How Perfect You Are (Carlson College Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “Hiking? Uh, seriously?” I shot Jenna a quizzical look. Jenna was more of an indoor girl. She didn’t like bugs or mud or sweat, and vastly preferred spending her days in the air conditioning of a mall or movie theater.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Jenna laughed, an almost nervous chuckle.

  “I’m just waiting for the punchline. You don’t really like things like hiking,” I pointed out. Jenna let out another nervous laugh and rolled her eyes.

  “I do so! I just haven’t had time to lately,” she said defensively.

  “If by “lately,” you mean since I’ve known you, then I would agree,” I said, shaking my head as I bent over to get closer to the cupcake I was frosting.

  “Trying new things can be fun,” Jenna told me, apparently realizing she could in no way refute my previous statement. “Come on, please, Cass?”

  “Hey, it’s your birthday,” I told her. “I’ll do whatever. Just don’t blame me when your birthday present from Mother Nature is poison ivy and mosquito bites.”

  4

  "Oh, my god, wasn’t that great?” Brooklyn squealed as she practically collapsed in her chair beside me at Da Vinci's later that night. Her drink sloshed dangerously close to the rim of her glass, and I edged a few inches away from her. I was wearing one of my favorite dresses, a pale blue lace number, and I did not relish the idea of having to try and remove strawberry margarita stains from it.

  “You were great,” I told her, raising my voice slightly to be heard above the din of the bar. Brooklyn, who had been my roommate my freshman year at Carlson, had always harbored dreams of stardom. At her parents’ insistence she was studying finance to be practical, but she never missed an opportunity to try for what might wind up being her big break.

  Apparently opportunities to “get discovered” included karaoke night at a small college town bar, which Brooklyn almost never missed. Unfortunately for Brooklyn, her singing, which was actually quite good under normal circumstances, and drinking did not mix, resulting in myself and all the other patrons of Da Vinci's being subjected to several very whiny sounding renditions of 90’s pop classics. I was praying that last call for karaoke would be coming soon. Amber appeared to be thinking the same thing.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can handle thisss,” she slurred slightly, sounding oddly snakelike. I, with my twenty-first birthday still four months away, had been left in charge of ferrying everyone safely home, so Amber had been hitting the rum and coke quite heavily.

  “What are you talking about? This is great!” Brooklyn yelled much louder than was strictly necessary as she clapped and stomped her feet along with the frat boys on stage who had chosen to regale us with “Cotton Eyed Joe.”

  “I don’t know who Cotton Eyed Joe is, but I hate him,” Amber muttered to me. Moments later several guys appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the three of us, attempting to press us into the conga line that inexplicably but traditionally accompanies the siren song that is “Cotton Eyed Joe.”

  I somewhat reluctantly allowed myself to be swirled around the dimly lit dance floor, my hands on the shoulders of the girl in front of me while a pair of hands from behind me were clamped firmly on my waist. The group moved in a random serpentine all around the room. As the song wore on, the line grew in size to the point that it was difficult to move without crashing into things. It reminded me of the game Snake, which I had spent many an hour trying to beat on my grandmother’s Nokia brick phone as a child.

  Mercifully, the song ended just when I was getting fed up with being bounced off random people. I detached myself from the clammy handed guy who had held onto my waist several seconds longer than was strictly necessary. On the way back to our table I passed several classmates and Drew from work, and after making brief small talk with all of them my introvert senses were tingling. I was more than ready to call it a night by the time I reached the table.

  Amber and Brooklyn were already there. Amber’s head was on her arms, her blonde and pink hair pooling onto the table. Brooklyn was snapping selfies and giggling to herself, punctuated with occasional hiccups.

  “Where’s Jenna?” I asked, realizing that it had been some time since I’d last seen the birthday girl.

  “She went to the bathroom!” Brooklyn continued to yell even though there was no music at the moment. I winced, feeling the beginning of a headache.

