Free Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley by Danyl McLauchlan Page B

anything. He washed his face in a nearby puddle then headed towards Joy’s house, a spring in his step.
    The address on the card led him to a flat sunlit section. A concrete path ran across a lawn; steps led onto a wooden porch running along the front of the house, which was a nondescript cream-coloured wooden building with frosted windows and a peaked red roof punctuated by skylights.
    Danyl knocked at the door. His stomach rumbled. No one answered, which made sense. Joy had disappeared, after all. She had repeatedly mentioned her boyfriend, though, and Danyl thought this boyfriend might let him in and feed him breakfast then hand over the blue envelope, but apparently not. Perhaps the boyfriend didn’t even exist? It was probably just a clumsy way for Joy to signal that she wasn’t romantically available to Danyl. But she didn’t know about his medically induced impotence, so the joke was on her.
    He tried the door. It opened.
    That was odd. You’d think a drug dealer would have better home security. Then he pictured Joy drifting out her front door late last night, her eyes glazed over, letting the door swing shut behind her then trailing down the hill towards the alleyway. Still, he hesitated. This wasn’t like breaking into Verity’s parents’ house or Steve’s house, or setting fire to Eleanor’s kitchen. This was a stranger’s home. He knocked again and called out, ‘Hello?’
    Still no reply. He stepped into the darkened interior of the drug dealer’s house.
    It consisted of one very long room separated into different spaces by the arrangement of the furniture. Just inside the front door was the kitchen area with a white tiled floor, segmented off by a dining table atop polished wooden floorboards, then black leather couches facing a large flat-screen television. A Japanese-style divider stretched between a tall wardrobe and a chest of drawers. A door-sized gap in the divider led to an unlit space that had to be the bedroom. Grey light filtered in from evenly spaced skylights.
    Danyl began his search in the kitchen. He looked in cupboards, drawers and the refrigerator. When he was finished, he made a breakfast bowl with organic muesli and frozen blueberries. He topped this up with goat’s milk, took a spoon from the cutlery drawer and groaned with pleasure when he tasted the first spoonful. Then, chewing and swallowing, he walked to the dining table at the far end of the kitchen.
    The kitchen was covered with papers. Danyl walked around it, craning his head to read them all. There were photographs of graffiti, copies of the Te Aro Community Volunteer Newsletter with some sentences underlined, others blacked out. Words scrawled in the margins. Beside the newsletters were graph pages covered with complex algebraic equations. The number 1/137 was at the bottom of one of the pages, underlined and circled with red ink. Also on the table: a large ashtray filled with ash. The reek of cannabis hung heavy in the air.
    He rummaged through the mess, but there was no blue envelope. Just beyond the table, though, lay a pile of clothes. Danyl knelt down to inspect them.
    Black leather boots. Black jeans. A black T-shirt. That’s what Joy was wearing last night in the alleyway. Danyl frowned, thinking. Most people in Te Aro owned multiple black T-shirts and pairs of black jeans. So the pile of clothes on the floor might not mean anything. But it might mean that Joy had reappeared, somehow, and then returned home and taken off her clothes.
    His frown deepened. If Joy was here, naked, then it might not be appropriate for Danyl to be in her house, creeping towards her while eating her blueberries.
    He called, ‘Hello? Joy? It’s me, Danyl. The guy from the alleyway.’
    No reply. Danyl ate another spoonful of food and moved deeper into the house.
    He passed the couches and TV. The TV sat atop a long, polished wooden shelf filled with books and records. A stereo