Final Exam

by Maggie Barbieri

  Crawford eyed his steak.

  “Do you want my chicken?” I asked, pushing my plate toward him.

  “No, thanks,” he said, about as unconvincingly as he could. I picked up his plate and exchanged it with mine. He smiled widely. “Thanks,” he said, and dove into his plate of food.

  I picked at my steak pizzaiola, not my first choice, but delicious nonetheless. I heard my cell phone ring in the bottom of my bag and I dug it out. It was a text message from Max. “Call me immediately. It’s an emergency.”

  Crawford noticed my face go pale and put his fork and knife down on his plate. “What is it?”

  I dialed Max’s number. “It’s Max,” I said as the phone rang on the other end. She answered, out of breath. “Max, it’s me,” I said as quietly as I could so as not to disturb the other diners. “What is it?”

  “Is it an emergency?” she called into the phone.

  “What?”

  “It is, isn’t it?” she said, starting to cry. “Oh, God, I just knew it.”

  I had no idea what was going on and told her so.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have left Aunt Sheila when she was so close to death. I’ll be right there,” she said, and the call went dead.

  Moments later, I had another text message. “Match.com sucks. I needed an out. I’ll see you l8ter.”

  When Crawford figured out that it wasn’t a true emergency, he went back to eating. He had enough sense not to ask.

  We capped our meal off with some coffee so that we could stay awake long enough to get back to campus. I also needed to sober up a bit, and still bought into the notion that a hot cup of coffee would do the trick. Crawford pulled into the parking lot of my building and right up to the front door, turning off the car.

  “You know we can’t make out here,” I said. “Silly man.”

  “So how are we going to handle this?”

  I was a little tipsy from my two martinis and one glass of wine and had no idea what he was talking about. “Handle what?”

  He sighed, a little exasperated.

  “Hey, it’s way past my bedtime!” I protested, looking at the dash. It was—it was close to midnight. “I can’t think past nine. And it’s one hundred o’clock,” I enunciated.

  “How are you going to dig into the Amanda Reese/Costas Grigoriadis connection?”

  “Verrrry delicatelllly,” I said, speaking slowly. I let out a loud giggle.

  He unlocked my door with his key pad. “Okay. You’re in no shape to discuss this. Just be discreet,” he reminded me. He leaned over and gave me a long kiss. “Is there any chance you can come to my apartment this weekend?”

  I leaned in and fell against his chest, something I hadn’t been meaning to do but the momentum of the two martinis carried me. “Are you inviting me to a sleepover?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about it for a minute and then realized that I was on call for the weekend. “Can’t. On call.” I had another thought. “But I could sneak you in and you could hide out in my room!”

  He patted my head. “I’m a little old for that. Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?”

  Party pooper, I thought. But he was probably right. I got out of the car and waved at him, watching him drive away. I turned and looked through the glass, where I spotted Bart Johanssen dead asleep at the desk, his head resting on the head of his lacrosse stick. That’ll leave a mark, I thought, looking at his cheek deep in the crosshatched basket. I rang the bell, but he didn’t move. I started to rustle around in the bottom of my bag for my keys, unable to get purchase on the elusive set. I rang the bell again and watched as Bart raised his head, eyes closed, and then let it fall again. I dropped to a crouch and put my bag on the ground, opening it wide.

  A hand over my mouth interrupted my cry of “Eureka” as I pulled the keys from the bag. I was dragged backward across the parking lot, my heels scraping along the macadam. I struggled to get up but being pulled backward in a semicrouch made it impossible. As a last resort, I threw the heavy key ring at the front door but missed by a mile. The keys fell with a clatter a few inches short of the glass.

  I was thrown into the back seat of a two-door car, a feat that I marveled at later. The car was on, but silent.

  Because it was a Toyota Prius, a car that makes no noise when idling.

  Twenty-Two

  Now I was sober.

  Because believe it or not, this was not the first time I had been kidnapped. It seemed I was going for some kind of personal record.

  But it was the first time I had been kidnapped while a little drunk, and the first time during which my kidnapper kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .” until I thought my head would explode.

  I turned and looked at Amanda, who was in the back seat with me. “If you’re so freaking sorry, then why did you kidnap me?” I asked. Wayne was in the driver’s seat, driving like a bat out of hell off the campus and onto the main drag. Even in a sensible Prius, Wayne was making good time down the avenue.

  Amanda pushed her hair away from her face and sighed loudly. She didn’t have an answer for that one.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, adjusting myself in the seat and putting on my seat belt.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Where are we going, Wayne?”

  I watched the stores on the avenue whiz by as Wayne made every light, something I had never been able to do since I started commuting to St. Thomas; inevitably, I would hit one red light and have to wait. He headed down toward the highway but stopped short of Broadway, turning right instead into a small residential side street. He pulled over and stopped the car; we were about a mile from campus. He turned around and I got my first good look at Wayne Brookwell, former resident director, current bane of my existence.

