Deadly Little Sins (15 page)

“For your
friend
,” Alexis cuts in. She and I share a look. No doubt that Spencer was selling drugs to this friend of his.

“Yeah. So, I finish up and go to find Natalie, and I hear footsteps. Running. She screams, then some guy yells at her ‘Get back here, what are you doing here,’ and then I saw the cop car parked at the overlook,” Spencer says. “Someone must have seen us trespassing and called them. So I took off for my car.”

“You didn’t wait for her?” I ask. “Great boyfriend.”

“It didn’t make a difference anyway,” Spencer says. “I got busted sneaking back into my dorm. Goddard expelled Natalie the next morning. He was
pissed.
I heard he called every headmaster and dean he knew and told them what she did.” Spencer looks thoughtful for a minute. “Never got my Sox jersey back from her.”

I stare at him. “So you definitely haven’t seen Natalie since?”

“Nah. We didn’t keep in touch.” He shrugs, returning my stare.

“How about my cousin?” Alexis cuts in. “Caroline Cormier-Frey. Do you remember her? She was Natalie’s roommate.”

Spencer laughs. “I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, Lexie.”

Alexis grabs my wrist under the table.
L-I-E
she spells out with her finger.

“Good talk,” Spencer says, standing up. “I really do have somewhere to be, though.” He nods to Alexis. “Give my regards to your pops.”

Alexis’s expression is murderous as Spencer slips out the door, onto the golf course.

“How do you know he was lying?” I say.

“Because,” Alexis says. “Caroline interned in my father’s office after college. She and Spencer would have worked there around the same time.”

“Maybe he just didn’t notice her.”

Alexis raises an eyebrow. “It’s hard not to notice someone who calls a meeting over the copy paper tray being left empty. The other interns called her Caro-whine.”

Sounds familiar. When she still went to Wheatley, Alexis once left me a sticky note for daring to have a coffee maker in my dorm room.

“I need you to do something,” I tell Alexis. “If you’re comfortable snooping through Caroline’s phone, that is.”

Alexis smirks at me. “Do you realize who you’re talking to?”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

While I’m waiting for Alexis to get the chance to comb through Caroline’s phone in search of a burner app—or any incriminating text messages—I gather more intel on Spencer Vandenberg.

There’s a lot of information about him, since he was in the public eye leading up to the Winter Olympics eight years ago. But there’s nothing that suggests a connection to the Barnes family, or even that Spencer is anything more than your standard drug-peddling yuppie scumbag.

U.S. Olympic Team Cuts Competitive Snowboarder Who Failed Drug Test

The Olympic Committee announced Tuesday morning that FIS World Championship silver medalist Spencer Vandenberg, 22, would not be competing in the Torino games. The announcement follows last week’s headline that Vandenberg, an alum of the Wheatley School, tested positive for trace amounts of a banned substance during an International Olympic Committee drug test.

Neither Vandenberg nor the coach of the men’s snowboard team could be reached for comment.

There’s a picture of Spencer, posing with a banner for Mountain Crush energy drink. I’m going to venture a guess that he lost that sponsorship.

So Spencer got off with a slap on the wrist for being an Olympic hopeful, only to throw his chances at a medal down the toilet. Meanwhile, Natalie gets expelled, her life takes turn after turn for the worst—and somehow, years later, she returns to the scene of the crime.

Did she blame Spencer for everything that happened to her? Was making her way back to Wheatley the first step in a plot for payback?

Something keeps bugging me about Spencer’s story. He said Natalie was screaming and running from a man. I’ve been busted being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be before. Many times. You always run, but you never scream. Crying and pleading for forgiveness is the best way to handle a cop.

You don’t scream unless you have a reason to.

Maybe Natalie didn’t scream because she saw a police officer. Maybe she saw something else—something she wasn’t supposed to see. Spencer had just conducted a drug deal at the annex; what if someone other than the cops were waiting in the woods and Natalie had gotten caught in the crossfire, so to speak? Even slimy, low-level high school drug dealers have enemies.

Possibly, enemies so powerful that Natalie had to take drastic measures to evade them. But if Wheatley really was the scene of the crime, why would she return?

