Dial Em for Murder

by Bates, Marni;

  I stubbornly ignored Ben’s advice. “We never looked for a Morgan Danvers.”

  “We also never looked for a Morgan Denvers or a Morgan Danningham; should we start looking for your dad in that needle stack of needles, too?” Ben demanded. “Best case scenario: your dad’s first name really is Morgan, which means he lied to your mom about his name before he left her. Remind me again why you want to find this asshole?”

  “Maybe he had a good reason.” The excuses I’d dreamed up a billion times came spilling out. “Maybe he thought he was putting my mom at risk, or someone was after him, or he needed to help somebody in trouble.”

  “If any of that is true,” Audrey said softly, “then don’t you think that’s one more reason to keep your distance, Em?”

  Probably.

  If I saw it laid out as a multiple choice question, it would probably have looked something like this: A sixteen-year-old girl is delivered a cryptic warning in a coffee shop. She can either:

  (a) Tell the police.

  (b) Tell her mom.

  (c) Accept a stranger’s invitation to attend a private academy while she futilely searches for a father who might not want to be found.

  The correct answer should have been obvious. Ben and Audrey had no trouble selecting the most practical solution. Except I couldn’t shake the feeling that option C was my best bet.

  I needed to find my dad. Maybe he wasn’t any better than Pierre the thief, or Kristoff the tooth-fairy terrorist, or Felix the scumbag, but he couldn’t be much worse. I mean, yeah, theoretically it was possible. Maybe he was a murderer or a gangbanger or a stodgy accountant who enjoyed reporting people to the IRS. But the man that my mom had described—the one who had said that he believed in the beauty of her dreams—sounded wonderful.

  He sounded like the kind of person who could help me become more. And if he was a disappointment, well, then at least I’d know for sure. It would be one less thing to spend my time imagining.

  “You guys don’t have to support it,” I said. “But this is happening. I’m going to track down my dad. I’m going to follow some crazy dead guy’s advice, because if I don’t I’m going to hate myself for taking the coward’s way out.” I unzipped the suitcase and began tossing in the shirts that lined my dresser drawer. “You’re both welcome to say ‘I told you so’ when . . . if this whole thing blows up horribly in my face.”

  Ben glared at me. “Are you ser—”

  “Okay, Em,” Audrey cut in smoothly. “You know we’ll always have your back. But that’s going to be a whole lot harder if you flee the country.”

  “I’m going to Emptor Academy. I’ve got a scholarship there.”

  That left Audrey at a complete lack for words. Too bad Ben wasn’t similarly shocked into silence.

  “Since when?!”

  “Since Sebastian St. James showed up at the police precinct and offered it to me. I guess the dead guy is his grandpa and—”

  “Well, isn’t that cozy. His grandpa dies and suddenly Sebastian St. Jerk’s first thought is to offer you a scholarship? Come on, Emmy. Please tell me you’re not going to take him up on this.”

  “You guys don’t have to support this,” I repeated.

  “So we’re either the assholes who don’t support your decision or we’re the assholes who let you stroll into danger alone,” Ben snarled. “That’s fan-freaking-tastic. I feel better already!”

  I continued throwing shirts into the suitcase, unable to come up with a response that wouldn’t annoy both of us further.

  “Why don’t we, uh, try to set up some ground rules?” Audrey suggested, looking nervously from Ben to me. “Emmy has to keep us updated with regular calls. No leaving the country without advanced notice. That sort of thing.”

  I nodded slowly. “I can handle that.”

  “How about handing over the Slate to the police so that they can do their job? That seems like a great ground rule to me.”

  “If I can’t find a solid lead on my dad within the next—” I paused to consider a good time frame. Ben was right when he said that knowing my dad’s real first name wouldn’t necessarily make him any easier to track down, “four months then I’ll turn in the Slate.”

  Ben didn’t look appeased, but he seemed to know it was the best promise he’d be able to weasel out of me.

