J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for continuing to read! Thank you especially to Candylou, MargaretA66, ErinJordan, max2013, caseykam, and Sofia for your reviews on the previous chapter! I hope you enjoy this one and God bless!
Chapter XIV
Fenton shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was the first time in his life that he could remember feeling uncomfortable in a police station, but then there had been a lot of experiences lately that were the first in his life. At the moment, he was waiting in Chief Collig's office for the police chief, who was supposed to be arriving any minute. That was some of the discomfort, the waiting and the anxiety. The other part was that Collig's office had a glass door, and every time an officer walked past that door, Fenton imagined that he or she would look at him and wonder what he, of all people, was doing unattended in the chief's office. Of course, he had no way of really knowing what they were thinking, and he couldn't even see whether they were actually looking at him since he had his back to the door. It was all imagination, and that made things even worse that he was allowing himself, once more for the first time in his life, to be so affected by imagination.
Finally, the door opened, and Fenton breathed a little easier in relief, thinking Collig had finally come. When he turned to look, he found it wasn't so. It was Captain Olaf, the second-in-command of the Bayport Police Department and one of the few officers who had regarded the Hardys with some hostility even before this whole mess had started.
"Captain," Fenton greeted him with a stiff nod. "I was just waiting for Chief Collig."
"I know," Olaf replied, sitting down in Collig's chair. "He called me and asked me to talk to you. He said he'd be late this morning. I expect he's running down some leads of his own."
"Is there any news?" Fenton asked.
"There are several items the chief wanted me to fill you in on." Olaf checked a notebook before continuing. "First, the parole officer for Eva Moriare, formerly known as Evangeline Moretti, insists that she was in New York at the time Mario Beretta was attacked in Philadelphia. She saw her a few hours before the incident as well as the next morning. There's no way she could have gotten all the way to Philadelphia and back in that amount of time."
Fenton nodded as he took in this bit of information. So, either Evangeline had hired someone after all or she wasn't involved in the attack on Mario. He wasn't sure which sounded more likely. "What about now?" Fenton asked. "Is she still in New York?"
"That's right. She's not allowed to leave the city at all for four months as a condition of her parole. After that, she can leave with someone approved by her parole officer, but there are restraining orders against her preventing her from coming within a thousand feet of the residence of any of her intended victims from last time. In any case, she can't very well come either here or Philadelphia."
Fenton thought this over and then shook his head. "No. There has to be some mistake. It doesn't fit that Evangeline would have hired anyone, and who else would have wanted to harm Mario?"
"That's something for the Philadelphia police to investigate," Olaf commented. "I do have some good news. The chief forwarded the information from that packet that Joe received in the mail. There are plenty of police departments that were glad to have it, even knowing where it came from. It seems your reputation isn't as tarnished among ordinary police as it is with the feds."
"I'm not sure how good that news is, or that it's really news. It's not the police departments who have been making trouble for us, and we don't have to go all the way to the federal government to find trouble. We have plenty right here in Bayport."
"True." Olaf shook his head. "Politics isn't my game, so I don't know what the answer is there. All I can say is that I've got a feeling this is all going to come to an end soon, one way or another."
"I know. I have the same feeling," Fenton agreed.
HBHBHBHBHB
"This is the one," Sam said, stopping at the door of an apartment in a large complex. He used the key that Belle had given him to unlock it, and he and Joe went inside.
The apartment was furnished without extravagance but still with some regard for comfort. There wasn't much for decorations except for a few family pictures and a few pieces of religious art. The front room held a futon and some armchairs, along with a TV and a coffee table. There was a closet by the entryway with several coats hanging in it and some basic cleaning supplies, such as a vacuum, mop, and broom. One door led into a kitchen where nearly everything was put away except for a few dishes in the dish rack—Mario didn't have a dishwasher. Another led to a bathroom. The third led into the bedroom. It had a carpeted floor and, in addition to the bed, it also had a desk and a chair and an overcrowded bookshelf. A laptop was sitting on the desk.
As soon as they entered that door, both Joe's and Sam's gazes were directed to a dark red stain on the carpet.
"John said the police are done in here, right?" Joe asked, although he knew that he was correct. "We should clean that up so he and Belle don't have to."
"Good idea," Sam agreed. "You can do that while I look around and see if I can find anything."
"It doesn't look too promising to me," Joe commented, giving the living room a critical glance as he made for the closet by the front door. "Mario is apparently pretty neat, his attacker didn't ransack the place, and the police would have put everything back as they found it, more or less."
"True, but if there are any clues left, the police obviously would have missed them," Sam pointed out. "It's worth looking, anyway."
