Finding the Forger (16 page)

Connie badly wanted that Witherspoon account. Not only did she speak up for a new phone line at dinner, but she offered to do the dishes when it was my night. Her new helpfulness was almost enough to cheer me through my doldrums.
Almost.
Now that the day was ending, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I had done something really bad to Doug.

I tried to call him as soon as I got home, but he wasn’t in and I didn’t want to leave a message for fear he wouldn’t call me back. No point in painting a “hurt me” target on myself, right?

I figured I’d do some homework, then reach for the phone and try him around 7:30.

At 7:23, however, Connie popped into my room, her cell phone in hand. I know it was exactly 7:23 because, ever since I came up with the call-Doug plan, I’d been counting down the minutes to my self-imposed zero hour. I was lying across my bed, studying for
History.

Okay, okay, I was pretending to study.

“Why don’t you call Neville back?” Connie said, holding the cell phone out to me. This was serious if she was offering the cell.

“I’m supposed to call Doug at 7:30,” I told her. I smiled sweetly. “But I’ll try Neville after that.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “You can call Neville first. Tony’s on the phone right now, anyway.”

Ah-ha, that was the real reason for the cell. Call me crazy, but I doubted if Connie would lend me the use of her cell phone to call Doug. My guess was that the cell offer was for Neville phone calls only.

With a sigh of resignation, I sat up and held out my hand. After she plopped the tiny phone in my palm, she pulled out a piece of paper with her other hand.

“Here’s his number,” she said. “I wrote it down for you.”

I narrowed my eyes and took the paper, trying to telegraph in the broadest possible terms that this was not something I enjoyed doing. I wanted her to be an expert witness in my good-girlfriend trial, you see. (“So, Miss Constance Balducci, did your sister
like
calling Neville Witherspoon?” That was the key question I imagined the prosecutor, who looked a lot like Doug, asking. And Connie would answer, “No, sir. She was extremely reluctant to make the call. I had to force her to do it.”)

“Do you mind?” I asked after punching in the numbers. Connie just shrugged and walked out of the room. As the call rang through, I got up and closed the door.

“Witherspoon residence,” a maid-like voice answered.

“Is Neville there, please?”

A few seconds later, Neville was on the phone, cheerily thanking
me for getting back to him.

“The reason I was calling, love, is I have an extra ticket to a gala of some sort. Tomorrow night. Some charity event at the symphony, I think. Would you be so kind as to escort me?”

With no regret, I explained that I couldn’t accompany him. No dates allowed on school nights. That was the Law of the (Balducci) Land. Thank you, Mom.

Then I had a veritable brainstorm. Connie! Connie could accompany him! Sure, she was nearly ten years his senior, but she was pretty cool looking, and she was the one who wanted to get close to the Witherspoon clan, not me.

“Hey, but my sister could go,” I said, and launched into a description of what a babe she was and how interesting she was and how much she would like to meet him—how she’d told me so after I’d described him to her. Yes, I was pouring it on, and not feeling a twinge of guilt for doing so.

To my surprise—and maybe even a little disappointment— Neville didn’t bat an eyelash at this sister-swap. If anything, he jumped on the idea with tremendous enthusiasm.

“That sounds marvelous. I can pick her up at 7:00. Or would she prefer I meet her at the Meyerhoff Hall?”

Knowing Connie liked an exit strategy for new dates, I had mercy on her and suggested she meet him at the hall, and arranged for the rendezvous.

My heart lighter, I chatted easily with Neville for a few minutes and got off the phone feeling like a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I’d killed two birds with one stone—I’d been nice to Connie and I’d gotten rid of Neville! Woohoo!

All silver linings have clouds, though. In the hallway a second later, I nearly collided with Tony, which meant he was off the
phone. While this brightened my mood considerably, our conversation did not.

“Doug called,” he said as he headed for the bathroom. “Connie said you were on the phone with that Neville guy, so I told Doug you’d call him back.” He shut the door behind him.

What? “On the phone with that Neville guy”? Did Tony tell Doug that?

“Tony!” I shouted through the door. “What did you tell Doug?”

“Huh? I don’t remember. You were on the phone.”

I knew I wouldn’t get anything out of him, so I sagged back to Connie’s room. Her door opened as I approached.

“What did Tony tell Doug when he called?” I asked.

“I don’t know. What did Neville say?” She held out her hand for her phone, which I started to give her, then retracted at the last minute.

“Wait a second. Bargain. I’ll tell you about Neville—and it’s good, by the way—if you tell me precisely what Tony told Doug when you told Tony I was on the phone with Neville.”

“Look, I don’t remember, okay? I didn’t think it was something I’d be interrogated on. C’mon, tell me about Witherspoon. Can I see his dad or not?”

I knew I could hold out and make her life miserable for the evening, but what was the point? Chances are she was telling the truth—that she truly didn’t take note of what Tony had told Doug. Some private investigator she was! So I went ahead and returned her phone while I told her about her terrific date with Neville. She moaned and groaned about the usual things—the age difference, the fact that Neville wasn’t her type (which gave me plenty of opportunity to rib her about the guy who currently was “her type”—namely, Kurt, “the Hunky Man”), and the fact she had
nothing to wear. But all in all, I think she was pleased to have the opportunity to talk with Neville, who, she was sure, would get her in to his father’s office.

