Also Known As (11 page)

The entire upstairs was a master suite, I soon realized, including a huge bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub and a skylight in the massive closet that revealed a clear, empty sky overhead. The Icelandic nights had been so light, and I still wasn’t used to New York’s darker heavens. It was nice to see the moon again.

I could feel the party pulsing under my feet as I prowled the huge walk-in closet. I was pretty sure that the closet was the size of our temporary loft in Soho and easily twice the size of our house in Reykjavík. Surely big enough for a safe, right?

Wrong.

The cutout that my parents had showed me on the blueprints turned out to be nonexistent in the actual house. I started shoving clothes aside, moving shoes and feeling the walls, checking the edges of the carpet to see if it would pull up and reveal a floor safe. Nothing. My heart was starting to pound in time with the music and I wished I wasn’t wearing a turtleneck. How was I supposed to get anything done when I was being strangled by my own clothes?

“Shit, shit,
shit
,” I whispered to myself as I felt the wall behind a tie rack. Jesse already knew I was at the party. What if he was wondering where I was? Time was always of the essence, but especially when people were looking for you.
Especially
then.

A few minutes later, I realized that the closet was a waste of time. There was nothing in there, no safe, nothing but socks and ties and men’s shoes, all of which looked really uncomfortable. I moved back into the bedroom, looking behind artwork that was probably worth several million dollars, dropping to my knees to glance around a dresser that was too heavy to move.

Nothing.

Five minutes later, I left the room frustrated and empty-handed. I hate when I can’t find the damn safe. I
hate
it. It’s my job, the one thing I know how to do, and when it’s not there, it’s like
I’m
not there.

The party was still raging, though, and it seemed to have only gotten more crowded. Roux was nowhere in sight and I only saw the top of Jesse’s curly head as it disappeared around a corner. Everyone else was a stranger, and I had a rare moment of self-pity when I thought that I should have just stayed home and read a book instead. Angelo could rappel himself into the house later.

I was just trying to figure out which window I could open that would make it easier for Angelo when I heard the fight. I didn’t know it was a fight at the time, though. I just thought it was one girl screaming a lot. And then I heard the name “Roux” and immediately followed the noise into the library.

The library
.

Oh my God, I’m an idiot
, I thought. And apparently my parents were useless at reading blueprints. Libraries had shelves, empty books, plenty of room for hidden safes galore!
I canceled my mental image of Angelo ziplining in through the window.

The fight, however, was still going. Roux was backed against one row of books, half-ready to tip over, looking angry and sad at the same time. “You know what you did!” another girl screamed at her. I recognized her as Julia, the jilted girlfriend whose ex-boyfriend had slept with Roux.

Hoo boy.

“He didn’t even like you anymore!” Roux said, her words slurring together. “He liked me! He was gonna break up with you!”

“Lying bitch!” Julia yelled back, and oh my God, I was at a high school party and there was alcohol and an actual girl fight. When did my life turn into a movie?

Everyone watching took a collective breath when Julia busted out the word “bitch.” Apparently that’s a fighting word in Manhattan private schools. Roux’s red sequined horns were askew on top of her head, but she seemed to be breathing fire, just like a bull, just like she had said when I first met up with her that night.

“Ask him!” Roux shouted, and pointed toward one of the dopiest-looking guys I had ever seen in my life. His eyes were red-rimmed and he had a smile that seemed to suggest he had been stoned for the past six years. He was still wearing his school uniform, and I would bet a hundred bucks that he was one of those teenagers who went trick-or-treating as “a teenager.”

They were fighting over
this
clown? Now I had seen everything.

“Jake?” Julia said, crossing her arms and looking over at Stoner Boy. “Is it true? Who did you like better, babe?”

Babe?
They were still together?
Jake cheated on Julia and she took him back? If this were a TV show, I would have been recording every single episode on my DVR. And judging from the crowd in the room, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

(And Jake and Julia? Really? It was so matchy-matchy that I wanted to gag.)

Jake looked like a deer that had just woken up to find a hunter’s gun pointing at him. “Uh,” he said, and Roux managed to roll her eyes a little at his denseness. But then she bit her lip and looked at Jake, and it was suddenly so obvious.

