Genuine Fraud

by E. Lockhart

  He hadn’t heard Paolo call Jule Imogen. Had he?

  No.

  Maybe.

  No.

  Why did Forrest want Paolo investigated? Did he think Imogen had been stalked and murdered? Did he think Imogen had been romantically involved with Paolo? Did he think Jule was lying?

  Jule packed her bags and went to a youth hostel she’d read about, on the other end of town.

  THIRD WEEK OF FEBRUARY, 2017

  LONDON

  Eight days before Jule left for the youth hostel, she called Forrest’s cell from the London flat. Her hands were shaking. She sat on the kitchen counter next to the bread box and let her feet dangle. It was very early in the morning. She wanted to get this call over with.

  “Hey, Jule,” he said. “Is Imogen back?”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “Then why are you calling me?” The disdain in Forrest’s voice was palpable.

  “I have some bad news,” Jule said. “I’m sorry.”

  “What is it?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the newsagent’s. Which is apparently what they call newsstands over here.”

  “You should step outside.”

  “All right.” Jule waited while he walked. “What is it?” Forrest asked.

  “I found a note, in the flat. From Imogen.”

  “What kind of note?”

  “It was in the bread box. I’m going to read it.” Jule held the note in her fingers. There were the tall, loopy letters of Immie’s signature, her typical phrases, and her favorite words.

  Hey, Jule. By the time you read this, I’ll have taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Then I’ll have hailed a taxi to the Westminster Bridge.

  I’ll have stones in my pockets. Lots of stones. I’ve been collecting them all week. And I will be drowned. The river will have me and I will feel some relief.

  I’m sure you’ll wonder why. It’s hard to give an answer. Nothing is right. I don’t feel at home anywhere. I haven’t ever felt at home. I don’t think I ever will.

  Forrest couldn’t understand. Neither could Brooke. But you—I think you can. You know the me that nobody else can love. If there is a me, at all.

  Immie

  “Oh God. Oh God.” Forrest said it over and over.

  Jule thought of the beautiful Westminster Bridge with its stone arches and its green railings, and of the heavy, cold river flowing underneath it. She thought of Immie’s body, a white shirt floating around her, facedown in the water, in a pool of blood. She really did feel the loss of Imogen Sokoloff acutely, more than Forrest ever could. “She wrote the note days ago,” Jule told Forrest when he finally went silent. “She’s been gone since Wednesday.”

  “You said she went to Paris.”

  “I was guessing.”

  “Maybe she didn’t jump.”

  “She left a suicide note.”

  “But why? Why would she?”

  “She never felt at home. You know that was true about her. She said it in the note.” Jule swallowed and then said what she knew Forrest would want to hear. “What do you think we should do? I don’t know what to do. You’re the first person I told.”

  “I’m coming over,” said Forrest. “Call the police.”

  Forrest arrived at the flat two hours later. He looked hollow and disheveled. He brought his bags from the hotel and declared he would sleep on the couch in the den until things were settled. Jule could take the bedroom. Neither of them should be alone, he said.

  She didn’t want him there. She was feeling sad and vulnerable. With Forrest, she preferred to have her armor on. Still, he was good in a crisis, she gave him that. He set himself to texting and telephoning people, and he talked to everyone with an extreme gentleness Jule hadn’t known he possessed. The Sokoloffs, their friends from Martha’s Vineyard, Immie’s college friends: Forrest got in touch with everyone personally, checking them neatly off a list he’d made.

  Jule called the London police. They came in, bustling, while Forrest was on the phone with Patti. The cops took the note in Imogen’s handwriting, then asked for statements from Jule and Forrest.

  They agreed it didn’t look like Immie had gone traveling. Her suitcases were in the closet, as were her clothes. Her wallet and credit cards were in a bag they found. Her laptop wasn’t in the flat, however, and her driver’s license and passport were missing.

