Deadly Little Sins (7 page)

“We should break up into pairs,” I say. “We can cover more ground that way.”

I catch Banks muttering something that sounds like
Who made you Queen bitch?
I stare him down. “You can be my partner.”

Bingham and Oliver laugh as I drag Banks to the next row, where the yearbooks from 1990 until now are stashed with the various volumes of
A History of the Wheatley School.
On the other side of the stacks, Jill removes a yearbook. She catches my eye through the hole where the book was. And she smiles. I return it as Banks plops on the floor with a yearbook.

I grab the yearbook for 2002 and sit across from Banks. I flip through several pages of photo collages at the front of the book, pausing when I see a picture of Professor Robinson, my art history teacher from last year.

I smile, because Robinson has slightly more hair and better teeth than he does now. He’s at the center of a group of about ten students. A pug-nosed brunette is holding up a sign that reads ART CLUB.

I do a double take—not because of the brunette. The girl next to her.

What’s that called, when your brain is so fixated on one thing that it starts telling your eyes to see things that aren’t really there? I think that’s happening to me right now.

Because there’s no way the girl is really
her
.

Ms. Cross.

I flip to the student portraits so fast I nearly give myself a paper cut. I scan the freshman class for the name Natalie Barnes. Nothing. Same for the upper grade levels.

I turn back to the art club photo. The girl has a round face, in that freshman-with-baby-fat way. Her blond hair is cut short, with thick, American Girl doll–like bangs.

It’s so hard to remember the details of someone’s face when you haven’t seen them in months. But I squeeze my eyes shut and picture Ms. C. She has long hair the color of copper, and gray eyes that squint when she smiles. She’s girl-next-door adorable yet pretty enough to be an actress in a Kate Mara–type way.

I cover the bangs of the girl in the picture so I can peruse every one of her facial features. Slightly long canine teeth. Round, gray eyes, and the slightest dimple in her chin.

It’s not my brain convincing me to see something that’s not there. I’ve found Ms. Cross.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

“Boom,” one of the boys says from the other side of the stacks. I think it’s Bingham. “Found him. Professor David Scheckel. Chemistry, 1998.”

Crap. I can’t leave the library yet—not when I’ve finally had a breakthrough.

“Give me that.” I jerk my head toward the 2002 yearbook in Banks’s hands. He shrugs and rejoins his friends.

“So I guess we go make a copy of his portrait,” Jill says.

“I’ll meet you guys downstairs,” I say. When they’re gone, I reexamine the picture. Ms. C is wearing a woven leather bracelet that’s identical to the one the girl next to her is wearing.

They could have made them together in art class, but none of the other girls in the photo is wearing one. It’s more likely that the girls are friends, and bought the bracelets together somewhere.

I flip to the student portraits in Banks’s yearbook: No Natalie Barnes. But I notice something strange—a whole page of pictures of kids I don’t recognize from the 2001 yearbook.

Somehow, I doubt that Wheatley gained ten students in a year.

I return to the 2001 yearbook and flip to the class portraits, more deliberately this time. Just as I suspected, there’s an entire page of students missing, as if someone tore it out carefully. From the looks of it, it’s students A-B.

Which would include Natalie Barnes.

I sit back against the stacks, the cold metal of the shelf jabbing into my spine. Someone tore out the page. But who? The most logical conclusion is that Ms. C did it. If she really is Natalie Barnes, a former student, she would have had to clean up her bread crumbs to be Jessica Cross without getting caught.

I don’t know for sure if Ms. C’s real name is Natalie Barnes, but I at least know how I can find out.

It doesn’t take me long to identify the girl standing next to Ms. C in the art club photo: Caroline Cormier-Frey, Class of ’05. Massachusetts State Junior Equestrian champion. Science Olympiad finalist. Harvard Class of ’09.

In every one of her photos, she’s glaring as if it would physically pain her to smile.

This should be fun.

During lunch, I google Caroline to see what she’s up to now. Apparently she works at the Massachusetts Republican Assembly in Weston, Massachusetts. Even more fun.

