Deadly Little Sins (9 page)

Caroline’s lips form a line in a way that makes me think this chick wasn’t exactly rolling in friends in high school. Not exactly a shocker, if so.

“Oh really,” she says. “And who is that?”

“Natalie Barnes,” I say. “What can you tell me about her?”

Caroline leans across the coffee table separating us, as if she’s about to tell me a secret. “You have thirty seconds to get out of my house before I call the police.”

I grip the armrests of my chair. “So you did know Natalie?”

Caroline gets up. I leap out of the chair as she advances on me. “Natalie Barnes is a lying, conniving little psychopath, and I haven’t seen her in over ten years.”

“I’m not trying to cause trouble,” I say, backing up. The backs of my heels meet the wall. “Natalie is missing, and I just want to find her.”

“So you came to
me
? Is this a sick joke?” Caroline’s eyes flash. “I didn’t
touch
Natalie. Get. Out. Of my house.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s why I came—”

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

The dog resumes barking its head off. I bolt for the door as a pug with a horrendous overbite barrels down the stairs, followed by a tall brunette yelling after it.

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” the brunette says as my feet hit the porch steps.

I whip my head around. You’ve got to be freaking kidding me is right.

The brunette is Alexis Westbrook.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

“What are you doing here?” I demand.

Alex’s nostrils flare. “In what possible scenario could you possibly be the one with the right to ask that question? I
live
here.”

“What—why?”

“How did you find me here?” she demands. “No one was supposed to find me here.”

“Are you … related to
Caroline
?”

“No,” Alexis snarls. “Her mother is my stepmother’s sister. Amanda Cormier-Frey.”

Crap. I should have known that if something sketchy was going on at Wheatley, that the Westbrook family would be involved somehow. I glance around the Cormiers’ expansive property, looking for an escape route. Alexis mistakes it for admiration.

“Mary Ellen brought us here to avoid the reporters back home,” she says. “She calls it
rustic
.”

Poor Alexis, having to downgrade from a multimillion dollar brownstone to a house worth a humble seven figures.

“You’re uncharacteristically quiet,” Alexis snaps. “Why are you here?”

“It doesn’t matter. I was leaving.”

“Oh, no you’re not.” She steps in front of me.

“I am. Now get out of my way before your cousin calls the cops on me.”

“
Step
cousin,” Alexis says. “And I’m not done talking to you. Is this about what happened with my father?”

I freeze. “No. But I’d go back and stop your dad from going to Shepherd’s house if I could.”

Alexis’s eyes flash. “I’m glad Shepherd is dead.”

“So then we don’t have a lot left to talk about.” I try to get around her, but she blocks my path.

“What are you mixed up in now?” she asks. “If Caroline is involved, I know it can’t be good.”

I glance at the house. For once, I actually agree with her—Caroline actually makes Alexis look normal.

“It’s nothing,” I say.

“You can’t BS me,” Alexis says. “I’m not one of those half-baked guys you lead around. I know you’re onto something.”

“You don’t know anything.” I force my way past her.

For Natalie’s sake, I hope that Caroline has absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance. Because I know too well what happens when someone gets caught in the Westbrook family’s crossfire.

So my visit to the Cormier-Frey house did not go well.

Even if it weren’t for Caroline’s ridiculous reaction to Natalie’s name, I definitely can’t go back. Not as long as Alexis is there.

There’s a long list of people I would rather deal with than Alexis Westbrook. All of my ex-boyfriends. A drug cartel. My dad.

But Caroline’s words linger in my head.
I didn’t touch Natalie.

I never said she did.

I find myself on the chocolate chip pancake line the first morning of classes. Now that all the grades are moved in, the dining hall is back to feeling the way it did last year—like the main level of the 34th Street Macy’s in December.

The four freshman girls in front of me laugh in unison. Freshmen travel in packs, with these nervous faces like they’re afraid of missing something if they’re not always with their roommate and the girls across the hall.

We inch up the line, and I see what the girls are laughing at. Or rather,
whom.
Banks Sherwood.

“So you didn’t have to do any of those stupid games?” one of the girls is saying.

