Jex Malone (7 page)

“What?” Deva and Cissy respond simultaneously while I look at Nat like she's nuts.

Because, clearly, she is.

“We've known you since birth. What crime have you ever solved?” Deva demands.

“I'd like a shot at it,” Nat replies. “Look, some police departments actually let citizens in on cases and give them a chance to figure it out. It's a really successful approach. Turns out you have to be at least twenty-one to get into those kinds of programs. That's … discrimination! Age discrimination! I don't want to wait—and I won't put up with discrimination of any kind.”

My brain is in overdrive. How did I go from wanting to keep these girls' mouths shut about snooping around my dad's files to Ms. Crazy “Let's Solve the Case” thinking she's living an episode of
Law and Order … as one of the cops
?

These girls are nuts
.

Okay, Okay … Jex, think fast.

Now, I'm thinking to myself in a rapid-fire way. I have to get them to keep their mouths shut or trouble is coming. Big, big, fat uber-trouble! What do people from New Jersey do when they want other people to keep their mouths shut?

No, I can't go all Tony Soprano on them, although it's tempting.

Okay, but the mob is good at getting people to shut up. I need a mob-like solution like a hit man … no, too bloody … like someone getting whacked … no, too violent … I need something mob-ish like an oath! Like when wise guys pledge eternal loyalty. I need …

“A club, but not really a club,” I blurt out. “We need to make this official and form a real detective agency! To solve the case! Like Nat said, ‘Let's solve it.'”

“A what?” Cissy asks. “Solve what?”

“An agency, a real detective agency,” I announce. “I think if we're going to do this right and solve the case, we need to be official. Secretly official, but still official.”

“A real-life detective agency,” Deva replies, raising her eyebrows. “Is this like a club? Is it like the Girl Scouts? Because I don't do that shade of green.”

“No, no, no—not like the Girl Scouts—and not a club. What are we? Twelve years old? We're a little too old for a secret club,” I interrupt, adding, “but, if we're going to do this right, let's form something real and have some rules about who is going to do what so that we don't waste anyone's time.”

“If we form our own little agency, our work will have some, um, organization to it,” I ramble, which I'm good at under dire circumstances like this one.

“Oh, I see what you mean,” Nat says with a tone in her voice that seems to say: “I have no idea what this girl is talking about, but I still want to solve the case.”

My mind is racing because I'm trying to figure out how to make some logic out of what is coming out of my mouth before the words are released into the universe. I know I'm not doing a very good job of making any sense.

“That's how we do it in New Jersey,” I tell them, now really making it up as I go along. “We are just very organized people. I mean, since it is my dad's stuff, at least do it my way by all of us forming this union.”

“Right, a group,” Deva responds, letting it sink in. “What are we now? Silly little freaking Nancy Drews? Aren't we really too old?”

“Well, that's a great idea, Deva,” I say, slanting her words. “But we're not the Nancys or the Drews. We're the … uh … um … I got it. We're the Drew-Ids.”

Nat jumps off the couch and nearly falls over her own feet. “I'm getting chills. Real chills!” She holds out both arms that are covered by her hoodie and cries, “Did you know that IDS is law enforcement shorthand for Intrusion Detection System?”

Of course, I don't know that.

Deva touches her manicured fingernails to her head. “Stop, Nat, you're giving me a migraine,” she says.

Racing over to the computer, Nat punches in the word. “In German,
Drew
means trustworthy. In Greek, it's courageous. It means wise in Welsh,” she says in a breathless voice.

“I'm breaking out in hives now,” Nat continues in a voice that's made up of all parts pure joy.

“Shut up, Nat,” Deva begs. “We can be the Drew-Ids if you don't give us one more fun, noninteresting fact about what it all means.”

“And it's an homage to Nancy,” Nat says with reverence, like she equates Nancy Drew with Princess Diana or Mother Teresa. “I read all forty-seven books.”

Cissy, Deva, and I stare hard in her direction. “You read all fifty-six Nancy Drew books. No judgment,” I say, reminding myself that I read most of them, too, but I don't have to confess everything to these strangers.

“Nancy will do,” Deva says. “She looked so cute in those candy-striper uniforms.”

“Nancy was my best friend—other than you guys,” sighs Cissy. “She wasn't afraid of anything.”

