“I’m sorry this happened to you kids,” Mildred says, handing over the box to Marco. “It’s the same thing that happened to my Reginald. I guess you couldn’t help him or yourselves, Chanti.”
“I’m not done yet.”
“Who’s Reginald?” Marco asks.
“Mildred, is this the sign Smythe claims she caught your son defacing?” I ask, pointing to the marble LANGDON PREPARATORY SCHOOL sign inside the grassy circle.
“That’s the one. Well, that’s the replacement. They had to get a new one carved—part of which Smythe docked from my pay. I’m still paying for it. The art teacher said she saw Reginald in the art room just before Smythe claimed she caught him out here. Some spray-paint cans turned up missing. Reginald told Smythe he was just in that room looking for his sketchbook, but she wouldn’t hear it.”
“So how did she make the leap from missing spray-paint cans to Reginald being guilty?”
“Said she caught him red-handed with that paint spraying up the sign, even though it was getting dark and the real culprit ran off when she walked up on him.”
“They put the replacement sign in the same spot?”
“Yes, why?”
“Did anyone look at the surveillance tape? That camera is angled right at the sign.”
“Smythe did.”
“Did you?”
“I tried to, but she claimed it was part of police evidence.”
That sounds like BS to me. I can’t imagine Smythe called the police for such a small-time offense. It wouldn’t be worth sullying the Langdon name with any negative publicity. Too many kids of Denver’s glitterati attend Langdon and she’d never jeopardize those fat tuition and endowment checks.
“What did the kid spray on the sign, anyway?” Marco asks. “Was it about Smythe?”
“How she’s a word that rhymes with witch. In big red letters.”
“No wonder she’s so mad,” I say, though I can’t really blame the perp. “Mildred, did you ever hire that lawyer?”
“Just did. I meet with her today.”
“First thing you ask her to do is subpoena that tape from the surveillance company. They’ll have the master. I don’t think the tapes went into state’s evidence.”
“You think she lied about Reginald?”
“No, but it was dark and I think she wanted to see Reginald, so she did. It’s amazing what witnesses think they see.”
She gives me a big hug and hurries off to call her lawyer.
“Talked to a lot of witnesses, have you?” Marco asks, looking at me like he might be onto me. Or maybe I’m just paranoid.
“Uh, no. That always happens on Perry Mason. The classic cable channel plays the reruns.”
“So you and Perry Mason save Mildred’s kid, but what about us?”
“I guess we have a free day,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.
“This is no joke, Chanti. Remember when I got upset with you the other day? My cousin is the reason I jumped off like that.”
“Your cousin?”
“Yeah, David. His parents brought him here from Mexico when he was a baby. They were here illegally and got deported last week, but they brought him to stay with us before the feds came. He’s fifteen and this is all he knows—the States.”
“After all these years they got deported?”
“I don’t know—the whole illegal-immigrant thing is getting intense. They had jobs, paid taxes, weren’t living off anyone, but they’re cracking down I guess. But David shouldn’t have to leave everything he knows because of a decision his parents made fifteen years ago.”
“Won’t he miss his parents?” I say, realizing I sound a lot like a suspicious detective with all the questions, and I don’t want to go there again.
“My aunt and uncle just want him to finish high school. It’s only three more years.”
I don’t ask any more questions, just try to imagine what it would feel like if I was told today that I must move to, I don’t know . . . Bangladesh, and never return.
“We’re going to figure out a way to make him legal, but in the meantime I don’t want the police looking too closely at my family. I don’t want him kicked out because of my problems with the cops.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, touched that he would trust me with his cousin’s secret. “This must be so scary for your family. But we’re going to get out of it. We were set up. I just have to figure out who it was, and then prove it before the cops start digging into your family. Like in the next day or two.”
“You know something the cops don’t?”
“I know a lot the cops don’t. That’s why I really need to get inside Langdon. That’s where the answers are.”
“Is Perry Mason helping you figure this out, too?”
“Something like that,” I say, distracted by the sight of Bethanie’s car, convertible top down, driving past Langdon Prep on her way to her secret parking spot. I take off down the drive, planning to intercept her before she can walk to the school entrance.
She’s still checking out her hair and reapplying her lip gloss when I reach her car. You’d have thought I was about to jack her BMW given the look on her face. It’s amazing how quickly your so-called friends can turn on you.
“What are you doing here? I heard you were suspended.”
“How’d you hear that? I just found out myself,” I say as I make myself comfortable in the passenger seat.
“I just heard, that’s all.”
“From Lissa right? Because she’s all up under Smythe and Smythe can’t keep her mouth shut,” I say, wondering how much other information Lissa has about me thanks to Smythe. Somehow she found out about my arrest, even though Lana says the record was expunged. That must be how Lissa was able to tell all my business at Annette’s party, and to all of Langdon the next day.
“Look, Chanti. I know you didn’t do this, but I also know I’m not trying to mess up my thing here, right? Sorry, but bad news follows you, girl.”
