Adventures in Funeral Crashing by Milda Harris Page A

about this for the last
half hour, so I nodded, realizing that I wasn’t going to be able to
dissuade him. I still didn’t think we had enough to go on. It could
be a coincidence. Troy could be a totally innocent guy, who just
happened to have a lot of dead girl space friends. Still, I will
admit, even I had a vague hope that the police would change their
investigation from drugs to murder and that Troy’s relationships to
the victims might be a catalyst for that.
    The Palos Police Station is a small police
station. My guess is that most of their calls are about domestic
violence and petty crime. I should have known that they wouldn’t
know what to do with a murder case, even if it did fall in their
laps.
    “What can I do for you, Ethan?” Detective
Dixon asked, leaning back in his desk chair as he took a sip of
coffee from a steaming styrofoam cup.
    Didn’t he know that styrofoam was practically
non-recyclable? What about saving the planet and all that? I didn’t
say anything, though, even though I was thinking it. We weren’t
here to save the planet, after all. We were there to stop more
people from getting murdered and since I was the weird girl, we had
agreed to let Ethan do all the talking. So, quiet, stay quiet, was
the mantra I kept repeating in my brain.
    Detective Dixon’s office was a tiny cubbyhole
in the Palos Police Department and it was littered with those empty
styrofoam coffee cups. This guy liked his coffee…and killing the
planet. Other than that, there were papers everywhere. For a small
suburban town with no apparent crime, other than a triple murder
labeled as drug overdoses, he looked like he might be a busy guy.
And, okay maybe there was more than just domestic violence cases
happening in the city of Palos. Maybe it wasn’t the nice town it
seemed to be. I know I had always felt safe there before, but maybe
not so much now.
    Ethan was in the middle of explaining the
situation, when I tuned back into the conversation and out of my
inner monologue, “So, what that boils down to is that we think my
sister Liz, Olivia Reynolds, and Melissa Kent were all murdered.
And, we think Troy Matthews might be involved. He knew all the
victims.”
    Detective Dixon had spent Ethan’s entire
explanation nodding, but he hadn’t even touched the blank notepad
and black pen lying on his desk, “You said they were Facebook
friends?”
    Ethan nodded, “Yes.”
    “Technically, aren’t they all connected
through their school? Isn’t Facebook a social tool? For networking?
It’s possible that they all knew each other too, isn’t it? Laurel
Community College is a small school. A tight knit community
college, if you will. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone’s
on Facebook. That’s why these overdoses are such a tragedy,”
Detective Dixon had slipped into his procedural police voice.
    It was obvious to me that he was thinking –
ah, these silly kids, trying to play detective! I was no silly
kid!
    “They’re not overdoses! They’re murders!” I
said and okay, maybe I said it a little too loudly, with a little
too much emphasis, and totally out of the blue since I had just
been sitting there quietly before this.
    “And, how are you involved?” Detective Dixon
turned to me, “Besides being Mr. Ripley’s girlfriend? I’m sorry,
Miss…”
    “Kait Lenox,” I said, feeling frustrated.
    “Miss Lenox,” Detective Dixon continued,
“I’ve worked for this police department for the last twenty years.
We’re checking these overdoses out, but for now, they’re classified
as drug related deaths. There’s no evidence leading us to believe
these girls were murdered.”
    “But we just gave you evidence!” Ethan
cried.
    “All based on how you feel about your sister
and other girls in similar situations. It’s a coincidence. It is
very possible that the girls all had lots of friends in common.
They may have even known each other. It’s a very, very sad
situation, but there is absolutely no