Deadly Little Sins (20 page)

Is that what my life would look like next year if I hadn’t gotten myself into so much trouble? Those girls could be Remy and me in Harvard sweatshirts.

If Tierney believes Caroline, I’ll be gone by the end of the week. Expelled for real this time, from the second prep school in less than a year.

I’m not going to have the life my parents always wanted for me.

And the worst part is that I’m realizing I never wanted it for myself.

I don’t know what’s left for me, or where I go from here. And I’d be lying if I said I’m not terrified of finding out.

An older woman rounds the corner the college girls disappeared around. She’s lugging a wire cart behind her, filled with grocery bags. She’s got one of those weird plastic hoods over her head, I guess in case it rains or whatever. She stops in front of Luke’s building.

I cross the street.

“Need a hand?”

The woman looks up and blinks at me.

“With the groceries,” I say.

“Oh. Yes, yes, thank you.” She lets go of her cart. I lift it up the steps while she enters the building access code: 0-0-7-9. I file it away in my head for future reference.

The woman leads me into the lobby. It’s cramped. On one side, there’s a bulletin board of notices and flyers advertising guitar lessons from someone named Shana. And there are about twenty mailboxes.

“They finally fixed the dang elevator,” the woman wheezes. “A whole week to fix it. I says to the super, I never heard of it taking a week to fix an elevator.”

I glance over her shoulder, scanning the mailboxes. Dunton, 412, Feldman, 203, Barnes, 310.

“Well, thanks, doll,” the woman says as the elevator door opens. My cue to leave. I have about .05 seconds to get on that elevator with her without looking like a psychopath.

“I’m actually headed upstairs,” I say. “Visiting my dad this weekend.”

I help her lift her cart over the elevator threshold.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” she says. I can’t tell if the blank look that crosses her face is suspicion. She motions to push the button for her floor.
Please not 3, please not 3.

She hits 5. A small sigh of relief escapes me as I hit 3.

“Do I know him?” she asks.

My toes curl in my shoes. “He … just moved in. My parents are separated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” The woman gives me a sympathetic look. The doors open for the third floor.

“Take care, doll,” she says, before they close on her. I nod, even though she’s already gone.

I turn and head down the hall, panic cornering me. The sound of a TV blasts from Apartment 306.

The building is old and the doors have handle locks, almost like rooms in a house. With trembling hands, I get out my nail file. The seven P.M. news continues to blare across the hall.

I pause with the file wedged in the lock and press my ear to the door. I can’t hear anything. I don’t know what I expected—Natalie’s cries for help? Luke isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t leave her here, let alone hide her here in the first place. If he’s got her.

The door clicks open and I slip inside the apartment. It’s narrow, with an exposed brick wall covered in artsy prints and photographs. There’s a kitchenette attached to the dining room/living room. The door off the living room is closed.

I search inside my bag for my pepper spray, just in case, as I approach it. I swallow and turn the knob, opening the door an inch.

Luke’s bedroom is empty, save for a crisply made double bed, a nightstand, and a dresser. The room leads into a pristine master bath. I reach for the nightstand handle; as an afterthought, I use a tissue to open it.

Inside are two rows of neurotically folded socks and a moleskin journal. I pick up the latter and flip through scattered sketches of what look like website interfaces.

It’s useless. And there’s a chance everything I find in this apartment will be useless. But I can’t leave if there’s a chance something here holds a clue to where she is.

I sit at Luke’s desk, in the living room. He has desktop computer with a huge monitor and CD towers: one of those build-it-yourself types. I turn the computer on and almost immediately get a password prompt.

Damn it.
I’m no Dan Crowley, and I know next to nothing about Luke Barnes. There’s no way I’m getting on this computer. I shut it down, noticing a paper-clipped set of papers next to the keyboard.

It’s a photocopied itinerary for a trip to Austin. The flight leaves in an hour. I browse the papers, also finding hotel information, airport transportation arrangements, and a schedule of events for the fifth annual Innovations in Internet Technology and Social Media Convention.

