The Fixer

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “Any idea who those four hundred attendees were?” I asked Henry, my eyes locked on the instructions for our lab.

  “My mother got me a list.” Henry’s eyes flickered toward mine, only for a second. “She doesn’t know why I requested it.”

  He won’t tell her, I thought, reading his expression. Not until he knows more. In his position, I probably would have done the same thing.

  There were times when I thought Henry and I were a lot alike.

  Glancing up to make sure that we hadn’t attracted the attention of the teacher—or anyone else—I reached into my bag and pulled out my copy of the photograph from Raleigh’s office. After a moment’s hesitation, I slid it across the table to Henry.

  Ivy had told me to stay out of it. But Ivy had told me a lot of things over the years.

  Henry had a right to know.

  Across from me, he unfolded the picture and studied it for a few seconds, then set it aside and returned his attention to our project.

  “Any idea where it was taken?” he asked.

  “No. I can identify five of the men.” I indicated which five.

  Henry weighed the tennis ball and made a mark in his notebook. “The one next to the president is John Thomas Wilcox’s father.”

  That made six.

  “And how many of those men are on the list you got from your mother?” I asked Henry. How many of them might have had the opportunity to poison Theo Marquette?

  Henry didn’t have to consult his list. He held up two fingers.

  I considered the men in the photograph, setting aside Vivvie’s dad and Pierce. The Hardwicke headmaster. The minority whip. The president. The man behind the scenes.

  “Which two?” I asked.

  Henry arched an eyebrow at me, and I answered my own question. Looking down at the photograph, I pointed first to one man, then the other.

  William Keyes. That was easy. Given that we were talking about a Keyes Foundation gala, that went without saying.

  My heart beat viciously in my chest as I slowly moved my finger to my second guess. Not the headmaster. Not John Thomas’s father. My finger hovered over the president’s face-you-could-trust. After a long moment, I pressed my finger down.

  I wanted Henry to tell me that I was wrong.

  He didn’t.

  CHAPTER 41

  At lunch, Henry was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t at his usual table. Asher hadn’t seen him. Even my short acquaintance with Henry Marquette was enough for me to know that he operated according to a series of predictable algorithms. He did what he was supposed to do. He was reliable. Responsible.

  Missing.

  I found him in the computer lab. The door closed behind me seconds after I stepped into the room. Henry barely glanced away from the screen.

  “I’m trying to narrow down a time frame on the photograph,” he told me. “Look at this.” He pulled up two digital images. “Congressman Wilcox shaved his mustache off last spring, so wherever the picture you found was taken, it’s recent. Six months ago or less.”

  I processed that. Six months ago or less, Judge Pierce and Vivvie’s father had been in the same place at the same time.

  Six months ago or less, the president and William Keyes had been there, too.

  “It might not mean anything.” I wanted to be the voice of reason, but I didn’t feel reasonable. I felt like we were standing on the verge of something cavernous and unthinkable and real. “The picture. The guest list for that party. It might not mean anything,” I continued, grappling for objectivity like a climber trying to hold on to the edge of a cliff. “We don’t know for sure that someone poisoned your grandfather at the gala that night, let alone if it was someone in that picture. The fact that the president and William Keyes were the only ones in both places could be a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, Tess. Sometime in the last six months, the man who killed my grandfather and the one who paid him to do it had a little sit-down. I’ve looked for another connection between Bharani and Pierce. I skipped my morning classes to look, Tess, and I couldn’t find anything. The only connection is this photo. This meeting, whatever it was.”

  I was surprised that Henry Marquette had skipped class. I wasn’t surprised that his next move had been the same as mine: to look for connections, to figure out what—besides the murder—tied the judge and Vivvie’s father together.

  “There was another number on that disposable phone.” Henry was implacable. “That means there is at least one other person involved.”

  Someone with access to the justice. Someone who could get close enough to poison him. Someone who could make sure Pierce was positioned to be nominated in his place.

