The Tell-Tale Con

by Aimee Gilchrist

  I felt like an idiot.

  But I was here to work, and work I would. I took a couple of seconds to watch the other teenagers inside the clubhouse when we opened the glass double doors. I copied their studied boredom and indifference with just a soupçon of disdain. No one gave me a second look, though a satellite could have seen my shiny skirt from space.

  We wandered through the building, past three dining rooms with varying themes of décor and levels of formality, until we reached another open room. I wasn’t sure where we were, but I was certain I knew where to find Kanako Poe. She was standing near the door to the pool area, her white maxi dress setting off her beautiful skin and her face largely concealed by an enormous white sun hat.

  Sam pointed circumspectly. “There she is.”

  “I know. I recognize her.”

  “Okay, I’m going to go ask around, see what people seem to think she feels for her darling boy. You got this?”

  I did. I also got a sinking sensation when I considered how eager my acquaintances seemed to be to hop on the investigation train. How could they be so into it when I kept asking myself every single day what the hell I was doing?

  I took a deep breath, oddly much more nervous to be speaking to Kanako than anyone else in the last few days. Even Ana. Of course, it was no doubt because I couldn’t pretend to be anything. She already knew who I was. That’s what it was. Or something.

  Sighing, I headed for the double doors like I was going out to the pool. I planned to intercept her with surprise, as though I couldn’t imagine I’d run into her here. But I didn’t have to do anything. After I took three steps in her direction, she lifted her head, saw me, acknowledged me immediately and then started my way. I was surprised she’d want to speak to me as we barely knew one another.

  Maybe she was bored.

  I saw My Sharona sitting in a chair at the side of the room, but she was reading, manga which I found hilarious, and didn’t look up at all. “You’re Harrison’s girlfriend,” Kanako said matter-of-factly.

  I stopped myself from flinching. Instead I shrugged indifferently. It would be in my best interest in terms of what she’d be willing to say to me, if she thought I was Harrison’s main squeeze or whatever. “I think that might be a bit more than it is. No one has used the G word yet. And you’re Harrison’s mom.”

  To my surprise she didn’t correct me. That wasn’t what I’d expected at all. Instead she slanted me with a look that mixed two parts curiosity with one part censure that I was relatively sure I didn’t deserve. “I hope you will rub off on Harrison.”

  Well, I had to say that was the first time a parent had ever laid that one on me. “I…” She’d honestly caught me so off guard I had no idea what to say. “Why?”

  “You, I always see working. Even here you don’t come to play like the other girls. But to work.” For a moment I thought she knew I was here to investigate her, but then I realized she was referring to my clothing. “Harrison is a very smart boy. So smart. I’m sure you know this. He could be amazing.”

  The implied message was he could be amazing, but he wasn’t. I felt indignation rising. “I think he’s amazing.”

  I remembered that I was supposed to be his girlfriend, or whatever. A girlfriend would have wanted to defend him. So what if her words irritated me anyway? Responding was rational. I was not too involved.

  She hmmphed. “Harrison is brilliant. But he’s lazy. So lazy. Everything is too easy for him, so he doesn’t try anymore. No one can succeed that way. Even people who are naturally incredibly talented.”

  “He just doesn’t know what he wants to do.”

  What was I saying? I was supposed to be interviewing Kanako, crossing her off my suspect list. Not wanting to punch her for saying stuff that was true. Harrison did seem indifferent. He was a brilliant guy, someone with amazing capacities, who didn’t appear to have any particular interest in anything. “He tried at chess.”

  “Yes. He tried. Then he succeeded, and now he doesn’t care anymore. I am glad he has you to care about. You will fix him.”

  Gah! I had no clue how to respond to that, but it made me want to run away screaming.

  “Maybe he doesn’t need fixed,” I ground out, because I had an inkling that people in country clubs were less than enthusiastic about their member’s guests running around screaming, even if they were properly dressed.

