Private 8 - Revelation (17 page)

That would be very not good.

"Ah! Thank God," Ivy said finally.

She shoved whatever she was looking for into her bag and strode past me toward the door. She got so close to the closet I could see the fur lining on her coat and smell her musky perfume. It was all I could do to keep from gagging. Then she walked out and slammed the door behind her.

I let out a breath but didn't move. Glancing at my Nike watch, I forced myself to wait. And wait. And wait. Until five full minutes had passed. Then I finally emerged from the closet and took a real breath.

"That was way too close," I said to myself. 177

I was about to flee the scene when something caught my eye and I paused. It was the picture--the photo of Cheyenne, Noelle, Ariana, and Ivy. It still hung above Ivy's bed, but something about it had changed. As I took a tentative step toward it, I realized what it was. Every single face had been X'd out with black marker except for Ivy's. Just like the photo of me and Cheyenne.

My whole body trembled. What did these defaced photos actually mean? Was she close to getting rid of Noelle? And if so, how did she intend to do it? Hands quaking, I lifted my phone and snapped a photo of the photo. Then I took a step back and snapped the wider scene once again.

This was all I needed. I was going to the police. And this time, they were going to have to listen to me. Noelle's life--and maybe even my own--depended on it.

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***

"I'm sorry, Reed. I don't really know what you think this proves," Detective Hauer said, sliding my iPhone across the table to me. He pushed up the sleeves of his drab, tan sweater and folded his arms on the table in front of his notebook.

I felt as if every muscle in my body had just atrophied all at once. He had to be kidding me. First, the two officers at Hell Hall had told me that Detective Hauer wouldn't be on campus today. So then I had been forced to skip an entire morning of classes, sneak off campus, walk all the way over here in the freezing cold, and suffer on that cracked plastic chair in their saunalike waiting room for over an hour. All of that for him to just dismiss me?

"I already told you," I said, sitting forward until my upper body was pressed against the edge of the table, my hands clasped in my lap. " Ivy herself explained to me how much this silver box meant to her. To her, it's the reason her grandmother died. Cheyenne not only left her

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alone at her grandmother's that night to potentially watch the woman die, but she took the box with her. Ivy hated her for that."

"So she killed Cheyenne over a jewelry box," the detective said skeptically, leaning his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand. "That's not much of a motive."

"No! She killed Cheyenne over her grandmother's death!" I said, frustrated. "Look at the photos of Cheyenne's room from the morning we found her. That box is sitting on her desk. Now it's hidden in Ivy's room. She must have gone back and taken it. To her that box is a symbol of everything that happened that night. Maybe she thought that if you guys found it you might figure it all out. I mean, isn't that what guilty people do? Return to the scene of the crime to cover their tracks?"

The detective took a deep breath and glanced toward the open doorway behind me, toward the hustle and bustle of the office, as if he was wishing he was out there rather than in here. Why did he refuse to take me seriously?

"Listen, Reed, we've already talked to Ivy and she has an alibi for the night Cheyenne was murdered." He pulled his notebook toward him and flipped through it. "She was with Gage Coolidge all night and he corroborated her story."

"So? Gage is totally in love with Ivy," I protested. "He'd say anything she asked him to say."

Hauer looked at me with the expression of a man who was starting to get fed up with pandering to a whiny kindergartner. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to cry or smack him across his tired, old face. Instead, I whipped out my next weapon. 180

"Look," I said, pulling the destroyed photo of Cheyenne and me out of my bag and slapping it down in front of him. "I found this in my room the other day."

Detective Hauer picked up the two halves of the photo by their edges and looked them over. I grabbed my iPhone and scrolled to the pic of Ivy's photo, then turned it to him.

"Now look at this," I said. "Me, Cheyenne, Ariana, Noelle. All of us X'd out in the exact same way. The girl has already taken care of Cheyenne, and Ariana took care of herself. That leaves me and Noelle," I said, my voice trembling. "She's coming after us next, I swear."

For the first time all morning, Detective Hauer looked slightly interested. Even concerned. I was glad that the fact that I was afraid for my own life had actually gotten through to him. He had a heart after all. He placed the phone and the photo in front of him and studied them. I seized my moment.

"Is that what you want, Detective?" I asked. "Do you really want another murder on your hands?"

He lifted his weary eyes to me and sighed, then sat back in his chair.

