Player (13 page)

“I don’t think it was a coincidence at all!”

The angry voice came from just outside the hallway. Josh swiveled around in his chair and was stunned when he saw his parents standing in the doorway. His mother looked nervous and concerned. Her lips were turned in a frown, but she remained silent. His father was livid, so much so that his face was blotched red, and a large vein was protruding on his forehead. His eyes flashed dangerously, and Josh was fairly certain that if his father could have kicked the living crap out of him without being arrested for child abuse, he would have done it at that moment. Fortunately for Josh, he couldn’t get away with it in the middle of the police department.

“Dad? Mom? What are you doing here?”

“What are we doing here?” Mr. Hanover repeated, furious. Spittle flew from his twisted lips. “What are you doing here? This has gone too far, Joshua! Why are you bothering this detective with your nonsense?”

“Nonsense!” Josh shouted back, growing equally angry. “You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

“Now everyone just calm down,” Detective Gibula instructed. He squished his cigarette butt into his overflowing ashtray. “Josh, I called your parents. You’re a minor. We shouldn’t be talking at all without them present.”

Josh silently cursed the fact that his eighteenth birthday was still four months away.

“If you were really concerned that your friend’s death wasn’t an accident, why didn’t you come to us first?” his mother asked.

“You would never have believed me,” Josh said sullenly. “I know Lily wasn’t suicidal. Can’t you at least investigate it?” Josh pleaded, turning his attention back to Detective Gibula. “Just to be sure?”

“We already investigated,” Detective Gibula replied gruffly. “All her friends from school said she’d been depressed about her boyfriend. She even mentioned him in the suicide note. It was an open and shut case.”

“I’m afraid our son was her boyfriend,” Josh’s father said. “It appears that his callous disregard for other people’s feelings has finally come back to haunt him. All of this drama is his somewhat irrational response to his own guilt.”

     “Steven, try to have a little compassion for God’s sake!” his mother reprimanded, and shook her head in reproach.

“Oh, I see,” the detective said. His hard eyes softened ever so slightly. Even the fat cop wasn’t as big of a jerk as Josh’s own father. “I understand how you must feel. It isn’t your fault that Lily died. And trying to make a suicide look like a murder isn’t going to make things any easier for you.”

“This has nothing to do with me feeling guilty. I’m going to feel just as guilty either way!” Josh told him. “Lily’s own brother doesn’t believe she killed herself. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

Detective Gibula tried in vain to cover a belch as he scratched his balding head. He seemed unfazed by the untimely bodily function, and continued to shift things around on his desk as he spoke. “Mr. Grant isn’t handling his sister’s death well. He’s mentioned murder too. I’m going to ask you the same question I asked him. Why would anyone want to kill Lily Cavalier?”

“These notes make it sound like they did it because of me,” Josh said softly.

Detective Gibula laughed at his presumption. He actually guffawed, his large belly bouncing with each ungraceful movement. Josh’s parents weren’t laughing though. They both looked mortified as they lingered in the doorway, listening to the conversation.

“A jilted lover? And to get even, they killed one of your girlfriends?” Detective Gibula asked, still chuckling. “Kid, if you believe that, you have a pretty high opinion of yourself. You’re a good looking guy, all right, but do you really think you’re worth killing for?”

“You think this is one big joke, don’t you?” Josh fumed. “Well, I didn’t think it was very funny when someone slipped rat poison into my migraine prescription.”

The detective abruptly stopped snickering, and turned to Josh’s parents with a serious expression. “Is there any truth to this rat poison thing? Whether it’s connected to Lily Cavalier or not, if someone is running around spiking people’s medication with rat poison, that’s a serious problem.”

“Josh definitely had food poisoning, but—”

“But we doubt very much that anyone is to blame for that, unless it’s Josh himself,” Steven interrupted his wife. “But that’s our problem, not yours. I think we’ve wasted more than enough of your time for one day, officer.”

“Kid, you have a wild imagination, and I’m sure we could go back and forth like this all day,” the detective said. “But your father is right. I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with you right now. I have a job to do.”

“Part of that job should be finding Lily’s killer!”

Josh tried to make a dramatic exit, but he practically tipped over his chair when he stood up. He was prepared to storm out of the office, but Detective Gibula called him back. Josh would have liked to ignore him, but his parents were blocking the only exit, so he was forced to turn around. He looked at the cop’s double-chinned face with an unhappy frown.

“Josh, just so you know, if I did believe Lily Cavalier was murdered, you would be my number one suspect.”

His voice wasn’t threatening. In fact, it sounded flat and uninterested. Like he was stating a simple fact that everyone present should already be aware of.  Josh snorted and pushed past his father to get out the door.

Josh’s parents remained silent until they had passed the front desk of the police station. He noticed a few of the younger policeman pointing and snickering as they made their way through the station. They must have overheard his conversation with the detective. His father noticed it too, and it only fueled his fury. He was able to control himself until they were safely out of earshot, but once they reached the parking lot, he couldn’t contain his anger any longer. He let loose with a ferociousness Josh had never encountered before.

“Joshua, do you have any idea how insane the stunt you just pulled is? Do you realize lying about a murder case is a federal offense? Do you want to ruin your life? Are you trying to make all our lives miserable? Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I decided to have children at all!”

“Sometimes I wonder too!” Josh spat back. “It isn’t as if you actually give a damn!”

“Josh, I know your father and I have been putting in a lot of hours at the hospital,” Robin said calmly. “But it doesn’t mean we don’t care about you.

“A lot? I barely remember what you look like half the time!”

“So this is all about getting attention!” Steven shouted. “I knew that was the problem. You know, Josh, you aren’t a child anymore. You’ll be leaving for college next year. This kind of behavior is absolutely ridiculous.”

