The Boy Next Door Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  What This Book is About...

  The Boy Next Door

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Epilogue

  VIP Offer

  About the Author

  Also by Josh Lanyon

  Copyright

  For the last fourteen years, former celebrated Boy Detective Merle Madison has been trying to build a grown-up career for himself as a private investigator. There are just two problems: there’s not a lot of serious crime in the small town of Hayvenhurst—and Police Chief Isaac Ramsay keeps denying Merle’s application for a PI license.

  Merle and Isaac have history, some good and some bad, so when someone seems determined to put Merle out of business—permanently—he naturally turns to his former sidekick for help.

  But Isaac’s days of playing second fiddle to a Junior Sherlock Holmes are long past. In fact, Merle will be lucky if Isaac doesn’t kill him himself.

  The Boy Next Door

  A Short Story

  Josh Lanyon

  Prologue

  Warm lips moving on mine, passionately, insistently.

  I knew those lips. I knew that kiss.

  Isaac…

  Moist breath pushing into my mouth, filling my lungs.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  We breathed in unison. Quiet. Intimate. Yes.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Isaac, I love you. I really do. I miss you so much…

  From down a long tunnel a voice said, “He’s breathing on his own, Chief.”

  And I’m really, truly sorry…

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  And from now on—

  Waaaait a minute.

  Chief?

  That wasn’t right. I wanted Isaac, not Chief.

  “Chief?” Once more the word hollowly echoed down long, empty corridors. “Chief?”

  I murmured protest. The mouth fervently pressing mine withdrew.

  I unstuck my eyelids, stared dazedly up. Bits of black floated in the evening air. Red embers drifted down like glowing snowflakes. In front of a kaleidoscope of ragged black-edged treetops was a ring of grim faces gazing down at me—and the grimmest face of all was that of Police Chief Ramsay. I thought I could see tiny twin flames dancing in his eyes.

  I unstuck my lips. I’m not sure what I wanted to say. I can explain everything?

  I probably owed him an explanation or two.

  In the distance came an alarming tearing-away sort of sound. The cops all turned to watch in silence as my neighbor Dick Chekhov’s plastic Santa—still sitting in its red plastic sleigh—plummeted in flames from his rooftop.

  As Santa’s sleigh crunched nose-first in the frosty grass, Isaac swung back to me.

  “Goddamn it, Merle,” he roared. “What did I say? What did I tell you? I’m done warning you. This time I’m throwing your ass in jail.”

  I tried to sit up. “On what charges?”

  “Malfeasance. Obstruction of justice. How about that? Interfering with a police investigation. That’s a good one. Conducting business without a license. Disturbing the peace. Public nuisance. How about menace to society? That fits. Don’t worry about it. I’ll find something. There won’t be any shortage of charges when I get done with you…”

  Chapter One

  Do you know me?

  If you live in Hayvenhurst, you probably know of me. Celebrated Boy Detective Merle Madison.

  Or, these days, Former Celebrated Boy Detective Merle Madison.

  Which is still better than the occasional Formerly Celebrated Boy Detective Merle Madison. Because, say what you will, my exploits as a boy detective were…okay, maybe not legendary, but impressive for a kid of eleven, which is how old I was when I solved my first big case.

  The headline in the Daily Bulletin ran: Local Boy Solves Arson Case. The framed article still hangs in my office. Or did.

  Before the bomb behind my filing cabinet went off.

  I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Let’s start at the beginning. My first memory—okay, not my first memory because that’s probably a false memory anyway—but from as far back as I can remember, there was Isaac.

  But never mind him.

  I grew up reading The Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown and the Three Investigators and, okay, yes, don’t bust my chops for it, Nancy Drew. When other little kids were babbling about growing up to be astronauts or firefighters or police officers or mermaids, I wanted to be a PI.

  Is that so wrong?

  I wanted to have adventures and solve mysteries and help people. And I wanted Isaac to be my associate. Of course, we didn’t call them associates back then; we called them sidekicks. But it was still a pretty good gig. He didn’t complain.

  Okay, he did sometimes complain. He did point out that Frank and Joe were equals and that the Three Investigators were largely equals (though, let’s face it, Jupiter Jones is really the star of the series), and Encyclopedia Brown would have been smashed to a pulp a zillion times if not for Sally Kimball, but no one can deny that Beth and George were Nancy Drew’s sidekicks. They were not partners.

  It was during one of those intermissions in our friendship that I solved the Beamer Arson Case.

  Yes, Isaac did help. A little. At the end.

  Okay, and maybe at the beginning. A little.

  But it was my case and I solved it.

  The first time Old Man Beamer tried to burn down his warehouse, everybody thought it was an accident. Including me. I was the one who reported the fire and actually saved the warehouse, which is why I started taking an interest in said warehouse and Old Man Beamer. Also, I hated Bobby Beamer, the old man’s son.

  Some people just annoy you by their very existence, and that was me for Bobby. Bobby had it in for me from day one of Mrs. Miller’s kindergarten class. He did not like the cut of my jib. Or anything else about me. And I wasn’t crazy about him either, especially after he started trying to deliberately run me down at recess with one of Room 4’s tricycles. Play Time became a living hell for me until Isaac stepped in.