Nat smiles and says, “Nancy was the best. Okay, I'm shutting up now. Really. Lips locked.”

For a split second, I wonder if we should do a blood oath or even a pinky swear.

“There needs to be a list of rules. This ain't a free-for-all. So, let's write down three or four rules. So it's officially official,” I say.

“I'm not slicing my finger and doing a blood oath. Infections,” Deva announces. “Not you, Cissy. Or Nat. But I don't know about Jex. No offense.”

“These will be our bylaws,” Nat says with a sigh. “I'm studying business law in my advanced placement college class. We go to school in Nevada, too—when we're not sweating or tanning.”

“Yeah, we know you're smart, Nat. But back to business. Break these rules and you're out of the Drew-Ids, as in your little can kicked to the curb,” Deva says.

Half an hour later, we have agreed to ten rules that were read aloud in an almost religious and reverent way. Each girl took her turn reading what was now officially official.

In keeping with rule 7 (no documentation), Cissy, Deva, Nat, and I immediately put all of our doodles and the bylaws that Nat jotted down through my dad's very professional shredder.

Shred, shred, shred. It is the law.

Our law.

“Undoubtedly, we shouldn't be doing this. We should be studying for our math finals or doing anything else.”

—Trixie Belden

Is this situation totally nuts?
I ask myself the zillion-dollar question while pretending to be asleep.
As if I could sleep.
Daddy Dearest has to work late tonight. Not his fault. He will make it up to me.
Blah. Blah. Blah
.

Whatever. Whatever.

So I pretend the pull out couch with the pancake-flat mattress is a king-size pillow-topped bed at some swanky hotel. Obviously, it's some five-star joint that allows big drooling dogs. The pooch is at my feet licking my toes, and she is pretty cute while being totally starved for attention. We have so much in common.

With the air conditioning so cold I can almost see my breath, I pull the covers over my head, light things up using a police department–issued flashlight I found in the garage, and slide out the first thick file in Patty's missing persons case.

Missing person.
That's what it still says marked on the file. They never could call it a murder case since they never found the body.

This much I know.

Every now and then, I'd overhear my parents talking about the case when Dad would make his weekly call to check on me. Not often, but usually around the anniversary of Patty Is Gone Day, I would hear my mom say on her end of the conversation: “Yes, John, I know what day it is. How could I possibly forget the big case? The only case.”

Mom and Dad usually don't talk long on the phone when and if he calls. Usually it's just a “Hey, how are you? Good, glad to hear everything is fine and Jex isn't wounded or dead” exchange of pleasantries. I know Dad then rushes to say, “Put Jex on the phone because I've only got a minute to talk.”

That's his escape hatch for me, too, just in case we don't have anything to say to each other that week or nothing big has happened like I somehow invented a cure for cancer or rocketed to the moon. My mom jokes that our phone calls sound a lot like roll call at the beginning of a cop's shift: Report in with what happened that day so everyone is on the same page and knows what's going on. Then go about your business.

Oh, and stay alive out there.

“Oh, and be safe out there,” he says. Yeah, my dad actually says that at the end of every single telephone call. Right after he says “love you” really fast. More like “lvya.” Who has time to enunciate an actual vowel? Remember, he only has an actual you-can-time-it-on-your-watch
minute
to talk.

His stupid flashlight is the big, heavy metal kind, and it kind of hurts my wrist to hold it at an angle, but I still manage to read the file under the covers. Thank God my dad has the neatest handwriting in the world. It's like a teacher's penmanship to the point that it almost looks like typing.

I feel like Indiana Jones searching through some paperwork in
Temple of Doom
. I wonder if a snake will jump out and bite me every time I fold the page back, but here goes nothing.

I clear my throat.

No sound.

I clear it again.

The first report was written the morning after Patty disappeared. My dad had a blue pen in his shirt pocket that night with thick ink, which has managed to hold up even though these files are so old now. He wrote down the address of the call first. That must have felt weird since it was just around the corner from our—I mean
his
—house.

He wrote the date—July 5, 2001—and the time of arrival at her house in military time: 0715 (all police do that). He checked the “missing person” box at the top of the report and jotted down her address.

He checked the boxes for “white” and “female” at the top of the form and then wrote out her full name and date of birth: