Callie in a couple of days. She told them she was going on vacation. So," Marcie continued. "I called her cell phone provider and told them I was working for the FBI. They're tracking the GPS in her phone as we speak. Tell me," she said, "do you think Homeland Security will let the FBI prosecute me first, or will they just ship me off to Gitmo first thing?"
"I'll send your roses to Guantanamo," Frank told her. "Let me deal with the FBI. They owe me a favor or two."
"You?" Marcie said. "I'm the one they constantly antagonize."
"Walking up to your desk and asking if I'm in probably doesn't count as aggravation," Frank said. "Especially when you're the receptionist."
"It is when they do it twice a month and don't take a hint when you're never in your office."
Frank shook his head, listening to the laugh in Marcie's voice, the rain hitting the roof of his car, the sound of the windshield wipers. "I'm going to have to take that job at the FBI just to retroactively cover for you, aren't I?"
"I bet the pay would be better," Marcie said. "Cell phone company just sent me Callie Shaw's location. Or her cell phone's location anyway. Bayport, New York. 35 Elm Street. The nearest cross street is-"
"High and Elm," Frank said. "She's at my parent's house."
Fenton and Laura were in Brazil, celebrating what was probably their tenth honeymoon and Gertrude was on her Alaskan cruise. The Hardy household was supposed to be empty.
Frank parked his car down the street and shut off the engine. He switched his cell phone to vibrate and slid it into his back pocket. He thought briefly of calling the police but he really didn't have anything to tell them. Callie had kept in touch with his family even after the two of them had gone their separate ways, there were a dozen reasons why she might be at his parents' house. And as for evidence…
He didn't actually have much of that, really.
Callie's car was parked in his parent's driveway. The house itself was dark. He watched for a couple of minutes, looking for any movement, any sign that someone was in there; didn't see anything but rain on the windows and wind blowing through the tree branches.
The rain had faded into a heavy drizzle while he drove but as soon as he opened his door it picked up again into a downpour. He shook rain out of his eyes and jogged across the street.
The lawn was soaked after nearly a full day of heavy rain and his sneakers splashed as he walked the outside of the house, checking the front and back doors, the porch and finally the garage.
Cops and lawyers and private investigators as a rule don't keep spare keys lying around in fake rocks or under door mats. When there were a dozen criminals threatening revenge or getting angry about their retrials, it didn't pay to make things easier for them. Fenton Hardy was no exception. All three doors were locked with no sign of tampering.
Which meant either Callie picked the lock very well – Frank kind of doubted that, but anything was possible – or she had a key. More likely. His mother might have asked her to check in on the place while they were away.
His phone vibrated quietly in his back pocket and he ducked around the side of the garage before answering it.
"I found Vanessa Rhys," Marcie said. "Vanessa Bender and Callie Shaw took the same flight from LA to New York City yesterday afternoon, a couple of hours before Vanessa's husband even noticed she was missing. I got a hold of a member of the flight crew who was in between flights and he remembered them because Vanessa was in a wheelchair. From his description, I'd say Vanessa was drugged when she was wheeled onto that plane."
Frank shook his head, checking around the side of the garage. "I wouldn't have minded being wrong, Marcie."
"Do you want me to call the police now? I mean, this is kidnapping, even if we're wrong about everything else."
"Yeah, that's probably not a bad idea. Tell them about the missing persons report and the flight records."
"Not your brother?"
"We don't have any proof." He flipped the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. Time to get a closer look.
He let himself in through the back door with his own key, moving quietly and watching for movement. The kitchen was still and quiet, except for the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock from the living room. He eased the door shut and paused a few feet into the house.
The kitchen was dark, with only the slightest illumination from the streetlights, but he could see something dark on the floor by the counter. He glanced around then knelt on one knee. Liquid. Dark and slightly sticky. He rubbed some of it on his fingers and smelled blood. Not a lot of it, but enough.
He stood, wiped his hand on his jeans and opened the basement door.
The stairs were a little creaky, but he'd climbed them hundreds of times and he knew exactly where the creaks and groans were and how to avoid them. He scanned the room as much as he could in the dark, not willing to risk the lights. The small LED light on his keychain was bright enough for him to sweep the room, but not much else.
The basement had been equal parts storage and game room when he had lived there. There had been an entertainment center and video games, a couch and coffee table. Weights and barbells had been arranged against one wall, sporting and camping equipment packed away in the corner, waiting for the next fishing trip, the next camping trip.