  But I digress.

  At the time of the first fire at Tractor Beamer’s Warehouse, everyone assumed the Beamers were rolling in dough, so the fire had to have been an accident. If that warehouse went up in smoke, George Beamer would have lost everything. Sure, there was insurance, but he’d have been out of business, and that company had been in his family forever. He’d have lost his purpose in life, his standing in the community, his very raison d’être as Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin might have said.

  At least, that’s the way we all thought back then. We made suppositions about what was important to Mr. Beamer instead of just looking at the facts. Our deductions were based on a false premise. A good detective tries not to make assumptions. A good detective just looks at the facts.

  Although sometimes instinct plays a part.

  Did I mention Bobby used to try to steal my lunch money during those occasional lulls in my friendship with Isaac? Well, that was a clue right there that didn’t sink in until the second time Mr. Beamer tried to burn his warehouse down.

  To be fair, it was really Isaac who brought that lead to my attention.

  “Jeez,” he said, helping me pick myself up after Bobby tried to push me down three flights of stairs after social studies. “Why’s he always trying to steal your lunch money when his family’s so rich?”

  Yeah, good question.

  Anyway, the first fire happened on a Sunday morning when everyone was in church. Everyone except for me.

  I was suppo
sed to be locked in my bedroom, thinking better of saying something so blasphemous as “justice is more important than heaven.” (But really, if you don’t believe in heaven, justice is more important.) Anyway, I crawled out my bedroom window as I always did when I was supposed to be “thinking better,” and went down to the creek behind the Beamers’ warehouse to catch frogs.

  Which is how I noticed black smoke billowing from the loft of Tractor Beamer’s Warehouse. I ran across the road to Mr. Dean’s house, got his house key from under the porch light, and went inside to call the fire department.

  I got a mention in the paper for my quick thinking, which added fuel to the fire. My fire to be a detective, I mean.

  But sadly, my quick thinking (per the Daily Bulletin) was only a reprieve for Tractor Beamer’s Warehouse because not a month later, the building burned to the ground in the middle of the night.

  That fire coming so soon on the heels of the first fire did raise a few eyebrows, but people just couldn’t believe Old Man Beamer would deliberately put himself out of business. Even I didn’t think the fire had been deliberately set. Not at first.

  I couldn’t help noticing, though, that Bobby seemed to hate me even worse after I saved his dad’s warehouse. And I couldn’t help remembering what Isaac had said about it being strange Bobby kept mugging me for lunch money when he had three times the lunch money the rest of us did.

  Or did he?

  That was when I realized Bobby had started bringing a sack lunch to school.

  I had time to notice stuff like that because Isaac and I were taking one of our breaks from being best friends.

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Isaac had yelled in my face. “You don’t get everything your own way all the time, Merle.”

  “I never said I did!”

  “Sometimes I get to pick what we do.”

  “I know that!”

  “Sometimes I get to pick our cases.”

  Uh-oh.

  Screeching brakes. Smashing glass.

  “But that’s not how it works,” I had tried to explain with kindness and patience.

  Well, he wouldn’t listen. So we were not speaking to each other when I started snooping in the woods behind the Beamers’ farm and found that abandoned chicken coop. And in that abandoned chicken coop I found empty cans of gasoline, an unopened pack of wiping rags, and—looking like it had been forgotten in the dirty straw of the wall shelf—a battered blue baseball cap with the Tractor Beamer logo. Exactly like the one Mr. Beamer used to wear.

  Naturally, I had gone straight to Isaac.

  “You don’t think you’re maybe slightly overreacting?” I rattled the handcuff on the railing of the hospital bed. I mean, really? Handcuffed to a bedrail? Were we trapped in an episode of Barnaby Jones?

  “No,” Isaac replied grimly. He had tried to wash the ash stains from his face, but I could still see smudges of gray under his blue eyes. His black eyebrows looked singed. “How is he?” he asked Dr. Waters. “Can he be discharged?”

  “Well…” Dr. Waters has known us our entire lives. He delivered both Isaac and me. Not at the same time, naturally. Isaac is six months older than me. He likes to say those were the only peaceful six months of his life.

  “Lucky,” Dr. Waters said.

  Isaac’s face went grimmer still.

  “Two cracked ribs. Assorted cuts and abrasions. Mild concussion—”

  “Normal state for him.”

  “Minor smoke inhalation—”

  “Any chance it might shut him up for a while?”

  “I want to remind you that I’m the victim here,” I broke in. “I told you someone was trying to kill me. You wouldn’t listen. You insisted I was making it up.”

  “You’re under arrest,” Isaac snapped.

  “No kidding!” I rattled my handcuff at him again. “You already said that. You already did that.”

  Isaac’s eyes narrowed to bad-tempered slits. The thing is, he’s not really bad-tempered. In fact, for a law-enforcement officer, he’s kind of…easygoing. Even good-natured. Except when it comes to me.

  Case in point. His mouth drew to a thin line. So thin, I’m surprised he could pry the words out. He did, though. He said, “I’m going to say a lot more before we’re done.”