  His picture on the school intranet didn’t do him justice. Yes, he was slack jawed, and yes, it didn’t look like there was a whole hell of a lot going on upstairs, but there was a sweetness to his face that didn’t show up in the photograph, a crinkling around his eyes that made me get why Amanda thought him the bee’s knees or the cat’s meow or whatever it was kids today called each other.

  “I’ve got a lot to ask you, Wayne,” I said. I rubbed the back of my neck, hyperextended during my drag across the parking lot. “What the hell is going on?”

  Wayne pointed out the window on his side of the car and I saw a playground. “Let’s go over there.”

  We got out of the car and crossed the street to the small, deserted playground. A sign admonished YOU MUST HAVE A CHILD TO ENTER THIS PLAYGROUND. Well, I had two, so I guessed I was in the clear. There was one bench, suitable for two bodies, which Amanda and Wayne sat down on, leaving me to choose between a swing and one of those plastic character heads on a giant spring. I chose the swing. I put my hands on the chains that suspended it to steady myself. “Okay. Shoot.”

  Wayne bent over and put his elbows on his knees, his head into his hands. His shoulders shook slightly and I hoped to God he wasn’t crying. I looked at the black sky, waiting for him to compose himself, and studied the only constellation that I knew, the Big Dipper, and counted the number of stars. Finally, Wayne looked up. “Those weren’t my drugs,” he pronounced.

  I swung back and forth a little bit, my feet making divets in the soft sand. “Okay. Still doesn’t explain why you disappeared, threw a beer bottle at my head, knocked me out . . .” I ticked off Wayne’s offenses on my fingers. “Got anything you want to say?” I asked pointedly.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  “That’s it?”

  “Sorry,” he said more sincerely. He pulled his head out of his hands; Amanda rubbed his back.

  “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” The tranquil night, a slight breeze wafting through the air, did nothing to improve my mood. When I felt myself softening slightly toward the hapless Wayne, I touched the lump on my head to remind myself of my real feelings.

  “Tell her, Wayne,” Amanda said, dropping her hand fr
om his back to his knee.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” he said.

  I didn’t think this guy could get on my nerves any more than he was at that moment. I wanted to get off the swing and put my hands around his neck and choke him until he gave everything up. Every last detail. I gritted my teeth. “I’ve got time.” I looked around the playground. “I’m certainly not walking home at midnight so unless you want to bring me back now, start talking.”

  Amanda looked at Wayne. “Let me. It’s all my fault anyway.”

  This statement brought about all sorts of “no, baby, it’s not,” and “yes it is,” and “I love you,” and kissing and hugging and forgiveness and such. I finally yelled into the night air, “Stop!”

  They looked at me, two innocents caught in some kind of web of lies and deceit. Amanda took a deep breath and told me the tale. And it wasn’t anything that I ever would have come up with, even in my very wild imagination.

  “So, you’re not her dealer?” I asked Wayne.

  More vigorous head shaking.

  I stopped swinging, bringing my feet to a stop. I continued to grip the chains on either side of the swing. “So, let me get this straight.” I pointed at Amanda. “You are engaged to a senior at Princeton.” Explained the ubiquitous sweatshirt but not the lack of an engagement ring. I pointed at Wayne. “And you’re in love with her.” I looked back at Amanda. “And you’re in love with him,” I said, pointing at Wayne. “And your current boyfriend and your stepfather—Costas—are after Wayne because your boyfriend is jealous and your stepfather wants you to marry him. And both of them want Wayne out of the picture.” I took a deep breath. “That explains the man who keeps popping up on campus. But it doesn’t explain everything.” I kept my eyes on Wayne. “Where did the drugs come from?”

  Wayne’s eyes were wet and he looked like a little kid caught in a very bad situation; the truth wasn’t too far from that. Except that he was a big kid—a twenty-six-year-old kid in big trouble. “I don’t know!” he cried. “I was just about to leave for spring break and I came back to my room after a staff meeting. They were sitting on the floor of my bathroom. The only thing I can guess is that whoever put them there didn’t think I was coming back to my room and that they could get me in trouble when housekeeping found them.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “For all I know, they belong to that Williamson kid. He’s a total stoner.” He looked at Amanda pointedly.

  “Spencer would never do anything like that,” she protested.

  “Okay, before we start making rash accusations, tell me the rest of the story,” I said.

  Wayne looked at me. “Housekeeping cleans while we’re out for the break. They would have found them, turned them in, and I would have been in huge trouble.” He wiped his hand across his eyes. “I would have been fired. Or worse,” he said, shuddering at the thought of what might have happened.

  “So you ran.”

  He nodded. “It was the only thing I could think of at the time.”

  I thought it would have made more sense to call the police but he obviously had a reason as to why that wasn’t an option; I let that drop for the time being. “What did you tell Merrimack?”

  “I left him a voice mail telling him that I wouldn’t be coming back after the spring break.”

  “Right after you called your aunt, right?” I asked. It was starting to make sense.

  He nodded. “Sister Mary is my godmother. I couldn’t think straight so I called her first.” He wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. “How much trouble am I in?”