They'd been planning a hiking trip for the week Joe disappeared. The two of them, Chet and Biff, Tony and Phil, hiking the Appalachian Trail for two weeks or until they got tired of roughing it, whichever came first. They had been all packed, ready to leave. Frank had double-checked their gear himself and left it neatly stacked by the basement stairs.
He never got around to unpacking it. For a minute, he wondered what his parents had done with it.
The basement was still storage, but now it was mostly a workshop for his father. Fenton Hardy had enjoyed his retirement for exactly two weeks before driving his wife completely insane. He'd taken up photography to keep himself busy and out of Laura's hair. Frank had been down here dozens of times since then, had helped his father build the dark room against one corner of the basement. He knew exactly what had been removed, what had been thrown away and what had stayed where it was.
The freezer was still there.
Laura Hardy stocked it up with hamburger, steak, chicken. Turkey, ham and goose during the holidays. When she was going away for a few days she would make homemade soups or casseroles and freeze them so her husband and sons didn't live off takeout and ice cream the whole time she was gone. It was rarely more than half full.
Frank tried to think if anyone had opened that old freezer the entire time Joe was missing, and couldn't remember. Neighbors and friends had brought them food so Laura wouldn't have to cook. And Callie had been there, helping with the meals and the cleaning.
He spread his hands over the top of the freezer for a moment, then held the flashlight in his teeth and raised the lid before he could talk himself out of it.
Vanessa stared up at him, eyes wide, sobbing into the gag that covered her mouth.
He stared in shock for a moment, then pushed the lid back and reached down into the freezer. Vanessa was squinting into the light, crying quietly and gasping for breath. She didn't fight him as he pulled her out, but her skin was so cold that Frank thought she might not have the strength to fight him.
He held her shoulders and got his other arm under her knees, lifting her up and out. The couch was long gone, so he set her down on the floor. "It's me," he said softly, watching the door at the top of the stairs. "Vanessa, it's Frank." She was shaking as he untied her hands, shivering almost violently. It was a good sign that she hadn't been locked in there too long.
Once her hands were free she removed the gag while he cut her feet loose. "Callie," she said. She was still gasping for breath and shaking and he could hear tears in her voice beneath that, but mostly her voice held anger. "It was Callie. She drugged me and brought me here. She said- she said you would figure it out before I ran out of air. That she was sure of it, but-"
"She's giving me a lot of credit," Frank said grimly. "Van, is there anyone else here besides the two of you? My parents?"
"No, I didn't see anyone. Just Callie. I was still kind of out of it when she put me in that thing. I don't know how long it's been."
Not very long. She would have used up all the oxygen in that freezer pretty quickly.
"All right," he said. "You and I are going to go upstairs together and you are going to get out of here and call the cops. All right?" He waited for her nod. "Are you hurt?" he asked, remembering the blood on the kitchen floor.
"Dizzy, nauseous and my hands and feet sting like a bitch," she said. "Does that count?"
"You can walk, right?" He helped her up off the floor, watched her take a couple steps toward the stairs. She was steady enough and he'd bet she could run if she had to. "All right, take it slow and quiet."
He gave her his cell phone and ushered her out the back door, keeping watch until she made it to the street.
He had a feeling he knew where Callie was. And what she had done with Biff.
His room was the same as nine years ago. The shelves filled with books, the desk, the framed prints on the walls.
The body on the bed.
"What took you so long?" Callie asked.
Frank pulled his eyes away from Biff and stared at Callie. She stood against the far wall, her back to the window. She had a gun in her hand but it wasn't pointed at anyone.
"I waited for you to find out," Callie said. "The whole time I just kept thinking 'Frank will know, Frank will find out.' You didn't."
"How was I supposed to know it was you?" Frank took a couple of small steps toward the bed. "Callie, why would I have ever suspected you?"
"Everyone suspected me," Callie said. "The FBI suspected me. The Secret Service suspected me. A guy called Arthur Gray interrogated me for six hours, did you know that?"
The Gray Man. So the Network had involved themselves after all. "Callie, I don't understand. How did this happen?"
"We were fighting," Callie said. She was staring at the bed, not him, and he took a few more steps until he was at the side of the bed. This close he could tell that Biff was alive, but unconscious. He could see the two playing cards laid out on Biff's stomach. Ace of Spades. Queen of Hearts.
"About what?"
She laughed. "What did we always fight about, Frank?"
"So this was about me?"
"He went out that morning, just like your mother said. Jewelry store. He bought Vanessa a necklace. He still had the bag in his hand when we were talking." She ran a hand through her hair. "I asked him to call off the fishing trip."
"You killed my brother over a fishing trip?" He was colder than Vanessa had been in that freezer and so tense he felt like he was only a hard push away from breaking. "A fishing trip, Callie?"
