Her guilt was becoming less likely by the second, and I let off a disappointed sigh.
“Okay, ladies!” Saffron called our way. “We’re ready for you!”
“One sec!” Annika reapplied her lipstick, then shot across the room like a demented cat.
“That includes producers!” Saffron added.
“I’m coming!” I got up, too distracted by my thoughts to see what I was needed for. In the space of five minutes, the girl vamping it up for the camera had said some pretty stupid things, mixed up Alfred Hitchcock the person for Hitch the movie, and failed to register the loaded meaning of the words “vertigo girl.”
That settled it. Annika Gitter was capable of many things, but breaking into the Moonery and making off with a copy of Sills’s script wasn’t one of them.
{ 14 }
Devil in the Details
As if being big as a liner ship and in possession of six bathrooms weren’t selling points enough, Annika’s Jane Street town house also happened to be half a block away from Clementine Records, the best music store this side of Paris. Normally I would have stopped to flip through the shop’s collection of sixties rarities, but by the time we wrapped up the shoot, dusk was settling in and I could picture the girls skulking about the clubhouse, snacking on candy and waiting for my update.
Much as it pained me, I allowed myself only a passing glance at the beautiful Petula Clark LP in the window and raced up to the Fourteenth Street subway station. Half an hour later, when I burst into the Moonery’s office, all of the girls were lying on the floor and flipping through magazines, as if stranded at an airport. And it looked like the Moons had decided to bring at least one of the other Half Moons up to speed—Hallie was in the mix, sharing the blue loveseat with Poppy.
“Hey, Reagan.” Diana brought her nose closer to whatever she was reading. “Here’s a recipe for sticky toffee coconut trifle. How good does that sound?”
“I can go down and make rice pudding,” Hallie offered.
“All we have is cat food,” Becca told her. “Besides, Claire will be here any—” She stopped short when she noticed that I was leaning against the doorway. “She’s here!”
When the rest of the girls turned my way, I saw their faces were full of hope, and I was instantly overcome with a sinking feeling. None of them even made fun of my crazy makeup or outfit.
Becca sat up and patted a spot on the rug next to her. “So, how’d it go?”
I didn’t answer until I’d sat down and got a whiff of Becca’s figgy perfume. “It was fine,” I said reluctantly, “but I don’t think she did it.”
Their expressions went flat and all sound drained away except for a clack-clack. Only now did I see that Sig was behind the computer. Something told me she wasn’t working on a term paper.
Diana watched me stare at Sig. “We’ll explain in a sec,” she provided. “But tell us why it’s not her.”
My eyes cut over to Becca, whose arms were folded around her knees. “First, I’m pretty convinced that she doesn’t have what you’d need to operate that iPod.”
“What’s that?” Reagan sounded confused.
“A double-digit IQ.”
My joke earned only one laugh, and I rapidly unzipped my jacket pocket. “It wasn’t just that,” I said, extracting a Polaroid I’d stolen from the shoot. I slid it over to Becca. “See, she has Hitchcock posters over her bed,” I said, and proceeded to tell everyone how Annika had reacted when I’d said the magic words. “There’s no way she would have been so mellow if she knew ‘Vertigo Girl’ meant anything. I’m not saying she would have had a heart attack, but she didn’t even twitch.”
Diana let off a low whistle. “Crap.”
“I’ll say,” Reagan added.
“So enemy number one just fell off the list.” This was Becca.
“Which would be fine if we had an enemy number two,” said Diana.
“It doesn’t have to be such a gloom-and-doom show in here.” Poppy was trying to affect a bright tone. “We can cross Annika’s name off the list. That’s a step in the right direction.”
“What list?” Diana sounded peeved.
Poppy groaned. “It’s got to be one of the Helle Housers. We just have to figure out which one.”
“Which one of the remaining two hundred and twenty-something morons,” murmured Sills.
“Well, whoever did it has to be remotely smart,” Poppy said, “or else she would have put it up on the Internet already for some immediate gratification. We just have to figure out which one of those girls knows enough to hold her cards close to her vest.”
