Either way, it wasn’t mine to figure out. The police would gravitate here when they stopped toying with the body and started looking for other kinds of evidence. I was no cop, and I had no real desire to find out why Nate had been killed. I pushed the papers back into order and noticed that the computer was on and the massive Mac screen, like the size of me, was actually on, but asleep. Nate’s family wasn’t home. If anyone had been on here it would have been Nate before he was killed.
I accidentally bumped the mouse with the end of my pen and waited impatiently for the screen to wake up. The police were going to find their job too easy this time, I suspected. The page that came up was a calendar, no doubt Nate’s since it couldn’t reasonably be anyone else’s since no one else was in town. There, filled in for this morning, right before we’d arrived, was an appointment. Nate had done the police’s job for them. All they had to do was figure out who C.A. was, and they were good.
Whoa. Wait. C.A. I had seen that. I pushed the papers aside again and found Nate’s bank info. What if twelve thousand dollars from C.A. Harrison was actually twelve thousand dollars from C.A., for the purpose of demon-hunting Harrison?
I took a deep breath, mentally added another tally mark to the list of reasons I’d someday be going to hell, and snatched Nate’s drivers license off the desk, shoving it deep in the pocket of my jeans.
When I came back out into the living room, the police were talking to Harrison's grandmother, who was weeping as she answered. I heard her tell the male detective that she'd seen Nate just that morning.
"When was this?" the detective asked her.
She sniffed. "I don't know. 8:00 maybe?"
He jotted that information down, and I made mental note of it. If she'd been with him as late as 8:00, and we'd arrived two hours later, that didn't leave a big window of opportunity for whoever had killed him.
The detective finished with her, and I watched Harrison say goodbye to his grandparents. I couldn’t hear what he was saying because he stood too far away and spoke only in whispers, but his expression and body language spoke of sympathy and kindness. He was being a good grandson.
The female detective with the crazy hair pinned me, suddenly, with an icy glare. She crossed the room to me. “What did you say your relationship to the victim was, again?”
I evaluated what take would work best with her. The truth, most likely, since I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I didn’t have one. I’m Harrison’s friend. Nate’s cousin, I mean.” I indicated to Harrison where he still stood with his grandparents.
“We will be calling you to ask a few more questions.” Her voice was hard and brooked no argument. Which was why I was surprised when she asked, “Is that okay with you?”
No. It most certainly was not okay with me.
I flashed her a benign smile. “Of course.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything else.
Harrison joined me. “Are you ready?” he asked quietly.
I glanced around the house looking for any more details we could take with us when we went. There was nothing. The house was an empty shell. A glass windowed receptacle for this family’s loss. Sighing, I said I was, and we went back outside into the bitter mountain autumn.
Harrison was utterly silent, and I didn’t feel comfortable bringing up the fact it was possible someone had paid his cousin to torture him, and also possible that person later killed his cousin. Though I was going to have to address the plan I had brewing for tomorrow morning sometime today. Tomorrow would be too late.
I chanced a glance in his direction, and looking at him made me feel guilty. His hands clutched the wheel until his knuckles were white. His jaw was so tight I was sure his teeth must be grinding.
Finally I couldn’t handle it anymore. “I’m sorry, Harrison. This must be terrible for you.”
He glared at me as though I’d done something wrong, and I felt like every kind of idiot. Telling someone I felt bad for them was tough for me, and he was throwing it back in my face. “I appreciate that, Talia. But I’m a bigger jerk than you know. I’m not grieving, other than in that I feel bad for my grandparents and especially for my aunt and uncle. I’m pissed. Just infuriated. And the police made it clear they suspect me.”
“Anger is part of the grieving process,” I pointed out unhelpfully.
He didn’t even bother to look at me.
“I hated Nate. He was a total prick. In my entire life I cannot once remember actually enjoying time spent with him. And now he did some dumbass thing and got himself killed. All his life all he’s done is make his parents miserable. And now they’ll be miserable for the rest of their lives because he stole money from someone, or bought drugs from the wrong person, or talked crap about the wrong person. As usual, his family will pay and pay and pay, and there will never be any relief for them.”
Wow. I never would have pictured the path his mind had taken. Moreover I got the impression Harrison felt guilty because he felt this way. Nevertheless, he’d homed in on the real losers here. Nate’s parents, who had experienced a lifetime of heartache and now would never have the chance to see their son find his way.
Though I was enough of a cynic that I didn’t think he would have gotten any better.
Either way, Harrison’s brutal honesty had the reverse effect he seemed to think it would. I liked him much better than I had before, because somewhere underneath everything I didn’t understand about him, there was a person who was just like me: a little rough around the edges and a little bitter about life. Maybe that made me a bad person, but there it was anyway.
He pulled the recorder I’d found in his floor from his jacket pocket and tossed it in the back seat. “Well, I guess this is useless.”
Now came the bad part. “Actually, Harrison, I wouldn’t be so cavalier about dumping that. When did you start hearing those voices?”
The date he rattled off was the day after Nate had made that twelve thousand dollar deposit. Crap. “Does C.A. mean anything to you?”
He glanced at me before turning his attention back to the road. “No, should it?”