Unless her only option was to hide in plain sight.

By Friday, I still haven’t heard from Alexis and I’m almost fresh out of leads. So I start digging into Ms. C’s personnel file. She was good at pretending to be Jessica Cross, but she must have slipped up to someone in the past eight years—given someone a reason to doubt her real identity.

One thing sticks out to me on the resume—Ms. C worked at the Cambridge Public Library for three years before taking the job at Wheatley. Cambridge is nearby—maybe tomorrow I can stop by. On Sunday, Remy is dragging me to a BC-Notre Dame football game, and Monday is Columbus Day, which means the library will be closed.

After class, I meet up with Kelsey for a trip to the campus grocery and convenience store. Murali’s birthday is tomorrow, and I agreed to help her bake him a cake. The store doesn’t have his favorite—Funfetti—so we buy a box of vanilla mix and three packages of M&Ms.

“They won’t melt in the oven, right?” She pushes her glasses up her noise as we pay and leave.

“If they do, it’ll be delicious.” I’m now aware of how empty my stomach is. I had to skip lunch today to finish my homework that was due in my afternoon classes. I was up late last night, combing news articles for mentions of developments in Dr. Muller’s case.

Something Dennis said to me the first time we met up doesn’t fit with my theory that Dr. Muller’s murder is connected to Ms. C’s disappearance. According to him, the police in Dorchester are looking for a serial home invader, whose MO matches a cold case in another town called Brockton.

I google “Brockton + homicide” and get a hit. Ryan and Tyler Becker, two brothers in their twenties, were shot execution style in their apartment, in what looked like a robbery gone wrong. They were both tied up—the killer stole money and some valuables.

And, according to people who knew the Becker brothers, a lot of weed. The police found “drug paraphernalia” in the apartment but no actual drugs. The standing theory is that Ryan and Tyler were killed by either a burglar who was surprised to find them home, or a rival dealer.

Spencer’s wolfish grin works its way into my mind.

Spencer could have known about room 105. But I only talked to him for the first time last weekend,
after
I got the text message. Unless someone tipped him off and gave him my number.

When Kelsey and I get to the lounge, Remy and April are at the wide circle table, surrounded by textbooks, highlighters, and index cards. Their college-credit human anatomy class already has them spiraling into a panic.

“It’s a Friday. Why are you doing this to yourselves?” I ask, checking the oven temperature.

“It’s the only college-level science class that fit into my schedule,” Remy says over the top of her pencil. She’s chewed half the eraser away.

“It’ll look good on my med school apps.” April drains her soda from the dining hall loudly. “I want to be an aesthetician. They’re the highest-paid doctors.”

Remy stares at April. “Anesthesiologist. You want to be an anesthesiologist. Aestheticians work in spas. They give
facials
.”

I snort. Kelsey rolls her eyes. April just shrugs as Remy grips her pencil. I have to turn around to hide my smile; it drives Remy
batshit
that April acts like a lost toddler in a mall yet has a higher class ranking than she does.

I’m stirring the M&Ms into the cake batter when Kelsey groans.

“The oven is broken.”

Remy looks up. “It just takes a while to heat.”

“Thanks. Because I haven’t lived here for over a year.” Kelsey rolls her eyes.

Now April looks up. Rem’s mouth hangs open; I wonder if I should do something to diffuse the tension. Like spill the rest of the M&MS on the floor.

Kelsey blinks, as if she’s fending off tears. She slams the oven door shut. “It’s not heating at all.”

“I’ll call the guys,” I say. “They can get rid of Murali for a little while, and we can use their oven.”

I find Brent in my contacts, forgetting that I still have him on speed dial until I see the lightning bolt next to his number. My throat feels tight. Next to me, the redness is fading from Kelsey’s face.

“Sorry,” she mumbles in Remy’s direction, pulling her hair into a messy bun. “PMS.”

Brent picks up on the third ring. “Yo.”

“Yo. Is Murali around?”

“Taking his afternoon siesta, I think,” Brent says. “Why?”

I explain the situation. He promises that even the surviving members of Led Zeppelin reuniting and rocking out next to his bed won’t wake Murali up, and Kelsey and I trudge over to Aldridge with a pan of raw cake mix.