“Does that bad news include you?”
“What?”
“Did you set me up, Bethanie? Why did you take me to Annette’s house when you knew it was the last place on earth I’d ever want to be?”
“Okay, so I should have told you where we were going, but I didn’t set you up. I was surprised to find out it wasn’t really a party. Remember? I was expecting to meet some guys and get to know all the power people at Langdon.”
True, and I don’t think she was faking that.
“You said you got a last-minute invite from Lissa,” I say. “How last-minute?”
“Right before you walked up to me at my locker that morning. She’d just invited me, and suggested I bring you and Marco. Which is why I was kind of surprised when we got there and she said she’d planned a girls’ night out.”
So maybe Lissa was planning to set up both Marco and me that night, and when he didn’t show, she went to plan B.
“I can’t believe you would think I’d ambush you.”
“Well, you wanted in with Lissa and Langdon so much, I wasn’t sure how far you’d go.”
“I’d never go that far. Look, I have to go,” she says, looking at the clock on her dash. I guess getting to class on time is more important than helping me beat a false arrest charge. “I can’t get caught up in your drama, Chanti.”
“I’m not asking you to. All I want to know is what happened that night at Annette’s. Can you give me that? No one from Langdon has to know you told me anything.”
“You already know what happened. Someone broke in and took all her stuff.”
“Not all of it. What did they take? And was there really a break-in?”
“What does it matter? Stuff was taken.”
“Please, just replay it for me.”
“Okay, the two-minute version and then I’m going to class,”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
“All right already,” she says, adding a final touch to her lip gloss before snapping the visor mirror clos
ed. “We got back to the house a couple of hours later. . . .”
“It took that long to get something to eat?”
“First Lissa wanted burgers, then she wanted to go to Dairy Queen for a sundae. After that, she made me stop at Safeway to get some snacks to take back to the house.”
“You wouldn’t think someone as skinny as Lissa would have such an appetite.”
“She could be a model, right?” Bethanie says, still enraptured with Lissa. “So when we get back, the front door was open a few inches.”
“No broken glass, no busted doorjambs?”
I’m thinking whoever did it almost wanted to show that there were no signs of forced entry. I mean, could they have not taken two seconds to make sure the door was closed?
“No, the door was just open. We didn’t think much of it because we figured in the excitement of you storming out and us following you, whoever was last out the door didn’t close it all the way.”
“Do you remember who that was?”
“I know it wasn’t me because I felt bad for you and I was the first one out. I was gonna try and stop you.”
I want to ask her why she doesn’t feel bad for me now, but I only have about ninety seconds left.
“So it could have been any of the other four?”
“Man, you sound like Five-O. I know it couldn’t have been Annette, because she came out behind me jangling that ridiculous keychain she has, you know the one with about fifty charms that make all that noise. Drives me crazy.”
“I guess that leaves Lissa and the clones.”
“The who?” she asks. She pushes a button on the dash and the top starts closing, my cue that the interview is almost over.
“Never mind. So when you went inside, it looked like the place was ransacked, right? You knew right off the place had been robbed.”
“No, that was the weird thing. Everything looked the way we left it, as far as I remember. We didn’t know anything was missing until we went to turn on the TV. That was the most obvious thing gone. Then Lissa helped Annette look around the house, and Annette started crying about the missing figurines and how her parents were going to kill her.”
“The figurines?”
“Yeah. Remember Lissa showed them to us during that boring tour of Annette’s house? Come to think of it, everything missing we saw on that tour. Unless they found more stuff after I left. They called the cops then.”
“Whose idea was it to call the police?” I ask as I follow her lead and get out of the car.
“That was definitely Lissa’s suggestion. Annette didn’t want to. She said her parents wouldn’t be back until Sunday night and she’d just try to replace everything so they’d never know there was a party or a break-in. But Lissa convinced her to call the cops. You know how those girls are—they’d follow Lissa off a cliff if she asked.”
“So why do you want to even hang out with them?”
“Two minutes are up, Chanti. I’ll be late for class.”
“I appreciate the information.”
“Yeah. Good luck,” she says as she walks toward Langdon, and I believe she means it.
Chapter 28
When I get back to the Langdon driveway, Marco is there waiting in his car.
“Need a ride?”
“You don’t mind being seen with me?” I say as I get into his car.
“We’re both jailbirds, right? Birds of a feather and all that.”
“We’d better stick together. All we have are us.”
Right away I feel like I shouldn’t have said that, since it not only sounds like something on a Hallmark card, but it also smacks of wannabe-your-girlfriend desperation.
“What gets me is that they tagged us only because we’re scholarship kids.” Marco is always so laid-back, but right now he sounds angry. I guess being suspended for something he didn’t do is enough to unnerve even Marco.
“Apparently being broke is a motive these days,” I say. “When you think about it, that’s the motive for most breakins. People need the money.”
