Dial Em for Murder Read online

  Officer McHaffrey: Alright.

  Emmy Danvers: Well, they take down a drug cartel.

  Officer McHaffrey: I see.

  Emmy Danvers: I doubt it. The plot is actually pretty complicated because her sister-in-law—

  Officer McHaffrey: Let’s try to stay on topic, miss. I heard someone say that he took your drink. Did you confront him about it?

  Emmy Danvers: I told him I wanted it back. Does that count?

  Officer McHaffrey: Yes, it does. And did he return it to you?

  (Emmy Danvers points to her sopping wet shirt, stained with the remnants of a grande mocha Frappuccino.)

  Emmy Danvers: Uh, I guess he did?

  Somehow I segued from there back to my romance novel, describing every plot point, while Officer McHaffrey did his best to maneuver me back to our very own—very dead—John Doe.

  Officer McHaffrey: Can you tell me anything about his state of mind?

  Emmy Danvers: Well, he seemed confused. Really paranoid and Alzheimer-y.

  Officer McHaffrey: Alzheimer-y?

  Emmy Danvers: (shrugs) Yeah. I think that sums it up.

  I didn’t say another word, not because I actually believed the dead man was right and that I couldn’t trust anyone ever again, but because if I mentioned the dead man’s cryptic warning about my father, Officer McHaffrey would’ve been obligated to ask some pointed questions about my home life, and I didn’t want to get personal. The last thing I wanted to discuss right after having a stranger’s lifeless body rolled off me was my complete lack of a reliable father figure. It wasn’t as if being raised by a single parent increased the likelihood of being attacked by a strange man in a coffee shop. Explaining that I’d never met my father, not even for something as insignificant as a pumpkin spice latte, did make it far more likely that I’d graduate from uncontrollable shaking with adrenaline to full-on ugly crying on the sidewalk outside the Starbucks.

  I focused on delivering one-word answers and nodding my way through the rest of the interview. It was the only way to postpone the tears I could feel welling up inside me, threatening to spill out at any second. Officer McHaffrey had barely finished thanking me for my cooperation when I bolted.

  My sneakers slapped the pavement in a steady beat that offered no real comfort, especially when my breathing became shallow and choked. I couldn’t drown out the morbid whispers of onlookers, and their words continued ringing in my ears.

  “He didn’t look sick to me, until—”

  “Are you kidding? He had one foot in the grave before he even pushed open the door!”

  “I wonder if the police have already identified the body.”

  The tight knot of revulsion in my stomach only began to ease when I swiped my keycard into my apartment building, instantly smelling the familiar mix of mildew and detergent that lingered from the laundry room. Something about it steadied my pounding heart rate, helped clear my head. I needed to walk up the three flights of stairs to the cramped apartment I shared with my mom, change into my favorite pair of hole-ridden jeans and my baggiest sweater, before attempting to wash the coffee stains out of my clothes. Then I needed to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. That nobody had whispered a cryptic warning to me during their last moments on earth. That the storm had passed, the worst was over—insert reassuring cliché here—and that my life would now return to its regularly scheduled programming.

  I might have even convinced myself, if I hadn’t double-checked all my pockets to make sure they were empty before shoving the clothes into the washer. There was something weighing down my jacket. Something that most definitely hadn’t been there before my run-in with a geriatric coffee thief. Fingers still trembling from shock and adrenaline and a dozen other emotions I didn’t particularly want to name, I delved deeper inside. I should have felt the papery folds of a secondhand book about the Vietnam War or a pamphlet full of conspiracy theories, some weird manifesto I could toss in the dumpster without a second thought. Instead the pad of my thumb slid across a smooth glass screen that I nearly fumbled and dropped to the ground because, oh holy crap, this did not belong with me. An old man slipping a handful of butterscotch toffees into my coat? Okay, that would be strange but sort of understandable in that who-knows-why-old-people-do-what-they-do kind of way. But randomly giving me one of the most expensive tablets on the market? That went well beyond weird.