  Forrest asked a police officer if the suicide note could be a forgery. “Maybe a kidnapper wanted to put suspicion elsewhere,” he said. “Or maybe it was a note she was forced to write? Is there a way you could tell if she was forced to write it?”

  “Forrest, the note was in the bread box,” Jule reminded him gently. “Immie left it for me in the bread box.”

  “Why would Miss Sokoloff be kidnapped?” asked the officer.

  “Money. Someone could be holding her for ransom. It’s strange that her laptop is missing. Or she could have been murdered. Like, by someone who made her write the note.”

  The officers listened to Forrest’s theories. They pointed out that he himself was the most suspicious person: an ex-boyfriend who had recently arrived in the city looking for Imogen. But they also made it clear they didn’t really suspect a crime of any kind. They looked for signs of a struggle but found none.

  Forrest said Imogen could have been abducted from outside the apartment, but the police officers reminded him about the bread box. “Suicide note makes it clear,” they said. They asked if that was Immie’s handwriting, and Jule said it was. They asked Forrest, and he said it was, too. Or at least, it looked like it.

  Jule gave them Imogen’s UK phone. It showed only calls to local museums and emails from her parents, Forrest, Vivian Abromowitz, and a few more friends Jule could identify. The officers asked for Immie’s bank records. Jule gave them some papers printed out from the missing computer. They were in a drawer of the desk in the living room.

  The officers promised to search the river for Imogen’s body, but they also noted that if her body was weighted with stones, it wouldn’t surface easily. It had probably been moved away from the Westminster Bridge by the current.

  If they found her at all, it might take days or even weeks.

  END OF DECEMBER, 2016

  LONDON

  Six weeks earlier, Jule arrived in London for the first time. It was the day after Christmas. She took a cab to the hotel she’d booked. The English money was too large to fit neatly into her wallet. The cab was mad expensive, but she didn’t care. She was funded.

  The hotel was an old and formal building, remodeled inside. A gentleman wearing a checked jacket sat at a desk. He had a record of the reservation and showed Jule to her room personally. He chatted while a porter carried her things. She loved the way he talked, as if he’d stepped out of a Dickens novel.

  The walls of the suite were papered in black-and-white toile. Heavy brocade curtains covered the windows. The bathroom had heated floors. The towels were cream-colored and textured with small squares. Lavender soap was wrapped in brown paper.

  Jule ordered a steak from room service. When it came, she ate the whole thing and drank two large glasses of water. After that, she slept for eighteen hours.

  When she woke, she was elated.

  This was a new city and a foreign country, the city of Vanity Fair and Great Expectations. It was Immie’s city, but it would become Jule’s own, just as the books Immie loved had become part of Jule, too.

  She pushed open the curtains. London stretched out below her. Red buses and beetle-black taxis crawled through traffic on narrow streets. The buildings looked hundreds of years old. She thought of all the lives being led down there, people driving on the left, eating crumpets, drinking tea, watching telly.

  Jule was stripped of guilt and sorrow, as if she’d shed a skin. She saw herself as a lone vigilante, a superhero in repose, a spy. She was braver than anyone in the hotel, braver than all of London, braver than ordinary by far.

&
nbsp; Back in the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, Immie had told Jule about owning a flat in London. She had said, “The keys are right here. We could go tomorrow,” and patted her bag.

  But she hadn’t mentioned it ever again.

  Now Jule called the building manager who handled the flat and told him Immie was in town. Could he arrange for cleanup and an airing? Could some groceries be brought in, and fresh flowers? Yes, everything could be arranged.

  When the flat was ready, Immie’s key turned easily in the lock. The place was a large one-bedroom with a den in St. John’s Wood, near lots of shops. It occupied the top floor of a white town house and had windows that looked out onto trees. The cupboards held soft towels and sheets with a ticking stripe. There was only a bathtub, no shower. The fridge was tiny and the kitchen barely furnished. Immie had fixed up the flat before she’d learned to cook. But that didn’t matter.

