“Oh, all right,” Xander snapped back. “I’m not sure it’s anything. Hey, like, it’s probably nothing, and Gemma’s just flipping out but, like, during the party we accidentally opened the door to Maman’s office—you know, ‘cause, like, there were a lot of people here and we wanted more room, you know—and now some of Maman’s equipment looks kinda messed up.”
I said nothing and wondered whether, if I remained silent, the conversation, and all its potential ramifications—read: me being involved—would just go away.
“Tekla?” Xander’s voice wavered on the other end of the line.
Nope. No such luck. Xander was still there, and no amount of pretending could make him or his problems disappear.
“How messed up?” I murmured.
“Tekla,” Xander wailed, all teen bravado abandoned, “I think you better come over, ‘cause I think we really messed up.”
Words failed me again. I glanced at my laptop. It was on my desk in the very same spot I had dropped it last night after the trip to the library, when I had left with 236 cases yet to be read. Cases, I reminded myself, I could read because of the Lamonts and their money.
“Tekla,” Xander pleaded. “Are you there?”
“Yeah,” I replied sourly.
I HAD NEVER STEPPED foot in Monique’s office before. It was the rabbit hole on the ground floor where Julian disappeared every time he was in New York. It was also undoubtedly the place Monique met with all the beautiful and glamorous people she shot for her covers. I imagined Giselle Bündchen, Jessica Simpson and maybe even Madonna—or, at the very least, Anna Wintour—gracing the assuredly posh space with their presence.
I had been dying to know what Monique’s office looked like—but it looked nothing like I envisioned. No celebrities lounged in smoky corners, sipping fat-free smoothies and discussing the latest trends in fashion. Okay, I hadn’t really expected Carmen Diaz to just hang around, not when Monique wasn’t there. But, still, I thought the room would be decked out in photo-shoot-ready splendor, with makeup stations, stacks of couture dresses, oversized set lights and, oh yeah, shoes. Lots of them. Manolo Blahniks. Jimmy Choos. Zanottis. Shoes not yet available to the public. Shoes only accessible to the upper echelons of the fashion elite. Shoes I could maybe try on when no one was looking.
But there were no lights, shoes or dresses. Instead, the office was just as stark and white as the rest of the townhouse, with white marble floors, white walls and two rows of white desks, complemented by white chairs. An occasional black and white print—probably Monique’s—adorned the walls. Oversized computer screens occupied most of the desk space, and two enormous printers took over the rest. These had to be expensive, professional grade, as were the cameras and lenses haphazardly scattered throughout the space. But otherwise, the room looked like any other vanilla office anywhere in New York: neat and organized.
I frowned. Too neat and organized. Aside from an occasional scuffmark on the floor and an empty water bottle here and there, there was no indication that anyone, let alone a horde of partygoers, had been in the space after it closed for business on Friday. I turned to look at Xander and Gemma sitting in two of the chairs. They were still in their party clothes: Xander in white Polo shirt and jeans, his hair actually combed, Gemma in a yellow jersey mini-dress, in full makeup.
“I don’t get it.” I waved a hand around the room, encompassing the obviously undamaged computers, telephones and cameras. “Everything looks fine.”
“Not these,” Xander said as he shook his head and pointed to a shelf in a half-open closet. “Those.”
I walked over to the closet, pulled its door open all the way and stared down at ten compact black boxes. Numerous buttons and display screens clued me in that they probably had something to do with taking pictures, but otherwise the boxes looked like no cameras I had ever seen.
“What are they?” I turned back to Xander.
“Digital backs,” he said as if the name alone should suffice in explanation.
“What?” I glanced at Gemma for help. She shrugged, her eyelids barely open.
“Don’t ask me,” she mumbled. “All I know is that, like, they snap onto the cameras and Maman has to have them to take pictures.” She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “Oh, yeah, and that they’re, like, really expensive. That’s why Julian stores them in the closet there.”
