The Case of the Disappearing Corpse Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  The Case of the Disappearing Corpse

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  The Case of the Disappearing Corpse

  By June Whyte

  Copyright 2013 by June Whyte

  Cover Copyright 2013 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Also by June Whyte and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  The Case of the Disappearing Corpse

  June Whyte

  One

  “Hey, guess what?”

  I almost dislocated my neck as I swiveled around on the bench and stared at the gangly redhead behind me. Dressed in orange board shorts and a too-small, faded black tee-shirt that crept up his back whenever he bent over, Jack McEvoy practically crackled with excitement.

  “Hmm… Let’s see. You found a ten dollar note and you’re going to share it with us?”

  Jack grinned at me. “In your dreams, Cha.” His carrot hair standing on end, he tossed his football bag onto the scarred wooden table and crossed his arms. “Give up?”

  Tayla, my best friend in the world since year one, took a swig from her water bottle. “You know I’m hopeless at guessing games,” she protested.

  Even dribbling water down her chin Tayla still looked cool. At twelve, she already wore 12A bras while I was straight up and down like a broom handle.

  “This better be good,” I growled at Jack. “We’ve been waiting half an hour for our fish and chips.”

  “It’s better than good—Patsy Turner found a body!”

  “A what?” Tayla’s mouth went instantly into fly-catching mode.

  I frowned in disbelief. Patsy Turner used to be my baby-sitter when I was a little girl.

  “A real dead body?” I had to be doubly sure here. Jack loved nothing better than to play tricks on us.

  “Dead as a fish dinner!”

  Jack slid onto the picnic bench, all elbows, sharp knees and kicking legs. Once settled, he pulled out a white-papered parcel from his smelly bag of used footy-gear.

  “Eeeyuggh!” gagged Tayla, making sick noises. “You put our fish and chips in with your stinking socks!”

  I screwed up my nose and punched him on the arm. “You’re so gross, Jack.”

  “I know.” He grinned, the freckles over his nose running into each other. “Patsy reckons the dead guy had a knife stuck in his back. When she kicked him, just to make sure he was dead like, he rolled over and the knife fell into the pansies. That’s when blood spurted out.”

  “Ooooh, eeeyuggh again! Wasn’t it enough the poor man was dead without Patsy kicking him?” Always a bit on the squeamish side, Tayla had gone a funny grayish green color.

  I, on the other hand started to tingle all over. It was like hearing a strange noise in the middle of the night and waking up excited and terrified at the same time. In fact I couldn’t open my notebook quickly enough to list the key points of the mystery.

  1. Male body found flattening the pansies on Patsy Turner’s front lawn.

  2. Knife in deceased’s back.

  3. Kicked after death by a brown Doc Marten boot. (Patsy wouldn’t be seen dead outside her front door unless she was wearing her Doc Martens.)

  4. Knife fell into the pansies.

  As Jack unwrapped the white paper parcel and spread the contents on the table, even the tantalizing smell of fish and chips smothered in salt and vinegar didn’t slow me down.

  This thing with Patsy was way cool. Ever since reading about the Write-a-Murder-Mystery short-story contest in this month’s KidLit magazine I’d been itching to get started. For children under fourteen, the story had to be based on a true crime. First prize was five hundred dollars plus the winning entry would be published on the Internet.

  Way to go!

  I jiggled my biro up and down impatiently. Jack had grabbed a large handful of chips and his face had taken on this real blissful look as he ate them. Made me feel like putting a bomb in his jocks.

  “Jack! Forget the food!” I yelled at him. “What did Patsy do then?”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “Well, did she kick him again or what?”

  Jack raised one questioning eyebrow. “You’re going all weird on me, Chiana. I dunno. She’d be totally freaked out so she might have.” He reached over, snagged the biggest piece of fish and transferred it to his mouth. Through noisy chomps he continued. “I only just heard about it from Patsy’s brother, Josh. He was at the fish and chip shop. He said when his mum started screeching about Patsy being too young to rent and should’ve still been at home, he took off out of there.”

  “But Patsy’s twenty-one.”

  The look on Tayla’s face seemed to agree totally with my thoughts. Twenty-one was old.

  “Tell me,” I said, pen poised, head cocked towards Jack. “Did Patsy know the dead guy?”

  “Josh reckons she did.”

  “Patsy knew the dead guy. Wow!” I began scribbling again.

  Suspect knew victim. Why was he at her house?

  Where was Patsy when he was murdered?

  Jack leant across to get a peek at my notes. “Hey,” he protested, grabbing my biro and holding it out of reach. “Patsy isn’t a suspect. She was walking home from Laughing Class at the time the guy was killed.”

  “Laughing Class?”

  “Don’t ask. All I know is Josh said his sister went to Laughing Class for therapy. That’s where she met this guy. He acted like a real slime-ball so she told him to drop dead.” Jack’s eyebrows scooted upwards while Tayla’s mouth went in the opposite direction. “Of course she didn’t mean it!”

