“Which crime are you charging her for?” my lawyer asks. “This warrant says nothing about a pajama-party burglary.”
“That’s because he’s got no evidence. And it wasn’t a pajama party. It was just an all-night party and I didn’t want to be there all night. When did that become a crime?”
Lana clears her throat and I know I need to pull back on the smart remarks. But I can’t help it. That’s how I respond to stress. Being interrogated by the police for a crime you didn’t commit is right up there on the stress-o-meter, if you ask me.
“So tell me again where you were yesterday, between nineteen hundred hours and twenty hundred hours. That means—”
“She knows what it means,” Lana says, more than a little annoyed. “She already told you.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I was at the park on Lexington meeting a friend.” I’m glad Lana is beside me and I don’t have to see her face when I say this, because I know she’s thinking, when you were supposed to be home doing schoolwork.
“Did anyone see you at this park?”
“Yeah, my friend.”
“Anyone besides your friend see you at this park?”
“No, because whoever punked us—I mean, set up this fake meeting between us, like I told you before—had us meet in this area that had been sprayed with insecticides and was supposed to be off-limits.”
“And you missed all the signs that said not to go into the area.”
“Because I was, um . . . a little distracted.”
What am I supposed to say? I don’t believe telling Detective Bertram that I couldn’t see straight because I was in lust about Marco would go over well with him or Lana. Or my lawyer for that matter. I can’t even believe I have a lawyer. To say this day is majorly sucking is an understatement.
“Look, Miss Evans, none of this looks good. You have no alibi at the time of the thefts. You’d been in both of the houses prior to the burglary and had an inventory of all the valuables that were stolen from the houses. You knew the owners of the homes would be out of town. Your fingerprints were all over the place.”
“Because I’d been in the house! It’s part of my job. I already told you, when we do the assessments, we walk around the house and figure out what needs to be packed, and what—”
“I know. We’ve heard all that before.”
“And you’re going to hear it again until you get it that my daughter didn’t do this,” Lana says, and I’m pretty sure she’s finally found a home for her size nine, which is why my lawyer suggests she take a break and get some air. Now I feel a little more free to talk.
“Just call Marco, that’s my friend, he’ll tell you where I was. Well, sort of more than my friend . . .”
“Is that right?” the detective says, smirking in a way that suggests he just got some dirt on me, and makes my lawyer stiffen.
“Why is that an issue?” my lawyer asks.
“Because Miss Evans’s boyfriend is in another interrogation room at this very minute.”
“What?” Because I’m sure I didn’t hear him right.
“He’s been charged, too. So you can see that he doesn’t provide the best alibi.”
“What’s he have to do with this?”
“I’m glad you asked, although you already know.” Detective Bertram is having way too much fun ruining my life. What’s he got against me? I mean besides some incriminating evidence and a felony charge. “He helped you rob those homes. He drove the van—”
“He doesn’t even own a van.”
“It was a Mitchell Moving and Storage van that he has the keys to. That’s why you were able to get past the gate guard and why the neighbors didn’t call the police right away. They’d seen the van there before, you’d just been there last weekend. They knew the owners always use Mitchell to move their stuff every year. It wasn’t until you were long gone that they realized moving companies don’t usually do night moves.”
“This is crazy. We were at the park!”
“Say the two of you.”
“So you have eyewitnesses who can place me at the scene between nineteen hundred and twenty hundred hours?” I ask, surprising Detective Bertram. Yeah, I know a little somethin’-somethin’ about this game, too.
“Well, we don’t have an ID on you. But the description they gave sounds too much like your boyfriend.”
“At eight o’clock? It was dark by then. Couldn’t have been that good of a look.”
“Whoa, save something for me and the courtroom,” my lawyer says. He laughs, though I don’t think the situation is a bit funny. I don’t plan to ever see the inside of a courtroom, at least not from the defendant’s table.
“You’re definitely your mother’s kid,” says Detective Bertram, and not like it’s a compliment, either. “In which case, you’ll understand how bad this looks for you.”
That’s when he pulls a plastic bag from a box under the table. Inside is my wallet. That stupid no-zipper-having bag of mine.
“Recognize it? It was found on the scene. And it wasn’t from your previous visit. It was in the middle of the floor where the residents would have seen it if you’d left it there last weekend.”
“This interview is over,” says my lawyer, but I already knew before he opened his mouth that it was a really good time to shut mine.
Chapter 26
This time it’s the real deal. I’ve been charged with a felony, and I’ve been given a court date. Just two weeks to figure out who really did this. But at least I’m out on bail and able to investigate.
“You won’t be doing anything close to investigating this case,” Lana says over dinner. “My C.O. doesn’t even want me near this case. Thinks I’m too ‘emotionally invested.’ ”
“So neither one of us will know what’s going on?”
“I said my C.O. doesn’t want me near this case. I didn’t say anything about obeying him.”
“You always follow orders.”
“Well, no one’s ever tried to send my kid up for a class-two felony, either.”
“So you believe me now.”