“Her vest?” Diana asked incredulously. “I always thought the expression was ‘close to your chest.’”
The silence that ensued must have embarrassed Diana; she got up to get a snack.
While we waited for Sig to fiddle around on the computer, Becca was kind enough to inform me that our resident tech genius was examining the computer’s keystroke history. Apparently there was a way to call up a record of every key that had ever been tapped. “Maybe the burglar decided to check her e-mail when she was here.” Becca glanced up and shrugged.
“You think that the intruder would’ve risked getting caught and wasted any time checking her e-mail?” I said.
“Actually, you’d be surprised,” Sig told me. “A few months ago there was this big-time hacker who got caught at the Internet café he was using because he had the brilliant idea to download every Cat Power song from the iTunes store in the middle of his heist.”
Becca smiled and got up to knead Sig’s shoulders.
A few minutes later, Diana returned with a dish of what looked like mint ice cream and jelly, and Sig’s clicking was slowing down.
“Hurry up.” Poppy looked at her watch. “This Purple City party only goes until ten.”
I felt my signature confused duck expression bloom across my face. Was I doomed to never fully understand what was going on?
“Purple City?” I repeated. “The skateboard shop?”
Poppy nodded and I looked at her with newfound approval. Purple City is a skateboard store in my neighborhood. It officially specializes in limited-edition sweatshirts, but its real selling point is the adorable skater boys who use the shop as a clubhouse. I’d lived only three blocks away from it my entire life and none of the guys there had ever deigned to talk to me.
“How do you know those guys?” I asked.
“I don’t,” Poppy said with a smile. “I’m piggybacking on Sig.”
I glanced at the girl behind the computer. “You’re friends with those guys?” I could tell I wasn’t doing a very good job concealing my surprise that our resident geek was chummy with some of New York’s most intimidating guys.
“Kinda.” She was still concentrating on the computer.
“Turns out her boyfriend’s a pro skater.” The mischievous twinkle in Reagan’s eye told me I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been expecting to learn this tidbit about Sig. “Rafer Campos.”
“Sex god on wheels,” sighed Poppy.
Sig bit down a smile, then scrunched her nose. “There’s no record from Wednesday morning,” she announced, bringing everybody back to the trouble at hand. “It says the last time anybody used the computer was Tuesday night.”
“You sure?” Sills asked.
Sig nodded. “She probably has a BlackBerry.”
“You sure the perp’s a she?” I asked.
“Just a guess,” Becca said. “It’s hard to imagine a guy taking the time to put everything away so nicely. He would’ve just run off with it and left the drawers open.”
“Territorial marking’s classic male behavior.” Diana patted Linus on his head, and I half expected him to pee on the spot.
“Hold up!” Sig sounded excited. Never had she seemed so in her element.
“Whatcha got, wizard?” Hallie asked.
“This didn’t take any wizardry. I just went to the wonderful World Wide Web. Elle House’s recently updated home pa
ge, to be precise.” She pointed to the screen. “Have a look.”
Becca leaned in and read aloud. “‘Next Sunday. Film study night in the white library. Organic cocktails, popcorn, and a recently released treasure.’” She straightened her back and looked up at me. “Looks like Little Miss Sticky-Fingers might not be so patient after all. Coming to a clubhouse near you: the grand unveiling of the looted goods.”
I stared at Becca for a few seconds. “Okay, I see what you’re thinking. But for all we know they could be showing the new remastered Valley of the Dolls DVD or whatever.”
I didn’t want Becca to get ahead of herself.
Becca scowled. “Then why wouldn’t they just say what movie they were showing?”
“It says ‘Details to follow,’” Diana read from the screen. “We’ll just have to check back.”
“I can hardly wait,” Becca groaned, and I glanced around at all the faces in the room, each more spooked than the last.
It looked like the old saying had got it right: the devil was in those details.
Our meeting adjourned, we all went downstairs and snaked out through the deli. Night had fallen and the air was laced with frost. Quietly, everyone peeled off in different directions, leaving me with the feeling Sig wasn’t the only one who had a date lined up. It all made me feel like a bit of a loser. A loser who couldn’t help missing Andy.