Sam started his search in the living room, while Joe turned his attention to the closet. He didn't see any kind of carpet stain-remover out in plain sight, but there was a large cardboard box with several bottles in it. He started pulling them out to look at the labels.
When he tried to put one of the bottles back—it was a hard floor cleaner, hardly helpful for the job he had—it didn't sit down again levelly. He pulled it back out and peered into the box to see what was underneath it. He pulled out the offending object and surveyed it in puzzlement.
It was a well-worn die cast toy car. The paint was rubbed off on all the edges and the rear axle was warped. It had obviously been well-loved by a child once. Joe turned it over to look at the bottom. The year printed there was twenty years earlier.
"That's really weird," he commented.
"What is?" Sam asked.
"This." Joe held the car up for Sam to see. "Does Mario strike you as the type of guy who still plays with toys?"
"Hardly. He must have had guests who brought a kid with them. The kid must have left the car in the closet."
"That's possible," Joe replied. "It's an old toy for a kid to be playing with these days."
"It could have come from a second-hand store," Sam suggested.
"Maybe. Or…" Joe looked up at the top of the closet. There was a shelf there with several boxes lined up on it. On impulse, he pulled one of them down. It was full of knick-knacks: a jewel box, a photo album, some seashells, a pocket knife, a partly-finished model ship, and other such things. The one that caught Joe's attention the most was a dried white rose. He gingerly picked it up.
"What do you think this means?" he asked Sam.
"It's hard to say. You think it has something to do with Mario's attack?"
"Possibly."
Joe pulled down another box and looked inside. That one was full of '80s and '90s cassettes. The next box he tried was more of a success. This one was full of old, well-worn toys. There was a stuffed dog, several plastic animal figurines, a G.I. Joe, a sack of marbles, and most significantly, a dozen or so die cast cars in the same condition as the one Joe had found. Whereas the other boxes had been neatly packed up, everything in this box had merely been thrown in haphazardly.
"I'm starting to get an idea what's going on here," Joe said.
"What?" Sam asked.
Joe rubbed his chin as he dropped the car he had found in the bottom of the closet into the box. "I bet all these boxes are things from Mario's childhood, including maybe things his parents had. That first box, I'd say, was definitely his parents' belongings."
"Okay," Sam conceded. "So?"
Joe once again picked up the white rose. "Picture this. Someone is trying to get their hands on something Mario's parents owned. This person suspects that Mario has this item. Now, they don't want anyone to know exactly what they're trying to get, so they want to find a way to get into his apartment without anyone connecting the dots. There just so happens to be a woman who has sworn revenge against Mario who has recently been released from prison. So the thief breaks into Mario's apartment and attacks him according to Evangeline's MO so that everyone will naturally assume that it was Evangeline and that there was no reason for it other than her twisted idea of revenge. Meanwhile, the thief makes a quick search of the apartment. They find the boxes in the closet—they're not exactly hidden—and pull one down. It's the one with the toys. The thief drops it and toys spill all over the closet floor. The thief's plan hinges on no one realizing he had any interest in these boxes, so they hastily throw all the toys back in the box, all but the car they miss."
"That sounds reasonable," Sam replied. "The only questions are: what was this person looking for and did they find it?"
"Mario would maybe know, if he was able to talk," Joe said. "Belle and John might have some ideas."
"We'll ask them."
HBHBHBHBHB
Frank was scanning through the headlines of the Bayport Gazette as he ate a late lunch by himself. Callie was having a severe bout of morning sickness—despite it being early afternoon—and had gone back to bed. Frank's shift had started early that morning and it had been a quiet one, so he was already back at home. While he was looking at the headlines, he was trying to think of the most productive use for his time.
As he was finishing lunch, there was a knock on the door. Instantly, he was a trifle suspicious, but he relaxed when he found that the caller was Chet.
"Hi, Frank," Chet said. He was wringing his hands nervously, and so Frank knew he had something on his mind. "I hope you're not trying to get to work."
"I had a morning shift today." Frank held the door open. "What's going on?"
"Oh, good." Chet looked around him as he entered the apartment. "Where's Callie?"
"She's in bed. She's not feeling very well."
"Oh. That's too bad." Chet paused. "Maybe it's just as well if just the two of us could talk. Do you have time to talk about something? It's kind of important."
"I guess so," Frank replied. He was beginning to be a little confused. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"Well…Yeah, in a way." Chet sank down in one of the chairs at the table. "I've made a huge mess out of things."
"Not you, too," Frank joked, sitting down across from him.
"I've been so outright rude to Joe."