“I may have underestimated what you were telling me was going on at school, but I always believed you were innocent. The only thing you’re guilty of, the only thing you’re always guilty of, is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and usually with the wrong people. That’s why I don’t want you doing any investigating, observing, detecting, or whatever you want to call it because it will just get you into more trouble.”
“But I have access that you don’t.”
“What kind of access?”
“I don’t know . . . possible witnesses, likely suspects.”
“Who? Give me names.”
I don’t think I’m ready to show my hand just yet. Lana’s a great detective—I mean, she taught me everything I know—but if I give her names, she might scare off the people I most need to catch in the act to prove my innocence.
“Okay, so I don’t have anything, but I just thought . . .”
“Well, stop thinking. I’m not going to let you go to jail for something you didn’t do. I know it’s hard, but try to focus on schoolwork and let the professionals handle this.”
Right now I need to talk to someone other than Lana. Even though she worked in burglary and was probably the best detective they ever had, she can’t look at this case in full-on cop mode because she can’t see past it being about her kid. Funny how things change in an instant—the day before my arrest, I wanted her to act more like a mom than a cop. Now it’s the other way around.
I find Tasha in her driveway handing tools to her father, whose legs are sticking out from underneath his Whole World, as Tasha calls it. The rest of us call it a Corvette—a really old one from the seventies. Tasha figured out a long time ago if she had any chance of competing with the Corvette for her father’s time, she’d better learn the difference between a manifold and a carburetor. Her dad is a mechanic who comes home everyday from working on other people’s cars to work on his own.
I always thought that was strange. I only do homework after being in school all day because I have to. But I guess it’s the same way Lana comes home and watches cop shows on TV. Except now she gets to work on the real-life case involving her daughter, thanks to whoever is setting me up.
“What’s up?” Tasha greets me.
“You have a second?”
“Dad, I’m going inside with Chanti now,” Tasha yells loudly like being under a car is like being down in a well. “I’ll make you some iced tea and bring it out.”
“Thanks for helping me out, baby girl,” her dad says, sounding a little like he is down a well. Pretty much the only time I think about what it would be like to have a father is when Mr. Morgan calls Tasha baby girl. It makes me think I may have missed out on something.
I haven’t been in Tasha’s house for a while, not since I started hanging with MJ and Tasha made friends with Michelle. But now it’s just like coming home, it’s so familiar. Her mom is really into the Southwestern motif, so everything in the house is the color of an Arizona desert at sunset: sage, copper, blue, and clay.
“You still have problems at school?” Tasha asks as she puts the teakettle on to boil.
“Worse. How’d you know?”
“We don’t talk like we used to. I figured it must be something bad for you to come over.”
I feel a little guilty because she’s right.
“You can’t tell a soul about this, Tasha. Not Michelle, not even your parents.”
“Have I ever?” she asks.
“I got arrested last night for a burglary at the home of one of my boss’s clients.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly. Whoever is setting me up did a great job—they planted my wallet at the crime scene.”
“Man, somebody must really hate you, Chanti.”
“Somebody really wants to avoid getting arrested so they’re framing me. But it could be anyone who has been around me and my sorry excuse for a drawstring purse.”
“When’s the last time you remember having the wallet?” Tasha asks, putting a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies on the table.
A true friend knows I need chocolate when I’m stressed, and that’s what Tasha is. I was worse than Bethanie when I brushed her aside so easily for MJ. Bethanie has known me only a couple of weeks; I’ve known Tasha since third grade. If I were Tasha, I’d let me suffer without cookies.
“Thursday when I put a couple of dollars in Ms. Reeves’s donation jar. I noticed it missing Saturday morning before I went to work.”
Talking to Tasha helps me think. It might be anyone in study hall—or at Langdon, for that matter. It could have been Annette or anyone at her party. I may have lost it while I walked all over Cherry Creek Friday night looking for a bus stop, or even on the walk home from the bus once I finally made it to the Heights. But it still had cash in it when I identified it for Bertram, and no one around here would have left the cash, even a few dollars.
Tasha breaks me from my thoughts when she asks, “You didn’t need your wallet all day Friday?”
“I keep my bus pass in a separate holder, and Bethanie—this girl from school—bought everything when we went out Friday night.”
Now I feel guilty all over again about neglecting my friendship with Tasha—first for MJ, now Bethanie. But Tasha lets it slide.
“So who is Ms. Reeves?”
“She’s the crazy teacher I thought was doing all the stealing at school, but apparently not. She confessed to stealing some stuff, but not everything, so the school’s still watching me, too.”
“You’re a mess, Chanti.”
She pours me a glass of milk and joins me at the table.
“I busted Ms. Reeves and got her fired. I can figure this out, too.”
“Maybe it’s the teacher setting you up. You probably aren’t her favorite person right now. Can you really trust a crook’s confession?”
“No, the connection has to be Mitchell’s Moving. Whoever did it drove a Mitchell van. They had access to my wallet and the clients’ keys.”
“How do you know they didn’t just break in?”