I resist the urge to bang my head on the desk. Luke Barnes is on his way to Texas for a stupid geek conference. He’ll be back in a week, according to the flight info.

I sigh, reminding myself that if Luke were really leaving town for good, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave incriminating evidence behind anyway. I turn my attention to the filing cabinet. Maybe his computer password is hidden inside.

The folders are arranged alphabetically by category. I flip through the tabs, hoping to see one that’s labeled PASSWORDS, but no such luck.

But there is a folder labeled PHONE.

Inside it is every Verizon bill Luke Barnes has received in his life. Or, since 2005. I wonder if Luke will notice if I make a pot of coffee in his kitchen, because it’s going to take me
hours
to go through these bills to see if he’s been in touch with Natalie.

I sit back on my heels, trying to think like someone on the run. The first thing I would do is get one of those disposable cell phones: nothing with a contract or wireless tracking device. Natalie’s too smart not to do the same—so there’s no way she’d use the same cell phone for very long.

I pull Luke’s bill from last spring; I know which cell phone number she was using then, because she gave it to me in class in case I needed to text her. That way we’d have no excuse for not understanding the homework, she said. She was always there to help.

I wonder if she really meant it, or if she only did it because it was something the real Jessica would have done.

As I browse through the phone records for March, April, and May, the real Luke Barnes couldn’t be any clearer.

He’s a liar. There are three phone calls from Natalie’s number in April alone. According to the bill, each call lasted around nine minutes.

So much for Luke not hearing from his sister for years.

Something grazes my legs.

“Jesus.” I cover my mouth, even though the only one who heard me is the gray- and-white cat sitting at my feet. It looks up at me and head-butts my ankles. I rub its neck and shuffle the phone records back into order. I have to get out of here; there’s a neatly stacked tower of cat food cans on the kitchen counter.

Luke must have appointed a human to come open them while he’s away, and there’s no telling when he or she will show up.

As I look for
P
to replace the phone records, my fingers graze over
N.
There’s only one folder. It’s not labeled.

I open it. There are two check stubs inside, dated from February and April last year. Both are made out to cash. Each is for $2,500.

N
for Natalie? If so, it looks like Luke Barnes tried to pay his sister to go away.

As I’m getting up, I see a piece of paper sticking off the edge of Luke’s desk. It’s smushed between two books, as if he was trying to get it out of view.

I recognize the school crest on the paper. But it’s not Wheatley’s: It’s Plymouth’s.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

I swore I wouldn’t steal anything from Luke’s apartment, so I snapped a photo of the paper with the Plymouth crest on it.

It was a map of the reform school. A building was circled in red pen. I tried to pull up a similar image on Google, but I couldn’t find a map of the school. Luke must have had access to a primary source—or at least an old book.

Even though I’ve read up on it what feels like thousands of times, I do an Internet search on Plymouth again. I have to be missing something—some reason why Natalie and her brother would be so interested in it.

Wikipedia Entry: Plymouth Reform School

The Plymouth School, also known as the Massachusetts State School for Boys, was a reform school in Surrey, Massachusetts, a town in Suffolk County. The school was founded in 1870 by notable writer and behaviorist Radcliffe H. Sullivan. While Sullivan intended for Plymouth to be a secondary school for orphaned or previously incarcerated boys, the institution was criticized in the 1900s for becoming little more than a juvenile detention center. In 1961, the state officially closed the Plymouth School, citing a lack of funding and years of poor performance evaluations, including allegations of squalid living conditions and abuse of students at the hands of staff.

The entry is pages and pages long, and I’ve read most of it, anyway. I search for mentions of “Wheatley School.” I get a hit at the bottom of the page, under the section entitled “1961–present.”

