Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

little in the way of investigating. After the funeral, Chief Eccleston had taken me aside and threatened to arrest me if I so much as sniffed in the direction of Mike Zernan’s murder investigation, and I didn’t doubt his sincerity.

With that said, the threat of arrest had never stopped me before. Why was it stopping me now?

I sighed.

Who was I kidding?

I knew exactly why I didn’t want to look into the murders.

Wheeler.

The look on her face when I brought up the murders at the funeral.

I didn’t want to hurt her, to make her relive any more of that pain.

There was a loud chirp in my ear, and I stopped. It took me a moment to realize it was the sound of an incoming text message. As I pulled the phone from my pocket, I felt myself hoping the message was from Wheeler.

It wasn’t.

It was from Will’s sister, Bree.

Her text was four words long. Four words that would change the entire course of my investigation.

The notebook isn’t Will’s.

“What do you mean the notebook isn’t Will’s?”

She didn’t answer. She was too busy playing with Harold and May. She’d gone bonkers when she first saw them and leapt from her car.

“Bree!” I shouted.

She stopped petting them and looked up. She was wearing nearly the same outfit as before, yoga pants and a halter top, but today with a tan military jacket.

“The notebook, Bree. The notebook.”

“Oh, right.” She reached into her car and grabbed the notebook off the passenger seat. She tossed it to me and said, “It’s not his.”

“How do you know?”

She hefted May up with a grunt, holding her like the gigantic baby she was, then said, “Because, dillhole, I know what my brother’s handwriting looks like, and that’s not his.”

I flipped the book open.

She added, “It’s almost exact, even down to the columns and everything. It’s just not his handwriting. He didn’t write in block lettering. And it’s too neat.”

“And,” Bree said, using May’s front hoof to wave at me, “that book isn’t four years old.”

I closed the book and gave it a long survey. The cover was tattered, the pages starting to yellow, the large coffee stain permeating nearly half the book. It looked aged, beaten.

But Bree was right, the book wasn’t old. It was made to look old.

I said, “Why are you just telling me now?”

“I didn’t really look at it after you gave it to me. I mean, it was a nice thought, you giving me my brother’s notebook and all. But, I mean, I have a bunch of his other stuff that means a lot more.”

“But you cried when I gave it to you.”

She squished her face together, squinted, and sniffed.

“You were faking?”

“You totally thought you were giving me something priceless. I didn’t want to take that away from you.”

In a weird way, this was really sweet, and I was again reminded of how much she was like Lacy.

I let out a long exhale, then asked, “You want to stay for dinner?”

“Can’t. Got a date with Billy the checker.” She smiled, then added, “Well, not exactly a date with Billy. He’s got a date with his girlfriend—at least according to his girlfriend’s Snapchat—and I’m gonna listen in.”

“You need therapy.”

“Probably.”

“How are you gonna listen in?”

“I have my ways.”

“Okay, call me when you get arrested.”

“Will do.”

She kissed both the piglets on the snouts, told them she loved them and that they were both very special, then hopped in her little car and peeled away.

I sat down at the dining room table and stared at the notebook, taking a moment to process everything I just learned: 1) the notebook wasn’t Will’s, and 2) it was made to look like it was older than it actually was.

“Why did you send me this, Mike?” I said out loud.

Then it hit me.

It hadn’t taken Mike three days to find what he was looking for, it had taken him three days to create it.

Mike must have spent three days creating a replica of Will Dennel’s notebook. He filled over one hundred and twenty pages with entries. It must have taken him thirty hours. Then he went through the trouble of making it look as though it was four years old. Beat it up. Put it in the dryer. Spilled coffee on it. Probably dragged it behind his friggin’ truck. Then he popped it in the mail with an Arizona return address.

But why? Why not just send the real notebook?

For the entries to look exactly how Will did them, Mike must have had access to the real notebook.

What was he trying to tell me?

I’d spent countless hours poring over each page of the notebook looking for hidden messages in the margins or even within the bets themselves, but I hadn’t noticed anything.

I flipped open the book and gazed at the top entry:

Josh / Pacers / -3 ½ / $50.

Then the next three:

Phil S. / Celtics / +4 / $25.

Jenny / Bruins / +130 / $25.

Morris / Stanford BB / -12 / $100.

I continued going through pages. Two hours later, I’d found nothing.

Zip.

I thought back to the padded mailer the Moleskine had come in. I’d only given it a cursory glance, much more concerned with the contents it held.

I dug the orange-gold mailer out of the trash and surveyed it. The return address was written in block lettering, an address in Phoenix. Then there were ten stamps, all US Flag Forever Stamps, in the top right corner. It was postmarked June 7th from the post office in Mexico.

I considered this for a moment. I’d first gone to visit Mike on Saturday, June 4th. I’m guessing it had taken Mike two days to copy the notebook and make it appear worn and aged, then on Monday night he drove the thirty minutes to Mexico and dropped it off at the post office self-drop. Later that night he was killed. Then the package was picked up on Tuesday, postmarked, then made its way to my doorstep the next day, Wednesday, June 8th.

The timeline fit.

But