Adventures in Funeral Crashing (Complete Novel)

Chapter 9: Inquiring

CHAPTER 9: INQUIRING

I had a hard time sleeping on Sunday night after I left Ethan's. We stayed up until almost midnight talking. Yes, I'm serious. Still, it's not like we were making out or anything. Not that my dad cared. He was a little mad that I had gotten home so late.

"Kait Lenox, where have you been?" My dad said as soon as I walked in the door at 12:15 am on a school night.

I never did that. I think we were both shocked, so I said, "Out."

I went to my room and that was the end of it. I wasn't about to tell him I was with a boy. If I told him that he wouldn't have believed me that nothing happened even though it's totally true. Now that I think about it, it was a little weird of my dad to let it go that I was out so late with no good reason.  He definitely wasn't as mad as he should have been. He should have followed me back to my room and demanded an answer. Then he should have yelled at me and grounded me. He didn't, though. Maybe he thought I had made a friend or something and was happy about it. Parents are weird like that. 

Any disapproval on my dad's part was worth it, though. Ethan and I had spent the night making plans for attending Vanessa Martin's funeral. There was an online obituary already up and the wake was Monday night from 3 pm to 9 pm. Ethan and I were going to go right after school. I coached Ethan a little on funeral crashing, since I had been to so many. He had only ever been to his sister's and except for remembering talking to me, the whole thing was a big blank for him. We were going to pretend to have known Vanessa through Liz, if anyone asked. We were hoping Troy Matthews would make an appearance. We were really, really hoping for more good leads.

There were definitely other leads that I wanted to follow too. I had a list. I still wanted to talk to Suzie about Liz and Olivia Reynolds. I was going to do that during school on Monday. Maybe I could get Kyle to join me and at least introduce him to Suzie. It would be like multi-tasking. Hey, if Ethan and I could be semi-friends, Kyle had an awesome as hell chance with Suzie.

The other lead we had to follow up on was definitely Troy Matthews. And, if he didn't show up to Vanessa's funeral, Ethan and I needed to find a way to talk to him. The trick there would be not to spook him, especially if he was the killer. Neither Ethan or I wanted to end up dead just because we said the wrong thing.

 And, then there was the thought of having set plans with Ethan for a third day in a row. I was starting to get cocky about it. I mean, if Ariel was going to Homecoming with him, maybe Ethan was just taking her to the dance. Maybe it didn't mean that they were dating too. When did he have time? You know? I mean, Ethan had spent almost the entire weekend with me. And, okay, a dance is way more romantic than investigating a murder together, but still, the amount of time spent with someone counts for something, right?

The first lead, I was going to follow, though, was reading Liz's journal. I opened it to the first page dated about four months ago.

May 23

Today's my birthday. Happy birthday to me! For this year, I want to: save money to go to Paris, get into a good college, see my first Cubs game, teach Paws five cool tricks, and find a job working with a vet. It's going to be an awesome year, starting today!

I felt exceedingly sad as I finished that first journal entry. It was a short one on her birthday and Liz had so much hope for her future and only a few months later it was gone. I hope she had gotten to do at least a few of the things she had wanted to do. I kept reading. I learned more about Liz and her dreams, the mundane things in her life, volunteering at the animal shelter, her job, about some of her friends and her dog Paws, but there was nothing helpful, in terms of the investigation (and no mention of drugs!), until I got to the last three entries.