After its closure in 1961, local residents complained about trespassing and vandalism at the site of the abandoned school. The state ordered the school to be bulldozed in 1965. The question of how to handle the 1,000-acre land was fraught with contention for years. Many argued the land was a historic site that should be preserved by the state; however, taxpayers favored the private sale of the land, which would have been expensive for the state to maintain. In 1985, the nearby Wheatley School expressed interest in purchasing the land for an extension of the Wheatley campus. It wasn’t until 2000 that the state court approved the sale of the land for $15 million; attorney Nathan Roe represented the Wheatley School in the transation. Headmaster Benjamin Goddard announced the school’s plans to move forward with his legacy project, the Wheatley annex, in 2001. In 2006, the $5 million project was completed.

The Wheatley annex is used by the school for biannual leadership outings, as well as private events such as corporate outings, birthday parties, and weddings, which generate an estimated $1.5 million in revenue a year for the school.

Fifteen million dollars, plus another $5 million, for a glorified obstacle course and picnic area. Damn. Goddard sure takes the term
legacy
pretty seriously.

It’s a link to Natalie Barnes, at least. I’m just not sure it’s the one I’m looking for.

Natalie was caught trespassing on the land Goddard wanted to develop for his precious annex. Then he expelled her and made sure no headmaster in the area would accept her into his or her school.

What had she really done—or seen—at the annex that night?

Everyone is busy discussing plans for Halloween weekend when I get to dinner. Remy is trying to convince the group to go to a costume party at a BC frat, but the guys want to stay in the dorms and watch
The Blair Witch Project.

“Apparently I missed you all turning a hundred,” Remy snipes.

“We’re guys,” Murali says. “We’re not going to get into a frat party.”

“Speak for yourself,” Brent says. “You haven’t seen my sexy nurse costume.”

“They don’t care as long as you pay,” Remy says.

“It’s kind of true,” Cole says. “I’m still not going, though.”

“Whatever. Saves us from being embarrassed by your lazy-assed costumes.” Remy shares a triumphant smile with me. I smile back; does this mean I’m on some sort of probationary friendship? I’m afraid to ask.

My head isn’t in the Halloween debate. I can’t stop thinking about the new, bizarre pieces to the puzzle.

Luke gave Natalie money and lied about not hearing from her in years. I definitely don’t trust him, but if Natalie’s alive, he’s my best chance of figuring out where she is.

And then there’s Spencer. Natalie had spent nearly three years of her life researching Plymouth Reform School—the same place she’d been with Spencer the night she was expelled.

I have to find out what really happened that night.

But Natalie’s not here to explain, and Spencer definitely isn’t telling. And if I even try to approach him again, best-case scenario is that it’ll end with me being legally required to stay fifty feet away from him.
Best
case.

“Anne?” Remy is tapping my shoulder. I think it’s because I’ve spaced out again, and someone is trying to talk to me, but when I look up, the whole table is quiet.

Because Dean Tierney is standing behind me.

“Would you like to start or should I?”

We’re back in Tierney’s office. She folds her hands on the desk in front of her and waits for my response.

I hesitate. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

“I received an anonymous message that you were seen purchasing drugs at the BC-Notre Dame football game this weekend.”

I resist my urge to put a fist through Tierney’s desk. “It wasn’t anonymous. And it’s not true.”

Tierney leans back in her seat. She drums her nails—long, unpolished—on the armrests. “True or not, this is a serious accusation, Anne. I’d be remiss if I didn’t look into it.”

My jaw sets. “I know it’s serious. That’s why someone with a grudge against me would make it.”

Something flashes in Tierney’s eyes—hesitation. “Do you know who would do such a thing?”

I dig my nails into my kneecaps. Caroline wanted to screw me over, but she wanted to protect her own identity more. Just in case I could turn around and prove that she was the one buying from Spencer. I can’t tell Tierney the truth without raising suspicions about what I’ve done to piss off the other side of Alexis’s family.

I shrug. “I dumped a glass of cranberry juice on Brooke Dempsey’s tray the other morning.”

Tierney blinks at me. “And why did you do that?”

“She pretty much called me a whore. Sorry for my language.”

Tierney sucks in her breath.

“Am I expelled?” I blurt.