  “We don’t know a lot of things, Tess.” Henry’s voice was curt. I was starting to recognize that tone as an indication that he was clamping down on his emotions, refusing to let them gain control. “We don’t know if Pierce approached Vivvie’s dad or the other way around. We don’t know who masterminded this whole thing.” He paused. “We don’t know who your sister is working for now.”

  That took me off guard.

  “We don’t know what her endgame is,” Henry continued forcefully.

  My mouth felt like it had been filled with sawdust. “What are you saying, Henry?”

  “Your sister solves problems. Professionally. Whoever the other number on that phone belonged to, I’d say they have a pretty big problem right now, wouldn’t you?”

  I’d underestimated just how much Henry mistrusted my sister. It had never occurred to me that he might believe that instead of working to uncover this conspiracy, Ivy might be working to cover it up.

  “Your grandfather and Ivy were friends. She would never—”

  “What do you think fixers do, Tess?” Henry’s voice was maddeningly calm. “They cover things up. Even if there’s a cost. Even if they have to break a few laws to do it.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said fiercely.

  “Vivvie’s father’s suicide didn’t make the papers,” Henry continued. He was like a train chugging its way toward a tunnel at a steady pace. Never slowing down. Never stopping. “Someone kept that away from the press.”

  I thought of Ivy, wrangling the press outside Justice Marquette’s wake. If my sister wanted to keep something like that out of the papers, could she?

  Yes.

  “Everyone knows your sister works for Georgia Nolan,” Henry said. “Can you honestly tell me she doesn’t troubleshoot for the president, too?” He didn’t give me a chance to answer. “And William Keyes? He’s rich. Rich enough to pay her whatever it takes for her to protect him and his image.”

  “She’s not working for Keyes.” It took everything I had not to raise my voice. “They don’t even get along.”

  “Then why did his son pick you up from school last week?” Henry arched an eyebrow at me. “Word travels fast at Hardwicke, Tess. Whether you like it or not, you have to accept that there’s at least a possibility that your sister may have a conflict of interest here. And the side she comes down on may not be the right one.”

  Ivy had told me not to tell anyone. To protect me, I thought desperately. She did it to protect me. And Vivvie.

  “Tallyho, friends of Asher!” Asher had impeccable timing. He waltzed into the room and hopped up on the computer table, his legs dangling down, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Like the tension in the room wasn’t thick enough that you could have cut it with a knife.

  “Am I interrupting something?” he asked blithely.

  Just Henry telling me he thinks my sister might be working to cover up his grandfather’s murder. Henry must have read something in my expression, because a hint of remorse flashed across his features.

  “You’re not interrupting anything.” Henry pulled his gaze from mine and turned to Asher. “Tess and I were just having a bit of a debate.” His green eyes found their way to mine again. “I may have pushed my case a little t
oo hard.”

  “You?” Asher said, feigning shock. “Never.”

  As Asher launched into a story that seemed to involve a cupcake and a remote-controlled airplane—clearly meant to dissolve the tension—I had to fight the urge to stare at Henry until I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  What had Ivy done to convince him she was capable of something like this?

  I turned my head away from Henry. I could just barely make out our reflection in the glass pane that separated the computer lab from the hall: Asher constantly in motion, and Henry and I sitting still as statues, neither of us looking at the other.

  Movement on the other side of the pane forced my attention away from the reflection.

  Emilia. She opened the door to the lab a second later. I saw the moment she registered the fact that Henry, Asher, and I had gone silent at her entrance.

  Her chin jutted out, her perfect posture going even more erect.

  “Did you need something, Em?” Asher asked.

  “Not from you.” Emilia’s tone when she addressed her brother was a mix of comfortable and blunt. Henry stood up, obviously expecting Emilia to address him, but she just gave him an icy look, then turned to me.

  “I need to talk to you.” Emilia had a knack of issuing statements like orders. I was going to ask her if it could wait, but something in her eyes made me hesitate.

  She took a step forward. “It’s about Vivvie.”