  She waved me off with one delicate hand. A charm bracelet tinkled at her wrist. “Of course he does. His leaving chess is another sign of his downward spiral. In five years he’ll be turning into his father. That is not what the world needs.”

  I wasn’t certain what to read into that comment. Clearly she found some aspect of Van’s personality wanting, but I wasn’t certain what part she meant. Nor did I want to ask. But I was not looking at the person who wanted to kill Harrison. I was also positive that she didn’t hate him the way he thought. She was under the assumption that she was motivating him.

  “I think Harrison will be fine. He just…needs to live.”

  She nodded sagely and smiled a wan Mona Lisa smile. “This is what I’m saying. Harrison is alive, but already he isn’t living. He’s too young to be so indifferent. You must make him care again.”

  I kind of wished I could. “That’s a big job,” I whispered.

  She slid on her huge sunglasses. “I think you’re up for it.” She turned and headed for the door without so much as a goodbye.

  “That was weird,” I mumbled, turning around and almost bumping into some guy who couldn’t be named anything but Blaine. He gave me a sharp look, took a long second to undress me visually, and then walked away.

  “So was that,” I muttered.

  Shaking my head, I went to find Sam. She was in the dining room that was obviously intended for the younger members of the club. Casual dining was going on around us. Littler kids, some actually toddlers, were picking at their food at tables dressed in cotton tablecloths. Sam was talking to a young guy, blond, good looking, and one hundred percent douchey.

  I joined them without an invitation.

  “Sam, we don’t want to be late for our game.” I smiled at the guy and gave Sam a pointed look.

  “Okay, I’m coming.” She scowled my way and then turned a brilliant smile on Mr. Tool. “I’ll see you later, Dennis.”

  Dennis? That was odd name for someone who looked like they belonged in the cast of The O.C.

  Of course, once we were outside we headed for the car and not the courts. “That was super fast,” she complained. “I didn’t get to talk to anyone.”

  “Except Dennis?”

  She flushed. “Well, he was right there.”

  “It’s okay. I found out what I wanted to know by talking to Kanako. Let’s go get these stupid clothes off.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Rules of the Scam #37

  Information is a good liar’s best friend…

  When I got home, Mom was in the main area talking to a client whose appointment didn’t start for another ten minutes. I recognized her. She’d been in before. She always wanted to know if her married boyfriend was going to leave his wife. I was pretty sure that I could have predicted the answer to that one.

  Mom was telling the woman she needed to prep the room for their spiritual experience. She laid her hand on the lady’s shoulder and used her fake Eastern European Mystic Madam voice. “Megdala knows all. We will see the truth.”

  Then she stopped, stared at the wall, and her eyes lost all their focus. She pointed at me. “It will be fine. Don’t bother to worry.” She wasn’t bothering either, at least not with the MMM voice at the moment.

  “Worry about what, mo…Meg?”

  She didn’t answer me. She just glanced at the desk and said, “Well, don’t leave them waiting. You’re supposed to get it. Remember, I don’t do that.”

  She turned and wandered aimlessly back into her work area, bouncing off the doorframe as she went. Good lord. My mind immediately went to how much a CT sc
an or something would cost. We didn’t have insurance, but she was showing every sign of something like early onset dementia.

  The phone rang, making me jump. I glanced back after my mom, my brain spinning. I snatched it up because it was my job to get it, and Mom didn’t like them to wait through more than two rings. Don’t leave them waiting…I almost slammed the receiver back down, but instead I muttered, “Mystic Madam Megdala’s.”

  The person on the other end asked me if they could do a party here at the shop. Distracted, I glanced at Mom’s client. She looked confused. “No, I’m sorry. She doesn’t do that.”

  I nearly dropped the phone when I realized what was coming out of my mouth. No. My mom was not truly psychic. I refused to believe it. This must have been her new shtick to impress the clients. Arrange for a call to prove her precog ability. And mistress woman was impressed, judging from the awe on her face. I was going to kill Mom.