  “Well, I’m going to head that way myself. I’ll see if I can round her up. We should probably go soon,” I said. A quick glance at my phone showed that it was 1:15. While I didn’t have work the next day, or rather later the same morning, I was still exhausted from the lack of sleep the previous night. I was beginning to dream longingly of my bed and no alarms to disturb me.

  The line to the bathroom was long. I took my phone out to pass the time. I sent Jenna a quick text in case I didn’t bump into her, then started to browse my Instagram feed.

  I saw pictures taken at DaVinci’s on the accounts of several of the acquaintances I had just bumped in to. I tapped on the location tag, curious to see if I could spot myself or my friends in any of the shots taken tonight.

  I smiled when I saw one with both Brooklyn and Jenna in the background. Jenna’s birthday crown, a cheap plastic tiara she had insisted on wearing all night, was slipping precariously down her forehead while Brooklyn pulled her across the room, laughing. Several shots later there was one where the back of Amber’s head, with her distinctive pink streaks, was just visible.

  Swiping back to my main feed, I saw that at some point Jenna had posted a picture of Amber, Brooklyn and me. We all grinned broadly while Amber made bunny ears behind my head. Scrolling down, I saw another picture Jenna had shared. This one also had Amber and Brooklyn in it, but they were cut off. I seemed to be the main focus. It looked like I was in the middle of saying something, and my hand was half in front of my face. Not a particularly flattering picture.

  “Jenna should not be allowed to use social media while drunk,” I muttered to myself. Frowning, I realized that I was in the next picture Jenna had posted as well. This one was of just me, sitting by myself at the table looking oddly pensive while I stared at the drink specials on a flyer on the table.

  I quickly scrolled through the rest of Jenna’s recent posts and was surprised to see that I was in a total of six different pictures. I hadn’t remembered her taking that many. The pictures looked like she had tried to go for an artsy style, with odd angles and slight blurring. They had no hashtags, either, something Jenna tended to go a little overboard with. I decided I should take Jenna’s phone away for the rest of the evening once I found her.

  When I finally made it through the bathroom line and got back to our table, I saw that Jenna had returned in my absence and she and Amber were engaged in a lively debate over which of the frat boys currently on stage had the best hair.

  “Jenna, are you aspiring to be a paparazzi these days, or what?” I joked as I sat down. Jenna shot me a strange look.

  “What?” she asked, but just then there was a round of hooting and hollering from the crowd as one of the karaoke performers stripped off his t-shirt and tossed it to a girl dancing to the side of the stage.

  “I think that’s our cue to get out of here,” Amber said. “I didn’t bring any singles!”

  After settling our tabs, we made our way outside. There was a brief moment of panic when I couldn’t remember where my car was, but we soon found it hidden in between two massive SUVs. Amber called shotgun while Brooklyn and Jenna managed to squeeze into the back seat without dinging the doors of the Toyota that was several inches over the line.

  “Cassie, what the hell?” Jenna said suddenly as I attempted to back out without side swiping anyone. Concerned, I stomped on the brakes. Amber, who had not yet fastened her seatbelt, lurched forward.

  “Hey!” she exclaimed indignantly.

  “What, did I hit something?” I asked Jenna, worried.

  “No, why are there all these pictures of you on my p
hone?” Jenna replied.

  “The ones on Instagram? I don’t know, I assumed you just really liked taking my picture tonight. That’s why I made that paparazzi joke earlier,” I reminded her as I resumed easing my car past the danger zone.

  “Cass, I didn’t take these,” Jenna said slowly.

  I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and the odd feeling I had experienced earlier after waking up from my nap came back.

  “You didn’t take pictures?” Brooklyn sounded confused and also half asleep. I could see in the rearview mirror that her face was pressed against the window, eyes closed.

  “Not these. There’s, like, half a dozen pictures of Cassie posted on my Instagram. But I didn’t take any of them. Just the good one of you three, that’s it,” Jenna explained, sounding upset.

  “Of course you took them,” Amber reasoned. “Who else would have?”

  “I don’t know, that’s the thing. Did any of you take my phone?”