  “Jack, my pen?” I gave him my best imitation of Frosty, our year seven teacher at Star of the Sea school where we all attended. Her real name was Ms. Winters and one of her icy glares could freeze a kid at twenty paces.

  He tossed the pen in the air, caught it in his mouth, and then with a circus clown grin, wedged it behind his left ear. Each time I went to grab for it he ducked away, his grin getting wider with every move.

  I shrugged. “Okay, keep it—I have plenty more.”

&n
bsp; Diving into my back-pack I pulled out a dark green biro with silver stars running down the length. Collecting pens was a hobby of mine. I had about two hundred and twenty five last count.

  “Now, go on,” I said, taking a bite of my fish and chewing as though it was made of cardboard. When I become obsessed with my writing everything else takes a back seat. Even eating. “What happened when the police arrived?”

  “That’s the weird part. After making sure the guy was dead, Patsy stumbled inside to ring the police, but—by the time she came out again—the body was gone.”

  “Wow!” said Tayla. “Gone? As in got up and walked away?”

  “Hardly think so, Tay,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I think Jack means the murderer came back and collected him.”

  I turned to Jack. “Right?”

  “Guess so. Unless the garbage man drove past and thought the body looked untidy sprawled on the front lawn.”

  Jack’s jokes can be so sick. I just shook my head and made another note.

  Body disappeared by the time police arrived.

  “What are you up to Cha?” Tayla put both elbows on the table and studied me closely. “Since when have you been interested in dead guys?”

  “Yeah. You’re even starting to creep me out.” To prove his point Jack shook his head when I offered him my second piece of fish, then quickly changed his mind, grabbed the fish and stuffed it into the rubbish bin he called his mouth. His next muffled comment sounded like ‘Wotjadoin’?

  “I’m going to write a murder-mystery.”

  “And enter the contest in KidLit?” Tayla asked, a frown creasing her forehead.

  I nodded. “The rules say the story must be based on a true crime…right?”

  “Right.”

  “This is just so freaky,” I explained. “The judge wants a murder-mystery based on a true crime and a corpse is found just around the corner from my house. Coincidence or what?”

  Understanding crept into Tayla’s eyes like a frightened rabbit. “Oh, no…”

  “So, all we have to do is find this missing body, interview witnesses, and ask leading questions—you know like private eyes do in the movies—then track down the killer. Simple.”

  “Simple?” Tayla’s voice squeaked, the chip she’d raised to her mouth totally forgotten. “You’re crazy, Cha. We can’t like chase after a killer. What do we do if we catch him?”

  “We could sit on him till the cops come,” Jack suggested, scraping the last of the chip crumbs into a heap and sucking them up with his wet tongue. “So…when do we plan on starting?”

  Two

  I figured sleuthing was easy. After all, I’d read every Nancy Drew book in the series and anything Nancy could do, Chiana Ryan and her trusty assistants could do better. For a start, we had more technology and if we helped the police find the murderer, I’d have a freshly solved true crime to base my story on.

  Ever since I could read, I’d wanted to be a writer. When a vocations officer visited my year seven class last month, he asked us what we wanted to do when we left school. I said I wanted to be an author. When he asked why—I told him the hours were great, writers got to sit under a tree with a bottle of icy lemonade in summer and snuggle up with their laptop beside a fire in winter. And the biggest bonus of all—writers never had to dress-up.

  Okay, you guessed it. I’m a bit of a slob. Or I prefer to think of myself as a tomboy. Unlike my stepsister, Sarah, who is totally into hair-gel, make-up and the fake shaggy-fur Sherpa look. We’re the same age but different as mud and chocolate.

  Twelve going on thirty, was my mum’s description of Sarah.

  Talking about Mum, since marrying Sarah’s dad six months ago, my mother’s gone really weird on me. Sometimes I think she was beamed up during the wedding-ceremony and sent back down to earth as an alien. Instead of making Sarah dress like a regular kid and not a chorus girl, she keeps yelling at me for wearing my favorite jeans. Unbelievable. Okay my faded straight-legs have holes in both knees, but as everyone knows, jeans aren’t jeans until the knees are worn through.

  Anyway…when I arrived home from the beach I climbed our stairs to my bedroom, slowly, thinking about how to flush out Patsy’s dead guy’s killer. That’s Private Investigator talk. So, I didn’t realize a crime was taking place at that very moment—until I opened my bedroom door.

  And caught Sarah in my room.

  This was bad. Trespassing in my room was a crime punishable by walking the plank in shark-infested waters. An offence more criminal than stealing hubcaps and selling them as mirrors to the Eskimos. A sin more serious than….well, you get my drift.

  “Hey, bucket-head!” I stood nose to nose directing my laser-like glare in her direction. Eyes zips of lightning. Voice a roar of thunder. “You are dead-meat!”

  Sarah didn’t even have the decency to look scared. Or guilty. Instead, she waltzed across to the corner mirror, eyed her reflection from several different angles, then ran long fingers through her hair.