"You were leaving for Stanford. I wouldn't have seen you for months. I wanted to have more time with you. He said no." She shook her head slowly and it rocked a bit, like she was half asleep and couldn't hold her head up anymore. "He wasn't even angry then. I was. Got mad, told him off for being selfish. He said 'He's my brother'." She pushed off from the wall, took a couple of steps closer to the bed. "We were forever fighting over you, weren't we?" She smiled down at him. "Not much of a fight, was it? I always lost."
"What happened, Callie?"
"He walked away from me. Just, turned. And walked away. I got angry." She reached down and brushed a hand over Biff's hair. "I pushed him. Just- I pushed him. That was it. I wanted to get his attention, so I shoved him a little. I've done it before, you know?"
She had. Callie and Joe had bickered and fought dozens of times and Joe had a habit of walking away from fights he didn't want to have. Callie had shoved him in the chest or smacked him in the arm more than once to force him to pay attention to her. It had aggravated Joe sometimes, usually only made him angrier, but it had never really meant anything.
"He stopped and was turning back. I guess I caught him off balance." Callie shrugged, her head ducked so her face was hidden behind her hair. She looked like a little kid who had been caught doing wrong. "He fell and hit his head. And he didn't get up." She looked up at Frank, tears on her cheeks. "I just pushed him. He was a football player. He was half a foot taller than me and he knew judo and he picked fights with guys five times bigger than me so why did I hurt him?"
"Why did you hide it?"
"I don't know," she said. "I panicked. I was scared. Part of me didn't even believe it."
"The playing cards?" he asked. "You cut him open, Callie." He gagged on bile. "You cut him open and you're telling me it was an accident?"
"You didn't figure it out!" she cried. "Weeks of waiting for you to figure it out and no one did! I had to make you figure it out!"
"Why didn't you just tell me?"
"How could I tell you?" she said. "How could I tell you I killed Joe?" She rubbed a hand across her eyes and looked down at the gun. "God, I couldn't tell you that."
He followed her gaze. "Are you going to shoot me now?"
"I thought about it," she whispered. "But I don't think I want to, anymore."
Frank reached across the bed, over Biff's still form and wrapped his fingers around the gun. Callie stared down at her hands as he carefully tugged the gun out of her grip.
"He was turning around," Callie whispered, staring down at their hands. "He was turning around. He was going to say something. Maybe he was going to agree with me. You know? Maybe he was going to call it off. I'll always wonder what he was going to say."
He left her sitting in his desk chair, her face in her hands, while the room swarmed with EMTs and police.
Frank woke up with the sun in his eyes. He groaned and covered his face with his arm, blinking until his eyes adjusted a little.
He heard a familiar chuckle and the weight of someone sitting down on the side of his bed. "Thought you'd never wake up."
He lowered his arm and blinked into the light. Joe grinned down at him. "Feeling better, bro?"
Frank took inventory and decided he did. He felt better than he had in a long time. "I'm okay," he said. "You?"
"Pretty good," Joe told him. His brother leaned back on his hands and rolled his eyes at Frank. "All things being equal."
Frank sat up against the pillows and glanced around his old room. "Been awhile."
Joe made a non-comittal sound. "Kind of."
"Sorry," Frank said. "I'm sorry it took me so long."
Joe shook his head, and shifted his weight so he could clap Frank on the shoulder. "It took as long as it needed to. You don't have to apologize to me."
"I miss you," Frank admitted.
"I miss you, too," Joe told him. "But it's okay."
"What the hell, huh?"
Frank jerked upright, disoriented for a minute. He stared at the angry man in the doorway for a full ten seconds before he recognized Chet and then he glanced around the room for another long while before he realized he'd fallen asleep sitting in the recliner in his parent's living room. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and tried to force himself awake. "Chet?" He pushed himself up in the chair and winced as he rolled his head. Sleeping in chairs was never a good idea. He checked his watch. Nearly noon. He'd been asleep for hours. "Hey, man. What are you-?" He stopped for a moment and looked at Chet again. "Dude, are you wearing pajamas?"
Hospital scrubs, Frank realized a second later. Pale blue pants and t-shirt decorated with baseball bats and mitts. "Those look comfortable," he finally said, for lack of anything more relevant to say.
"I thought we had an agreement," Chet said. He was glaring rather ferociously. Chet was a big guy. Normally he'd be intimidating, but the scrubs were mostly killing it.
"We did?" Frank asked. He tried to remember the last time he'd talked to Chet. "I'm not going to kill Biff, Chet. I just saved his life, like, seven hours ago."