  Slate Industries had produced the Ferrari of electronics and my sticky Frappuccino fingers had no business holding one of their masterpieces. Roughly the size of a large smartphone but thinner than three quarters stacked on top of each other, it had been lauded as the tablet/phone love child hybrid that nobody realized they needed until they felt it resting in the palm of their hands. Then it became the next generation of tech they couldn’t live without. The Slate’s superior memory, speed, privacy settings, battery life, durability, and general awesomeness came with a hefty price tag attached.

  And yet now one of them belonged to me.

  For some reason all I could think as my fingers skimmed across the smooth chrome exterior was that anyone who could afford a Slate should be buying their own damn Frappuccinos. My Starbucks Stranger didn’t need to resort to theft to get his caffeine fix. But for some reason he’d claimed my drink, grabbed my wrist with his ridiculously strong fingers, and slid this outrageously beautiful machine into my pocket. So maybe keeping it was the right thing to do. Even to my own ears that rationalization sounded awfully thin. “Finders keepers, losers weepers” probably didn’t apply to cases where the loser turned up dead. Then again, turning over the Slate to the cops wouldn’t magically bring the old man back to life. Most likely, it would go mysteriously missing, and if an officer in the department happened to start using an identical Slate, well, none of the other cops would ask too many questions about where he got it. As far as I was concerned there was enough moral ambiguity to keep me on the safe side of karma. If I handed it over to the authorities, I would be denying a dying man’s parting gift. That would be rude. Disrespectful. Downright dishonorable.

  I was merely respecting his final wishes.

  “Earth to Emmy!” Audrey waved her arms dramatically in front of my face. “Are you even listening to me? You should have called us!”

  I nodded and then did a quick sweep of the cafeteria. Nobody seemed to be paying us any undue attention, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. Probably leftover paranoia from the old man’s creepy warnings. “I know, okay? I should have called. Can we move on already?”

  Audrey and Ben traded looks. The problem with best friends is that sometimes they know you a little too well. They can tell when you are holding out on them. And they have absolutely no qualms about poking and prodding until you’ve spilled all your secrets.

  “Em’s just mad he interrupted her alone time with her fictional Prince Charming.”

  I glared at Ben as my cheeks heated with annoyance. Ever since he caught me with a big dopey smile plastered across my face as I finished the last paragraph of a romance novel, he’d started giving me crap about my personal life. Which was blatantly unfair, because did I criticize him for hooking up with random girls after baseball practice or outside the batting cages or on the subway or wherever the hell else he happened to meet them?

  No, I did not.

  Much.

  But that wasn’t the point.

  Zzzzz! Zzzzz! Zzzzz!

  The three of us stared in silence while my backpack jolted like the victim of an invisible stun gun.

  Ben raised an eyebrow. “You going to answer that anytime soon?”

  “It’s nothing,” I lied, grabbing my backpack off the chair and shoving it farther under the table. “Just ignore it.”

  Confusion radiated from Audrey’s warm brown eyes. “I don’t get it, Em. Why are you suddenly hiding stuff from us?”

  Because I don’t want you to tell me to do the right thing. Not yet.

  Ben used his foot to snag the strap, and w
ith one effortless movement he brought up the backpack and dumped all my possessions onto the lunch table. Textbooks, notebooks, my graphing calculator, a few cheap pens with the names of real estate offices on them, a special journal for all of my novel ideas, and the Slate I definitely should have left at home. I’d been uncomfortable with the idea of leaving it on my bedside dresser—or anywhere out of reach, really—which was stupid because I hadn’t been brave enough to do more than flip the Slate over half a dozen times, examining every smooth inch. The possibility, no matter how remote, that my information might be listed in the dead man’s contacts had scared me into inaction. Or maybe that had been the product of the shock finally catching up with me. Either way, I didn’t mean for the Slate to become my very own show-and-tell exhibit.