There’s no contact information for Caroline on the MRA’s website. But I know where I can find out where she was living fifteen years ago. The tunnel system beneath the schools leads to the basement, where all of the school’s old records are kept, including student files.

I plan to head straight for the tunnels after orientation breaks for the day, but I need my laundry basket so I don’t raise any suspicions about going into the basement empty-handed. But as it turns out, Brent is sitting outside my room, his back against the door.

“April let me in, but Remy’s not here,” he says.

“I’m sure she’s on the quad with everyone else.”

“I didn’t come here to see Remy.”

I lower myself until I’m sitting cross-legged next to him. I’d invite him in, but my clothes are all over my bed. Besides, I don’t need people spreading rumors about me leading Brent into my room.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“I’ve been here less than forty-eight hours. My mom’s called four times to make sure I have all my meds, Cole talked about Princeton until two in the morning, and Remy already has my whole weekend planned out.” He turns to me and tilts his head against the wall. “Be my friend again? I’m starting to think you’re the only normal person here.”

I hope not, since I’m the one who spent her morning at the police station trying to convince a detective that a missing woman using a stolen identity is the key to solving a murder. “That’s not true.”

“Well, my kind of normal,” he says.

I breathe him in—the familiar scent of his grapefruit-smelling Ralph Lauren cologne. He only wears it because his sister gave it to him as a Christmas gift.

It takes me a couple seconds to settle on what I want to say. There’s a lot I wish I could say, but these moments never last as long as they do in my head. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming back.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I wouldn’t be bursting to see me either, after the way I treated you.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t girlfriend of the year, either.” I bump my shoulder into his. He gives a hollow laugh, and I wish he’d smile because I miss the way it looks on him: a little crooked and self-conscious. It balances out how cookie-cutter cute the rest of him is.

I look away from him, realizing I’m staring.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, just anxious, I guess,” I lie. “I have a ton of ass-kissing to do to fix up my transcript. Definitely not getting into Princeton, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t think the Ivy League is for you anyway.” He pokes my side. “You like …
fun
too much.”

I poke him back. “Okay, Mr. Straight and Narrow, where are you applying?”

He shrugs. “No idea. My mom’s been hassling me to look at Notre Dame. My dad thinks I can do better.”

“I asked what
you
wanted.”

“I’m not … really sure yet.”

His words come out slow. Deliberate. Brent hates talking about himself, as if he’ll somehow say the wrong thing and mess up how he wants you to see him. He’s the guy who shamelessly admits to nonessential things, like having a One Direction song on his iTunes and getting his first boner at a performance of
The Nutcracker.
He’ll talk to anyone who will listen about some TV show he discovered on Netflix or the new
Game of Thrones
book, but ask him what he wants to be when he grows up and you’ve crossed a line.

I used to be drawn to that about him; Brent was this nut I’d do anything to crack. And I thought I did, when he opened up about his diabetes and we started dating and I learned about how screwed up his family is. Now it’s a reminder of why we broke up: Brent puts up walls when he gets mad. Brent looks for reasons not to trust people.

Brent didn’t believe me. If the situation were reversed, I probably wouldn’t have believed him. I’d
never
believe that my own father was involved in a murder, or covering one up.

I should have understood why he wanted me to let the Matt Weaver thing go. But I couldn’t, so I lied to him and went behind his back.

I want to believe that things could be different this time. That he’d believe me if I told him what was going on with Ms. C.

But wanting something isn’t enough to make it happen.

Once I get rid of Brent, I grab a laundry basket from my room and head for the Amherst basement. I push the bookcase that conceals the tunnel entrance, but it doesn’t budge. I catch my breath—I can’t really be
that
out of shape from sitting in my apartment all summer. (It is
not
easy to do Pilates in an eight-by-eight-foot bedroom, but I managed.)

I plant my feet close together to anchor myself and push again. The bookcase isn’t going anywhere.

It’s bolted to the wall.