  That was all it took for her to have my complete attention.

  “She’s in the bathroom,” Emilia said softly. “She looks . . .” Emilia bit her bottom lip. I hadn’t pegged her for the lip-biting type. “She’s not okay.”

  “Vivvie’s here?” I interrupted.

  “Listening comprehension,” Emilia snapped back, looking more like her usual self. “Yes, she’s here. And something’s wrong.”

  “Which bathroom?” I asked, a feeling of dread taking up residence in my stomach. Vivvie had buried her father this morning. Why would she have come to school? And how bad must she have been for Emilia to come get me?

  “Downstairs,” Emilia replied. “East corridor.”

  I started walking before she even finished talking. Henry and Asher followed. When I got to the bathroom, there was no one else inside. I’d expected to find Vivvie in one of the stalls, but she was just sitting on the floor.

  “Vivvie.” I knelt down next to her.

  “Sorry,” she said roughly. “I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You weren’t in the courtyard,” Vivvie said. “It’s stupid. I came to find you, and you weren’t in the courtyard, and—”

  “Breathe.”

  Vivvie breathed. Then she thrust something toward me. It took me a second to realize it was a newspaper, and another after that to realize that she wanted me to take it.

  I took it. Slowly, I unfolded it. Then I understood instantly why Vivvie had come.

  PIERCE FRONT-RUNNER FOR SUPREME COURT, the headline declared. My mind whirred. This wasn’t an op-ed piece, and it wasn’t some two-bit newspaper. This was the front page of the Washington Post.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Everything okay in there?” Asher called. “I ask in the most unobtrusive possible way!”

  I looked down at the paper in my hand.

  “You can show him,” Vivvie told me, pushing herself to her feet. “He’s going to see it anyway. Everyone’s going to see it.”

  I reached out and squeezed Vivvie’s shoulder, and then we made our way out into the hall. Asher was standing next to the door. Henry was behind him. Wordlessly, I held up the article.

  PIERCE FRONT-RUNNER FOR SUPREME COURT. The headline was just as disturbing the second time, but not as disturbing as the subheading. Sources say the president is moving toward nomination at an unprecedented rate.

  “What sources?” Henry asked the question before I could. I had no answers. All I could do was move a step closer to Vivvie and take her hand in mine.

  Her father had died on Friday. She’d just buried him—and now the Washington Post was announcing that some anonymous source had gone on record saying that the president was preparing to nominate the man who’d hired her father to commit murder.

  “They can’t do this.” Vivvie found her voice again, her hand squeezing mine until it hurt. “Tess, the president can’t nominate Pierce. He can’t.” She pulled her hand away from mine and stepped back. “What if they killed him, Tess? What if Pierce and whoever he’s working with killed my father, just like they killed . . .”

  Vivvie’s eyes darted to Henry’s. Her words dried up, and the two of them were suddenly caught up in the kind of staring contest that nobody wins. Neither one could look away.

  “Henry.” Vivvie swallowed. “I . . .”

  “I know,” Henry said softly. “About my grandfather. About your father.”

  Vivvie flinched. She waited for him to lash out.

  “You could have kept quiet.” Henry was so focused on Vivvie that I felt like I was eavesdropping, like neither Asher nor I had any place in this moment. “You didn’t,” Henry continued, his voice just as soft. “You spoke up.”

  Vivvie’s eyes filled with tears.

  Henry reached out and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “I owe you for that.”

  “I’m sorr—”

  “Don’t.” Henry’s voice was implacable. “Don’t apologize. Not now, not ever, not to me.” He turned back to me. “We need to know if the article is true.”

  Was the president really on the verge of nominating Pierce? And if he was—what did that mean?

  The president was at the gala. The president is in the picture. The president has the power to see this nomination through.

  “Maybe Ivy knows something,” I said, turning the situation over in my mind, trying to come at it from a different angle. “She won’t give me details, but I can ask.”