  I opened my mouth.

  He said harshly, “And I do mean done.”

  Chapter Two

  Isaac came into his own in high school.

  That probably sounds like I’m jealous. Well, a lot of the time I was.

  I mean…high school.

  Everyone is insecure and uncertain. Everyone with a brain. And Isaac was no different.

  Yeah, he changed that summer.

  For one thing, he suddenly shot up a few feet. Okay, a few inches, but I felt like his kid brother when we started school that autumn. I did finally catch up—mostly—but it was a slower and less dramatic process. He also started to fill out. And, unforgivably, he developed the faintest shadow of a mustache. At fourteen!

  For another thing, he revealed an unexpected and unwelcome aptitude—and passion—for football. Huh? When the hell had he learned to play football? And why hadn’t he invited me along?

  But the main thing, the real thing that came between us, was he started dating Nancy Walker.

  Not the Nancy Walker who played the housekeeper on McMillan & Wife. That would have been too weird. Nancy Walker the head cheerleader at Hayvenhurst High.

  Although, really, that was too weird too.

  While Isaac was busy turning into a handsome, popular jock, I was figuring some things out about myself. I figured out that I really did want to be a detective, whether Mrs. Malone, my guidance counselor, agreed or not. I figured out that I needed cases that paid better than finding out who stole Brooke Hasting’s ten-speed or who was letting their dog crap on the Olsens’ front lawn. I figured out that I didn’t want to date cheerleaders—or any girls at all.

  I didn’t tell Isaac, though. He had already told me he was too busy with football practice to continue sleuthing. I didn’t want to hand him another reason—another thing—we didn’t have in common.

  The situation came to a head (in a manner of speaking) the afternoon I heard Nancy trying to browbeat her friend Ally Ventura into pairing up with me for a double-date.

  I was sitting a couple of rows behind them in the bleachers during football practice, but they never noticed me.

  I wasn’t really listening to them—they never said anything of interest—but then I heard Nancy say in a coaxing kind of voice, “Just for a while. Isaac won’t go out if Merle has to sit home alone.”

  “Are you sure they’re not…” Ally wiggled her hand in the time-old gesture that signifies I-forget-the-word-for-bisexual-oh-duh.

  “Isaac? No way. Who knows with Merle?”

  “My dad says Merle seems a little light in his loafers.”

  Nancy giggled. “He probably does own loafers. Isaac says he uses shoe trees.”

  “They probably match his geeky Christmas sweater collection.”

  They nearly fell off the bleachers laughing at that.

  For the record, I don’t own a geeky Christmas sweater collection. Or any Christmas sweater collection.

  Anyway, when I told Isaac, he didn’t believe it.

  Or maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t care.

  It felt like he didn’t care, so we didn’t talk for a while.

  Three years.

  My choice, according to Isaac, when we did start talking again.

  No way.

  Okay, maybe it was.

  It didn’t really occur to me maybe radio silence hurt him too. He didn’t show it.

  He did stop dating Nancy Walker, but there was always someone else. A never-ending stream of pretty someone elses.

  It was a tough time for me. My career as a celebrated boy detective was starting to slow. What had seemed cool to my sixth-grade classmates seemed freakish to my fellow ninth graders.

  Mr. Beamer was out on parole.

/>   Mrs. Beamer had divorced him while he was in the jug, and Bobby was attending River Heights High School in the next county. Which was one bright spot. About the only bright spot.

  Anyway, it was tough losing my best friend and trusted assistant to the football—and cheerleading—teams, but it was even tougher when, senior year, my parents divorced.

  Six months after that, my mother married and moved to Nebraska. Nebraska! That’s how unhappy she was. My dad and I had never been close, and that change in circumstances didn’t do much to fix it. Even so, it was tough when he died a year later in a car wreck.

  Accidental. I know. I investigated.

  Accidents do happen. Especially when you’re tiring of living.

  The Hayvenhurst Jail is over a hundred years old. There was a move by the historical society a few years ago to get it placed on the National Register, but that didn’t come to anything. And maybe just as well. It’s the ugliest building in the entire county.

  Other than mine, the cells were empty on Christmas Eve, which was a relief. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to drunks singing Christmas carols off-key or doing whatever else drunks get up to during the holidays.

  I could probably have given the bars across the window a hard wiggle and broken out. But I didn’t want to break out. I wanted to talk to Isaac. Also, to be honest, I wasn’t feeling that great. A couple of cracked ribs is no big deal in the PI game, but I still felt kind of sick and shaky. My throat hurt. My head hurt.

  My heart hurt.

  It wasn’t the first time in recent memory someone had tried to kill me, but it was the first time I felt like Isaac would have been happy if they’d succeeded.

  That probably sounds like I was feeling sorry for myself, and I probably was.

  I was picking at the blue plastic hospital bracelet around my wrist when Isaac finally showed up. He’d made a more determined effort to wash the grime from his face and to slick back his dark hair. He looked tired, and his eyes were wintry in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.

  He unlocked the cell, stepped inside, and leaned back against the bars, arms folded in silent and preemptive resistance to whatever I was going to say.