I, meanwhile, was not pleased. I tried calling Doug back, prepared to tell him the full truth about the phone call and even throw in a line about how “forward” Neville had been, which would then lead me to toss off a line about how he even “kissed me goodnight the other night, which I thought was so rude.”

But Doug’s line was in use—the voice mail picked up immediately. I tried a few more times in the next half hour—to no avail. So I decided to call Kerrie to pour out my troubles. No dice there, either. Her line was tied up as well.

I sat down at the computer and, firing up the Internet and email, IM’ed Kerrie, letting her know I just tried to call her.

She wrote back immediately: “i’m on the phone with doug.”

“
O
N THE PHONE WITH DOUG.”

The words were like a knife to my heart. After Kerrie IM’ed me she was on the phone with my boyfriend, I made polite cyber-chat for a few minutes, then wrote a cheery, “i need to talk to doug myself, so i’m gonna go now,” which any half-intelligent person knew really meant “get off the phone so I can talk to my boyfriend!”

But when I tried his number again, the voice mail still picked up almost instantaneously, which meant Kerrie had either ignored my hint or didn’t get it. I can’t imagine she didn’t get it.

In fact, she didn’t get it for hours. I tried his number five more times before going to bed, and each time the line was in use. I tossed and turned all night.

I was in a foul mood the next day, and my mood perfectly matched the weather. It was raining—a soaking, heavy downpour that left none of us unscathed. Even those with umbrellas were wet, and I’d forgotten mine, so I was drenched. My sophisticated new haircut lay matted against my head, and I was sure I looked like a wet dog after a reluctant bath, except maybe not as cute.

Rule of the Universe: At the very moment when you’re looking
your most uncute, expect your boyfriend to want a heart-to-heart talk with you.

Actually, I was the one who decided on the heart-to-heart. I’m not good at waiting for bad news. No, far better to meet it head on than loll around in it, right? So when Doug came into the locker hall that Tuesday, I was loaded for bear. I marched right over to him and said, in a charmingly accusatory way, “I tried to reach you all night last night, but you were on the phone with Kerrie.”

He stared at me for a second like I was nuts. Then he grimaced, threw his books in his locker, and leaned against it.

“I was only on with her for a few minutes. My brother was using the phone.”

Oh well. So much for my grand confrontation. Somehow, I felt disappointed. Okay, time to switch to a new tack.

“Did you get the Mistletoe Dance tickets?” I asked, again in that attractive voice that combines whining with a dash of irritation.

“No.” Then, the coup de grâce—the words that would haunt me all day. “I didn’t know if you still wanted to go with me,” Doug said.

The bell rang. The bell always rings at the wrong time. But we still had a few minutes’ grace period. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to use them to reconcile our rift because Sarah breezed in late and her locker was near Doug’s. When she saw us together, she looked at me with mopey eyes and told me she needed to talk with me.

“About Hector,” she said. “I talked to him last night. He’s thinking of quitting.”

Sarah and Kerrie must have come in together because Kerrie soon joined our little gathering. At the mention of Hector, Kerrie scowled. Sarah noticed.

“It’s serious, Ker. He could be in real trouble,” Sarah said.

“Right. ‘Real’ being the key word there,” Kerrie said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sarah asked. After shoving her lunch inside the locker, she twirled her combination lock and quickly grabbed her books for the day.

“Hector has a record. He’s a likely suspect. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist . . .” Kerrie said, shrugging her shoulders.

The blood rushed to Sarah’s face, turning it beet red.

“Hector’s not like that! He’s a good person. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time!” She looked at me as if I was supposed to help out here, but I had reached my trouble-quota already today.

Doug, however, decided to once again play mediator, and, as usual, stepped in on Kerrie’s side!

“I think Kerrie’s just trying to look out for you,” he said to Sarah. “She doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

Now it was my turn to steam and stew. So that’s what Doug and Kerrie were IM’ing each other about last night—Sarah and Hector? Once again, my friend Kerrie was using Doug as a sympathy sponge. It wasn’t fair and I was tired of it.

I looked at Sarah. “I’ll talk to Connie,” I told her, and I knew she’d know what I was saying—I’d try to find out more info and pass it along.

Kerrie let out a little snort. The second bell rang, and with the morning grace period over, we had to hightail it to class or be marked late.

“What?” I asked Kerrie.

“Nothing,” she said in a harrumphy kind of voice. “Connie might find out something Sarah doesn’t want to face.”

Sarah slammed her locker shut. “You just don’t like Hector
because he’s a Latino.”

Kerrie practically sputtered with indignation. “I can’t believe you said that! You’re accusing me of being a . . . a . . . racist!”

“If the shoe fits . . .” Sarah said.

Oh man, this was bad. Really bad. Kerrie was accusing Sarah’s boyfriend of being a criminal. Sarah was accusing Kerrie of being a racist. Doug wasn’t getting the Mistletoe Dance tickets. Where would it all end?

“Look, let’s . . . calm down,” I was about to say. But Doug did me one better. He walked over to Kerrie, who looked like she was going to cry, and put his arm around her shoulder. Now
I
felt like crying!

“We can talk later,” Doug said to no one in particular. And we all went off to our homerooms.