  “You have to agree to one more thing,” Ben said, and I braced myself for an impossible demand. “Steer clear of that Sebastian guy. He sounds twisted.”

  I laughed in disbelief at the intensity in his face. “Oh, that won’t be a problem. I plan to give him a very wide berth.”

  As wide as possible, unless I had to dig into his past to figure out my own.

  Chapter 9

  My lack of sentimentality made it a whole lot easier to pack.

  I tossed in the clothes that I wore nearly every day (a few pairs of jeans, a handful of shirts with writing puns on them, some sweatshirts, and sneakers) and then, because I figured Emptor Academy was the kind of place where I might have to dress up in an attempt to blend in, I added a few dresses for good measure.

  There were a few framed photos on my dresser that I protected by wrapping them in a spare sweatshirt. The first picture was from elementary school, me happily dangling from the monkey bars above Audrey, both of us sporting enormous gap-toothed grins. The next was a classic birthday party picture where I concentrated on blowing out the candles of my homemade cake. My favorite showed me as a bald red-faced newborn in my mom’s arms. She looked so young in that photo, partly because she was wearing a pink loose-knit sweater and partly because she’d been captured with tendrils of her hair dancing in an invisible breeze.

  She’d been alone, and scared to death, and she’d done her best by me.

  Out of habit, I added a small photo album I’d hijacked years ago to the pile and tugged at the suitcase until I was able to yank the zipper closed. My hand rested on top of the hard plastic shell for a moment as I debated unpacking the photo album. Leaving the apartment with the only photographic evidence of my dad’s existence felt wrong. My mom didn’t have any good snapshots of his face because he’d insisted on taking all the photos. Still, I had spent hours flipping through the album from their time together in a pathetic attempt to understand him a little better. I’d spent over a decade trying to analyze those pictures before I realized I was simply driving myself insane and stopped.

  Still, the album was undeniable proof that once upon a time my parents had done stupid touristy things together. There were a whole series of shots of my mom rocking a classic Marilyn Monroe pose with her hands on her hips and her lips puckered in a teasing kiss with the Hollywood sign looming in the background. He’d documented over twenty of their dates, everything from the Griffith Observatory and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to window shopping along Rodeo Drive and strolling down Venice Beach.

  The last two photos were ones my mom had taken. All I could determine with any degree of certainty from the first photo was that my dad’s broad shoulders looked well-built and strong as he walked down a street lined with palm trees. The second image was a bit more informative. My mom had taken a super close up photo of his left eye that revealed every fleck of golden brown in an otherwise green iris. I’d nearly hacked both photos into a million pieces more times than I wanted to admit.

  I hated them. Loathed that the image of my father walking away was the closest we’d probably ever get. The only reason I hadn’t ripped the photos into confetti was because some stupid part of me thought I might need them someday. That I’d be walking past the lions at the New York Public Library and identify a total stranger as my father with the briefest of eye contact. Then he’d sweep me into his arms in a cinematic embrace that deserved swelling orchestral music. All the photos had actually accomplished was making me wonder if his right eye was lighter than the left, if my own moss-green irises were a faithful copy of that color.

  I wiped the palms of my hands on my jeans and turned to face Audrey and Ben who were ho
vering by the bed. They hadn’t assisted me with the packing, which unfortunately left them with nothing to do but obsess over my future.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to call Nasir?” Audrey asked for what had to be the hundredth time. “He might be able to help you, y’know, get settled in or something.”

  “If you want to call him, go for it. But I don’t need you to contact your ex-boyfriend for me. I can look out for myself.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been doing a killer job so far,” Ben countered. I ignored him.

  “Your call, Audrey,” I said. “I’m still willing to yell at Nasir for you. Trash his dorm room. You just say the word.”

  “No. That’s—no. It’s fine.”

  Yeah, I seriously doubted that whatever happened between Audrey and Nasir qualified as “fine,” but Audrey clearly wasn’t ready to talk about it. Part of me knew that I shouldn’t push—that she’d share when she was ready—but the temptation to pry had never been stronger.