  I hung up the phone and opened my mouth to say something, anything, to the pale and bewildered client, when I heard sirens outside the window. They came to a stop right outside of Mr. Wong’s, and I knew. I ran to the window and looked down, spotting the line of cars parked right in front of The Library. Two black and whites, sirens blaring, and an unmarked black sedan with a temp light on the roof, flashing red.

  I let loose with a cuss word that startled my mom’s impressed client out of her reverie. She stared at me as I went for the stairs, rounding the corner so fast that I slammed hard against the wall of the stairwell before using the ricochet to gain some speed and hit the stairs running. When I burst into Mr. Wong’s, he looked up from his copy of this month’s Cosmo. “Talia, you…”

  I held up my hand. “Not now, Mr. Wong.”

  I darted in and out of traffic like a demented game of Frogger, hitting the stairs in front of The Library at the same time as the doors burst open. The uniformed cops came out first, three of them, followed by Good Cop and Bad Cop. Between them was Harrison, arms behind his back, bound, no doubt, by handcuffs. He saw me and flinched slightly, but then looked up, his gaze clear and direct.

  Bad Cop was already talking, her demented curls dancing in the breeze. “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed to you. You have the right…”

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, nearly hysterical. It was a stupid question. What they were doing was pretty obvious. They were arresting Harrison.

  “Oh, it’s you.” Good Cop smiled slightly, like I might be happy to see him. “You’ve saved us the trouble of coming over for you. You’re coming with us.”

  Had I been arrested, it wouldn’t have been the first time. But as it was they only wanted me for questioning. Again. But they were a lot more interested in my answers than they had been the first time around, back at Nate’s house. This time my mother was called, and I was sent to sit in an interview room to wait. My requests to know what was going on with Harrison were denied. As was my request to go pee.

  About an hour into my waiting game, I asked to make a statement without my mother present because who the heck knew where she was. This thrilled both Good Cop and Bad Cop, and Good Cop came in with a recorder, reminding me again that I was willingly speaking without my mother present. Bad Cop must have stayed in with Harrison.

  When the questions started I realized that I was not being questioned about Nate’s murder. At least not yet. I was being questioned about the bank. The cashier had identified Harrison in a photo lineup. She was less certain about me. That seemed unfair that Harrison was pegged and there was some debate on my end since the whole thing had been my idea. But that didn’t mean I was going to fess up to it. I didn’t know what Harrison was telling them, and maybe he could still get out of it.

  If he was lucky they’d arrested him for impersonating Nate and not for murder. We could do something with the first charge. Less so with the second.

  “So you deny entering a bank with Harrison Poe and attempting to impersonate Nathaniel Malhotra to the cashier?” Good Cop demanded, once I’d been apprised for the third time that I was willingly handing over my right to have my mommy hold my hand during these proceedings.

  “Certainly, I am. No one would ever believe I was Nate Malhotra.”

  For a second he was confused, and I could see his brain grinding away while he backtracked and tried to figure out what I was saying. His mouth pinched. “You’re going to be this kind, are you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure what kind you mean.” Though I’d been arrested in the past, I’d never been charged. It would be interesting to see if, now that I’d gone away from my parents and on to the straight and narrow, that record would change.

  “Did you go to the bank with Harrison Poe?”

  I sighed. “Okay, look, we both know you couldn’t care less about the bank. You want something you can arrest Harrison for, while you try to prove he murdered Nate. He didn’t murder Nate. I was with him. Unless he could be two places at once. And if he can, I want him to teach me how, because I will never go to class again.”

  “I want you to tell me all about that morning again.”

  So I did. I told him how we’d gotten up early. How we’d left at practically the crack of dawn so we could catch Nate before he went to his study group. I threw in details because I knew that Good Cop would hate them. Like what we’d been wearing, Harrison’s taste in music, what I thought of Nate’s house and the much colder weather in the mountains.

  “It doesn’t matter how many times you ask,” I told him, almost gently.

