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“Hey! Thought you had class this morning?” I found Piper in the science fiction section by her flaming pink hair. She had recently touched up the dye.
“I decided to skip. I need your help.”
“Oh? I’m intrigued. What do you need help with?” Her purple covered lips raised into a devious grin.
“Investigating a murder.”
She paused, putting a book back mid-way to the shelf. “Your father’s murder?”
“Yes,” I said, glancing behind me.
“Right. Okay, come on.” We headed into her office, and I pulled the guest chair around so we could sit side by side behind the computer monitor.
Piper typed away on the keyboard, logging into the system. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m wondering if Eli didn’t do this. What if it was someone else?”
She rolled her lips together, spreading the gloss around, and narrowed her eyes. “Huh. You doubt your ex-boyfriend killed your father?”
I shifted in my seat under her stare. “Well, he said he didn’t remember what happened. I am starting to believe him.”
Piper typed my father’s name in a search engine and brought up more news articles. Twisting my fingers together, I thought about what a great friend Piper had been to me. She was always down for doing something crazy to help me out without a second thought.
“How is your new girlfriend? I feel rude just barging in here and only talking about myself.”
“Pfft. This is way more interesting than her! Not really seeing her again anyway.” She focused on the computer in front of her. Quietly, she said, “I have other interests.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. She was just a fun fling. Then she stole my mini fridge after a sleepover. It’s done with… Are yousureyou want to see these pictures again?” She had quickly changed the subject and was pointing an intricately painted nail at the monitor.
Glancing at the screen, I saw the article with the crime scene photos. “Yes. I want to know the truth.”
Piper nodded and read aloud. “Police were called to a home in Centre Heights last night around 11 p.m. after a shot was heard by the neighbors. Upon investigation, a body was found in the living room of the private home, but the resident, Leticia Lake, had been unaware of any activities, having been asleep upstairs at the time of the incident.”
“If there was a shot, why didn’t Leticia wake up? What was she doing?”
“Fucking Eddie?”
I snorted and made a gagging noise. “Ugh. I hope not.”
“Suspect number one: it’s always the wife or girlfriend.” Piper scrolled down to the murder scene picture, which showed the blood spot where my father had died in the den. “It’s so much blood.”
“How many times was he shot? Does shooting someone normally cause that much blood loss?”
We read the article together silently until Piper made it to an interesting part. “A body later identified as Peter Minsky, a.k.a. Pete Monti, was found in his own home, stabbed—"
“Piper, it says the victim wasstabbed. They say he wasstabbedtwelve times! He wasn’t shot. That’s why there’s so much blood.” My entire body buzzed with electrical energy. Everything anyone told me about the murder flashed through my mind, but I had a difficult time organizing it all so quickly.
“Didn’t Johnny tell you Eli shot him?”
“Yes. Yes, he did.” I couldn’t breathe.
“Why would he lie?”
Piper and I held each other’s eyes. My skin felt cold. The hair on the top of my head tingled. “Either he doesn’t remember… or he does.” I checked my phone. “Oh! I need to go to my clinicals. I’m shadowing a new technologist in the DNA lab there.”
“We need to discuss this and look into it more!”
