Cypress Alley

Chapter 7

I lay on my back, staring up at the dull, white ceiling, faded over the years. I'd been living here since I was seven and the ceiling was one of the only witnesses to my silent joys and sufferings. It seemed like the only thing that really knew me.

"You have the life," I said quietly. "You just get to lie there your whole life, spying on whoever wanders into this house. And yet you don't say a word, despite the fact that you know everything."

Eliza took no notice of my ramblings. I turned on to my side. Ms Hartley had left the house to buy groceries and Eliza was studying her case notes intensely. She'd never studied this hard even for a test.

I closed my eyes and put my feet up on a pillow. When I awoke, with no recollection of the past hour and a half, Henry stood over me, grinning. 

"Hey, hey, hey, look who's awake!"

"Hi, Henry," I mumbled.

"Hiya!" shouted Eliza from the room next door. It seemed that she'd gone to her own room while I was asleep.

"Dude, you were sleeping for like, 5 hours!"

"No, I wasn't," I said, glancing at my watch. "Only an hour and a half."

"Yeah, but still." Henry stroked a hand through his spiky hair. "Weirdo," he said, playfully punching my arm.

Eliza barged into the room. She carried her notebook in her hands and a solemn expression on her face. "Elijah, we need to talk."

"OK... I'm outta here," Henry said, closing the door behind him.

"We don't have a proper suspects list," said Eliza hurriedly. She threw the notebook onto my bed and sat down at the other end. "We need a proper suspects list."

"OK, fine," I said. "We already have Ms Hartley and Wendy. Who else?"

"I don't know," sighed Eliza. "We're never going to find the murderer. We're hopeless!"

"Speak for yourself," I muttered.

"What?" Eliza asked.

"Nothing!"

She rolled her eyes. "Be serious."

I thought for a second. "What about Veronica? She's always hated North."

"True... but why would she kill her?"

"I don't know."

"Think, Dotson, think!"

"I don't know, OK?"

Eliza scrappily drew a line down the side of her page. On one side, she wrote three names, on the other, she wrote 'motives, facts, alibis'. "Ms Hartley doesn't have any motives, right? But we know that she's cruel and was out between 8 pm and 11 pm that night."

"Oh yeah," I said, catching on. "She never tells us where she's going, either." Eliza nodded, slowly calming down. I continued. "Wendy's motive is still unclear, but we do know that something happened between her and North."

"Right," Eliza answered professionally. "We need to find out what she was doing that night."

"And how are we going to do that?"

Eliza's eyes turned into slits and her mouth curled into a sly smile. "Interrogation."

"Uh, I don't think that will work," I said. "We have to make sure no one knows what we're doing."

Eliza nodded but her face fell in disappointment. She was taking this much too seriously.

"And Veronica...?" she asked.