I nodded, turned back to the closet again and stared at the—what was it, backs?—some more, pretending Gemma’s explanation made any more sense than Xander’s had. “So what’s wrong with them?”
From where I stood, they looked perfectly okay, all black with touches of white, nothing dented, and therefore nothing broken.
Xander got up from his chair and walked over to join me.
“I think,” he said, picking up a back and flipping it over, “someone spray-painted their sensors.”
“Oh,” I said, and looked more closely at the box in Xander’s hand, at its small rectangular mirror with obvious splotches of black. I didn’t know what he meant, but any sentence that included the words “spray” and “paint,” together, couldn’t portend good things. “And how did that happen?”
“Don’t know.”
Xander returned the back to its place next to the others. They appeared so orderly I had trouble believing anyone had touched them, let alone a vandal. Surely, no one bent on destruction would be so organized. “Gemma came down here this morning, after the party, to, you know, clean up, and found the closet open. She freaked. We opened the office but this closet always stays closed. Maman’s rule.”
I pulled the closet door towards me. It had three locks, none of which appeared jimmied.
“Then give me your theories on how the door opened itself, because it doesn’t look broken into,” I demanded.
Xander looked away from me. Gemma, too, averted her gaze.
I crossed my arms over my chest, like a sergeant about to drill her cadets. “Out with it, both of you,” I ordered crisply.
“Well,” Xander responded, refusing to face me. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets and moseyed back to his chair. “I might have left the keys here on the desk, accidentally, after I opened the office. They’re, like, all on the same chain.”
“Might have?”
He shrugged. This gesture really irritated me. Hey, I wanted to snap, you dragged me out here—on a Sunday—not the other way around. Who was doing whom the favor?
Xander pouted as he verbalized, “I don’t really remember. I was … sort of out of it.”
“Clarify ‘out of it.’” I wasn’t about to let up now.
“Okay, okay.” Xander slumped in the chair. “I had a few drinks.”
“What drinks?” I demanded.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Xander’s hands flew up in the air. “Maman and Dad know. They’re the ones who got us wine and beer for the party.”
My brows must have shot up to my forehead at this. They wouldn’t—couldn’t—have, not after the mess with Gemma. But as soon as that thought crystallized, I knew they would, and they could.
“Maman says social drinking is perfectly normal, and only puritanical Americans place age restrictions on responsibility,” Xander elaborated.
I tried to get my eyes to roll back to the front of my head.
“And then everyone else brought some liquor with them,” he added.
“How,” I scowled, “do a bunch of teenagers show up with liquor bottles under their arms, and no one outside noticed?”
“Not liquor bottles,” Xander clarified, indicating a half-filled Poland Spring near me. “Water bottles.”
Curious, I walked over to the bottle, picked it up and sniffed. The stench of vodka had me stepping right back.
Water bottles. How ingenious. They gave new meaning to the old paper bag trick.
“So you had a few drinks, and you decided to open the office because what, the four floors above were not enough? Just how many people were here?”
“Lots,” Xander grinned. “I lost count. The party was, like, awesome. Every private school kid must have come, and then some.”
I was not amused, or impressed. “The office?” I reminded him.
Xander’s grin fell. “People were hooking up, so the bedrooms were, like, really crowded.” At my blank stare Xander tried again. “You know, hooking up, like making out and … stuff.”
Oh. Hooking up. I stared at Gemma. Just who was hooking up? Her eyes hit the floor.
“And my friends and me,” Xander continued, “we wanted to jam on the guitar, so I suggested the office. We came down here and played. Other people were coming in and out, to listen.”
“And,” I said, “in all that playing you didn’t notice someone whipping out a can of paint and spraying? How’s that possible?”
Gemma snickered. “He forgot to mention the joints.”
My jaw dropped. Hard. Joints!
Xander glared at his sister.
“It’s no big deal,” he swore, his voice so earnest any jury would acquit him. “We just smoked one or two, to make the playing easier. You know, to get in tune with the inner groove. But the pot kinda made me lose track of things and people, you know?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. I knew. “And I wonder if ‘Maman and Dad’ know, too?”
