A Girl, a Murder, and Twelve Dreadful Children

Chapter XVII: Not Again!

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation. -- Charlotte Brontë, Villette

Dani's handwriting had been the bane of her parents, her teachers, her employers, and anyone else who had the misfortune to attempt to decipher it. If a beetle had fallen into a jar of ink and then wandered unsteadily across a page, the result might have been more legible than Dani's writing. The only person who could reliably understand it was Dani herself. Even she had to squint sometimes.

When she looked back over her notes and found herself confronted with squiggly lines that might charitably be called letters, she was reasonably confident in her ability to read it. But then she tried to make sense of some of it.

"Honey Apron tennis bog fried mist?" Dani read aloud. She stopped and rubbed her eyes. "What does that actually say?"

She studied the note. "Honey Apron tennis", after some thought and squinting, turned out to be "Monday April tenth". But "bog fried mist" remained a mystery.

Dani groaned. Some detective she was! If she couldn't even tell what her own writing said...

"What happened on Monday April tenth?" she asked aloud.

She didn't expect to get an answer. It was an unpleasant shock when one came.

"I had to go to the dentist," Noah said from behind her.

Dani jumped violently. Where had he come from? "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

Noah looked distinctly put out. "I didn't sneak up on you. I just walked in. Not my fault if you didn't hear me."

He had a point. But at the same time, Dani still felt disgruntled. No one liked being scared half to death, after all. Not even by eleven-year-olds who had just wandered in to hang up their coat. "You should tell me where you are when you walk in."

Noah shrugged. The way adults' minds worked made no sense to him. Why anyone would make such a fuss about something so minor was incomprehensible. Dani had asked what happened on Monday April tenth, and he had answered. It was as simple as that. Why grumble about it?

"Anyway," Dani continued with the air of one determined to win a foolish argument, "I wasn't talking to you."

Noah shrugged again. It wasn't worth arguing about it any more. He hung up his coat and turned to leave. Dani went back to trying to remember what had happened on April tenth -- other than a dentist appointment, of course.

Finally she remembered. That was the day when -- as far as anyone knew -- Courtney had last seen her boyfriend. He had come down to Enniskillen that morning for a brief visit, then returned to Belfast that evening. With this new knowledge, "bog fried mist" resolved itself into "boyfriend's visit". If only the murder case itself was so easily solved.

After an hour of poring over her notes, Dani had a reasonably good idea of what she'd do next. It was time to start investigating the boyfriend.

Courtney's boyfriend was burdened with the uninspiring name of Jayden Ratt. Dani was inordinately amused by the fact that some unfortunate family actually had a surname like that. What had they done to gain such a surname? And why had they given their son a first name so ridiculously, obnoxiously trendy it made the surname look even worse?

On the bright side, the hilarious name made tracking him down much easier than if his name had been something mundane like John Smith. No country on Earth could possibly contain more than one Jayden Ratt. At least, Dani hoped not.

Mr. Ratt's Facebook was easy to find. Dani scrolled through endless inconsequential posts about places he'd gone and friends he'd met. Strange. There wasn't a single hint anywhere that he was grieving his murdered girlfriend.