Page 17 of Betting on Lizzie

“Uh-huh. Who’s this?” the girl said in that half-bored, half-snotty tone teenagers used. He knew it well. The sounds of kids yelling and lockers slamming threatened to drown her out. He glanced at the clock and realized school had just let out.

“My name is Ben. I’m a fire investigator for the New Bern FR. Do you have a minute for a couple of questions?”

That squelched the teenage attitude, and she answered in a more serious tone. “Yes, sure. School’s over, I have a few minutes before practice starts. Hold on. I can barely hear you.”

A second later, the background noise disappeared.

“Okay. I dipped into the library. It’s way more quiet.”

“Great. I’ll try to make this brief. Can you tell me what happened last Saturday night?”

“Well, I went to a party with a friend. A different friend was gonna give us a ride to her house, where we were supposed to spend the night, but she bailed, leaving me and my friend kinda stuck. We’d…um…we had…uh…we couldn’t drive.”

“You’d been drinking?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I called Lizzie to ask if she’d come get us. It was after two o’clock. Maybe closer to two-thirty. She came right away and took us back to her place. We spent the night there.”

“Did you see or hear her leave the condo after she picked you up?”

“I didn’t feel so good and couldn’t fall asleep for a while. I heard the shower run, and then, at about three-thirty or so, she left again. I found out later that was when the firemen called and asked her to go to the bar. She didn’t leave before that.”

“All right. I’ll need the name and phone number for your friend.”

“Her name’s Maya. I can text you her number. I don’t have it memorized.”

Ben stiffened, and alarm bells clanged. Not the literal ones he heard every day from the fire station. The figurative, father ones that told him he wasn’t going to like the answer to his next question.

“Maya what?”

“Mansfield.”

Ben slumped in his seat.

“Um…also, I don’t think her dad knows about this, so if you could, you know…”

He took a deep breath and willed himself to remain professional and calm. He put the information aside to deal with later.

“Anyone else at the party who could vouch that Lizzie was there?”

“She was pretty much in and out, but there was one guy that would probably remember her. Lizzie pulled him off my friend and threatened him. I know his name, but don’t have his number.”

Ben sat up straight, instantly alert. When she didn’t elaborate, he pushed. “I’m listening.”

“Oh, um. Well, my friend was in kind of a sticky situation. You know, with a guy. Lizzie got in his face to make him leave her alone.”

“Your friend Maya?”

“Yeah.”

Ben’s blood began to boil. With disappointment that his daughter had been drinking. With rage that some guy had to be pulled off of her. And with sadness that Maya hadn’t trusted him enough to confide any of this to him. He took another deep breath.

“Okay, Bella,” he said. “Thank you for your time. Can I call you with any other questions?”

“Oh, sure. I don’t want Lizzie to get into trouble. She didn’t start that fire. If you knew her at all, you’d know she could never do such a thing.”

Not wanting to comment on that, he said goodbye and hung up. The pieces fell into place. Bella must be the new girl on the basketball team that Lizzie and her family had been cheering for. He’d heard Maya talk about her but never actually met her. Ben wondered if Bella was the reason Maya got into trouble. As far as he knew, she’d never been into partying.

Luckily, he had the afternoon to calm down before confronting Maya. That evening, she returned from practice and was babbling about something or another that some teacher had done.

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