  And that’s another thing that gets up my nose. My hair is bushy, a funny rusty-red color and I’ve been known to lose my comb in the tangles. Sarah’s hair acts all smug and princess-like, hanging in silky strands down to the middle of her back.

  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

  It was about then I spotted the color of bucket-head’s nails. Petal Pink. Immediately the simmering storm inside me erupted into a force ten hurricane. “Hey—you’re wearing my nail-polish!”

  The open bottle on my dresser was my first nail polish ever and I was saving it for special occasions only.

  Like Sarah’s funeral…

  That girl really knew how to wind me up. Big time. My teeth gnashed together like broken spokes on a wheel. Sarah merely shrugged, then studied her nails as though they’d been painted by Picasso.

  At last she lifted her baby blues in my direction.

  “You are so lame, Chiana,” she scoffed in a bored, I-don’t-know-why-I-bother-talking-to-you voice. “Everyone knows Petal Pink doesn’t go with carrot colored hair. You’ve got the fashion-taste of a frog. I keep telling you to use Lime Green.”

  Carrot-colored hair? That was it. She’d crossed the line. “And I keep telling you to stay out of my room. Now…let’s see if Petal Pink goes with your hair.” I snagged the open bottle from my dresser and advanced like her worst nightmare.

  “Maaaaaarg!”

  Geez…the way she was yelling for Mum you’d have thought I was going to cut off her ears and stick cauliflowers in their place.

  Hmm…

  On second thoughts…that wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Sarah dodged behind the bed. “Maaaaarg…Chiana’s gone crazy,” she squealed. “She’s going to tip nail-polish in my hair.”

  I bounced across the bed, the mattress a trampoline beneath my grubby sneakers. Sarah ducked behind the dresser. Wrong move. I had her. There was nowhere else to go except straight into the bottle of nail polish.

  “Gotcha!”

  “Maaaaaaarg!”

  A missile in the shape of a large wooden hair brush zinged past my left ear and kept going.

  Ha…missed me…

  In the act of upending the bottle, I heard the brush land. Then a startled grunt. I hesitated. Turned around.

  Mum reared up in the doorway, one hand covering her nose, the other waving a fist in the air.

  I grinned in anticipation. Hooo… Hooo! Now Sarah was for it…

  This was going to be worth watching; could even be better than a Star Wars rerun. Making myself comfortable for the entertainment, I plunked myself down on the bed. Couldn’t wait for Mum to blast Princess Sarah to the moon and back.

  “What are you doing to your poor sister, Chiana?”

  “Huh? Me?” I was totally gob smacked.

  Pillows hit the floor. The bed squeaked as I leapt to my feet. “Sarah comes into my room, pinches my nail-polish and you—you—blame me!”

  I couldn’t believe it. I ran past Mum and headed for the stairs. If I hung
around any longer I’d either say something that got me grounded for the rest of my life or I’d chop off Sarah’s hair and use it to line the rabbit’s cage.

  My footsteps thudded on the polished floorboards as I thundered down the stairs, Mum three steps behind.

  “Chiana! Wait! I want to talk to you.”

  “Sarah clouts you with a brush and you want to talk to me?”

  Too steamed up to watch where I was going, I didn’t see my dog Leroy lying on the bottom step, his wrinkled brown and white body stretched to its full length. That is until I tripped over him.

  While I hopped up and down holding onto my twisted ankle, the dog’s rhythmic breathing never faltered. His face, looking like it had slammed into a brick wall as he was born, never even twitched. Leroy, my energy-challenged bulldog could sleep through the final roars of a football-match.

  Mum came up behind me and put her arm around my shoulder. “You okay, Chiana?”

  I shrugged her arm off. Turned to face her. “Why do you always stick up for her, Mum? Why?”

  “That’s ridiculous. I don’t.” Mum’s frown deepened.

  “You do!”

  Mum shook her head as though clearing it of cobwebs. “I’m not arguing with you about it, Chiana. Anyway, what’s wrong with you two? You’re both the same age. Why don’t you get along?”

  “Mum—she’s a pain in the—”

  “Sarah needs our love and support.”

  “Sarah needs a head full of cooties,” I mumbled.

  “Your step-sister is still grieving for her mother. On top of that her father remarries and suddenly she has to fit into a new family. Isn’t it any wonder she’s proving difficult?”

  I hadn’t really looked at it that way before. Could I cope with losing my mum? It was too horrible to even think about. Before Sarah came into our lives, Mum and I had this absolutely cool relationship. She was more like my big sister and best friend rolled into one. Perhaps I should try a bit harder. Be nicer to poor Sarah.

  That is until I heard ‘poor Sarah’ giggling and singing at the top of the stairs, “Chiana’s in trouble. Chiana’s in trouble.”

  Immediately I batted the be-nice to Sarah image away, replacing it with one of me shoveling Sarah into a rubbish bin and nailing down the lid.