Ice Cream Corpse Read online

  “Hey, yeah, it is,” she said, passing Lolly to Marcello. “I should go over and say hello.”

  “Hang on, I’m coming with you,” I said, hurrying after her. I almost slipped on the edge of the pool. “Hey, no running!” a lifeguard called out.

  I called out that I was sorry, realizing that I really was being watched, even when I didn’t know it. Pippa had already found Jack and was talking to him in the line for the diving board. I had no intention of diving, but I joined them.

  “Hey, Pippa,” he said, growing a little shy. “I was hoping I might bump into you here. Are you two here on your own, just the two of you?” he asked, meaning Pippa and I.

  Pippa shook her head and pointed back to our half-empty pile of beach towels. “No, I’m here with my husband and baby. Lolly. See her?” she said, waving. Lolly didn’t wave back, just stuck her fingers in her mouth.

  “Y-you’re married?” Jack asked, his face falling. Uh-oh, this was what I had been afraid of.

  Pippa nodded. “Almost two years now.” She still wasn’t getting it. Jack had developed a little crush on her and maybe had thought the feeling was mutual.

  “I don’t feel much like diving all of a sudden,” he said sullenly, stomping off.

  “Hey, Jack, where are you going?”

  Pippa spun around. We were almost at the top of the queue. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I have no intention of climbing that ladder,” I said, pulling Pippa away.

  “Aww, I was actually thinking about jumping.”

  “Really?” I stopped and sighed. “Fine, if you want to, go for your life. I’ll stand here and cheer you on.”

  I held my breath nervously as I watched Pippa walk to the edge of the board. It was wobbling and she was hesitating. She either had to jump or she was going to fall in, and that was going to hurt.

  I heard a soft voice call me over my shoulder. “Hey there, Rachael.”

  My heart started pounding. Rocky?

  I spun around. It was a man with curly black hair, but he was about twenty years younger.

  “Andy,” I said, starting to laugh. “You scared me there for a second.”

  I heard a giant splashing sound over my shoulder and realized I had missed Pippa’s dive. “Rach?!” I heard a splutter as Pippa kicked her way back over to the side of the pool.

  I was still looking at Andy, though. He had a very serious look on his face.

  “Hey, I saw Jack come over and speak to you.” He reached into his pocket. “When he invited me down here today, he mentioned that you two might be here, so I brought this along. I’d better give it to you before it gets wet.”

  He passed me something in an envelope that had been previously ripped open. “What is this?” I turned it over and saw who it was from. “Oh, this is the letter from Harry?”

  Andy nodded and pressed my arm down gently so that I wasn’t waving it around. “Don’t read it here,” he whispered.

  “Why not?”

  I wanted to read it right away. I still couldn’t figure out how Harry could have written this so-called letter, considering he was dead. Something was seriously off about the whole thing.

  “Just…don’t,” Andy replied, looking around. Was there someone watching him as well?

  Pippa jumped out of the pool and shook herself off like a wet dog. “Did you see that?” she asked me, all excited.

  “I, uh—I heard it,” I said apologetically.

  “Aww, Rach!” She pointed to the queue. “It’ll be twenty minutes before I get back to the front of the line again.”

  “Sorry,” I said, then lowered my voice and showed her the letter, pointing to Harry’s name. “I was a little distracted with this.”

  “Oh, right,” she whispered back.

  Andy cleared his throat. “I, uh, I should get going.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Andy.”

  “Hey, don’t tell Jack,” Andy said, right before he left.

  “Don’t tell Jack what?”

  “That I gave you the letter,” Andy whispered. “He didn’t want you to have it for some reason.”

  I stepped out of the car and felt what I could have sworn was the hint of a cool breeze. It had been so long since I’d felt one that I couldn’t quite tell if I was just imagining it. I glanced up at the fruit trees on Pippa’s farm. If I squinted, I could just make out some of the leaves moving. Maybe, just maybe, this heat wave was close to breaking.