“Nope. They even had Wi-Fi in the annex lodge,” he says.

“Ugh, lucky,” two of the girls say at the same time.

Banks looks up, almost as if he feels me shooting daggers at him.

“Hi Anne,” he says sweetly.

“Hi, Banks. Are you always such a smug little shit when you send a girl to the hospital?”

I’ve wiped the smile off his face. The girls nudge each other, inching up the line and avoiding my eyes.

“It was a joke..” Banks’s voice is even, but the tips of his ears are red. I can tell by his expression that he was raised never to let a girl embarrass him. And even though I’m older than him, I’m still a girl.

“Farrah’s on crutches,” I say. “Some joke.”

Banks looks at me, lets out a laugh, and turns back to the freshmen girls, as if I’m some crazy bitch who isn’t worth his time. When the girls accept their pancakes and walk away, he mutters something to me.

“You were the dead girl’s roommate. You got a thing for dumpy little brown chicks?”

Maybe it’s because three weeks ago, I had lunch with a man who’s now dead, or maybe it’s because Banks is an asshole, but I lose it. I grab his wrist.

“Why don’t you call Farrah that to her face, you little mother fu—”

“I wouldn’t complete that thought, young lady.”

I drop Banks’s wrist and whip around. A man is behind us. He extends a hand to me.

“I’m Mr. Buckley. Your new vice principal.”

Sitting in John Buckley’s office is really putting a damper on my morning. Especially since it’s Dr. Harrow’s old office. Obviously someone thought a new Pottery Barn couch and executive desk would mask the fact that a murderer used to work out of this office, but I’m not fooled.

“So.” Mr. Buckley leans back in his chair. He looks like he could be one of my friends’ fathers. So—innocuous enough. “What did that young man do to draw your wrath?”

“He’s a racist and entitled brat, and I had to spend the entire week with him.”

Mr. Buckley nods, smiling.

“Is there any way you could … not tell Dean Tierney about this?” I ask.

“I’m amenable to that,” Buckley says. “To be quite honest, I’m still getting a hang of this prep school thing. I was principal of a public school in the inner city for ten years, but you kids are a whole new ball game.”

“So I’m not in trouble?”

“We’ll call it a warning,” he says. “Sorry for taking you out of breakfast, but I wanted to send a message to your audience.”

“And what about Banks?”

Buckley presses his fingers together. “How about you fill out a conflict report with what he said, and I’ll hang onto it in case he does it again?”

“That sounds fair,” I say, but Buckley is already rifling through his desk drawers. It’s a mess—folders askew, pens and Post-its strewn everywhere. He slides a drawer shut and sits back.

“The dean’s secretary has the forms. Excuse me a minute.”

He slips out the door, and I’m alone. Buckley’s ID card stares up at me from the desk.

Only someone who’s been huffing paint would actually consider stealing a teacher’s ID—especially someone in my situation. But Tierney has Natalie Barnes’s file on her desk. If I can just get into the building after hours and get my hands on it, I can prove that the school knew Ms. C was a fake, and that they’re covering something up.

I need the ID card.

But I’m not going to steal it.

Instead, I take out my phone and snap a photo of the ID, making sure the bar code is in full focus. I put my phone away just as Buckley enters his office, clutching a paper triumphantly.

“Here you go,” he says. “Bring it back to me whenever. Unless you have a change of heart.”

I thank him and shove the conflict report in my bag when I’m outside his office. I’m not going to fill it out, and it’s not because I’ve had a change of heart. I just have better things to do with my time than wasting it on someone like Banks Sherwood.

And one of those things is finding out if Dan Crowley was right about bar codes being the way of the future.

Mr. Buckley didn’t think to write me a pass, so I’m the last one to arrive to my first class: AP American Government.

“Don’t sit,” a thin-lipped woman barks when the hour strikes and we all move to choose seats. “I have my own chart.”

I groan inwardly and glance at my schedule. This is Professor Kazmarkis. I looked her up online this morning, to see if I could find any helpful information on that RateMyTeacher site. The only review consisted of a sad face.