Roux was still in love with him.

Julia looked ready to turn Jake inside out using only her menacing stare, so he answered quickly. “You, babe.” He smiled at her. “Jules, I
told
you, Roux didn’t mean anything. She was a mistake. She meant
nothing
.”

I looked at Roux when he said that and immediately wished I hadn’t. Roux looked like she had been slapped, her mouth twitching before it smoothed back to her normal, neutral expression. “There you go, Julia,” she said. “He’s all yours.”

“Damn right,” Julia replied, then threw her arms around Jake’s neck as the crowd started to disperse. Roux stayed standing next to one of the bookcases, but her knuckles were white against the mahogany wood.

“Roux,” I started to say when I was close to her.

“What?” She sighed. “Just … what.”

I had no idea what I was going to say, but before I could even think of something, Roux interrupted me. “He’s an asshole,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. Agreeing seemed to be easiest.

“A really big asshole.”

“Absolutely.”

“I hope he gets hit by a giant truck and they can’t even peel him off the street because he’s so flat.” Her words were slurring again, but I think that’s what she said.

“And then flattened again by a steamroller,” I said, then added “flattened a
lot
” for good measure.

Roux was starting to sink down against the wall, and she pulled a plaster head of some ancient Greek god down with her. “I’m just going to stay here and sulk with my new Roman friend,” she said.

“I think he’s Greek.”

“God, Maggie,
really
? You want to play ‘Guess the Ancestry’ right now?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I’m a jerk. But not as big a jerk as Jake.”

“Yeah.” Roux sniffled. “You can’t spell ‘jerk’ without ‘Jake,’ righ—? Oh, wait. Yes, you can. Never mind.”

She was quite a sight, red horns slipping closer to her forehead as she cuddled the Greek (no way was that thing Roman) head close to her. I sat down next to her, unsure of what to do or say. I had never been in love before, and I had never, ever seen a fight over a guy before. What were the rules here? Were we supposed to eat chocolate now? Maybe
Jesse’s mom had some contraband Hershey bars stashed in her nightstand. I couldn’t find a safe, but I could damn well track down some Halloween candy.

“He used to be really nice.” Roux sighed. “He said a lot of things….” She trailed off, her eyes filling with tears.

“Oh, no! Please don’t cry!” I told her. “Roux, c’mon, you said it yourself. He’s an asshole.”

“I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life!”

“You’re not even seventeen!”

“That just makes it worse!” She wiped her nose on her sleeve and sniffled again. “The only guy who will ever love me is Caesar here.”

“Well …” I tried to find something to say. “At least he died nobly.”

Roux looked at me and for a minute I thought she was going to start yelling again, but then she giggled. “You are so weird!”

“Says the demon girl who’s snuggling with Caesar’s head!” I protested, but I was giggling, too. “This party sucks.”

“It so sucks,” Roux said, agreeing. “They always do, though. Getting ready for the party is the best part of the party. It’s all downhill after.” Her gaze drifted from Caesar toward the bookshelves. “That picture sucks, too. It’s ugly.”

“Totally,” I said. It was a framed picture in the middle of two bookcases, a sailboat on choppy seas, an obvious Winslow Homer knockoff. Even the frame looked cheap, and I was pretty sure that Armand Oliver didn’t do anything cheap.

“I need more wine,” Roux announced next to me, wiping the leftover tears from her face. “Right now. Garçon!”

“Um, are you sure?”

She just waved away my concerns as she struggled to her feet, Caesar bouncing to the ground when she dropped him. “I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t be a worrywart PTA mom, okay? It’s not cool. Be cool. Where’s that happy wine land from last year?”

Wait a minute.

Why did Caesar’s head just bounce? That thing was made of plaster, right? Plaster should shatter or at least just fall, not bounce.

“Found it!” Roux cried, and apparently Jesse hadn’t locked the wine storage yet because Roux disappeared down the hall, followed by several other people. I didn’t have time to chase her, though, because I realized that I had found the safe.