  “Do you think this is enough?” Pippa asked, loading another box of fruit into the pile.

  “Enough for what? To feed an entire circus?”

  “Haha. Enough to show to Levon. I want to show him that not only is my produce amazingly high quality, but that I have plenty of it. I won’t run out and let him down.” She made a face. “I decided only to show him a few oranges, though. I’m going to focus on fruits that I can supply all year round.”

  “I think it’s plenty then,” I said, stepping over a box of lemons. “And I think that it’s a wise idea you’re going with. But remember, Levon said he doesn’t need anymore suppliers at the moment. So don’t go getting your hopes up.”

  She shrugged. “I figure that even if Levon says no, I’ve got other options. I was thinking I could set up a stall at the farmer’s market.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “What do you say, Rachael?”

  “Do you need my permission?”

  “Well, I will need Saturday mornings off. And a big chunk of Friday afternoon, if I’m going to do it properly.”

  “Oh.” I promised I would think about it.

  She moved one last box of apples so that they were all in a neat row.

  I took in a deep breath. “Well, are we going to read this letter from Harry or not?”

  Pippa took off her gloves and raised her eyebrows. “Possibly from ‘Harry,’ you mean.”

  I followed her back into the house.

  “We don’t know anything for certain yet,” I said. “Maybe Harry did write the letter, only he made it so that Andy didn’t get the letter until afterward. You can have it set up so that the post office posts it weeks or months after you drop it off. It could actually be from Harry. It could be a huge clue to his death.” Maybe he had felt like his life was in danger, and he’d written the letter to Andy in the event that something actually happened to him.

  “It’s kind of dim in here,” I commented, bumping into a side table before my eyes gradually adjusted to what I assumed was the living room.

  “Keeping all the lights off and the curtains sealed is the only way to make the temperature in here bearable,” Pippa said. “Don’t worry, your eyes will adjust.”

  I had to feel my way to the sofa. “Come on, can’t we just turn on one lamp?”

  “You’ll pay for it if we do. A single light bulb is enough to warm this room to unbearable levels.”

  I finally found the sofa and sat down before I bruised my ankles any more.

  Pippa settled down next to me. Well, she didn’t sit next to me so much as she sat right on top of me. I had to push her off me while she apologized, laughing. “If this letter really is from Harry, then he is a man after my own heart.”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes. Letter writing. I’m actually loving all these letters we’ve been reading lately.”

  My eyes had actually adjusted to the dark and I could make out Pippa’s face, but it was still too dark to read. I turned on the flashlight from my phone and pointed it toward the letter.

  “Read it,” Pippa said.

  “I am!”

  “I mean out loud!”

  I sighed. “Fine then.”

  “I’m really sorry guys. Hanging out with you has been a lot of fun, but my time in Belldale is over now. I need to head off on my next little adventure.”

  I paused, confused. This was just a very odd thing for a twenty-four year old guy to write. No text message, but this stilted letter, instead. I threw it down on the coffee table. “Well, there’s no way that Harry wrote this as a warning abo
ut his death. Unless it is in code or something.”

  “Hang on,” Pippa said slowly, leaning over to the coffee table to take a closer look. “Am I crazy or does this handwriting look really familiar?”

  I leaned back a bit. In the dark, it was kind of hard to tell for certain. “Familiar in what way?”

  “Where is that letter from Rocky?” Pippa asked.

  “I left it here,” I said, feeling annoyed. “For safekeeping. Please don’t tell me you’ve thrown it out or recycled it, Pippa.”

  Pippa made a face. “Oh my goodness, I think Marcello did take out the recycling earlier today!” she cried, jumping up. “I asked him to collect all the papers in the house and to sort them out.”

  I jumped up after her and stubbed my toe on the coffee table again. “Ouch!” I cried, hopping after Pippa as she ran outside. “Oh no, I hope it hasn’t been collected yet.”

  We charged out into the sun. I was almost blinded as we headed for the recycling can. Pippa kicked it over before I got there and squealed to find it had not yet been collected.