Xander shut his mouth. Gemma didn’t. She snickered louder.
“And where,” I turned on her, “were you while all this was happening?” I didn’t even bother asking about her alcohol consumption. No point beating a dead horse.
“Upstairs.” Gemma’s cheeks colored. A lot. “I didn’t see anything, I swear. So, like, what do we do now?”
I stared at the two of them. How was I supposed to know? I still wasn’t convinced there really was a problem in the first place. Couldn’t paint just be cleaned off? We needed someone else’s opinion, someone who actually knew what he was talking about.
“I think,” I said, “we better call Julian.”
“OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, oh my God!” Julian looked ready to cry. “Who … how did this happen?” he wailed.
“Is it really that bad?” I asked.
Julian stared at me as if I were a lunatic freshly escaped from an asylum.
“Yes,” he hissed, teeth clenched.
“Do we have to tell Maman?” Gemma ventured from behind me.
Both she and Xander were almost stuck to my back. They had glued themselves there the minute Julian arrived and saw the open closet.
“Yes.” Julian’s jaw ticked. A lot. “We have to tell Maman,” he aped Gemma’s words. “Or at least try to. She’s not picking up the phone at that damn spa.”
“Can we just try to clean off the paint?” I suggested.
Julian turned on me as if I had picked up the spray-paint can.
“Try to clean off the paint?” he bellowed. “Are you crazy? You can’t ‘clean off the paint,’ not from a back, not from its sensor. Whoever did this knew exactly what he was doing. If he had scratched a lens or any other part of the cameras, hey, it’s no big deal; the parts can easily be replaced for just a couple of grand. If he had smashed these computers here,” Julian said, indicating their screens, “it’s not too much damage; $5,000 maybe. But not the backs! You damage the sensor, and the whole thing becomes trash. Garbage. Waste. And you know what?” Julian stepped towards us, his body towering in its rage.
All three of us cowered back.
“Each one of these costs more than $30,000. Multiply that by ten. Two were on loan from the manufacturer, for trial purposes. They’re not even available on the market yet. Therefore, they don’t have a price. Oh God,” Julian groaned, “over $300K down the toilet—and my professional reputation along with it.” Julian paced the office. “This will get around to every studio, magazine, rental house and manufacturer. Worse, every client.” He slammed his fist into the wall. I cringed. “No one will trust us with new equipment anymore. Hell, I wouldn’t. It’s suicide for any photography business. If manufacturers don’t lend you their newest technology, you lag behind, and you lose clients. Not to add that our insurance premiums,” Julian pointed out, “will go straight through the roof.”
“No,” he said, halting and staring ahead of him, right through us, “this was no prank, no teenager messing around. Whoever did this had the whole thing mapped out. It had to be someone who worked with or for Monique in the past, someone who wanted payback for something. Of course Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum here made his job easy.” Julian shook his head. “Leaving the keys out. God, how stupid can you be? The guy who did this, he knew exactly how the Lamonts work, that they’d disappear and leave the kids with something as important as the keys. He’s smart, very smart; that’s who Monique likes to hire,” Julian mumbled before he focused his narrowed eyes on us. “Let me see the tape,” he demanded.
“What tape?” I scowled.
“The security tape,” Xander volunteered.
“You mean,” I circled around to face him, “there’s a security tape and you didn’t mention it before?”
“You didn’t ask.”
When Xander shrugged, I scowled harder.
Julian walked toward what I could’ve sworn was a digital video player and popped out a DVD. I gaped. Where else, my head reeled, did the Lamonts have hidden cameras? I shuddered, suddenly uncomfortable with the possibilities.
Julian walked back to the desk and inserted the DVD into a computer. We tiptoed behind him. The computer screen flashed on with wide-angle images of the office. There was Xander with his buddies and a guitar. We saw a bunch of obviously tipsy teenagers ambling in and out of the camera shot. And then—a body in a black hoodie, face averted, approaching the camera.