I run my fingers behind the half an inch of space between the bookcase and the wall, searching for the rough wood of the door.

Instead I find smooth drywall.

Wheatley finally closed off the tunnel entrances.

CHAPTER

NINE

Someone at this school is one step ahead of me. If I can’t get into the tunnels, I need a Plan B to get Caroline Cormier-Frey’s information—and anything else I can dredge up on Natalie Barnes.

Anything she didn’t get to first.

After the morning orientation activities, I ditch lunch and head for the Student and Alumni Services building.

The receptionist is on the phone. Even though there’s a waiting area outside with a couch and an armchair outside the office, I hang out in front of his desk.

He covers the receiver. “Can I help you?”

“There’s something wrong with my schedule.”

“You have to file a report through the student portal to make an appointment with your advisor,” he says.

“I already did that. I never got a response.”

His mouth forms a line. “Could you wait outside until I’m done here?”

“Sure.” In fact, I was counting on it. I sit on the couch and glance over at the door. I can’t see the receptionist, which means he can’t see me. But I can hear him on the phone.

With a quick sweep of the hall to make sure no one’s coming, I head for the water cooler. I grab a paper cup and pull back the lever for cold water. Then I keep pulling until the lever snaps off and the water spills out onto the floor.

I head back into the office and tap on the receptionist’s desk until he looks up. The jerk isn’t even on the phone anymore. “I think the water cooler is broken.”

He looks over and sees the water spilling all over the carpet. He leaps up and rushes out of the office. I run around to the other side of the desk.

“Come on, come on,” I whisper as I scan the icons on the computer’s desktop. Bingo: There’s one labeled ALUMNI DIRECTORY.

I type in “Natalie Barnes” and hit Search.

It says, “No results found.”

Does that mean she didn’t graduate? I gnaw my lip. I don’t have time to speculate. I try “Caroline Cormier-Frey” and poke my head around the desk. The receptionist is gone; probably getting paper towels. The cursor spins as the system runs the search. One result loads as footsteps sound outside the office. I take a picture of the screen with my phone.

“Did you do this?” The receptionist holds up the detached lever.

I muster up my best
who, me?
look. “It was an accident.”

The receptionist shakes his head and lifts up a ruined magazine from a basket on the floor. The entire waiting area carpet is soaking wet. I do feel kind of bad about that. Shame to waste a perfectly good
Vogue.

“Maybe I should come back later?”

“That would probably be best,” he snaps, before heading back into the office.

As I head down the hall, I pull up the photo I took of the screen.

Caroline Marie Cormier-Frey, born February 8, 1987. Class of 2005. Current address: 65 Sugar Maple Lane, Weston, Massachusetts.

I’ve almost ditched the building when a very tall woman in tweed sidesteps me.

“Anne,” Dean Tierney says. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”

I settle into the red leather chair across from her desk. The last time I was in here, Tierney threw me out. I may have accused her of not caring that Lee Andersen was stalking Isabella, which is pretty messed up considering that Tierney’s own sister was Vanessa Reardon—the girl who woke up in Matt Weaver’s bed after a party and didn’t remember getting there.

So the bright spot is that it would be hard for this meeting to get worse than that.

“We need to talk about getting you back on track.” Tierney already has my file pulled. The woman doesn’t beat around the bush; I’ll give her that. “Your situation isn’t ideal, but some of your teachers from last year have agreed to boost your grades half a mark if you do an extra credit assignment of their choosing.”

I’m stunned. “Why would they do that?”

“There are people at this school who believe in you.” Tierney gives me a hard look that lets me know she’s not one of them. She passes me a stack of papers, divided by different-colored paper clips. “These are the assignments. I’d suggest you start them now, before classes begin and you find yourself overwhelmed.”

My stomach sinks as I flip through the assignments. A book report, an article review … I’m never going to finish all these when I have to spend all day at orientation. I’m barely going to be able to find the time to track down Caroline Cormier as it is.

“I’ll try,” I say.