  “Nope,” I replied. “Of course, I’m in the pictures, so it’s not like I could have taken them.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror again and in the faint light I saw Jenna was biting her lip. She looked like she was going to say something, but stopped.

  “What?” I asked, forcing myself to take my gaze back to the road. Traffic was minimal at this hour, but the last thing I needed was for a random deer or drunk pedestrian to jump in front of me.

  “I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but after I took that picture of you guys I put my phone in my pocket,” Jenna said. “I went to go get a drink, and then we were all up by the stage. I wanted to take video, and when I went to take my phone out it wasn’t in my pocket anymore. I went back to the table because I thought I must have left it in my bag and just forgotten that I did.”

  “I remember,” Amber said. She had her feet on the dashboard, which she knew I hated, but I didn’t bother to scold her right now.

  “Except it wasn’t there,” Jenna continued. “I thought I must have lost it. I even went up to the bartender to see if anyone had turned it in,”

  “And then you told me!” Brooklyn jumped in, finally catching up. “And I said I thought you had left it on the table!”

  “Exactly. So I went back to the table again and couldn’t find it. Just to be positive, I checked my bag again and there it was, right on top.”

  “So…you just missed it the first time?” Amber offered.

  “How could I miss it when it was right on top?” Jenna sounded vaguely offended.

  “Well, you are kind of drunk,” Brooklyn pointed out, her own words uneven.

  “Not that drunk,” retorted Jenna. “Not so drunk that I wouldn’t be able to see my phone right in front of my face.”

  “Did you see anyone hanging out around our table?” I asked. “The pictures were taken from a funny angle. I had assumed Jenna just couldn’t hold the phone straight, but they could have been taken by someone a farther away.”

  I slowed the car and turned onto the long gravel road that led to our house. The few other houses on the road were dark, with only some random porch lights still on to brighten the late night landscape.

  “Well, Gavin was there for awhile,” Jenna mused. “We were talking about the ridiculous project we have to do for Delaney’s class. Did I tell you guys he wants 15 pages of-”

  “Okay, Gavin,” I cut in, trying to avoid a 10 minute discussion about how unfair it was that a college professor would expect his students to write a research paper. “Would he have taken your phone? Like, as a joke?”

  “Maybe? I guess it’s possible,” Jenna said, uncertain. “But what would be that funny about taking random, secret pictures of one of my friends?”

  “Who knows? Guys can be dumb. Anyone else?” Amber unfastened her seatbelt as we pulled into our driveway. Jenna shook her head, still thinking. She, Amber, and I climbed out of the car. Brooklyn, now fast asleep, remained slouched in the back.

  “Come on, help me with her,” I said to Amber, nodding at Brooklyn. Together we managed to rouse Brooklyn and get her out of the car, though she leaned heavily on me as we made our way up the porch. While we paused, waiting for Amber to unlock the door, I suddenly remembered the open window that had made me uneasy earlier.

  “Hey, Amber,” I started. “Did you leave the window open this morning?”

  Amber disappeared inside the dark living room as the front door swung open. Seconds later she had turned on the lamp near the door. It sent reassuring light spilling onto the porch.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Amber replied. “Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

  I sighed, watching for a moment to make sure that Brooklyn made it all the way onto the couch and not the floor before turning to face Amber and Jenna, who were now both looking expectantly at me.

  Quickly I told them about both the open window and the strange texts I had received that morning. When I had finished, Jenna had a look of confusion on her face. Amber looked more pissed off.

  “So it seems to me,” she began, sitting down on the arm of the couch and removing her impossibly high stilettos, “that some weirdo is playing jokes on you.”

  “Or,” Jenna interrupted, looking fearful, “you could have a stalker!”

  “No way,” I shook my head and let out a slight laugh. Me, have a stalker? It was ridiculous.

  “But this sounds kind of like an episode of Criminal Minds I saw the other day,” Jenna continued, her voice growing more animated. “There was this guy who was following women and trying to ask them out on dates. He had some kind of complex, I don’t remember what, and he couldn’t talk to women very well so when they inevitably rejected him he’d sneak into their house at night and-”

  “Jenna!” I cut her off. “Come on, don’t be ridiculous. That’s a TV show. That stuff doesn’t happen in real life.”

