by Meg Cabot
She made a face. “Oh yeah, of course. But I wasn’t going to go to one of them. I wasn’t being battered. Gary just hit me sometimes when he was super-stressed.”
Wow, was all I could think.
“So I never filed,” she said. “Mr. Hall—I mean, Gary—he says if I tell . . .” Her voice had trailed off.
“What?” I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “What, Tania? What’s the worst that he can do to you? He’s already murdered Jared, and he tried to kill Bear. Or are you going to sit there and tell me that shooting was totally random, the way you’ve been telling everyone else?”
Tears had filled Tania’s huge Bambi eyes.
“Not me,” she said, with a sob. “I don’t care about me. There’s nothing he can do to me that he hasn’t already done. I just . . . I don’t want him to hurt the baby. I can’t let anything happen to her.”
So that’s what had done it. Tania didn’t care what happened to her—she seemed to think she deserved physical pain, enough to inflict it on herself. But her maternal instinct had already kicked in and would not allow her to let anyone injure her unborn baby.
“All right,” I’d said to her. “But what if he goes after Jordan next? Don’t you think Jordan has a right to know? Jordan loves you. Jordan will understand.”
She’d shaken her head vehemently.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “He has photos. He says he’ll send them to Jordan.”
Oh no, I thought to myself. Could this get any worse?
“Tania,” I said, “lots of female performers have had embarrassing photos of themselves published on the Internet. Madonna. Scarlett Johansson. Katy Perry on Twitter that time she wasn’t wearing any makeup. I don’t think Jordan is going to care, and your career can certainly survive it.” A good publicist, I thought, could spin this whole thing into gold in a heartbeat. All Tania would have to do was appear on an Oprah special, provide some pictures of herself as a child in her undoubtedly run-down home, and Gary Hall was going to come off as the monster he was. “A couple of sexy photos—even a sex tape—aren’t going to hurt your marriage or your career.”
“Not those kinds of photos,” Tania said, looking shocked. “I’d never do that. I’m not stupid. I always knew I was going to be famous, and I’d never let some guy—not even my husband—take nasty photos of me. No, he said he’s going to publish the wedding photos”—for the first time all evening I saw a hint of the girl from the “So Sue Me” video, the fierce diva holding the whip who wasn’t going to take any guff from any man—“and that is not going to happen. No police. No one. Just you.”
“Okay,” I’d said, backing off. “We’ll handle it privately.”
Of course I was lying.
“You said he e-mails her his blackmail demands,” Cooper says. “He’s probably smart enough to write to her only from computers in Internet cafés, but did she give you copies of any of the e-mails? Because they could help us track him down if he’s living off the grid.”
“Off the grid?” I ask. “You mean like in the Everglades or something?”
Cooper grins. “No. Guys like him don’t usually have credit cards,” he explains, “because they don’t want to leave a paper trail, anything that might identify them or connect them to a certain place they might have been, either because they’re paranoid or, as in the case of our Mr. Hall, because they’re a criminal. They carry out all their transactions in cash, and they definitely don’t pay taxes. This makes it even more difficult to track their whereabouts. It’s possible he only carries an ATM card connected to the bank in which Tania makes her deposits, so he can withdraw cash whenever he needs it.”
I shake my head. “She didn’t give me copies of his e-mails, but I can try to get some from her.”
“Okay,” Cooper says. “He’s smart, but I doubt he’s smart enough to forge the IP address in his e-mail headers.”
“What kind of website is that?” I ask, squinting at Cooper’s screen. I’m pretty sure I need glasses for looking at computer screens, but I’m trying to fight the inevitable. “One that’s only available to detectives?”
“And anyone else who pays fifteen dollars a month,” Cooper says. “You shouldn’t shop so freely online, by the way. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had to take down your social security number? And your loyal fans have tracked down this address and put it on Google Earth. I’ve had to take that down a few times too.”
“Aw,” I say, leaning over to kiss his whisker-scruffed cheek. “My hero.”