  “Right.” Henry’s voice went cold. “Because talking to your sister will make everything better.”

  Vivvie looked from Henry to me. “Tess?”

  Vivvie trusted Ivy—and she needed to trust someone.

  “Henry,” I bit out. “A word?”

  We retreated slightly from the group. “Vivvie’s been through hell, and right now, Ivy is the one person she is counting on to make this right.” I willed Henry to hear me. “You can’t take that away from her.”

  “Vivvie didn’t come to your sister for help on this.” Henry’s tone was unapologetic. “When she saw that article in the paper, she came to you.”

  I swallowed, trying not to feel the weight of that. “She trusts Ivy.”

  “Maybe she shouldn’t.”

  I took a step closer to him. “This isn’t about whatever unforgivable sin my sister committed to get on your bad side—”

  Henry closed what little space remained between us. “My father didn’t die in a car accident.” Henry lowered his voice, whispering those words directly into my right ear, his lips brushing against the side of my face as he did. “He killed himself, and my grandfather hired your sister to cover it up.”

  I froze. I’d read articles about Henry’s dad’s death. His accident.

  “Your sister staged the wreck,” Henry continued. “She greased the right palms, and she put out the right story. My mother doesn’t know.” Henry was still so close that I could feel his breath against the side of my face. “I wasn’t supposed to know, either. But I do, Tess. I know.”

  I thought about what it must have been like to carry a secret like that, to watch his family mourning his father, knowing that the man had taken his own life.

  “I get up every day, and I lie to everyone I care about in this world. I don’t get to be angry. I don’t get to ask why. I’m complicit. She made me complicit.”

  He had a problem, I’d said to Ivy, of Theo Marquette. You fixed it. Her reply had been Something like that.

  “I told you,” Henry said, taking a step back. “Fixers are exper
ts at covering things up. Your sister’s practically an artist.”

  Vivvie’s father’s suicide hadn’t made the papers.

  “Whatever Ivy did,” I said, my throat tightening around the words until I thought I wouldn’t be able to get them out, “your grandfather was the one who hired her to do it.”

  How could he hate Ivy and not the old man?

  Because it’s easier. Because he’d just lost his father. Because he needed someone to blame.

  “My grandfather and I never discussed it,” Henry said tersely. “And now we never will.”

  CHAPTER 42

  I made it through the rest of my classes like a sleepwalker drifting blindly down a hall. My mind was a mess, tangled with questions I didn’t want to ask and thoughts I couldn’t banish.

  The photo. The gala. The president moving toward nominating Pierce. Ivy.

  Five minutes into my last class, I was called to the headmaster’s office. If I’d done anything to deserve his attention, I wasn’t sure what it was. I half prepared myself for this to be another round of John Thomas Wilcox Tries to Get Tess’s Locker Searched, but I couldn’t bring myself to really care about John Thomas or Headmaster Raleigh or my continued enrollment at Hardwicke.

  “Tess, dear.” Mrs. Perkins greeted me with a smile. “They’re waiting for you. Go right on in.”

  They? I barely had time to process that before the door to the headmaster’s office opened, and Headmaster Raleigh stepped out. “Tess,” he said. “Excellent.”

  Excellent? That wasn’t exactly a response I’d ever provoked from the man.

  “Come in, come in,” he said. The moment I stepped into his office, I realized why the headmaster had changed his tune.

  “Tess.” Georgia Nolan greeted me with a kiss on the cheek. I stiffened. In the corner of the room, a Secret Service agent looked on, his expressionless face never wavering. “I am sorry for surprising you,” Georgia continued, “but I was scheduled to meet with Headmaster Raleigh about the upcoming Hardwicke auction, and I wanted to check in and see how you were doing.” She squeezed my arm. “You had a bit of an upset last week.”

  I cast a glance at the headmaster, who seemed altogether pleased with himself for being able to accommodate the First Lady’s request. He probably would have tied me up with a little bow if he’d thought there was a chance of ingratiating himself further.