“Now what?” Becca asked. “Wanna sleep over at my place?”
My stomach clenched up. Of course I wanted one-on-one time with Becca, but there were other considerations to be made. I was, after all, still dressed up like a freak. And even though Andy officially lived in a dorm at Columbia, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was camping out at home tonight. He was always at home.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said.
“C’mon, I promise we don’t have to talk about this stuff.” She looked up at the Moonery’s ivy-covered facade. “And nobody’s there. It would be a waste of an empty house.”
She said it nonchalantly but I had to wonder if she knew my real reason for not wanting to come over.
“You sure?” I said. “You wouldn’t rather …”
“What?” Becca was quick to jump in. “Go to some midnight meeting of the Hudson Science League?” She pulled her cell phone out of her bag and handed it over. “Call your parents now so they don’t worry.”
On the cab ride up, Becca was bubbling over with a newfound exuberance. She was laughing and making fun of her dad’s diet. Some people might have found her sudden change in attitude bizarre, but I was supremely happy to be hanging out with the old, Moon-free Becca.
“Now he grazes instead of eating big meals, but I’m convinced he’s actually eating more than before,” she said.
“Not to state the obvious,” I said, “but it doesn’t sound like he wants to be on a diet.”
“Of course he doesn’t. My mom put him up to it. She said if he doesn’t fit into his normal pants by Valentine’s Day she’s taking Andy out for dinner instead.”
My heart sank.
“She should have a word with my mom,” I was quick to respond. I would die if she could tell that hearing that Andy might spend Valentine’s Day with his mother made me jealous.
“Are you kidding?” She glanced my way. “Your mom’s a stick.”
“No, not for her. You know how they say French women don’t get fat?” Becca’s silhouette nodded. “French men do. Especially when they’re dealing with writer’s block. Seriously, you’d think my dad’s expecting Mom’s ratatouille to write the book for him.”
Becca laughed and told the driver where to pull over. I looked up at the building’s windows and exhaled a sigh of relief. None of the lights was on.
Phew.
I got out of the cab first and waited by the door for Becca to work the locks. “Ignore the mess,” Becca said as we entered the house, which was as un-messy as a meditation room at a five-star spa. “Dad set up the place so his favorite songs come on when he walks into the room.” Only then did I see a few holes in the walls, with nests of telephone wires poking out. “It’s the stupidest idea, but he wouldn’t let us talk him out of it. Andy’s already ordered, like, a hundred earplugs online.”
My knees felt slightly shaky at the sound of Andy’s name.
“So what’ll it be, C?” she asked once we’d settled into the media room. She was holding up two DVDs: the original Dawn of the Dead and some Swedish movie about witchcraft in the Middle Ages. “Zombies or witches?”
“Got anything with cute high school girls?” came a voice from the doorway. The lights turned on and Andy’s green eyes met my gaze.
Great. Why couldn’t he have magically appeared the day before, when I’d been wearing my cool indigo Givenchy dress and my face hadn’t been spackled over with old lady makeup? Of course, he looked as put-together as ever, with a dark herringbone coat open to reveal a Columbia T-shirt.
“Don’t you have homework or something to do?” Becca asked him, perfectly embodying the role of snarky kid sister. The role of snarky kid sister’s not-so-cool sidekick fell to me.
“Nope,” he said, taking off his coat and falling into the spot next to me on the couch. His shin brushed against mine and he paused to smile at me before moving his leg away. I felt my cheeks blaze red. How could I have ever thought I was remotely interested in that spazzy guy from lunch period? “I could settle for The Pink Panther,” he said, redirecting his attention at Becca. “Peter Sellers, not Steve Martin, that is.”
Becca cleared her throat impatiently. “Fine. I’ll decide, then.”
The Swedish movie was better than expected. At least I think it was—it was hard to concentrate with Andy sitting so close by. When I turned to make a funny face at him during a scene where Satan took a bubble bath, I realized he was fast asleep.