“Yes, well,” he says, looking embarrassed. “I wouldn’t want any rat-poison-tainted cupcakes delivered here.”
“I think I can resist the urge to eat food that shows up on our front stoop,” I say. “And what makes you think Gary Hall isn’t his real name?”
“Because I just found two hundred Gary Halls,” he says. “All in their mid to late forties, all of whom seem to have lived in Florida at some time or other. I’ll never be able to figure out which one is the Gary Hall we want. Seems a little convenient to me.”
“Can’t you find out from their marriage certificate?” I ask. “Or their divorce certificate? Those are matters of public record.”
“Sure,” Cooper says. “But we won’t be able to get our hands on either of those until the courthouse opens Monday morning.”
I point to the computer. “Can’t you look them up online, like they do on CSI?”
He lets out a cynical laugh. “Oh, you sweet, naive girl. Some information is still available only in paper format, and then only to immediate family members. If you aren’t a family member, you have to physically present yourself at the county clerk’s office, usually with a small bribe, in order to obtain it. And the county clerk will still give it to you only if you’re as suave and debonair as I am, with a bold yet insouciant twinkle in your eye. Otherwise, they’re always on break.”
“I can’t believe you called yourself debonair,” I say. “Bold yes, and definitely insouciant, but debonair? And I’ve never noticed you were particularly suave either.”
“Suave enough to get you, baby,” he says with a wink.
I reach for another Oreo, ignoring him. “Can’t you track him down through the high school’s website?”
“You mean this one?” he says, pointing his laptop screen at me. I blink at the blue-and-white background.
“Does that say Lake Istokpoga High School? How do you even pronounce that?”
“It’s Seminole Indian for ‘many men died here.’ A group of them were swallowed by whirlpools trying to cross the lake.” Cooper has swung the laptop around and is reading from the high school’s web page. “Lake Istokpoga is only four feet deep in most places. Boaters need to be careful not to get stuck in bogs. Interesting that they mention this but not that the town is the birthplace of Tania Trace.”
“Maybe it isn’t something they want to advertise,” I say. Lucy has come back inside, her bone apparently buried to her satisfaction. She trots over to lean against my chair for praise, and I stroke her soft coat. “Especially considering the high school choir teacher ran off with her.”
“Still,” Cooper says, clicking through the school’s website, “you’d think someone might have mentioned it. But it’s not a very detailed site.”
“Tania said it’s not the largest school district—”
“Or . . .” Cooper says in an Aha! tone, turning the computer screen toward me, “maybe no one there is aware of who Tatiana Malcuzynski grew up to be.”
I stare at the photo he’s discovered of the first high school choir in the district ever to place in the Florida state finals. Grinning at me cherubically from the second row of sopranos is Tania Trace . . . but unless I’d been looking for her, I wouldn’t have realized it. She’s six years younger, thirty pounds heavier, and a few inches shorter than the Tania with whom I’ve spent most of my evening, her hair a fluffy black aurora around her face and her teeth in braces.
“Okay,” I say. “So s
he’s basically unrecognizable.”
“What about him?” Cooper taps the screen, and I get my first look at a photo of Gary Hall.
Brown-haired and brown-eyed, neither attractive nor unattractive, not the kind of man who’d ever stand out in a crowd, he looks exactly like . . .
A forty-year-old high school choir teacher.
“Mr. Hall,” I breathe.
“The game,” Cooper says, “is on.”
“Are you going to shoot him?” I ask.
“I am going to do what I’ve been hired to do,” Cooper says, closing his laptop. “Protect my client.”
“So,” I say, “you’re going to shoot him.”
“If he is threatening my client and happens to wander into range,” he says, “then probably, yes. Do you have a problem with that?”
I keep my hand on Lucy’s head. “Not so long as you don’t miss,” I say.
Chapter 19
Other than my bed, there aren’t a lot of places I can stand being on a Sunday morning, but Fischer Hall is one of them. That’s because no one there gets up before noon on weekends—unless they have to, for check-in or checkout. I usually have the place all to myself.