  The Slate writhed on the cafeteria table before I snatched it up and stuffed it into the crumpled sweatshirt. It buzzed one last time and then quieted, probably because the battery had died. I wasn’t sure how I’d afford a charger, but that wasn’t my most immediate problem. Not when my best friends were staring at me like I’d gone off the deep end.

  “What,” Ben asked with forced calmness, “is that?”

  “You mean, beyond a total violation of my privacy?” I began shoveling all my belongings back into my bag. “My new Slate.”

  Audrey’s jaw dropped open. “There’s no way you could afford that unless you sold your kidney on the black market.” I watched as comprehension dawned across her face. “The dead guy?”

  “Can you keep your voice down?” I muttered. “This isn’t something I want to advertise.”

  “You robbed a dead guy?”

  “No! Of course I didn’t. He gave it to me. Sort of.”

  “Yeah, nothing weird about that,” Audrey scoffed.

  “He gave it to me,” I repeated. Neither of them looked impressed with the repetition of that particular point, so I quickly moved on. “That makes it mine. Case closed.”

  Ben sat up straighter as he quickly zipped my bag shut. “I doubt the cops see it that way, since they’re headed right toward us.”

  Chapter 3

  The two police officers weren’t exactly chatty as they hustled me out of the cafeteria.

  They wouldn’t tell me why or where they were taking me. In fact, the cops barely spared me a glance. Instead, they flashed their badges at the lunch monitor, told him that they’d already cleared everything with our school principal, and assured him that this was merely a safety precaution. Officer Eva Thorton’s exact words were, “We have a credible reason to believe this young woman’s safety is at risk.” Then she placed one hand on my shoulder and frog-marched me out the door and into a waiting squad car. Her partner, Andre Brown, stayed two steps ahead of us. His wide shoulders partially blocked my view of the growing crowd of students, but I could still see plenty of people staring at me with open-mouthed amazement. I could hear the rumors starting.

  “Do you think she slept with the principal?”

  “Oh, come on! Everyone knows that she robbed a convenience store.”

  “No way! If she had money, she wouldn’t be wearing those ugly-ass sneakers.”

  On a normal day, being the center of attention would’ve freaked me out. I’ve never enjoyed being on stage or doing public speaking. Or public anything, really. So if an old man hadn’t died on top of me less than twenty-four hours earlier, this would’ve been my worst nightmare.

  Nothing like a quick brush with death to put life in perspective.

  The popular girls like Beckie Miller could whisper whatever they wanted. I had much bigger concerns, like what kind of “credible threat” could have two well-armed police officers pulling me out of school.

  Tell your dad sorry.

  Yesterday I’d thought that apology was intended for someone who didn’t exist. Now I couldn’t help wondering if it really had been directed at me. If he’d been perfectly aware that he was adding this much chaos to my life the moment he stole my drink.

  A little more context would’ve gone a long way toward clearing everything up, but my police escort seemed to be playing ambivalent cop, silent cop.

  “Um, excuse me?” I said hesitantly, unable to take the silence any longer. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  The two officers exchanged a meaningful glance as we pulled up to the station.

  “We’re here to ensure your safety. A detective will be talking with you soon,” Officer Thorton said brusquely as she pulled open the door. Even without the handcuffs, I felt like I’d already been marked as a criminal.

  “Breathe, kid,” Officer Brown said at last. “You’ll be fine.”

  Five words might be a soliloquy by his standards, but they did nothing to reassure me.

  “A detective?” I squeaked. “Um, what’s wrong with the two of you?”

  That didn’t come out quite the way I intended.

  “Nothing is wrong with us.” Thorton hustled me forward with an air of complete confidence that I envied. She didn’t look like she put up with crap from anyone, like she might play roller derby in her spare time because she loved the rush of physically knocking people out of her way.