  I thought for a minute, looking up at the apartment building behind Wayne’s head, lights twinkling in every unit. “I’m not sure, Wayne. But I sure wish you hadn’t almost cracked my head open not once, but twice. That would have most certainly gotten you an assault charge.”

  “I panicked,” he admitted. “You’re married to that cop, right?”

  “No, he’s just my boy . . .” I was back to having trouble with this. The kids on campus called each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” and I was decidedly older than all of them. What does one call their middle-aged companion? “He’s my friend with benefits,” I said, feeling sort of hip all of a sudden.

  Amanda shook her head. “He’s more than that. That would mean that you’re just hooking up. He’s your boyfriend.”

  “Fine. He’s my boyfriend. But we’re not married. And we don’t just ‘hook up,’ ” I said, using finger quotes. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs; talking to these two was bringing me down a conversational one-way street with nowhere to turn. “What does Crawford have to do with this?”

  “I thought you would tell him everything and I’d end up in jail. I can’t explain how those drugs got there. And there were a lot of them.”

  I knew that. “You’re going to have to tell him now, Wayne. You can’t keep living in the convent, mowing me down when you feel like it, and sneaking around campus like a modern-day hunchback. Time to come clean, mister.”

  He shook his head vigorously, something I couldn’t do since he had smashed me over the head. “Can’t do it.”

  “You’re going to continue living with the nuns?”

  “I’m not living with the nuns,” he said. “But I’m going to stay missing until I figure this out,” he said, nodding, a defiant tone creeping into his voice. He stuck out his jaw in an attempt to look confident, I guessed. “I want to figure out who’s trying to frame me. And why.”

  “You’ve done an admirable job thus far, Wayne. By all means continue, Sherlock,” I said, holding my hands out. “You’re on your own.” I got up from the swing. “I hope you enjoy Rikers. Because that’s where you’re going when I tell Crawford where you are and what you’re doing.” Something occurred to me. “Why did you steal my pillows?”

  He looked dumbfounded, obviously shocked that I was able to figure out his deception so easily. “I didn’t steal them. My aunt did.”

  “Why?”

  “She wanted to make me more comfortable in the convent.”

  She makes my life a living hell and she’s skulking around stealing pillows for her adult nephew? This woman was clearly an enigma wrapped in a conundrum.

  I started walking away from the playground, listening to the mumbling and whispering going on behind my back. It was like they were my kids and I had told them that if they didn’t leave the playground that very minute, I was going home without them. I walked slowly toward the chain-link gate and opened it up. “Okay! I’m leaving! See you later!” I let the gate clink noisily behind me and I continued down the dark street. Finally, Amanda called my name.

  I turned; she was standing at the fence. “What should we do?”

  I thought that was obvious. “I think you should go to the police. There are two very nice detectives working the drug investigation. Lattanzi and Marcus.” Amanda was listening to me so intently that she didn’t hear Wayne get up, hop the fence on the west side of the playground, and run toward the Prius. It took me by surprise as well; the kid was like a gazelle. He jumped into the car, and while it didn’t exactly roar to life, it made a clicking noise as he put it in gear and drove away. Amanda looked at me helplessly.

  “I don’t think he wants to go to the police.” She pushed her hair back and adjusted her glasses.

  She was a regular Nancy Drew. “I got that impression, Amanda.”

  “Wayne doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do,” she said, almost proud of him for what was, at this time, a serious character flaw.

  “Then it sounds like your stepfather is going to kill him,” I remarked offhandedly.

  “But I love him,” she protested. She sniffled and broke into a full-blown sob attack.

  “I’m not the one you have to convince of that,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder. “You have to convince your stepfather, right after you break up with your boyfriend.”

  She gripped the fence and rocked back on her heels, thinking about what I had just said. “Do you think I should br
eak up with Brandon?”

  “How the heck should I know?” I asked, sounding far more exasperated than I intended. After having been married to a serial philanderer, I hardly qualified as someone who should be dispensing love advice. My mind flicked over an image of Max—someone else in need of counsel in this area—and I shuddered. I still had that situation on my to-do list—I wasn’t going to leave Kevin hanging out by himself on that one as mad as I was at him—and didn’t relish the conversation that revealed to Max that she wasn’t legally married.

  “What?” Amanda asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, shaking it off. “One question.”

  She looked at me, her eyes wide behind her Buddy Holly glasses.

  “Did you know that he didn’t go to Mexico?” In other words, did you lie to me? I wanted to ask, but she got the drift.

  For some reason, I could tell that she was telling the truth. I don’t know how, but I just could. “I didn’t know that he was on campus until the other night.” When she realized I needed clarification, she looked down. “The night at the gazebo.” The night she lied about going to get her econ notes at the dorm down by the river.

  “Oh,” I said. “You were going to meet him.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d just make sure he was okay but when I saw you, I panicked. And lied.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Did you know your stepfather’s been coming around campus?”

  “No,” she said. “But it doesn’t surprise me. He knows something’s going on between me and Wayne. I tried to talk to him and my mother about it over spring break. He’s furious.”