Frank let out a small sigh and nodded. "I'm sure Joe isn't holding that against you. He's taken Tony's passing really hard, and he hasn't exactly been easy to be around since then. But he also realizes it, so I really don't think he's going to blame anyone for snapping back at him."
"I hope so," Chet replied. "But it hasn't just been since what happened with Tony. It started a long time before that. It started when you guys went to Ziyou, and I want to know what went on in that place. I asked Biff, but he wouldn't tell me, and I can't talk to Joe long enough without saying something I'd regret to ask him. It's not like either of them, so I figure whatever it was must have been pretty bad. I just can't figure out what it could be."
Frank nodded and thought about it a few minutes. "You know, you're right. That was the start of it. You probably do have a right to know about it, but I've got to warn you, it's really strange."
"I was already guessing it had to be." Chet leaned forward eagerly to listen to the story.
Frank thought a few seconds about what to say. "There was an old Buddhist monastery near the city we were in. It was deserted. Apparently, when the communists took over the country in the '50s, they murdered all the monks. Now the place is supposed to be haunted. Joe and Biff went in there, and they think they saw the ghost. Well, Biff heard it but Joe saw it."
Chet's eyes widened. "You really believe that?"
"I believe that that's what they believe," Frank replied. "Everything Joe described could have been rigged up. We've investigated enough fake hauntings, I have a good idea how you could do it. Joe is convinced it was real, though, and so is Biff."
"But you're not?"
"Like I said, it could have been rigged. I just don't believe in ghosts, like that. It just doesn't make sense."
"Why not?" Chet countered. "You're always talking about 'logical explanations.' But if there are ghosts, then that is a logical explanation. So where's the proof that the supernatural doesn't exist?"
"I never said the supernatural doesn't exist. It's the paranormal I don't believe in." Frank folded his arms. "See, I do believe in God and an afterlife and even angels and all that. I'll even admit that there could be genuine miracles. I just don't think that dead people would bother coming back to run around and scare people. I know when I'm dead, I'm definitely not going to waste my time like that."
"Oh. I hadn't really thought about it like that before." Chet frowned. "But then how do you explain all the ghost sightings? I mean, tons of people claim they've seen ghosts."
"I can't explain all the ghost sightings," Frank admitted. "I don't have the facts for the vast majority of them. All I know is that all the alleged ghost sightings I've investigated has turned out to be something else. Not a very good average for the ghosts. There is one thing about Joe's story that bothers me, though."
"What's that?"
"That it's Joe. He's seen all the same things I have. His first impulse—back then, anyway—wouldn't be to assume there's a ghost at work. It would be the opposite. It would have to be very convincing to shake him up as much as it did."
HBHBHBHBHB
Shaun hadn't heard from Phil all day, which was fine by him. He had no desire to keep running around, pretending to be a detective. What was there to investigate, anyway? They all knew perfectly well who had killed Darcy and why, and they also knew it was someone they couldn't stop. If Phil wanted to pretend differently, then he could do what he wanted, just so long as he left Shaun out of it.
He was waxing his surfboard and thinking and watching the people on the beach around him. He didn't see anyone he knew, apart from a few other surfers. They couldn't be involved in anything. They just wanted to surf. That was all Shaun wanted, too.
He noticed a girl who was watching him over her sunglasses. She smiled when he met her eyes, but there was something off about the smile. Shaun quickly pretended he hadn't noticed her and went back to waxing. Then he silently scolded himself. He was getting paranoid. Now he was even costing himself chances to flirt.
When he looked up again, he saw that the girl was coming toward him. She had put her sunglasses back on normally and she smiled again. Again, Shaun got the sense that there was something sinister behind the smile.
The girl leaned against his surfboard. "Shaun Stane."
"Do I know you?" Shaun asked in confusion.
"No, but I know you." The girl folded her arms. "I know you like your coffee black, that you haven't done your laundry in a week, apart from Tuesday when you threw a few clothes in the washer and then forgot them because you were playing Call of Duty, that you've been ghosting your sister ever since your last fight, that your neighbor directly above you has a dog named Topsy that barks at you whenever she sees you."
"Who are you? President of my fan club?" Shaun took a step back, feeling discomfited by her words.
"Hardly. But the most important thing I know about you is that you've been looking into Darcy's murder, along with your friends, Phil Cohen and Jenna Ridgeley."
"So?"
"There's been a lot of crime in this city lately. The police are stretched pretty thin. It'd be a shame if they had three more murders to investigate." The girl said this calmly, smiling again.
"What?" Shaun shook his head in disbelief. "I'm calling the police."
"You'd be dead before they got here. There is a way that none of you would have to get killed. You'd just have to do exactly as you're told."