And this morning I need that kind of peace and quiet so I can concentrate. I have a lot of work to do.
I pull open the front door and say hi to the security guard, a woman named Wynona who often works nights, a shift that can sometimes get a bit rough if drunks wander in from the park (or happen to be some of our own residents). But Wynona is no-nonsense enough—and large enough—to handle just about anyone, drunk or sober.
Wynona nods at me over the large coffee she’s holding in both hands, but doesn’t speak. I don’t blame her. It’s been a long night for me too. I have a similar cup in my own hands, even though I know they’ve probably stocked the cafeteria with breakfast for the girls and their chaperones. I couldn’t wait. I nod back.
Jamie is slumped behind the front desk, still in her pajamas. She’s thumbing sleepily through leftover magazines since the post office will allow us to forward only first-class mail.
“Hey,” Jamie says in surprise when she looks up and sees me. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t even ask,” I say. “How did things go last night after I left?”
Jamie shrugs. “Not bad, I guess. Wynona could probably tell you more.”
I glance questioningly at Wynona, but she only shakes her head and says, “Mmm-mmm-mmm,” over her coffee, her signal that she’s not ready to speak about it. I turn back to Jamie.
“Four service requests and one incident report,” Jamie says, pulling the administrative forms from the residence hall director’s in-box. “Looks like there was a leaky sink in 1718. The engineer on duty fixed it. The rest of the stuff was kids asking to get the guards taken off their windows so they could open them wider than two inches to take a picture of the fountain in the park. Like that will happen. Oh,” she adds—and it’s an “Oh” that’s accompanied by a face crinkled with concern—“one thing . . .”
I do not like the sound of that.
“What,” I say flatly.
“Well, it looks like a group of girls from one of the suites ditched their chaperone after she fell asleep and snuck downstairs—”
“What?” I demand, taking the incident report from her and scanning it. As I do, my heart begins to thump. The form, which is in triplicate, has been filled out in blue ink by Rajiv—he was the resident assistant who’d been alerted to the situation—is extremely detailed, and goes on for some pages. The girls are named. The first name I see is Cassidy Upton.
“Why?” I ask. “Where did they think they were going to go? Didn’t we relieve them of their IDs last night?” This was a plan Lisa and I had hatched. In order to keep the girls from sneaking out of the building at night, we were requiring them to surrender their New York College–issued photo IDs to the resident assistant on duty every evening. That way, if they did sneak out, they’d have to notify the RA in order to get back into the building.
“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Well, it didn’t matter, because the girls didn’t leave the building. They ran into some of the basketball players in the lobby—”
I drop my head onto the desk with a groan. “Don’t even tell me.”
“I’m afraid so,” Jamie says.
“Please say”—I lift my head to beg Jamie— “that they made popcorn, watched a Glee marathon in the lounge, and went to bed. In separate rooms.”
“I can’t,” Jamie says. “Because they didn’t. You know Magnus, the really tall one? Well, he bought them some beer from that deli around the corner. Then they all went downstairs to the game room to drink and play foosball and pool.”
I continue to scan Rajiv’s cramped handwriting, anxious to find out what happened next. “This is not appropriate Tania Trace Rock Camp for Girls behavior,” I mutter under my breath.
“No, I’d say not,” Jamie says, looking vaguely amused. “Wynona was watching them the whole time, of course, on the security monitors.”
I glance over at Wynona, who looks up from her coffee and says mildly, “You should have seen those girls’ faces when I went down there and asked what in the hell they thought they were doing.”
I want to walk over and throw my arms around Wynona’s neck. But I realize that would be inappropriate.
“Were they surprised?” I ask her instead.