“Whatever! My whole existence is ridiculous as far as you’re concerned! Everything I do is wrong. Nothing is ever good enough!” Josh fumed. “And the one time I really, really need you to stand by me, you can only make accusations. Well, you know what, Dad—screw you!”

“All right, Joshua, that’s enough!” His mother intervened. “There’s no reason to be disrespectful.”

Josh snorted and kicked the gravel of the parking lot.

“No, Robin, that’s fine. Let Josh have a temper tantrum if he wants to. Let him prove me right. In the meantime, Josh, your driving privileges have been suspended. And consider yourself grounded.”

“What? But I didn’t do anything! Mom?”

Josh’s mother shook her head sadly. “I have to agree with your father, though it’s for different reasons. You haven’t been yourself lately and I think we need to get to the bottom of it before we can let you have the freedom you’ve been used to.”

“Give me the keys to the Mercedes,” Steven said, and held out his hand expectedly.

“But Dad. . . .”

“Now!”

Josh grudgingly pulled the keys from his pocket, and gave them to his father. He rode back to his house with his mother. Once they got home, he ran up the stairs to his room without a word to either of his parents. He refused to come down for dinner, even though he was actually starting to feel hungry for the first time since the whole rat poison incident. No amount of coaxing from his mother could convince him to come out.

Josh was furious. Lily had been murdered and no one seemed to care. The police were no help. His parents were beyond useless. But his resolve only strengthened as he spent half the night staring at the ceiling, thinking things through. There was a murderer on the loose, and Josh wasn’t going to rest until he stopped them
.
  

Josh passed Bryan in the hall the next morning and they agreed to meet in the yearbook room during their lunch period. Josh spent a lot of time there, downloading and cropping photos for the annual publication. He was the only student who had his own key, so he knew they would have absolute privacy.

Bryan didn’t want to wait that long. He tried to convince Josh to skip school for the day, but the last thing Josh needed was to give his parents another reason to keep him under house arrest. Still, he was just as anxious as Bryan to compare notes, and he struggled through morning classes.

When he got to the chemistry room, Josh silently took his place next to Rosa. He met her worried gaze as Mr. Watson handed out their supplies for their lab assignment and tried to give her a reassuring smile, but he knew it didn’t really touch his eyes. He had too much on his mind to be lighthearted.

“Josh, what’s going on?” Rosa asked as she lit their Bunsen burner. “I was worried when you didn’t come to school yesterday.”

“I went to Lily’s funeral.” He sighed. “I would have called you last night, but my parents took my cell away.”

“What? Why?”

Josh rubbed his temples. He was getting a migraine again. Worrying about a murderer wasn’t helping to decrease his stress level. Even though his mother had given him a fresh bottle of codeine, he had no intention of using them. “It’s a long story, but it basically boils down to the fact that my father’s a total jerk who should never have procreated.”

“What happened at the funeral?” Rosa asked. She seemed relieved to change the subject. She had met Josh’s father. She knew death was a safer topic. “Did Bryan say anything to you?”

“Bryan said a lot of things to me.”

Rosa misunderstood. “Whatever he said, I hope you aren’t blaming yourself for what happened to Lily.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Josh explained. He leaned in a little closer, and kept his voice low so the kids at the next Bunsen burner wouldn’t overhear. “Bryan thinks Lily was murdered.”

“What?”

Rosa actually dropped the beaker she was holding. The glass fell to the ground with a crash, shattering into a million tiny shards. Several students snickered, and Mr. Watson peered at them over the rims of his thick glasses. He scratched his graying beard as he handed Josh a dust pan and ordered him to clean up the mess. Once the glass was safely deposited in the wastebasket, Josh and Rosa were finally able to resume their conversation.

“Josh!” Rosa hissed. “You can’t really think that Lily was murdered. That’s insane!”

Josh slammed his pencil down onto the desktop. “You sound just like my parents and that moron Detective Gibula,” he complained.

“Detective? Oh God, please tell me that you didn’t go the police. Not without some kind of proof!”

“I thought I did have proof.”

Josh told her about the second note that had shown up in his mailbox. She chewed her lower lip nervously as she listened, not quite sure what to make of it all. She was a little more willing to consider the possibility of murder when she realized it was connected to the rat poison, which she had witnessed firsthand.

“Wow, this is really scary,” Rosa admitted, and swallowed hard. “If they got away with murder once, what’s to stop them from trying it again?”

Josh realized that Rosa had a good point. He was so busy trying to prove that the first murder had happened; he never gave a thought to the possibility of a second attack being in the works. If they kept with their current pattern, it seemed logical that the killer would strike again. Which meant Rosa, as well as the other girls, could be targets.

“I’m so sorry, Rosa,” Josh told her, and took her hand. “As if dating a reformed player wasn’t bad enough, now I might have put you in danger.”

Her face drained of color. “Do you really think someone would try to hurt me?”

“I really don’t know,” Josh admitted. “But we shouldn’t take any chances. Just be extra careful. Try not to go anywhere alone for a while. I don’t want to scare you, but I’d rather have you scared than turning up dead.”

“No, I’m glad you told me,” Rosa replied, her voice controlled. “I’ll keep my pepper spray handy at all times. But don’t you think you should warn Elena and the other girls too?”

“You’re right.” Josh agreed. “They should know what’s going on. The only problem is, I don’t think they’re going to believe me. I’ll be lucky if I can get them to listen to me at all.” Josh fingered the small scab on his cheek, and wondered what Jasmine would do if he dared to approach her. Probably something that would make him permanently sterile.

“Do you have any idea who might be doing it? You were so sure that Bryan was the one who poisoned you,” Rosa said thoughtfully. “That hardly seems likely now.”