  “This is kind of fun, isn’t it?” Pippa asked, as she started to dig through the pile, kneeling down on the dirt.

  “Yes, diving through garbage on a ninety-degree afternoon is precisely my idea of a great time,” I said, sorting through the piles of milk cartons and cardboard packaging. “I can’t believe you left Marcello in charge of recycling,” I muttered.

  “Well, technically, he did a good job,” Pippa pointed out. “Too good a job, if we are being technical about it. He collected things I didn’t even want him to collect.” She was digging through a pile of papers and egg cartons. “It is important to recycle, you know, especially when…”

  “Found it!” I screamed, producing the letter before Pippa could finish her rant about the benefits of recycling. I fell back against the hot earth. “Do you know what would have happened if the collector had arrived before we found this? We would have lost a priceless piece of evidence.” I shook my head. Leaving Marcello in charge of anything was a serious risk. If there was a way for him to cause chaos, he would find it.

  Pippa snatched it out of my hand, her breathing a little labored. “What’s important is that we compare it to the letter Andy gave you.” She shot me a look. “The one supposedly from Harry.”

  She pulled the other letter out and compared the two of them side by side, shaking her head. “I knew it…” she murmured.

  “What? What is it?”

  She shoved them both back to me and pointed at the cursive. “Exact same handwriting.”

  I had to squint in the glare of the sun. “Are you sure? I mean…they are similar, sure, but…” I stopped when I saw that Pippa was pointing out something more specific.

  “Look, they both use the phrase ‘little adventure.’ And both times the phrase is written identically. The Ts are crossed in the exact same way.”

  I gulped. “Rocky impersonated Harry after his death. He wanted people to think Harry was still alive.”

  Was he watching us now?

  Chapter 7

  “We need to find the last known address of Rocky Morlock,” I said. “Maybe he isn’t as far away as we thought. If we can find the house he last lived in in Belldale, we might have a lead.”

  Pippa was trying to pile her apples and lemons into the back of her truck. “Do we have to start now?” she asked. “I was hoping to try and sell these down at the shops today.”

  “We can do both,” I said, helping her with the last box of fruit. “Hop in. I’ll drive!” I was eager to get on with it.

  I was in a state of adrenaline as I started the ignition to Pippa’s truck. I didn’t even know where I was heading and as we started to enter the actual town, I realized quickly that her truck was too difficult for me to drive. I was going to scrape another car or wind up hitting a pedestrian.

  I pulled over and hit the brakes. “Ah, this whole thing is useless,” I said, throwing my hands into the air. “Rocky is intent on not being found. He’s probably changed his name by now.”

  Pippa reached into the glove compartment and produced a thick, dusty book with yellow pages and blew on it. I coughed. “Nothing like the good old telephone directory,” she said with a wink.

  “Pippa, you’re not going to find…”

  “Here,” she said, pointing to name and number. She leaned over and showed it to me. “Morlock, R. Eleven Garfield Street, Belldale.”

  I shook my head. “This phone book is ten years old.”

  She slammed it shut and dust flew straight into my eyes, causing me to blink wildly. “It’s a start, Rachael! You said you wanted a last known address. This might just be it.”

  I thought about it for a second and then nodded. “You’re right. What else do we have to go on? But we should change seats first. I don’t know how you control this thing.”

  Pippa was an old pro behind the wheel of the truck as she directed us toward Garfield Street. “It’s just around the corner…shoot, hang on, what is this?”

  Bright blue flashing lights were hitting us in the review mirror, and suddenly we were being asked to pull over.

  I groaned as I saw Jackson climb out of the car. Great. Just great.

  “I told you we weren’t done talking about this, Rachael. I need to ask you some questions about Harry Daddo.”

  The police station was surprisingly chilly. I glanced around and noticed just how well ventilated and air conditioned the place was.

  “Darn, the people locked up in the cells are living more comfortably than me right now.”