  I was feeling sorry for him now that I’d given him a twenty minute explanation about my hatred for rap music and how cool Harrison’s sweater was and why I didn’t understand the love of Starbucks that everyone seemed to have. “Nate’s grandmother dropped by in the morning and left at eight, and he was still alive. At eight o’clock Harrison was with me in his car talking about our parents. You can’t change that. If you check cell phone records, which no doubt you’ve already done, you know this is true. Harrison didn’t kill Nate.”

  Good Cop slumped back in his seat and scowled at me like I was the person who had invented logic, and now it was coming back to haunt him. “He’s still under arrest for attempting to illegally obtain access to Nate’s accounts.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Even if he couldn’t worm his way out of it, he wasn’t looking at hard time. Doing community service. For like ten hours.

  Suddenly, the door was opened by one of the uniformed cops, and Mom burst in, looking like a suburban soccer mom. I wasn’t sure where she’d gotten khaki pants and loafers. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

  Good Cop stood. “We had some questions about a murder.”

  Mom’s indignation evaporated. She didn’t need to rescue me from that. We were a bunch of crooks and liars, but she wasn’t worried I was guilty of murder. We didn’t mess with that crap. “Oh. Well, are you done?”

  Good Cop sighed, his entire body shuddering. “Yes, I suppose we are.”

  Mom got me out of there as quickly as possible, adjusting her behavior from subservient, to hovering to demanding, as the people we encountered demanded it. We were back at Mr. Wong’s in no time.

  “Talia, stay out of murder,” she said at last, pulling Mr. Wong’s aged silver compact up to the curb. “It’s not good, that stuff.”

  “No one murdered anyone,” I said. “Actually, that isn’t true. Someone did murder someone. It just wasn’t me or anyone I know.”

  She sighed. “Your dad isn’t going to be pleased.”

  I sighed too. “Yeah, because I’m concerned he might be disappointed in me. His standards are so high.” I got out of the car and headed upstairs, locking myself in my room before she could try to talk to me anymore.

  What I wanted to do was talk to Harrison. Barring that, I had to do something. I was certain that Kanako wouldn’t let Harrison fester in prison. She would bail him out. Waiting until she did was the hard par
t.

  I took all the names that Harrison had given me and called Sam first, then Hector. My desktop was on the fritz, and I didn't have a laptop. Even if I’d had one, Mr. Wong’s wasn’t exactly a WiFi hot spot.

  I divvied up the list between them, the three-way call feature making the whole thing much more efficient. “I can’t get out right now, but I’ll meet up with you in the morning. I appreciate it.”

  “So you want us to look for any recent articles about these people? I mean, some of these people are pretty famous.” Sam sounded doubtful.

  “No, not any articles. Articles about major changes they’ve made recently or ways their lives seem to be exponentially downward spiraling. What about you, Hector? You think you’ve got it under control?”

  “Yup.” He didn’t offer anything else so I told them I’d see them in the morning, thanked them again, and went to bed. It was very late, but I couldn’t sleep. I was waiting for a call from Harrison. Which annoyed me at the same time as I had to embrace it, since it was true. I finally fell asleep about two in the morning, the yellow rubber phone tucked into the crook of my arm like a bizarre teddy bear.

  The ringing of the phone woke me up at six thirty Monday morning. I stared at the display with blurry eyes and realized the number belonged to Harrison. Also that I was still wearing my contacts and my eyes were grainy and irritated. I scrambled to answer, almost falling out of bed in my haste.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey.” Harrison’s voice sounded as irritated as my eyes, low and hoarse.

  “Are you okay?”

  I hated that I had asked and I hated that I was desperate for the answer. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m at home.”

  I closed my eyes, breathing in a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry. I guess you were right. We shouldn’t have gone to the bank.”

  I could practically hear him shrug over the phone. “It’s the least of my worries, Talia. Kanako got me out on bail, and anyway, they don’t care. They just wanted to hold me while they tried to find a way they could charge me for Nate’s murder.”