"No," Chet said. "The agreement about how if you ever figured out who hurt Joe, you'd come and get me. That deal. Remember that deal? I've only made you promise me about seventeen million times in the last ten years."
"Oh," Frank said. "That deal." He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "Sorry?" He was tired enough that he wasn't able to muster up much of a defense for himself.
"Con Riley called me," Chet told him. His voice was sour as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Imagine my surprise."
"Chet. There wasn't time. I didn't even know what was really going on." He licked his lips and thought wistfully of mouthwash. "I didn't really believe it, even when it was all tied up and handed to me on a silver platter. I just couldn't believe it."
"I think you knew."
Frank raised his head to stare at Chet. His oldest friend was watching him with less aggravation and a great deal more sympathy.
"I think maybe you knew," Chet said. "You looked at everyone except Callie. You ran off for the summer, getting as far away from Bayport as you possibly could, while every law enforcement agency and your own father seemed convinced that the killer would be here. And when you came back… you treated Callie really weird when you got back, Frank. At the time I just figured you sucked at break-ups, but in retrospect… It's like you just completely forgot about her for a while. A blind spot. Or repressed memory. Or something. I'm not a psychologist. But I think you knew."
"I told her the FBI suspected her," Frank remembered. "It was the first time I'd seen her in six years and that was how I started the conversation."
"What about Casey?" Chet asked gently. "Why Casey?"
Frank let his head fall back against the back of the recliner. "She wanted me to find out," he said. "I think Casey was just another chance to try and make me figure it out."
"That's kind of crazy," Chet said.
"A little," Frank said. "I don't think she was in her right mind when this happened."
"That doesn't make me feel better," Chet said. "She killed one of my best friends, and Casey, who I liked a lot, and she tried to kill Biff and Vanessa and you. And for the last ten years, she and I have been all buddy-buddy and I didn't even suspect her."
"Who would have?" Frank asked. "You know. Besides every law enforcement agency on the face of the planet except me." He shook his head, suddenly tired of the conversation. "Why are you wearing pajamas?"
"Hospital scrubs," Chet corrected him primly. "And I'm wearing hospital scrubs because they don't let you wear street clothes in the delivery room."
"Oh my God," Frank said. He blinked at his friend for a long minute. "God, tell me you didn't name that poor kid Frances."
"For your information, we named her Josepha." Chet grinned. "Francine."
Frank stared at him. "That's the most horrible thing I've ever heard. Did you sign the birth certificate while Emily was still drugged, or what?"
"Are you going to malign my choice of name for my firstborn child, or are you going to come meet her?"
"Can I do both?" Frank asked, pushing himself to his feet.
"No," Chet said. "You're going to accept this monumental honor and shut up."
Frank grabbed his coat. "Josepha Francine is not an honor. It's borderline child abuse."
"We'll call her Joey," Chet said. "I mean, geez. How mean do you think we are?"
"I think you named your daughter after the heroine in a Victorian Gothic romance novel." Frank held the door open for Chet and gestured his friend through. "If Emily tries to kill you when she finds out about this, I'm not defending you."
Vanessa Rhys yawned into her hand as she let herself into the house late one evening. "They want the dog to be grey," she said called ahead into the kitchen. "Grey. The movie is done and they want to know how hard it'll be to go back and make the dog grey."
"I'm going to guess very hard." Gerald's voice drifted out to her over the sound of the television and something sizzling on the oven. "There's a package for you on the dining room table."
She shrugged off her coat and folded it over the back of one of the chairs as she examined the small box waiting for it. It was about the size of a paperback book and wrapped in brown packing paper. She checked the return address and raised an eyebrow at Frank Hardy's name. "Do you know what it is?"
Gerald appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, drying his hands on a dish towel. "I resemble Superman in many ways," he teased her, "but X-ray vision is not one of them."
She rolled her eyes at him as she used her house key to cut the tape on one end of the package. Peeled back, the paper revealed a small cardboard box. Vanessa opened the lid and found a piece of notebook paper, folded up into a square, and a box from Bayport Jewelers.
She opened the box first, tilting it so Gerald could see as he peeked over her shoulder. It was a silver pendant, shaped like a butterfly. Colored stones were set in the wings. She touched the fine silver chain and held it up to the light. It wasn't expensive, but it wasn't cheap either. She passed it to Gerald and unfolded the note.
"Should I worry that Frank Hardy is sending my wife pretty jewelry?" Gerald asked.
The note was handwritten and short. She held it out for him to read and cupped the necklace gently in her hands.
Happy Birthday. Love, Joe.
The End