Kazmarkis sits everyone at the tables of two in alphabetical order.

“Brent Conroy.” She taps the back of a seat in the first row. Brent smiles at me with half his mouth as he slides into the chair. I didn’t know we had this class together.

Kazmarkis looks down at her chart. A quick inventory of last names in the room tells me what’s coming. “Anne Dowling.”

Kazmarkis eyes me, her probing stare lingering on me a second longer than the other names she’s called. I tell myself it’s because she doesn’t recognize me from around campus, and not because the mere mention of my name has put me on her radar.

“Next to Mr. Conroy.”

A couple people titter behind us, enjoying the schadenfreude at me sitting next to my ex. Kazmarkis tells them to be quiet.

Brent whispers in my ear. “Made a new friend at breakfast?”

“He let me off with a warning.”

Brent smiles. Kazmarkis shoots us a dirty look. I write a note in the corner of my notebook, tear it off, and pass it to Brent.

Do you know anyone who went to Muller’s memorial service?

Brent’s eyebrows knit together. He holds my gaze. I know what he wants to say—am I seriously going to start digging into a home invasion now? I tap my pen on the paper to get his attention. He slides it away from me and scribbles a note back.

The whole science dept., probably. Also Matthews and Robinson.

Robinson. My art history teacher from last year.

My statistics teacher holds us an extra five minutes because he forgot to hand out textbooks at the beginning of the hour, so I have to run over to the humanities building at the end of the day. I’m hoping to catch Professor Robinson before he leaves.

I knock on his doorframe, relieved to see him hunched over his desk, packing up his briefcase.

“Anne. Hello, dear.” He smiles at me. “Glad to see you back. There’s been a dearth of sassy little quips in your absence.”

I slip inside the room. “Hi, Professor. How are you?”

That’s when I notice the extra sag to the skin under his eyes. “I’ve been better. It’s been quite a sad week.”

I sit in an empty desk. “Dr. Muller?”

Robinson nods. “Such a brilliant lad. So kind.”

Robinson doesn’t know this, but I saw him and Dr. Muller together when I followed Coach Tretter into the staff-parking garage. Dr. Muller was driving Robinson home after he’d had a few too many glasses of champagne at a faculty presentation.

“I went to the memorial at MIT last week.” Robinson takes his reading glasses off and slips them into his jacket pocket. “You expect to eulogize your friends when you’re my age, but, well. Not like that.”

“Professor … did you happen to see Ms. Cross at the memorial?”

Robinson frowns. “I’m sorry?”

“Ms. Cross. Professor Upton’s replacement.”

“Oh.” Robinson blinks. “You know, I can’t say I would have recognized her if she was there. I don’t think I ever spoke to her.”

That can’t be right. When I asked Ms. C for help finding out what happened between Matt Weaver and Vanessa Reardon, she knew to lead me to Professor Robinson, who Vanessa confided in. Unless Robinson is telling the truth, and Ms. C found out another way.

Like through old records in the tunnels.

“Professor,” I say. “Did you have a student named Natalie Barnes? About twelve years ago.”

“The name sounds familiar,” Robinson says. “I don’t believe I had her in class, but she may have been in one of my clubs.”

“Blond, possibly friends with Caroline Cormier-Frey?”

“Oh, yes, Natalie!” Robinson taps his temple. “This old thing surprises me every so often. Yes, Natalie was in Art Club for a year. Very quiet girl. Can’t say I remember much about her, I’m afraid.”

A portrait of Natalie Barnes is forming in my brain. Quiet, unassuming. Didn’t leave much of an impression.

Almost as if even thirteen years ago, she was preparing to disappear.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Chicken fajitas are on the menu tonight, and it’s a good thing, because I’m going to need that extra protein in order to stay up late and break into the administration building.

Although technically, I’m not breaking in, because I have a key.

I feel bad about using Mr. Buckley’s ID for illicit purposes, because he actually seems like a cool dude.

But so did Dr. Muller. And Ms. C. If someone doesn’t get to the bottom of what’s going on around here, cool teachers have a pretty poor prognosis for sticking around. And staying alive.