Bingo. The culprit.
And then nothing. Just black.
“Fuck,” Julian cursed. “He spray-painted the camera’s lense.” Julian shut off the screen and plopped in a seat. “Like I said, no amateur. Though,” he smirked up at me, “you’ll be happy to know you can probably scrape the paint off that camera.”
Hah, hah. I smirked back. Had that really been necessary?
“Well,” Julian said as he rubbed his face, “I doubt they’ll have any luck figuring out who it is—what with all these people in and out and no visual—but we’d better call the police anyway.”
“The police!” Gemma, Xander and I cried out in unison.
“Do you think that’s really necessary?” I rushed on.
“I don’t think Maman and Daddy will like that,” Gemma added.
I had to agree. The Lamonts didn’t strike me as “get the police involved” sort of people.
“Yeah, well,” Julian glowered at us, “I need a police report to file an insurance claim, and neither Monique nor Stephen is here to say otherwise.” He whipped out his cell phone.
“Wait!” I grabbed his hand. “That really might not be a good idea. Xander and Gemma are home alone,” I tried to explain. “They’re fourteen, with no adult supervision. They were drinking, and their parents provided the alcohol. That’s not exactly legal in New York … ”
“Then the cops,” Julian cut me off before I could remind him about the drugs. And that if we called them in now, the officers would surely be obliged to put Xander and Gemma into some kind of legal custody. And where would that leave us? Fired, certainly, because two kids in jail couldn’t bode well for our continued employment. “Can deal with that too,” Julian snarled. “‘Cause I’m not taking responsibility for these brats. Unless,” he arched a brow, “you want to. Tell me, will the studious and perfect Tekla cover for the Lamonts again?”
I stared at Julian, stunned and hurt by his attack. Where was this coming from? I wanted to ask.
Instead, I nodded back at him. One of us had to step in.
He stayed around long enough for the cops to make out their report, but said nothing when their less-then-friendly questioning made me sound like the irresponsible, dead-beat parent. Then he abandoned me to deal with the rest of the cleanup alone. The jerk
.
And here I thought our date had meant something to him too.
Clearly, I was mistaken.
CHAPTER 19
THE LAW REVIEW office buzzed with activity—or, at least, as much activity as working on topics like judicial methodology, unilateralism and discrimination by proxy would permit.
Second-year staffers sat hunched over proofs, copyediting and blue-booking one last time, making sure every period, comma and semi-colon was in its proper place and every citation format met the legal standard. Once in a while, a staffer would get up and walk to the reference desk or seek out a third-year editor in a cubicle. Other editors whispered into phones—probably talking to disgruntled authors, professors at prominent law schools who didn’t appreciate mere students telling them to change this or that in their legal treatises. Still others huddled together in the conference room, brainstorming on the Review’s upcoming layout.
I seemed to be the only one doing nothing, sitting, waiting.
“Tekla, it’s good of you to make it,” said a tall, skinny man in his late twenties with ash-blonde hair and ashen skin. He approached me, and extended his hand my way.
The editor-in-chief.
I jumped out of my seat and grabbed his hand.
“Josh.” I greeted. I had met him once before, during Law Review orientation. Generally the editor-in-chief stayed behind closed doors—the only doors in the entire space—so he could be isolated from minor, mundane editorial problems and concentrate on the journal’s big issues, including those connected with its staff. “I got your letter.”
Josh smiled, the gesture thin and strained. “Please, come into my office.”
We moved into the space, and he indicated a chair. “Sit.”
I got myself settled, and he sat opposite to me.
“Tekla, what’s going on with you?”
I tried to smile, to diffuse the tension, but the effort came out crooked. “I’ve been really busy,” I hurried out. There was no point beating around the bush; I knew why I was here. My article was late. “I’m really sorry.”
“So I’ve heard.” Josh folded his hands and tilted his head. “Professor Johnson was here to see me.”
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