  The June after high school graduation, Jule knew, Imogen had attended a summer abroad program in London. While she was there, she bought the flat with encouragement from her financial advisor. The sale had gone through quickly, and Immie and her friends had shopped in the Portobello Road market for antiques and in Harrods for textiles. Immie had covered the front door with instant photographs from that summer—maybe fifty of them. Most featured her and a crew of girls and boys, arms around each other, in front of places like the Tower of London or Madame Tussauds.

  Jule put her things away in the flat and then took the photographs down. She threw them in the trash and took the garbage bag down to the basement.

  —

  In the weeks that followed, Jule acquired a new laptop and put the two old ones in the incinerator. She went to museums and restaurants, eating steaks in quiet establishments and burgers in noisy pubs. She was charming with servers. She chatted with booksellers and told them Immie’s name. She talked to tourists—temporary people—and sometimes went to a meal with them or joined them at the theater. She felt as she imagined Immie would: welcome everywhere. She worked out every day and she ate only food she liked. Other than that, she lived Imogen’s life.

  At the start of her third week in London, Jule went to Madame Tussauds. The museum is a famous attraction, full of Bollywood actors, members of the royal family, and the dimpled stars of boy bands, all sculpted in wax. The place was crowded with loud American children and their aggravated parents.

  Jule was looking at the wax model of Charles Dickens, who sat morosely in a hard wooden chair, when someone spoke to her.

  “If he lived now,” said Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone, “he’d have shaved that baldy head.”

  “If he lived now,” said Jule, “he’d be a TV writer.”

  “Do you remember me?” he asked. “I’m Paolo. We met in the summer on Martha’s Vineyard.” He had a bashful grin. He was wearing old jeans and a soft orange T-shirt. Beat-up Vans. He’d been backpacking, Jule knew. “You changed your hair,” he added. “I wasn’t sure it was you, at first.”

  He looked good. Jule had forgotten how good he looked. She had kissed him once. His thick black hair was in his face. His cheeks looked slightly sunburnt and his lips a bit chapped. Maybe he’d been skiing.

  “I remember you,” she said. “You can’t decide between butterscotch and hot fudge, you get sick on carousels, you might want to be a doctor someday. You actually play golf, which is stodgy; you’re traveling the world, which is interesting; you follow girls around museums and sneak up on them when they stop to look at a famous novelist made of wax.”

  “I’m just gonna say thank you,” said Paolo, “even though you made mean remarks about golf. I’m glad you remember me. Have you read him?” He pointed at Dickens. “I was supposed to in school, but I blew it off.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the best one, you think?”

  “Great Expectations.”

  “What’s it about?” Paolo wasn’t looking at the waxwork. He was looking at Jule, intently. He reached out and ran his hand down her arm while she answered. It was a very confident move, to touch her like that, seconds after reintroducing himself. She didn’t usually let people touch her, but she didn’t mind with Paolo. He was very gentle.

  “This orphan boy falls in love with a rich girl,” she told him. “Her name is Estella. And Estella has been trained her whole life to break men’s hearts, and perhaps she has no heart of her own. She was brought up by a crazy lady who was jilted at the altar.”

  “So this Estella breaks the boy’s heart?”

  “Many times over. On purpose. Estella doesn’t know how to do anything else. Breaking hearts is her only power in the world.” They walked away from Dickens and into a different section of the museum. “Are you here on your own?” Jule asked.

  “With a friend of my dad’s. I’ve been staying with him for a few days. He wants to show me the city, only he keeps having to sit down. Artie Thatcher, you know him?”

  “No.”

  “His sciatica flared. He went to rest in the tea shop.”

  “And how come you’re in London?”

  “I did the backpacking thing through Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Netherlands, France again. Then I came here. I was traveling with my friend, but he went home for Christmas, and I didn’t feel like going back, so I came to stay with Artie for the holidays. You?”

  “I have a flat here.”

