Free A Hard Day’s Fright by Casey Daniels Page B

deal.
    “What are you talking about?” she asked.
    Ariel already knew the story, so for once in my ghostly-encounter investigations, I didn’t have to make up a lie to cover my tracks.
    I grabbed my purse out of my bottom desk drawer as I said, “Lucy. What happened to Lucy must have had something to do with school. It must have. School is pretty much all a kid has. So if I check out her school—”
    “Why do you care what happened to Lucy?”
    Who would have expected a kid that weird to be so perceptive?
    I stopped in my tracks. Again, I thought about concocting a lie, and was grateful I didn’t need to. “Your mom told me about Lucy. You know, after you disappeared. I care because she cares.”
    This satisfied her. And that might have been a good thing except that when I got moving again and got to the door, Ariel was right behind me clutching her backpack.
    Nerve-wracking enough, because those piercings gave me the creeps. Worse, because I had a bad feeling about what it meant.
    I was holding out hope when I asked, “When I leave, you’re going back to your mother’s office, right?”
    Ariel shook her head. “You remember what my mom said. I can’t be left alone.”
    “But—”
    “There’s nobody else for me to stay with. Jim and my mom are in a meeting. Jennine out at the front desk is helping some people pick out a plot for their grandma who just died. If you leave me alone—”
    “Your mother will freak again.”
    Her expression brightened. It might have been because she liked the thought of Ella freaking, but I think it was more because of what she saw as a get out of jail pass. Excited and trying hard not to show it, Ariel shifted from black Converse to black Converse. “I’ve heard the stuff my mom says about you, Pepper, about how you help people out with all kinds of mysteries. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You’re trying to figure out what happened to Lucy. And now, we’re going to investigate, right?”
    “Right.” I didn’t like the self-satisfied look on her face, so I was quick to add, “Except for the we part. You’re going to come along. And you’re going to behave yourself. And you’re going to stay out of my way.” I looked at her hard. “Promise?”
    A tiny smile sparkled around Ariel’s mouth, and that darned lip stud winked at me. “Cross my heart,” she purred.
    I might have actually believed it.
    If I thought the kid had a heart.
     
    I t was Ariel’s idea to start out at the Shaker Heights Public Library.
    This worried me, and not just because I was embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. I figured we’d start at the high school. She pointed out that I’d never get past the security desk with my lame-ass story about how I was looking into the disappearance of a girl who’d gone to school there forty-five years earlier.
    We didn’t have security desks when I went to high school.
    I felt old.
    I shoved the thought aside, and in the library’s reference room, I slid a stack of Shaker Heights High yearbooks—from 1966 to 1970—in front of me. Only five books, but to me, it looked a little too much like homework. And I was never very good at homework.
    Unless I took advantage of my assistant?
    I turned to where Ariel was sitting next to me. “Why don’t you—”
    She shushed me with a hand signal. She was texting a mile a minute and never managed to break her stride. I was actually impressed.
    I got to work without her.
    I started with 1966 and flipped through the pages that featured the junior class. There was Lucy in all her golden glory, smiling like a beauty queen.
    Of course, I knew I wouldn’t find her with the senior class in the yearbook from 1967, but I looked, anyway. On the last of the pages dedicated to the seniors, there was that same picture of Lucy, along with the caption, We miss you .
    “Somebody didn’t,” I grumbled.
    Fingers flying, Ariel shot me a look.
    I continued on, paging through the senior class, looking for