Bah. Once again, I had to be the bearer of bad news. “Unfortunately, yeah. I suspect that it should.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rules of the Scam #17
When things get dicey, redirect…
When I met Harrison outside of The Library at 6:45 on Monday morning his slumped shoulders and hesitant movements told me he still wasn’t entirely with me, though I’d spent hours the night before talking him through, via the walkie-talkie phones, why this was necessary. He was looking surly and a little bit nervous, but he’d done as I’d asked and dressed the part.
Apparently Nate had been a natty dresser, and Harrison was on the curb wearing a pink polo under a linen sport coat with dark blue jeans and square-toed loafers. He and Nate didn’t look enough alike to pass for each other to someone who knew them, but I was fairly certain they looked enough alike that a bored teller was unlikely to notice the differences. He glared at me one last time before sliding on reflective aviator sunglasses and jamming a tweed hat on his head. He looked like an ad in a men’s magazine.
In an attempt to not stand out, I’d dressed in black slacks and a trim silk shirt with my hair nicely done and understated makeup. I was rocking the young professional look today, and we were going to be made fun of the second we got to school.
“This is nuts,” he reminded me, one more time, as he was getting into the car. As though the fifty times he’d already mentioned he thought I was insane weren’t enough to really get the point across.
“If we don’t do this now how will we ever know who C.A. is? They gave Nate twelve thousand dollars, Harrison. Maybe to demon hunt you. We need to know who they are and why they did that before they decide they’d like to kill you, too.”
“Remind me again why we can’t leave this to the police?”
I flinched at the word police. “Well, for one, because you yourself said they suspect yo
u. Also, because we don’t know anything yet. I mean, what if it’s nothing? Do you want to tell crazy hair and partner that you think some dude paid your cousin twelve thousand dollars to make you think you were insane and then maybe they killed him, but you’re not sure why? Or maybe none of that happened at all?”
He sighed heavily. “I guess not.”
“All you have to do is ask the teller for a copy of the deposited check. If the person’s initials are C.A. then we find some way to prod the police. If their last name is Harrison, it’s all a coincidence, and we go on our merry way.”
He put the car in gear and jetted out into traffic. “I don’t know. I mean, this is illegal.”
“Well, you don’t have to. But the police know nothing about this whole demon thing. You can either try to explain the theory to them, or you can let it go and never wonder again. Can you handle never knowing?”
He gripped the wheel hard and then slammed it with the palm of his hand. “No.”
After that, he drove to the nearest branch of Nate’s bank without comment. It was hardly after seven, and the bank was opening its doors. Not an ideal time for scamming. A crowd of bored and restless people in line would have been more opportune.
I scanned the lobby as we breached the double doors.
One guard, mid-sixties, bored and disinterested, probably already thinking about lunch. Two people waiting in line, an elderly woman in a seasonably warm scarf and a man in a My Little Pony shirt. There was a third person, a woman at the desks where people applied for home loans, looking pale and nervous.
I took in the tellers. Only two were working. A young man who didn’t have a clue what he was doing yet and an efficiently working Latina woman in a silk blouse that tied at the neck in one of those weird trends that were inexplicably reemerging.
I wanted the man, but of course, he was already helping someone. The woman called for the next person in line. I considered delaying our approach in an attempt to get Mr. Third-Day-of-Training, but I couldn’t find a way to communicate the idea to Harrison before he started forward. Sighing, I hurried to catch up with him.
The teller took a moment before looking at us, her French manicured nails clicking against the counter as, with the speed and skill of a blackjack dealer, she arranged and stacked papers into piles before paper clipping them together and tossing them into her drawer. She gleamed her sparkling white smile our way.
“Can I help you?”
Harrison lowered his sunglasses to the end of his nose, but didn’t take them off. “I need a copy of a check I deposited three weeks ago.”
“Certainly. Can I see your driver’s license?”
It was a standard way of accessing accounts, but I still felt like she was on to us, asking for it. Boy, I was losing my edge. But, I tolerably managed looking bored, and Harrison did an incredible job of looking bored, like this was merely another errand, and moreover, one he didn’t want to be doing. He had considerably more acting skills than I might have given him credit for. Maybe it was some kind of genetic hand-me-down from Van.
The woman, whose tag said her name was Marla, glanced at the driver’s license, up to Harrison and back at the license again. She was suspicious. I could read it in her pinched mouth and the set of her hands. Cues I’d grown up learning to read. Time for a redirect right now.
I leaned slightly forward. “That ring is amazing.”
As predicted she turned her attention to me, her lips tilting in an immediate and sincere smile. The ring actually was amazing. Huge and sparkling on her slender finger. But frankly I would have said it was amazing if it had been butt ugly. “Thanks so much. It belonged to my husband’s grandmother.” She held it in my direction, Harrison’s ID forgotten.
“You must feel so fortunate to be so loved by his family. How many karats is that thing?”
“Three and a half,” she said with real affection as though she was married to the ring, not the man who had given it to her.
“Wow.” I gestured to the ring and glared at Harrison. “Now, see baby, that’s a ring.”
Harrison, without missing a beat, lowered his sunglasses again, took in the ring and then pushed them back up, glaring my way. “I got a very good deal.”
