Deadly Cool (7 page)

“She got a text from him just before school let out,” Kaylee explained.

I felt my stomach clench. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Positive. She read it to me.”

“What did it say?” Chase asked.

“He wanted her to meet him at his house after school.”

I bit my lip. “It didn’t happen to say why, did it? Like, maybe she was helping him with a science project about condoms?”

Chase and Sam turned to me as one. Both wearing the same “get real” looks on their faces that said they pitied my stint in la-la land.

“What? It’s possible . . .” I mumbled to a spot of lint on my sleeve.

Chase turned his attention back to the Abercrombie twins. “So, the rumors were true? Courtney was sleeping with Josh?”

I cringed at the directness of his question. Mostly because it begged a direct answer. One I wasn’t sure I wanted to face head-on while standing in front of the entire Color Guard squad.

I could feel the eyes of every purple-clad girl giving me a critical assessment, silently comparing me to their late queen and wondering just how long it would have taken Josh to choose between us. I wore jeans. Courtney had worn designer denim with her initials monogrammed on the pockets in purple sparkly thread. I wore sneakers. She’d worn Ed Hardy athletic shoes with rhinestones embedded along the tongue. I had inherited what Mom liked to call an “athletic” build. She had looked like she was smuggling water balloons in her top. While my self-esteem was generally pretty healthy, I felt it wavering uncomfortably as speculation burned into me from fifteen different sets of judgmental eyes.

Luckily, it was speculation that would go unanswered.

Kaylee opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could answer Chase’s question, Caitlyn rode right over her.

“There is absolutely no way Courtney was sleeping with Josh. She wasn’t sleeping with anyone. Courtney was a virgin.”

Sam let out a loud snort.

Caitlyn turned on her the way a lion might turn on a juicy steak. “Don’t you dare disparage her good name!” she warned.

I was impressed.
Disparage
was a top ten SAT vocab word. Someone had been working with her tutor.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Sam promised, holding her hands up in a surrender motion. Then muffled another snicker.

“Courtney signed the chastity pledge on the first day of freshman year,” Caitlyn continued. “No way would she go back on it. She took it very seriously. Courtney was a virgin. I’d stake my life on it.” She turned to Chase. “And you can print that.”

But he didn’t look so convinced. “If that’s true, why was she meeting Josh in his bedroom yesterday afternoon?”

Caitlyn shrugged her bony shoulders. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

Trust me, I intended to.

SIX

THE BELL FOR FIFTH PERIOD RANG, AND STUDENTS
immediately ran inside, Sam included, calling over her shoulder that she had a Spanish test that afternoon. Me? I’d already ruined my perfect attendance record by cutting that morning. I didn’t really see any sense in finishing out the day. Especially when (A) I’d blown off my homework last night so I didn’t have anything to turn in, and (B) there was zero chance of me being able to concentrate anyway. Not when Detective Raley was lurking in the halls, Josh was on the run, and the entire HHH student body couldn’t decide whether I’d killed Courtney or had been about to be dumped for her. Or both.

What I needed to do was to speak to Josh. If he really had texted Courtney, effectively luring her to her death, I needed to know why. Yes, I was aware that the obvious answer was, duh, booty call. But I held out hope that all was not as obvious as it seemed. What can I say? I’m a big fan of denial.

Considering Raley was likely watching my cell usage like a hawk, I didn’t dare contact Josh via my phone. Instead, I decided to walk the two blocks to the public library on Main and mooch off their free internet to get in touch with him.

I turned to go . . .

And almost ran smack into Chase’s chest.

Apparently not
everyone
had dispersed at the sound of the bell.

“Going to class?” he asked.

No. But he didn’t need to know that. Considering I wasn’t exactly sure what sort of answers I might get from Josh, I didn’t really want an audience. Besides, I wasn’t certain I totally trusted Chase. When push came to shove, Chase had no loyalty to me. He was in this for a story. And he got that story whether Josh went to jail or not.

So instead of spilling my destination, I nodded. Slowly. “Yes. Yes, I am going to class.”