  Paolo leaned in close and pointed down a dark hall. “Hey, there’s the Chamber of Horrors, down that hall. Will you go in there with me? I need protection.”

  “From what?”

  “From the crazy-scary waxworks, that’s what,” Paolo said. “It’s going to be a prison with escaped inmates. I looked it up. Lots of blood and guts.”

  “And you want to go?”

  “I love blood and guts. But not alone.” He smiled. “Are you coming to protect me from the inmates of the asylum, Imogen?” They stood at the door to the Chamber of Horrors now.

  “Sure,” said Jule. “I’ll protect you.”

  There had never been three boyfriends at Stanford.

  There had never been three boyfriends anywhere. Or even one boyfriend.

  Jule didn’t need a guy, wasn’t sure she liked guys, wasn’t sure she liked anyone.

  She was supposed to meet Paolo at eight o’clock. She brushed her teeth three times and changed her clothes twice. She put on jasmine perfume.

  When she spotted him waiting by the carousel where they had arranged to meet, she nearly turned around and left. Paolo was watching a street performer. He had his scarf wrapped tightly against the January wind.

  Jule told herself she shouldn’t get close to people. No one was worth the risk. She would leave right now, she was about to leave—but then Paolo saw her and ran at her, top speed, like a little boy, stopping short before he crashed. He swung her around by the wrists and said, “Jeez, it’s like a movie. Can you believe we’re in London? Everything we know is on the other side of the ocean.”

  And he was right. Everything was on the other side of the ocean.

  Tonight would be okay.

  Paolo took Jule walking along the Thames. Street performers played accordions and walked low tightropes. The two of them poked around in a bookshop for a while, and then Jule bought them both cotton candy. Folding sweet pink clouds into their mouths, they walked along to the Westminster Bridge.

  Paolo took Jule’s hand and she let him. He rubbed her wrist softly now and then with the pad of his thumb. It sent a warm thrill up her arm. She was surprised that his touch could feel so comforting.

  The Westminster Bridge was a series of stone arches over the river, gray and green. Light from the lamps on top of the bridge shone onto the rushing river.

  “The worst thing in that Chamber of Horrors was Jack the Ripper,” said Paolo. “Know why?”

  “Why?”

  “One, because he was never caught. And two, because there’s a rumor that he killed himself by jumping off this exact bridge.”

  “Get out.”

/>   “He did. He was probably standing right here when he jumped. I read it on the Internet.”

  “That is complete trash,” said Jule. “No one even knows who Jack the Ripper really was.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It is trash.”

  He kissed her then, under the streetlight. Like a scene from a film. The stones were damp in the fog and glistened. Their coats flapped in the wind. Jule shivered in the night air, and Paolo put his warm hand against her neck.

  He kissed like he couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else on the planet, because wasn’t this so nice, and didn’t this feel good? As if he knew she didn’t let people touch her, and he knew she would let him touch her, and he was the luckiest guy in the world. Jule felt as if the river underneath her were running through her veins.

  She wanted to be herself with him.

  Wondered if she was being herself. If she could go on being herself.

  And if anyone could love the person she was.

  They pulled apart and walked in silence for a minute. A crowd of four drunk young women headed toward them, crossing the bridge precariously on high heels. “I can’t believe they made us leave,” one of them complained, slurring her words.

  “They should want our business, those buggers,” said another. Their accents were Yorkshire.

  “Ooh, he’s cute.” The first one looked at Paolo from ten feet away.

  “You think he wants to go get a drink?”

  “Ha! Cheeky.”

  “I dunno. Ask him.”

  One woman called out, “If you want a night out, good sir, you can come along with us.”

  Paolo blushed. “What?”

  “Are you coming?” she asked. “Just you.”

  Paolo shook his head. The women walked away, giggling, and he watched them until they were off the bridge. Then he took Jule’s hand again.

  The mood was different, though. They no longer knew what to say to each other.

  Finally, Paolo said: “Did you know Brooke Lannon?”

  What?