  “Yeah, Jenna!” came the sound of Brooklyn’s voice, muffled by the pillow she had slumped into face first.

  Ignoring her, I continued, “I think Amber’s right. It’s some stupid joke. Maybe it was the guy from your class. Or Drew that I work with! He was at DaVinci’s tonight, I almost forgot I saw him.”

  “But what if it’s not just a prank?” Jenna’s eyes were bright as she clearly relished the thought of me involved in some cop show type drama. “Maybe you’ll meet a handsome investigator like Shemar Moore and he’ll save your life and…”

  “Please, turn her off,” I whined to Amber. Swiftly, Amber stood and went to the hall closet where we stored extra blankets. She handed a blanket to Jenna, draped another over the now snoring Brooklyn, and proceeded to lead me upstairs by the elbow.

  “Uh, goodnight,” I called to Jenna, who was still spouting off her thoughts on how FBI agents were hotter than your average police officers to Brooklyn, seemingly unaware that no one was actually listening.

  Upstairs, Amber led me to her room. Looking around, it occurred to me not for the first time that Amber’s room might very well have been used in an illustrated encyclopedia to depict the entry for chaos. Amber always maintained that she kept her room extra messy to compensate for my orderly tendencies evident throughout the rest of the house.

  “The universe likes balance,” she had once said. “Night and day, hot and cold, neat and messy. I’m your balance.”

  Clothes, some folded and some not, were piled on every available surface, including the desk chair, dresser, the floor, and on the bed itself. The bookshelf was a haphazard arrangement of books, photos, and artwork. A spider plant that had somehow survived years of neglect hung in the corner, fairy lights dangling from the pot. Everything was brightly colored, sparkly, or lit up, giving the impression that we were inside some kind of psychedelic rainbow.

  “Here,” Amber shifted the pile of clothes off her chair and gestured for me to sit while she flopped belly first on her bed. Reaching into her nightstand drawer, she withdrew a flask and tossed it to me.

  “I’m not even going to ask why you hav
e a flask in your nightstand of all places,” I commented. Not a big fan of straight liquor, I hesitated for a moment before I unscrewed the cap and took a tentative swallow.

  “This is disgusting,” I coughed a second later as the whiskey burned its way down my throat. “Why do you drink this stuff?” I dabbed at my watering eyes with the sleeve of my dress.

  “It’s not disgusting! I like it,” Amber said with a laugh, holding out her hand.

  “You liking it and it being disgusting are not mutually exclusive,” I informed her. “I’ll stick to my wine, thanks.” I returned the flask and she took a long swallow, never once flinching. When she was finished, she returned the flask to her drawer and fixed me with a serious gaze.

  “So, do you have any idea what’s going on?” she asked me. I shrugged, idly reaching out and fiddling with the dozen or so nail polish bottles that sat on the edge of the dresser until they were arranged by color.

  “Do you know you have seven different shades of pink nail polish? And to answer your question, no. I really don’t. I want to say it’s just my imagination, or a coincidence or something, but with all of this stuff happening on the same day, who knows?” I tucked one leg under me on the chair. “And I could see someone doing the thing with all the Instagram photos as a prank, but what about the texts? And the window? Those aren’t very good pranks. They’re just...weird.”

  “I agree,” Amber sighed. “The window and the texts could be completely unrelated things that just happened to occur at the same time someone was playing a prank on you, but that seems unlikely.”

  “Honestly, I don’t really think it’s worth making a big deal over,” I said. “There’s got to be some rational explanation we just aren’t seeing. ”

  “Yeah,” began Amber slowly, “maybe we should wait and see if anything else happens. Maybe someone was just messing with you, and now they’ll be over it.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed willingly. I was tired and more than ready to forget the strange occurrences and move on. I had too many other irons in the fire the give something this silly my attention.