Disappointment went up in me like a plume of smoke.
“Hey, B.” I pointed at her brother.
“Duck,” she whispered to me, then lobbed a pillow at him.
He blinked and rubbed his head. “Are you demented?”
“It’s called a throw pillow,” she said in a fake-sweet tone. “Don’t blame me.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “I’ll remember that next time I get a kickstand.”
“Or a punchbowl.” Becca was having fun with this dorky game.
“Hey.” I suddenly remembered. “Kiki’s having a murder-mystery birthday party.” I proceeded to tell them everything I knew about it: the date, the Jon-Jon situation, and a sampling of the guest list. For Andy’s sake I made sure to throw in that Dr. Rabinowitz would be there. “Now’s your chance to see what your dean’s like when he’s tipsy and has fake blood dribbling down his chin.”
I looked at him hopefully.
“It sounds insane,” Becca said. “I’m so there.”
“Excellent. And you?” I was waiting for Andy.
He twisted up his lip and ran his hands over his jeans. “It’s kind of hard to make advance plans right now.”
I looked down at the ground, trying to hide my sadness.
“God,” Becca said to her brother. “You have such issues.”
There was something deeply wrong about the silence that followed. Every second seemed to stretch into a minute, until I couldn’t take it anymore.
My tear ducts were going haywire.
“I’m going to the bathroom.” I shot up like an alfalfa sprout. “Anyone need a Q-tip or anything?”
Lame, I know, but it’s not exactly easy to come up with a smooth cover-up when you’re in the middle of an emotional breakdown.
I sat on the lip of the bathtub and flipped through an old issue of BusinessWeek. Maybe enough exposure to boring charts and graphs would numb my feelings. When that didn’t work, I got up and leaned into the mirror. Looking hard at my eyes, I tried to hypnotize myself into believing that whatever his so-called issues were, they didn’t have to do with me or my crazy-lady outfit.
If only self-delusion w
ere my strong suit.
I finally pulled myself together, but when I went back to the media room, Andy was gone.
“I’m not even going to ask what took you so long in there,” Becca said. “Let’s go upstairs. Your suite awaits.”
There was a consolation, if a small one: at the Shuttleworth house, overnight guests weren’t tossed an L.L.Bean sleeping bag and old airplane pillow. They were treated to a king-sized bed and a bedside table that was, without fail, equipped with a pitcher of lemon water and a vase of fresh flowers.
We stopped at the kitchen for cookies, then trudged all the way up to the fourth floor. Becca opened the door and flung herself on top of the red and white duvet when we got to the guest room. “Pj’s are in the second drawer. There should be new toothbrushes in the bathroom medicine cabinet.”
I washed up and when I went back in to crawl under the covers, Becca was on the other side of the lead-heavy duvet, resting her head on her elbow. “So I’ll say good night,” she said, “but there’s something I wanted to talk to you about first.”
My stomach churned—my least favorite words in the English language are “we need to talk.” And I was pretty sure this had to do with Andy.
“Bring it on,” I said, my voice cracking like crazy.
“Well, last night my family went to dinner at Quilty’s and we ran into your friend Louis.”
“Louis?” I hardly recognized the name.
“Yeah.” Her cheeks flushed. “He was acting kind of strange. He doesn’t have a girl—”
“A girlfriend?” I jumped in, and she nodded sheepishly. “How could he? He’s too busy waiting for a certain somebody to wake up and smell the mix CDs.”
How could Becca, the smartest person I knew, be so dumb?
“Really?” She searched my face. “I mean, I sort of got the sense he liked me, but that was a while ago. And then last night he was all grumpy and I thought he was mad at—”
“Was he with his stepmother?”
“I don’t know. Some weird woman.”
“A spider lady with a severe case of blond hair extensions?” I waited for Becca to nod. “Yeah, she has that effect on him. Last time I went to an Ibbits family dinner, Louis and his father didn’t say a word and I was stuck talking to Ulrika about what color grouting she wanted to use on the bathroom floor—beige or bone. She has a way of killing the mood.”
Dream Life Page 16