  “Are you sure? I could, uh, give him the cut direct!”

  Ben stared at me as if I’d just provided proof that I’d lost my mind and needed to be institutionalized for my own good.

  “You know, like in Regency times when they’d pointedly ignore someone with a cold shoulder? I could do that!”

  Audrey smacked her forehead against her hand. “You’ve been binging on historical romances again, haven’t you, Emmy?”

  “Maybe,” I said, noncommittally.

  Ben looked revolted. “Christ, Emmy. You’re going to get yourself killed and your last words will be, ‘But that would work in a romance novel.’”

  “Will you look at the time?” I mimed checking a watch on my bare right wrist, “I’m all packed up and I’ve got somewhere to go.”

  Ben grabbed my suitcase and hauled it off my bed and onto the floor without another word. He’d wheel it out of the apartment complex, even if the elevator was broken and that meant hauling it down three flights of stairs. He’d complain, but he’d do it. Even now when he wanted to yell that it was a spectacularly bad idea to rely on a scholarship from Sebastian St. James, he’d only get extra snarky if I insinuated that I didn’t need him to maneuver the monstrosity on wheels.

  “Emmy, I’ve been doing some research on this school,” my mom said as I swung open my bedroom door. She blinked at Ben and Audrey, but didn’t say anything about their unannounced presence, probably because their comings and goings no longer came as much of a surprise to her. “Did you know that they have an Olympic-sized swimming pool?”

  No, but it didn’t come as a shock.

  “Uh, that’s great.”

  Thanks for the update, Mom, but I’m going to be a little preoccupied searching for my long-lost father to swim laps probably wouldn’t have gone over well. Not exactly the response she wanted to hear from me.

  “They also have a rock climbing wall, a fencing instructor, and an observation deck for anyone interested in astrology!” Her toffee-colored eyes widened as she pointed to the heavily smudged screen of our ancient computer. “This place is incredible! It’s like a summer camp.”

  The door to my mom’s bedroom jerked open, smacking against the wall with a disconcerting slam, and revealing an irritated Viktor. “Why so noisy out here?” he demanded in his thick Russian accent.

  My mom visibly withdrew into herself. “Sorry, sweetie.”

  I gritted my teeth to stop from pointing out that for a guy who didn’t pay rent he sure liked playing king of the castle.

  “I’m leaving, Vik,” I refused to flinch as his eyes narrowed in distaste at the nickname.

  His bushy eyebrows furrowed as he took in the golden-haired boy holding my suitcase and Audrey’s small feminine palm resting reassuringly on my arm.

  “You are moving in with him,” Viktor jerked his head at Ben, unconcerned with his own inability to remember my best friend’s name. “This is good. You stay there. Keep out of trouble.”

  His utter lack of concern for my well-being didn’t bother me in the slightest. It meant I didn’t have to fake more than passing civility myself.

  “Well, thanks, Vik. That’s real sweet of you.”

  My mom winced. “It really is for the best, honey. You’re going to love it there.”

  No more tears, Emmy, I ordered myself. Lock it down. There’s no point in wishing that she cared less about him and more about me. She can’t help the way she’s wired. Smile, nod, and walk out the door with your dignity intact.

  I almost crumbled when she pulled me into another hug.

  “I’ll see you later, Mom,” I managed to say around the lump in my throat before I followed Ben and Audrey out the door. It was easier to breathe with a wall separating me from Viktor, easier to pretend that he didn’t exist at all.

  Easier to keep my frayed emotions tightly knitted together.

  “Are you okay?” Audrey asked gently.

  “Fine. Great. Let’s go.”

  The longer we stood by the door the more likely it was that Mrs. Sampson would peek her head out into the hall and feel obliged to give her two cents. She’d probably see the suitcase and make some snide comment about the homeless youth population and how I’d fit right in.