  “Don’t joke about it, Rachael. I don’t want to have to lock you up,” he said as he guided me to the interview room.

  We were alone, but I felt like people were watching. I was pretty sure it wasn’t just my paranoia either.

  “I didn’t know Harry. Not really. I feel bad about it, honestly, not remembering him.”

  “It just seems a little coincidental that you were the one who found Harry’s body, and you just happened to know him around the time of his death.”

  “And that’s just what it is. A coincidence. Belldale is a small town. We’ve had a lot of people in the store. Harry wasn’t in the bakery any longer than a customer, really, and I couldn’t tell you the name of every person who purchased a pastry three years ago.”

  Jackson raised an eyebrow.

  “Are you sure? Because you’re looking a little flustered right now…”

  “It’s the weather!” I said with exasperation, banging a fist down on the table. “Everyone is looking a little flustered right now.” Including yourself, I thought but didn’t say.

  “Why didn’t Harry get the job?” Jackson asked.

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. I never made any notes about it. Some people aren’t cut out for the early mornings. Some people just don’t have the knack for it. I don’t know.”

  He made a note on his sheet of paper. “Hmm, so you are saying Harry was lazy…”

  “I’m not saying that! You’re putting words into my mouth.”

  “Just trying to get some information on a line of inquiry,” Jackson mused. “Trying to figure out if Harry was a good employee.” He placed the lid back on his pen. “Maybe other employers weren’t happy with his work ethic either.”

  I stared at Jackson. Was he thinking the same thing we were? That Rocky had killed Harry?

  I gulped. I should have told him all about the letters, but what about the threats? I couldn’t risk Pippa and Lolly’s safety, not for anything. Rocky was watching me, I knew that much for sure. He probably knew I was in the police station right now, talking to Jackson.

  “Can I have a glass of water, please?” I asked.

  Jackson frowned. “Sure.”

  He returned with a full glass and I gulped it down.

  Jackson sighed. “What were you doing at Pure Gelatosphere that day, Rachael?”

  “I was purchasing ice cream. Is that a crime now?” I asked. I’d been right. Jackson would
always find a way to cast suspicion on me. How could we date like this? He would always be watching everything I did, questioning my motives.

  “Can I go now?” I asked, standing up. I realized I was avoiding eye contact with him, looking down at the ground.

  “Is everything all right, Rachael?”

  I nodded and said yes.

  Not anything I can talk to you about, anyway.

  “What happened?” Pippa had been waiting for me in the truck the entire time and missed her chance to sell her fruit, so I probably owed her an explanation.

  “Just drive,” I said, pulling too hard on the seatbelt. It got stuck in the old truck and wouldn’t budge. “I just want to get out of here,” I said, pulling on it harder, which only made it jam more.

  “What is the panic about?” Pippa started the engine when I finally got the seatbelt free.

  “Pippa. Rocky told us—me—not to go the cops. If he sees us here, he’s going to think that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  She gulped and pressed her foot down a bit harder on the gas. “If only there was a way for us to get a message back to Rocky.” She shot me a hopeful look. “Maybe if we visit this address we found, then we’ll get a lead. Maybe even a forwarding address.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure it will do any good, Pippa. He’s out there, and he’s dangerous, and he’s always one step ahead of us. How are we ever going to catch this guy?”

  “We start with what we can do. We find his old address. Now, pick up that dusty old phone book and double-check it for me, will ya?”

  11 Garfield Street was a stately address. The home was all one level, but it was long and stretched back hundreds of feet from the driveway, with paved red brick underneath a wide balcony. There were lush gardens surrounding every side of the house. Whoever owned it now certainly kept it well-watered in this heat. There was not a spot of dry lawn anywhere.

  “Looks expensive,” Pippa commented, putting on the breaks. “I can’t say I’m surprised. He was doing really well for himself back in the late nineties and early two-thousands. Making a fortune from all those kids’ parties. I’m not surprised to find out he lived like a king.”