“So,” I start.

“I know I’m a bitch, and it’s not her fault, but what am I supposed to think when Cole and I had an amazing time at formal and at the concert, then he and Remy spend all week together during orientation and he gives me his
I-don’t-know-if-I’m-ready-for-a-relationship
speech?” Kelsey sucks in a breath. I’m afraid she’ll pass out if she doesn’t slow down. “He’s not over her. I’m just
sick
of not being good enough.”

“But we don’t have to talk about it,” she amends, even though I haven’t said anything. “Remy is your best friend. I’ll get over him.”

I’m thrown a bit by how easily she called Remy my best friend. For the past five years, Chelsea has been my best friend. But now that I’m hearing it out loud, I realize how true it is.

Remy’s my best friend now—the one who fills up my text in-box while she’s in class, even though we live together. She’s the one I went to when everything went down with Brent last year. She’s the person I’d punch a shitbag guy in the face for—and I have.

It only makes the fact that I went behind her back with Alexis—her ex-best friend—even worse.

Brent meets us downstairs. He waits with his hands in his pockets, removing one to wave when he sees us. I’m careful to balance the cake pan as we step into the elevator. Brent fishes an M&M off the top of the batter and eats it.

“You’re an animal,” I say. “I hope you washed your hands.”

“Yup. Right after I picked my nose.” He wiggles an eyebrow.

“Gross,” Kelsey says. The elevator dings. We get off at his floor and he lets us into the dorm, where Cole and Phil are playing PlayStation 3 in the living room. Kelsey instantly tenses next to me when she sees him.

“I’ll wait for the cake to bake if you want to head back,” I whisper to her.

And that’s how I wind up alone with Brent at the guys’ kitchen table.

“Did anything happen between Cole and Remy during orientation?” I ask him. Even though the living room is attached to the kitchen, the other guys can’t hear us from there because—the volume is too loud on the television. I shoot a glance at Murali’s bedroom door. Brent wasn’t kidding about his sleeping.

“He wouldn’t tell me if it did,” Brent says. “He knows I’d be pissed if he treated Kels like that.”

“Like … nothing even happened between them,” I find myself saying out loud. “Is that how I made you feel?”

Brent shrugs. Unscrews the cap of the water bottle he’s been carrying around. “No. Not really.”

“Good,” I say. “Because I never wanted to. Make you feel like that.”

He smiles, his eyes falling to the cap in his hands. He turns it over and over. I’d kill to know what he’s thinking right now.

My phone buzzes on the table next to me. Probably Kelsey, or Rem wanting to know why Kelsey is mad at her. I leave my phone face up and swipe to open the message.

From: 819-001-3702

No cops or I kill her.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

“I … need the bathroom,” I mumble. My legs tangle with the chair as I push myself up. I sink to the floor, reaching for my phone. It slips through my fingers and lands by Brent’s feet.

I motion to snatch it away, but Brent looks down and sees the message.

I grab my phone and stumble to the bathroom. I’m not going to throw up—not really—but I feel clammy and nauseous, and I just want to lie on the cold tile until my head stops spinning. Brent follows me in.

“Anne, what the hell is—”

“It’s a stupid prank.” My voice is trembling. “Someone is screwing with me.”

“Who is
her
?” He sits on the floor next to me.

“No one,” I say. “Brent, let it go. Please.”

His mouth forms a line. “Did something happen this summer in New York?”

“No.”

Brent hands me his water bottle. I sip it, allowing the blood to flow back to my face.

“Is this about Ms. Cross?”

I snap my head to face him. “Why would you ask that?”

“Every email you sent me after you left mentioned her, asking if she was back,” he says. “People are saying—there’s rumors—she and Dr. Muller were hooking up.”

I sip the water, silently.

“What’s going on?” he asks again. His hand is on my knee.

I block him out, go back to both times I went to see Dennis. I hadn’t been careful enough. What if someone was following me? They could have been behind me on the sidewalk the whole time, listening to me tell Dennis about the room 105 text.

The nausea returns; Anthony is the only person who knows for sure that I went to see Dennis.