“I suppose, but it still seems like a kind of prejudice. Like fiscal profiling. I mean, in this economy, who isn’t broke?”
“Everybody else at school. Langdon has to be a connection, if not for the Mitchell client thefts, definitely for the Annette Park burglary.”
“But they didn’t charge us for that one,” Marco says, merging into morning rush hour traffic on Alameda.
“Yeah, but it’s only a matter of time, at least for me. They can tie me to that one, too. They’ll probably say you were an accessory.”
“Accessory?”
“Yeah, that you were in on that one, too. How else could I have stolen a TV without a car? Besides, they have us on more than being broke. There’s also means and opportunity.”
“Which means . . . ?” Marco asks.
“We had a way to do it, because working for Mitchell, we knew the homeowners would be gone. Since no one believes we were together in the park that evening, we had a chance to do it. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what really happened, only what you can prove happened. There are a lot of innocent people in jail.”
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
“Because I do.” I have zero faith in my ability to seduce a boy, or even walk across a room in heels without falling on my behind, but you won’t find a detective out there with more confidence than I have in my ability to solve a crime. Especially when it’s my fate on the line. “Do you mind if we go back to the park?”
“You mean the scene of the crime?”
“No, that’s the scene of the alibi no one believes. We’re the only people who know the truth, which means we’re our best chance of figuring out what really happened. If we go back there, I can think better, maybe find a clue that I missed.”
“Why would there be clues at the park if that isn’t where the crime happened?”
“No, I mean clues in my head. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the way I think. It’s how I solve crimes. I mean, you know, the mysteries of life.”
“I have this feeling there’s a whole side of you I don’t know about,” Marco says, turning to look at me while we wait at a red light. “This isn’t like that show from back in the day where cops posed as high school kids, is it?”
“Me, a cop? That’ll never happen. A good cop needs a certain personality, like not being afraid of your own shadow for starters. But being a good detective? That’s mostly in your head—more brains than bravery.”
“You know way too much about police stuff.”
“I watch a lot of TV.”
“I hope that’s all it is. I’d hate to be really into you . . . well, as a friend I mean, and then you break the news you’re actually a thirty-year-old cop with a husband and kid at home.”
Just when I was getting comfortable talking to him one-on-one, he goes and lets it slip that he’s really into me and now I’m all tongue-tied. We ride in silence all the way to the park, although in my head I’ve come up with a thousand things to say. As we walk to the picnic table, the little flags are gone from the grass, but this section of the park is still empty. That probably has more to do with it being nine o’clock on a weekday morning than with pesticides. I really have no idea what I hope to find here, except that whoever set us up has probably been here before and knows how isolated it is, and being here might trigger a clue of who that person is. And it’s where Marco first suggested that we were something more than friends, even if his confession was drug-induced, and even if he’s claiming today that he’s only into me as a friend.
But right now, it’s all about the business, the most serious case I’ve ever had to work. Love comes later.
“Whoever the perp is, he knew about those two homes being empty, and that the owners were Mitchell clients,” I say, taking a seat at the table. “How about Malcolm?”
“Wouldn’t the perp also have to know about Annette’s party and be watching the house so he’d know when to burglarize it?
How would Malcolm know all that?”
“I don’t know—maybe Lissa was at her dad’s office and Malcolm overheard her planning the party and staked it out.”
“Why would Malcolm do any of this?”
“Because he’s stealing from Mitchell’s clients and doesn’t want to get arrested again. Maybe he’s a second-striker. Did he ever tell you what he was in jail for?”
“No, but Malcolm didn’t do it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because he’s a good guy, for one. Accusing him would be the same thing everyone else is doing to us. He’s been to jail, so he must have stolen that stuff. How’s that different from, you’re broke, so you must have stolen stuff?”
“I didn’t say he did it.” I’m completely surprised by Marco’s allegiance to Malcolm, who, I’m sorry, is just one strange dude. “But we have to look at everyone, and rule people out. That’s all I’m doing.”
“Well, you can rule him out. He didn’t steal so he doesn’t need to blame anything on us.”
I remember what Tasha said about someone hating me. That’s another possible motive.
“Marco, what if he didn’t frame us to cover up his crime? What if he did it because he hates working with us? He’s always asking to go back to his old team.”
“That’s a stretch, Chanti. He could get Paulette to reassign him more easily than setting up a burglary. Besides, he has an alibi—his probation officer. He told me he has to meet with him on Friday evenings.”
“That’s an odd time to meet a probation officer.”
“Not when your probation officer is also your AA sponsor and he meets you following your meeting with a whole room full of people who can vouch for your whereabouts.”
“Okay, so he’s out. And he has a lot of issues.”
We’re quiet for a minute; then I say what I’ve wanted to say ever since I found out Marco was in the other interrogation room.
“Do you hate me for getting us into this mess?”
“How did you get us into it? I thought you said someone set us up.”
My Own Worst Frenemy Page 18