I was tingly with pride that Harrison was so freaking good at falling in line with my gig. At least I called it pride.
Marla picked the license back up, trying hard to restrain her superior smile of a girl with a really awesome ring. “Could you verify your address and account number for me, Mr. Malhotra?”
Harrison rattled off his cousin’s address, but was tripped up by the account number. I could tell he was searching for what to say. “1014106600,” I provided without hesitation.
I knew he was shocked only by the slight jerking of his hands in his pockets. To Marla he gave the slightest hint of a sheepish grin and shrugged. “She’s always been better at numbers than me.”
Marla gave him a vague placating kind of smile and starting tapping keys with the ease of someone who had done it two million times before. She frowned at the screen. “When did you deposit the check again, Mr. Malhotra?”
Harrison gave her the date again and added, “It was for twelve thousand dollars.”
Marla clicked a few more keys. “I see a twelve thousand dollar deposit, but it was made in cash. There was no check.”
I knew Harrison had to be disappointed, but he didn’t show it. He should have been a pro. He knew exactly what to do. “Well, that would explain why I couldn’t remember the check number.” He shrugged. “Sorry about that.”
The teller apologized to us, though it was in no way her fault, and gave Harrison back Nate’s license. We didn’t speak until we were safely in the car. Harrison strapped himself in and muttered, “That was pointless.”
“I have to admit I never anticipated that the deposit would have been made in cash, though I guess I should have. A check would have been much too easy to trace.”
“Well, what do we do now?”
I had no answer for that. As far as I could tell we’d hit a dead end. “Honestly, I guess we don’t do anything. We assume that CA Harrison is a person and it wasn’t a reference to you, and we let the cops handle the rest. Do you still want to keep looking for a reason for the demon hunting?”
“No, I guess we don’t need to.” His displeasure was like a tangible third person in the car, but he didn’t take it out on me, or act out at all. He just kind of slumped over in his seat.
I refused to dwell on the twinge of guilt I felt for taking his money to do something I didn’t really do. But we had agreed on twenty hours. Whether it took less time than that or now.
“Hey, though, you were incredible back there. You are a great actor.”
His eyebrows raised. “I guess Dad rubbed off on me some. Man, I thought she was going to call us on the license until you brought up the ring thing. That was brilliant.”
“Rule number seventeen. Redirect.”
He slanted a look my way before pulling out of the bank parking lot. “There’re those rules again.”
Shoot. I needed to watch that. Harrison made it too easy somehow to say whatever I was thinking. “Oh, and the ‘she’s always been better at numbers than me?’ Amazing. You are an artist at making things up.”
“Are you trying this redirect thing on me now?”
Jeez. I would really have to watch myself with him. “I’m just saying I was impressed, that’s all.”
“How did you know that account number, anyway? That was weird. I mean, I know you saw it, but that was only once.”
“The battle of Hastings.”
“Come again?” He took the three blocks between the bank and Metro High like we had nowhere to go. People were jetting around us.
“It’s the battle of Hastings. I didn’t have to try to remember the account number. The battle of Hastings was October 14, 1066. That’s Nate’s account number with a couple of zeroes thrown on the end. 1014106600. It’s a simple trick.”
&n
bsp; “I doubt Nate did that on purpose. He doesn’t remember his own parents’ birthdays.” Harrison’s mouth pulled tight. “I guess I mean to say that he didn’t.”
I couldn’t make any comment on that. It would take Harrison awhile to remember that he needed to speak of Nate in the past tense from now on.
“I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose. It was a coincidence that worked out in my favor.”
Harrison pulled into the massive south parking lot of Albuquerque Metropolitan High School. “It’s interesting to me that you’re so terrible at remembering people’s names and yet so insanely good at remembering numbers.”
“Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?”
That was the last thing I needed. I could have given him a million answers. Numbers were reliable. They were constant and steadfast. I didn’t have to guess with numbers. People weren’t like that. But I didn’t want to give him anything. I didn’t want to be questioned.
“No, I’m saying it’s weird. That’s all.” It was obvious he thought I was out of my mind, and maybe I was. But I hated feeling like I was being picked at, that people were trying to figure me out. I was no one’s mark.
The silence in the car was deafening and awkward. I was definitely sorry that I hadn’t reacted like a normal person and laughed the whole thing off. Either way, it didn’t matter. It was over now. The whole thing was. Harrison wasn’t being hunted by a demon, I didn’t need to figure anything else out, my mom’s debt was paid, and we could all go on our merry ways.
If that was a depressing idea, I needed to spend more time going over the reason again that I didn’t have, or need, good friends. I flung open the car door and stepped out, wishing I’d thought to bring another set of clothes. Harrison got out too, tossing his sunglasses and hat on the seat before he shut the door.
“I’m sorry that you didn’t find out anything, and I’m sorry about your cousin,” I said. “Obviously, though, it’s a good thing your original issue is resolved.”
He cocked his head, a smile twitching at the edges of his lips. Hell if I knew what was funny though. “Thank you, Talia. You’ve been very helpful. I can honestly say I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
The Tell-Tale Con Page 6