I scrambled to my feet and grabbed the bust off the ground. It was surprisingly light in my hands, plastic instead of plaster, and I found the nearly invisible hinge at the back of his head. When I opened it up, I saw the key sitting inside.

I had to hand it to Armand, he knew how to make a job challenging.

I fished it out and put Caesar back on his pedestal, then hurried over to that ugly sailboat painting. I was right, Armand didn’t do anything cheap. And this wasn’t a cheap picture, it was a secret safe.

There was no one in the library, but I moved fast and
quick, just like I had been trained. I lifted the picture off the wall and sure enough, it was one of those safes hidden behind a painting. They’re notoriously easy to open, even without the key. All it needs is a four-digit code, and most people don’t get creative enough.

But it didn’t matter. I had the key.

The back of the painting came shooting out when I turned the key in the lock, revealing shelves that looked like they belonged in a medicine cabinet. There was a flash drive on the bottom shelf and I grabbed it.

“Where’s that Bordeaux?” I heard Roux yelling, but she sounded far away.
She’s fine
, I told myself as I hid the flash drive in the front pocket of my jeans. The party was still raging just outside the library, and I knew that anyone could come walking in at any minute, see me standing there with a painting and a broken plastic head, and ask what I was doing.

Ten seconds later, the safe was back on the wall and Caesar was back on his pedestal. I had done it. I had the files. I could leave.

“There you are,” Jesse said when he saw me come out of the library. “What are you, a bookworm?”

“That was last year’s costume,” I said. I was feeling magnanimous toward him, now that I had incriminating evidence that would probably ruin his dad’s big story and possibly his dad’s big magazine, too. I wondered if they would lose their apartment, or if Jesse would have to leave school. Would he end up homeless?

My elation at finding the safe was starting to ebb. I
wasn’t used to seeing the people involved in the case. Usually it was just me, some combination locks, and maybe a few fancy keys if the safe was doubly secured. But now I was looking at Jesse and he seemed kind of drunk and pretty happy and all I could think was,
I am so, so sorry
.

“I like books,” I told him now, glancing at the safe to make sure that it was hung straight on the wall. “Are some of these yours?”

“Nah, my dad’s. Some are my mom’s, though.” He pointed to an old-looking title up on the top shelf. “First edition of
The Great Gatsby
. That was … That’s her favorite.”

“Why is that everyone’s favorite?” I said. “Has
nobody
read
Tender Is the Night
? It’s so annoying.”

And then I realized that I had just insulted Jesse’s mother’s taste.

“Not that
Gatsby
is bad.” I backtracked. “I mean, it’s fine. I mean …”

Jesse was watching me with a little half smile that was becoming less annoying by the minute. “Do you want something to drink?”

Believe it or not, I’ve had wine before. I may have been raised in the insular world of international spies, but in Europe, they’re cool with kids having wine. Still, there’s a huge difference between your mother giving you the eagle eye while you sip half a glass of champagne, and a cute boy—I mean, a guy I was assigned to—offering you something in a red plastic cup at a Halloween party.

And I mean, c’mon, I’m supposed to blend in, right?

Right.

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You want apple juice?”

“That’s not scotch?”

He tipped his glass toward me so I could see into it. “Can you keep the secret?”

I just smiled. “I’ll do my best,” I said.

Chapter 10

Half an hour later, I knew a lot about Jesse.

He hated
Gatsby
, too, but not as much as he hated
The Catcher in the Rye
. He hadn’t had a drink since his dad got sober last year. His favorite color was blue, and his dog, Max, the same one that had tried to lick me to death, was sleeping upstairs in his bedroom, blissfully oblivious to the racket that was happening around us.

“Then why did you throw this party?” I said. We were sitting on the massive steel staircase, shifting every time people walked around us. “I mean, if you don’t drink and your dog doesn’t like crowds.”

He shrugged. “I dunno. People expect it. And when people expect you to do something …”

“You do it,” I finished, understanding all too well what he meant. “Does anyone else know that you’re totally sober right now?”

“Just you,” he said, then clinked his glass against my plastic cup. “And besides, I thought if I threw a party, you might show up.”