“No signs of forced entry.”
“You watch way too many cop shows, Chanti. You’re starting to sound like one,” Tasha says. It’s a testament to my storytelling skills that I’ve kept my best friend from knowing what my mother really does for a living, and I can’t ruin it now.
“That’s what the cops said when they questioned me.”
“Okay, so name all the people who could have gotten your wallet and a key to those houses.”
“There’s Marco, but that can’t be possible.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s . . . Marco.”
Tasha looks at me for a second like she doesn’t understand, then smiles.
“Oh. I guess there’s a lot we haven’t talked about lately. You’ll have to fill me in after we keep you out of jail. Who else is on the list?”
“Malcolm—he’s the supervisor of my moving team. Lissa Mitchell, queen witch at school. Annette Park, one of her minions. Annette’s house was burglarized the same night she gave this lame party I went to, and Lissa was there.”
“Wait—is it a coincidence this chick’s name is Mitchell?”
“Not a coincidence. She’s my boss’s daughter. I guess I haven’t told you all the facts,” I say, sounding like Lana. I lay it all out for Tasha, after which she just shakes her head.
“You should have gone to North High,” she says just as the teakettle begins to whistle.
After I get back home from Tasha’s and have dinner with Lana, I tell her I need to do homework, but really I’m going over my list of suspects. The only motive I can give Annette is that she’s afraid I’d bust her on the shoplifting charge. But it would make more sense to butter me up than to set me up. Malcolm stays on the list. Marco might think he’s an okay guy, but Marco would probably see the best in anyone. So not my style.
Maybe my phone wasn’t the only thing that fell out of my bag when I was at Mitchell’s on Friday, acting out the lie I told Bethanie. But why would Malcolm do it? Could he dislike working with Marco and I so much that he’d set us up? Tasha said somebody must really hate me. Maybe Malcolm does, though it would be easier just to tell Paulette we suck as movers and get us fired. But he stays on my suspect list until I can find out where he was when the house was burglarized. I’m pretty sure Smythe hates me, and she must have some kind of shady background for her to owe Lana a favor, but she wasn’t driving that van and she didn’t leave my wallet in that house.
You need three things to make a good suspect: a reason to commit the crime, a way to do it, and the opportunity to get it done. Right now, no one on my list has all three ingredients. Only one person in this mess has all the ingredients, and that would be broke, lost-wallet, stolen-goods-knowing, alibi-challenged me. Basically, I’m screwed.
Chapter 27
Okay, so there’s one other person as screwed as I am right now, and I wish I’d had the nerve to call him yesterday when I got out on bail, but I figured it was harder to hate someone in person than it is over the phone, so I decided to wait and see him at school. Really he has nothing to hate me for—I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong other than want desperately to be his girlfriend, which made me such an easy target to punk. But then so was he. He showed up at the park because he was just as desperate to have me. And really, is love a crime?
That’s what I’m thinking as I walk up the tree-lined drive to Langdon, because there’s no way I could face these kids if I didn’t know this was my chance to see Marco and make sure we were okay. We have to be okay because it’s us against them and because, well, I’m mad about him. But as soon as I get to the circular driveway in front of the quad, I see Smythe standing there with Marco, and neither of them look happy too see me.
“No need to hurry, Miss Evans. As I was just explaining to Mr. Ruiz, you will not be attending classes today. You’re both suspended until you’re no longer under suspic
ion by the police.”
“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” I ask. The last thing on earth I want to do is walk into Langdon Prep, but that’s where all the clues are.
“We aren’t locking you up.”
“But you’re locking us out,” Marco says. “We worked hard to get our scholarships. If we miss classes, we’ll jeopardize our grades. And I’m supposed to start in the next game.”
“While I appreciate your concern for your studies, I would think you’d have more on your mind at the moment. We’ll arrange for you to keep pace in class. Your teachers will e-mail your assignments to you. Your parents can bring in your completed work. It’s the same process we use for students with long-term illness. And the game is the least of your worries.”
“We didn’t do this, Mrs. Smythe, and I’m going to prove it,” I say.
“I wish you luck. But given the circumstances—the thefts that have occurred on campus—the board thought it best that we wait until the police have completed their investigations.”
Mildred is coming toward us, looking sad and holding a cardboard box.
“Here’s Mildred with your things,” Smythe says. “I had her clear out your lockers.”
“You didn’t even trust us to be inside Langdon long enough to clean out our own lockers?” Marco asks.
“The board made a decision . . .”
“Congratulations, Mrs. Smythe,” I say.
“Excuse me?”
“It must be a great day for you, finally getting rid of the scholarship kids you never wanted here in the first place. Two out of three of us, anyway.”
“That is not true.”
“Neither are the charges against Marco and me.”
She stares at me for a second like she might be human, like she might actually want to know the truth and maybe give me the benefit of the doubt. But she quickly reverts back to Headmistress from Hell, turns around, and heads for Main Hall. Marco and I have been dismissed.
My Own Worst Frenemy Page 17