  Ben’s face was remote and impassive, the way his expression always became when I showed up at his door needing a place to crash for the night. He’d gotten an extra mattress that he stored under his bed for me years ago. I kept waiting for his parents to protest, to point out that it wasn’t right for me to spend so much unsupervised time in their son’s bedroom now that we’d reached the age where hormones supposedly ruled our every decision, but they’d never objected.

  I had no intention of ever darkening the door to Ben’s apartment until this mess was cleared up. Just the thought of any of this craziness seeping further into my friends’ lives was enough to have me marching briskly toward the elevators. Toward Empty Academy.

  “It’s going to be fine, guys.” The lie slid smoothly off my tongue. “I’ll text you when I get there.”

  “And you’re sure you’ll be safe at Emptor?” Audrey sounded so skeptical I had to laugh.

  “Of course I’ll be fine, Aud. What’s the worst those snobs could do to me? Blind me with all their argyle? Crush me with the weight of their egos? I think I can handle it.”

  Ben didn’t release his hold on my suitcase until we reached the front of the building. “If the argyle becomes too much for you—”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence. I knew what he was offering.

  “Then I’ll stun them with a scathing indictment of their fashion choices.” I almost sounded like my usual snarky self as I smiled up at him. “They’ll be defenseless in the face of my wit.”

  “Wit, huh?” Ben didn’t look impressed.

  “Oh yeah. Sarcasm is always the best defense.”

  “Well, if you need something a bit stronger, I know somebody who would love to test his swing with a baseball bat on a moving target.”

  The image of Ben’s little brother Cameron screwing up his face in concentration while he aimed to knock Sebastian St. James right in the kneecap had my weak smile turning into a full-fledged grin. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And you’ll text us later tonight, right?” Audrey cut in. “No more of this I don’t want to bother you guys bullshit, Emmy.”

  I nodded. “Promise.”

  A sleek-looking black Town Car pulled up to the curb and an enormous man who looked like he shared genetics with a granite boulder stepped out of the driver’s side door and surveyed the three of us with a calm air of detachment.

  “Emmy Danvers?”

  “That’s, uh . . . me,” I gulped, suddenly wishing that I had insisted on transporting myself to the stupid school. I really hoped I wasn’t making some deranged psychopath’s job a million times easier by sliding into the backseat of this car. Not that the competitive-weightlifter-turned-chauffeur seemed to notice my nerves. He smoothly deposited my suitcase into the trunk with a single h
and, his eyes scanning our surroundings the whole time.

  “Holy crap,” Audrey murmured. “If this were a romance novel—”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be my line.”

  Audrey continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “He’d be the dragon who guards the castle.”

  It absolutely wasn’t the right time to explain the difference between fairytales and romance novels, so I merely nodded. Then I wrapped my arms around her for a quick hug before turning to Ben. My breath caught in my throat.

  His eyes were unbearably intense as they raked over my face. I’d never been any good at keeping secrets and Ben didn’t appear to have any trouble reading my fear.

  “Em—” he whispered and the rest of the world disappeared. It was pathetic, but my name on his lips had my heart pounding outrageously hard. I was too afraid of screwing up the moment to speak, so I waited silently for him to continue.

  I love you. I’ll miss you. Promise that you’ll come back to me.

  I’m only a phone call away.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  Too late.

  Chapter 10

  Either the enormous driver was under orders to be taciturn or he preferred keeping to himself, but the ride was a quiet one. He didn’t ask if I wanted to make any stops before heading to Emptor Academy. He didn’t recommend any detours or pry into my personal life, and I found myself wishing that he would provide a distraction. My imagination was spinning through worse-case scenarios and his silence wasn’t exactly helping.

  “So how long have you worked for the school?”

  No answer.

  “Do you like your job?”

  He grunted. It wasn’t much, but I chose to see it as progress.

  “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a chauffeur,” I lied. It wasn’t a sexy profession for a hero. At least not when compared with a billionaire Brazilian corporate tycoon, for example. “I suppose the hours can be pretty unpredictable. Do you get to pick and choose your clients or—”