He grinned. “Dude, you are the worst liar on the planet. Seriously, we got to get you some lessons or something.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.” I pushed past him, heading toward the front of the school.

“So, if you’re not going to class, what are you doing?” he persisted, following a step behind me.

“Nothing.”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Need a ride to nowhere?”

“No!” Even if I did, I wasn’t ready to take my life in my hands by riding with him twice in one day. “Look, just because we’re both investigating this thing doesn’t mean we have to be joined at the hip.”

Chase stopped following me. He gave me a long look. Then grinned again.

“Okay. Fine. I’ll catch you later, then.”

“Fine. Good. Catch ya.” I turned to go again.

And heard him call over my shoulder, “Say hi to Josh for me!”

Sigh.

The local branch of our library was situated just down the street from the high school. In theory it was within convenient walking distance for students looking to study after class. In reality, it smelled like musty paper, mildewed carpets, and unwashed bodies. Needless to say, everyone under the age of sixty avoided it like the plague. It was a squat concrete block of a building, boasting the latest in “modern architecture,” circa nineteen fifty. Orange carpet covered the walls (yes, the
walls
) and beige linoleum the floors. Metal racks held books still organized via card catalog, despite the availability of digital sorting. The town kept threatening to update the library, posting fancy watercolor renderings of the new building in the paper every year. But as of yet, fund-raising had only reached the level of enthusiasm necessary to pay for the watercolors, not the real building.

I held my breath as I pushed through the glass front doors, slipping past the circulation desk and heading downstairs to the basement that housed periodicals and two rows of ancient PCs. Laminated signs next to each station warned that we were only allowed one hour of internet usage at a time. With any luck, I’d only need a fraction of that.

I settled down at a station next to a white-haired woman looking at pictures of her grandkids on Photobucket (letting out the occasional coo at how cute they were) and a guy wearing three coats, two pairs of socks, and a week-old beard. I made sure to sit upwind from the overdressed guy, then logged online and made my way to MySpace to find the fake account that Josh had set up last night.

Honestly, I hadn’t been on MySpace in years, not since fourth grade. As soon as Jessica Hanson had enticed me to join her mafia, I’d been strictly a Facebook user. But, as Josh had pointed out, if everyone was on Facebook, MySpace was the virtual equivalent of a hideout in the woods. Deep, deserted woods.

I clicked on HHHRunner94 and came to a page tricked out with a red background, flaming cursors, and about twenty different songs on an automatic playlist. Granny shot me a look as the Kings of Leon blasted from the PC speakers. I quickly hit Mute, sending her an apologetic smile. Clearly being on the run left Josh with way too much time on his hands.

I scrolled down, hitting the Message Me button shaped like a skull and crossbones (Really, Josh? That didn’t strike you as just a little bit inappropriate?) and typed a quick note into the message window. I kept it short and cryptic on the off chance that Raley had somehow cracked Josh’s online alias.

Need to talk. Be online 2nite. 9 p.m.

I hit Send, hoping Josh was monitoring the account as vigilantly as he’d promised, then packed up my stuff and headed home.

To kill a few more minutes, I stopped at Jamba Juice for a Peach Pleasure smoothie. School wasn’t technically out yet, and the last thing I wanted was the third degree from Mom on why I was early. Which, as it turned out, was the least of my worries. When I turned the corner onto my street, I spied an unmarked beige sedan with police lights on the dash parked squarely in front of my house.

Raley.

I closed my eyes and thought a really bad word as I did a mental assessment of the situation. If Raley was inside, he was likely talking to Mom. The upside? If they were talking about murder, she probably wasn’t going to focus on the fact that I was home a little early. The downside? Mom tended to be a tad overprotective. And by a “tad,” I mean I was seven before she let me go down the twisty slide at the park for fear of “owies.” I could only imagine how she’d take this.

I had a fleeting fantasy of just turning around and walking away. Hiding out at the mall for, oh, say, the rest of my life. But it was short-lived. Anyway, it was a total pipe dream to think that Mom wouldn’t find out about Courtney’s death. I mean, hello? A girl at our school was murdered. Of course she would find out. In fact, I was sorta surprised it had taken this long. While Mom never watched the news (she said all that negativity interrupted the flow of her chi), she was as connected to the momvine as someone could be.