“I don’t know what kind of place they think we’re running here,” Wynona says. “One of them was actually standing on the pool table, doing a kind of stripper dance for the boys. ‘Does this look like a Hooters?’ I asked her. And those boys. They know better than that. I asked them, ‘Aren’t you in enough trouble already? Do you really want the president of this college finding out you’re buying beer for girls who are in the ninth grade?’ ”
“Then what happened?” I ask.
“Well, of course, the boys claimed the girls told them that they were twenty-one. But what twenty-one-year-old wears Hello Kitty underwear? I said to the girl on the pool table, ‘Baby, put your clothes back on. You know I got that entire stripper dance you just did on my security camera? I’m of half a mind right now to give that tape to your mama. And if you were my child, I would slap you from here to Newark.’ ”
“Let me guess,” I say, not even having to glance down at the incident report form to check the name. “That was Cassidy Upton?”
“How would I know?” Wynona demands. “They all look the same to me, with those skinny bodies and all the makeup. I called for Rajiv, took away the beer, and sent for the coach.”
My eyes nearly pop out of my head.
“You called Steven—I mean, Coach Andrews?”
“You best believe I did. He posted his private cell number right here”—she points to a slip of paper taped to the guard’s desk—“with a note that says, ‘Call if boys get out of hand.’ So I called, because I knew he’d want me to. He came over, got those boys down from their rooms, took them outside, and when they came back—probably two hours later—I have never seen anyone look as dog-tired. He made them run around the square fifty times.”
Whoa. I had tried to run around the square once and had been pretty sure my uterus was going to fall out.
“What I want to know is,” Wynona asks after taking a sip of her coffee, “what’s going to happen to those girls? What those boys did was wrong, but those girls weren’t exactly innocent flowers either, if you ask me.”
I nod. She’s right about that. Rajiv had noted in his report that, after he escorted the girls back upstairs, a fight broke out. Mallory St. Clare had called Cassidy Upton “a stuck-up bitch.” Cassidy responded by calling Mallory “a dirty whore who needs to take a shower in order not to be so dirty.”
All three girls, of course—along with the basketball players, despite Steven’s punishment—would be having a mandatory meeting with Lisa after such antics. The question was whether Lisa would tell Mrs. Upton what had gone on. As the girls were minors, it
seemed likely.
But what about Tania? She was the one—along with Cartwright Records Television—who was supposed to be responsible for keeping these girls busy during their stay at her camp.
“Perfect,” I say. “This is just perfect.” Stephanie will be thrilled that her plan to turn three talented vocalists into backstabbing little divas is turning out so nicely.
“There are also,” Jamie says, “these.” She hands me ten registration cards. They’re the cards residents sign upon checking in, noting that they’ve received their key. All ten have keys taped to them and signatures under the checkout line.
“They checked out?” I ask, bewildered, even though it’s obvious.
“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Last night. I guess Tania Trace Rock Camp didn’t sound like so much fun after hearing that a guy got murdered by one of Tania’s own fans, right here in the building.”
I can feel my mouth pressing into a thin line. “That isn’t exactly how it happened—”
“Well,” Jamie says, “that’s how they’re reporting it on the news. A few of the girls’ parents heard about it and freaked. Some of the moms checked out with their daughters. One dad drove all the way from Delaware to pick up his daughter. The roommate went with them. The others checked into hotels. I’ll guess they’ll be flying home today. Lisa dealt with it. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it.”
I’m sure I will.
“Thanks, Jamie,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Heather,” she says, looking as if she means it. “I guess none of this is going the way we’d hoped. Oh, and none of us is quite sure what to do about the stuff in the package room.”
“What stuff in the package room?” I ask, perplexed.
She hands me the key. I walk over to the door, unlock it, and can barely believe the sight that meets my eyes. The entire room is filled with deliveries. Not just roses, but every conceivable kind of flower, including lilies and carnations and huge sunbursts of gerbera daisies, bunches of balloons, teddy bears, candles, fruit baskets, store-bought cards, and handmade cards, some three feet tall. Most of them are addressed to Tania, but some are addressed to Jared, or “In Memory of . . .”