  “Then why—”

  I lost my train of thought as they led me into the heart of the station. Everyone was scurrying around, barking orders, gulping down coffee, or glaring at their computers. I looked at Officer Brown and hoped my red-rimmed eyes would guilt-trip him into telling me something useful, but he just steered me into a room empty of furniture beyond a dinged-up table and two chairs. Then they left me alone to wait.

  And wait.

  And then wait some more.

  By the time a stocky man with small dark eyes in a face that had the air of perpetual dissatisfaction stepped through the door, I had already plotted out a whole new romance novel. One that involved a plucky heroine, a very sexy district attorney, and a corrupt police station intent on covering up a prostitution ring.

  “I’m Detective Luke O’Brian,” he introduced himself easily before sinking into the chair on his side of the table. “You’ve gotten yourself into quite the mess, Miss Danvers.”

  Maybe it was knowing that the entire school would still be gossiping about me on Monday, or the fact that I still had no freaking idea why New York’s finest had unceremoniously hauled me in only to make me sit alone for the better part of an hour, or that a dead man had pretty much warned me this might happen, but I completely lost it.

  “I’ve gotten myself into a mess?” I repeated indignantly. “You might want to brush up on your detective work. I didn’t start anything!”

  He raised a single eyebrow, looking thoroughly unmoved. Probably because I was the least threatening person to ever take a seat in his interrogation room. “Why don’t we—”

  But I didn’t give him a chance to finish.

  “Tell me, is it normal for high school girls to be summoned here—or am I special?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his dark brown eyes. “Most girls your age don’t get tangled up in murder investigations. I’d say that makes you very special, Miss Danvers.”

  “Murder?” My knees weakened unexpectedly and I sank back into my chair. “What are you talking about? I was there, Detective. He tackled me and died. End of story.”

  “I’m going to play something for you, Miss Danvers. And then I suspect you’ll be dying to change your statement.”

  A sardonic gleam flashed in his eyes and my stomach twisted painfully, as if I had been dared to eat a seafood quesadilla and was now deeply regretting it.

  For some reason I couldn’t even begin to fathom, he wanted to scare me.

  That’s when I should’ve pulled the Slate out of my backpack. I should’ve slid it across the table and said, Here you go. Enjoy. Now please keep me out of this. All of this.

  Except I couldn’t help mentally replaying the old man’s warnings, even as the detective flicked open the briefcase to reveal a laptop inside.

  They’re coming to kill me.


  Trust nobody.

  You won’t survive long if you don’t go for the jugular, girl.

  It had been so easy to dismiss those words in the coffee shop as the meaningless ramblings of a senile man. But he didn’t sound crazy now. Not when the police were willing to drag me to the precinct for questioning in a murder investigation.

  If my coffee thief was right, if someone really had been out to get him, then maybe he wasn’t mistaken about the other stuff, either. Although that kind of thinking was exactly how psychics reeled in their customers. The psychic would say something vaguely cryptic, the client would search for a meaning in their own lives, and come up with something that linked the two together. And anything that didn’t fit the story? That tended to be ignored.

  Just because the old man had been close to death didn’t automatically mean anyone else was in danger.

  Detective O’Brian spun the computer around so that I could view the screen. “Maybe this will jog your memory.”

  One click later and I saw myself as a grayish figure sitting at one of the window tables, courtesy of what had to be the Starbucks’ security camera. It felt so weird watching onscreen-Emmy glare in frustration at the loaner laptop before moving toward the counter, and—

  O’Brian froze the video just as the old man snatched my drink.

  “Anything yet?”

  I shook my head so he let the security feed keep playing, although this time he kept up a running commentary. “He’s holding on to your arm for quite a while there. You say this is the first time you ever met him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And yet the two of you are looking awfully chummy.”

  I didn’t think that particular statement merited a response, so I took a page out of Officer Brown’s playbook and pressed my lips tightly together. The detective pointed to the Emmy onscreen who had just reclaimed her drink.