And clearly Raley was giving her the gossip motherlode.

I took a deep, fortifying breath and forged up the flagstone pathway to my front door. I opened it to find Mom and Detective Raley in the living room—Detective Raley standing near the empty fireplace, Mom perched on the edge of our brown microfiber sofa, her forehead etched with a line of concern I’d grown to know well. It was the same one she’d flashed at me when I pointed to the twisty slide, the same one she’d pulled out when I’d taken up Tae Kwon Do in third grade, and the same one that had frozen on her features all through driver’s ed last spring. It was her SMother face.

And it was never good.

As soon as she spotted me, she popped up from the sofa and crossed the four steps to the door to tackle me like a linebacker.

“Oh, Hartley, honey, are you okay?” she mumbled into my hair.

“Mom, I think you’re breaking my ribs.”

She eased up on her grip, stepping back to look at me as if finding a dead girl might leave a mark. “Detective Raley told me everything. Oh, honey, why didn’t you say anything? How awful for you!”

I shot Raley a look, wondering just how much “everything” was, but his face was a blank, unreadable thing.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“Fine? My God, your friend was killed, Hart. Clearly you’re not fine.”

I didn’t point out that Courtney and I were hardly BFFs. In Mom’s world everyone under the age of eighteen was friends with everyone else, like we were all part of some secret society of minors.

“Really, I’m okay.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind answering a few questions,” Raley said.

For a brief moment I thought about faking hysteria to avoid his interrogation. Maybe I
wasn’t
fine. Maybe we
were
BFFs. Maybe I
did
need a few more SMotherly hugs.

But since I knew Raley wasn’t really giving me a say in the matter, I nodded mutely and sat down on the sofa to face the music. Mom sat next to me and patted my hand.

“When was the last time you saw Josh?” Raley started.

“Yesterday,” I said slowly. Which was the truth.

“What time?”

“Early.” Which was definitely
not
the truth. I prayed I wasn’t as bad at lying as Chase seemed to think I was.

“Can you be more specific?” Raley pressed.

“Before school.”

“
Before
school?” Raley asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Yup.” I nodded so hard my hair fell in my eyes. Which was just as well, because if I lifted them to meet his, I’m pretty sure he would be able to tell I was on the downside of truthful.

“Okay.” Raley scribbled something in his notebook.

I leaned forward to see if it was “liar, liar, pants on fire,” but he turned the page before I could make it out.

“Any idea where Josh might be now?” he asked.

I shook my head. This time I was being 100 percent truthful. Of course, he hadn’t asked if I knew how to contact Josh later tonight . . .

“Wait—” my mom said, holding up one hand. “What do you mean, ‘might be’? Is he missing?”

“He’s not at home, ma’am,” Raley answered noncommittally.

“As in missing?” Her voice rose an octave.

“We don’t have information about his current whereabouts,” Raley said carefully, though he looked straight at me when he said it. I averted my gaze, finding an incredibly interesting stain on the carpet.

“Is he in danger?” she asked.

“We don’t believe that’s likely,” he hedged.

“So . . . if you don’t believe he’s in danger . . .” Mom said, trailing off as I watched her mental hamster jump on his little wheel. Mom may be a little quirky, but she’s no dummy.

“Josh is a ‘person of interest’ in this case,” Raley said, doing his air quotes thing again.

Mom leaned forward in her seat, a hand going to her chest. “You’re not saying Josh had anything to do with this, are you?”

“We’re exploring all possibilities,” Raley said. “At this time, we’d really like to talk to the boy. If you have any idea where he might be . . .” His eyes bored holes into me.

My eyes? Still glued to the carpet stain. You know, it kind of resembled a fish on its side. Mom might want to think about getting it steam cleaned sometime soon.

“We have no idea. We haven’t seen him since . . .” Mom turned to me.

“Yesterday. Before school,” I repeated. Unfortunately no more convincingly than the last time.

“Oh, Hartley,” Mom said, hugging me again. “To think I let you go out with a killer!”