Adventures in Funeral Crashing (Complete Novel)

Chapter 6: Sleuthing

CHAPTER 6: SLEUTHING

That is how I ended up at Ethan Ripley's house, with nobody home, on a Saturday afternoon. Any normal girl would have been beside herself with nerves at being alone in Ethan's house, in his room, on his bed...

It was a large bedroom actually, bigger than mine, at least. I was surprised to see that he had a large bookshelf filled with books. I knew Ethan was smart and such, but he actually read for fun? Cool. There was a lot of science fiction on the shelves. I saw Dune and Ender's Game and Stephen King's The Gunslinger series.  He reads! It was super sexy to me. Other than that, there were no posters on the wall, just a few framed records spaced out decoratively – a Beatles album, a Clash Album, a Bob Dylan album, and a few others. There was a guitar lying against the bookshelf. Did Ethan play music too? Wow, I was impressed. He really was the perfect guy. Sigh.

I was struck again by being alone in his house with him. To even be close enough to him to see the inside of his bedroom was amazing. I never would have thought I would be here. And, I mean, butterflies were jumping around in my stomach, but come on, we were investigating a murder, romance wasn't going to happen. I'll admit to being slightly disappointed about that.

It's not like I planned it or like he even planned it, being alone in his house. His whole family was spending the day at his uncle's in a sort of get out of the house day. Since he had spent the day before with the family, Ethan had claimed plans and declined going. I was just excited that I had made the list of Ethan's plans.

The plan, as we were sitting together in his room alone (I loved being able to say that!), was to break into Liz's Facebook account and see if she and the other victims had any friends in common, most particularly Liz's boyfriend Ted or Brent or Travis or Bob or whatever his name turned out to be. We hoped to find that out from her Facebook emails as well, since her status was a non-committed "In a Relationship" without the subject of the relationship's name.

Ethan was lying on his bed, eyes trained on the Facebook computer password screen that was visible on his laptop. I was lying next to him, trying not to think about how close his entire body was to mine.

I distracted myself by looking through Liz's phone again. She did delete all of her texts and her contacts list was an eon long. Her missed, received, and dialed calls were mostly girls that Ethan said were her good friends. He didn't think they had anything to do with it. There were three guys, though. One of them was probably her boyfriend – either Troy or Dylan or Max. None of them rang a bell for Ethan. I wanted to call up one of her friends or the guys, but Ethan had nixed that idea. Her friends were all really upset and nobody wanted to talk about murder. So, he wanted to hack into her 
Facebook instead. If we could get in, I was all for it. Besides, it meant I got to hang out with Ethan a little longer, in his house, alone.

"I know it has something to do with Paws," Ethan said, still staring at the screen.

The dog, Paws, was lying at the foot of Ethan's bed, fast asleep. He was a cute little guy, a Boston Terrier, who had lost an eye and wound up in the shelter. Liz had felt sorry for him and didn't think he'd get adopted, so she took him home, ignoring her family's no pet rule. Ethan said it took them less than twenty-four hours to fall in love with the dog too and throw out the rule. Doesn't sound like a girl who would OD on heroin, does it?

"Yes!" Ethan yelled.

I turned away from Paws, to look at the screen. Ethan was into Liz's account.

"It was ilovepaws, if you can believe it," Ethan grinned and then seemed suddenly sad as he said, "So totally Liz."

Liz's home page was up on the computer screen. She had two new messages. Ethan clicked on the inbox icon. Two messages appeared. One was from a guy, Troy, the other from a girl, Vanessa, both dated the Sunday Liz had died. Liz had never gotten the chance to read them. The rest of the inbox was empty. She must have deleted her messages as she read them, just like the texts.

Ethan was smiling, "Jackpot! It's him! His name is Troy Matthews!"

Ethan clicked on the message from Troy:

Hey, Liz!

It was great just talking the other night. I'm glad we did. I can't wait to see you again! Call you later.

<3, Troy

 "That doesn't seem weird or anything," I commented after reading the email over Ethan's shoulder. "But that doesn't rule him out, either."

Ethan nodded and clicked on the message from Vanessa:

Liz - 

When you get a chance I really, really, really need to talk to you. Called you, but it went straight to voicemail. Thought I'd see if you were online. Call me!!!

-Vanessa

 "Now that's interesting. She's not on the missed calls," I said looking at Liz's phone again.

"Her phone must have been off," Ethan said after a moment.

"That doesn't help. I wonder what the big deal was. Do you know Vanessa Martin?" I asked Ethan as I peered at her picture. I knew I had never met her. She probably went to Laurel Community College too.

"No. She must've been one of Liz's college friends. They didn't really come over, like her high school friends did. It wasn't cool to hang out here, if you know what I mean. Not that it is now either, but I have nowhere else to go. A lot of her new friends have their own places," Ethan shrugged.

"I really wonder what Vanessa wanted to talk to Liz about," A thought popped into my mind. "Can we email her? I mean, not from Liz's account because that might creep her out, but maybe from yours?"

"And just ask her what she needed to talk to Liz about?" Ethan sounded doubtful.

"Yeah, I mean, if she knows something, maybe she'll tell you. Play up the grieving brother," I offered. "It can't hurt. Worst thing, she'll say is no."

"What about Troy?" Ethan said, clicking back to Troy's message.

"I don't think we should email him...yet." I stared at Troy's message for a moment. "Actually, I have an idea. Can I?"

I reached for the computer and Ethan handed it to me. He sat up and looked over my shoulder as I went to Facebook's friend finder. I typed in the name – Olivia Reynolds. Her name popped up immediately and I clicked on her profile. I was looking for the mutual friends list and there it was  - two friends in common, Troy Matthews and oddly enough, Suzie Whitsett, the girl my chemistry lab partner, Kyle Jones had a crush on.

"Okay, interesting. So, Liz and Olivia both knew Troy Matthews and Suzie Whitsett," I started.

"Wait are you thinking... Check out Melissa Kent," Ethan was unknowingly, holding a death grip on the comforter. "Troy has to know her too."

 "Okay, okay, I'm checking her too, but do you know how Liz knows Suzie Whitsett? She's in our grade at school," I said, while typing in Melissa's name.

"The quiet girl? I think they volunteered at the animal shelter together or something. Liz took me to an animal adoption at the park once and introduced me to Suzie. I only remember because I had seen her in school, but had never actually heard her speak before," Ethan said, staring at the computer screen.

"You know, you can be really arrogant," I said, without thinking, as the results popped up.

Ethan turned away from the screen to look at me, "What?"

"Suzie's a really nice girl and really smart. She's just shy. You need to learn to get to know people before you judge their entire personalities," I don't know what was wrong with me. I was telling off the most popular guy in school for not taking the time to figure out that the quiet girl is just shy. 

"Like you?" he asked, watching me.

I ignored the question and turned to look back at the screen and Melissa Kent and Liz O'Reilly's common friends. I felt Ethan look at me for a moment more before he turned to look at them too. 

There it was, only one friend in common – Troy Matthews, Facebook friend to all three of the alleged murder victims. Coincidence? I think not. Although, one would think he'd delete them from his friend's list after he murdered them, but I guess not.