"Crosby!" he shouted, so loud I actually jumped in my chair..

Almost instantly, a skinny guy in a blue uniform scrambled into the room. "Yes, Detective?"

"Grab an evidence bag and some gloves and get in here," he ordered. "I want this photo dusted for prints."

"Yes, sir," the cop said. 181

My heart leapt as I looked back at Detective Hauer. Was this for real? Was he finally going to help me?

"We'll look into it," he said, glancing at the picture on my iPhone once more. Glancing at it as if he didn't like what he saw. "I'm not guaranteeing anything, but we'll look into it."

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IMMATURE STAMP

By the time I got back to campus after making a quick stop at the Hallmark store in town for some supplies to complete Josh's gift, classes were over for the day. Students were streaming out of the cafeteria following lunch and loitering on the quad before heading to their dorms to start primping and dressing and finishing wrapping their presents. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. If I had strolled back onto campus an hour earlier, I could have easily been snagged for skipping, but now I blended right in.Praying I wouldn't bump into Ivy on my way back to my room lest I give away my anticipatory glee, I took the stairs instead of the elevator. My plan was to hunker down alone in my dorm for the rest of the afternoon and wait to see what happened next. If the police did come to arrest Ivy, I wanted to be there to witness it.

I speed-walked down the hall to my room, tugging my scarf from my neck and unbuttoning my coat. There were a few girls hanging out

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in front of their rooms, but Ivy wasn't among them. When I slipped inside, I turned around and closed the door, allowing myself a quick breath of relief. Home free. Then I turned and faced my room. A gasp of horror escaped my throat.

The place was a complete wreck. The drawers of my dresser yawned open, clothes spilling out of them and covering the entire floor. My bed was unmade, pillows on the floor as well. My closet was open and half the clothes inside had been ripped from the hangers. The Chloe bag had been tossed in the corner, unclasped and upside down. Two of the three posters Constance had given me had been slashed in half and the third hung from one sorry tack over my bed. Even the photo of Scott and me hadn't come through unscathed. The glass was broken and the frame cracked.

I was going to kill Ivy. I was going to kill her.

My hands had just curled into fists when I noticed that all my CDs were fanned out across the desk, some of them having tumbled to the floor.

CDs. Wait a second. CDs.

Maybe this wasn't Ivy's handiwork after all.

I grabbed the Chloe bag and righted it, then yanked open the small, inside pocket. It was empty.

"Amberly," I said through my teeth. "You little bitch."

She hadn't found the Billings disc, which, of course, didn't exist. But she had managed to find her precious Carma Card. Plus what was left of my Billings fund money. Both were gone from their hiding place inside the Chloe bag.

184 My heart rate started to return to normal as my brain accepted the fact that this had not been the work of my stalker. There was nothing Cheyenne-related about this particular attack. No. Amberly had done this. The pointless destruction had her immature stamp all over it. Apparently, this was her idea of "doing things the difficult way."

I groaned as I looked around at the disaster area that was my room, hating the fact that Amberly had--even in a tiny way--gotten the better of me. Part of me wanted to storm right over to Billings and steal the stupid Carma Card right back, just to prove a point, but I knew that was never going to happen. No one over there was going to let me through the front door, let alone allow me to ransack my old room. I hated that Amberly had managed to get into my room and mess with me, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I wasn't going to let that twit ruin the rest of my day--the day on which Ivy might finally be arrested, the day on which I might finally get through to Noelle and Josh.

No. I was just going to have to deal. And hopefully, by the end of the night, this mess would turn out to be just a blip in an otherwise perfect day.

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MUCH WORSE

"I cannot believe she did this to you," Sabine said, shaking her head as she speed-folded my clothes and stacked them into my dresser. Apparently, when Sabine was angry, she was like a whirling dervish. In five minutes she had cleaned up all the clothes, hanging them back in their places and tucking them into drawers. "That's it. I'll never talk to that girl again."I smiled wanly as I carefully removed the photo of Scott and me from the broken frame. "Thanks, but won't that make your living situation a tad difficult?"

"I don't care," Sabine said, shoving the drawer closed. "Clearly there is something wrong with this girl. You can't just break into people's rooms. What is wrong with everyone?"

Good question. I was about to attempt an answer when several male voices filled the hallway. I heard the telltale feedback from a walkie-talkie and my heart skipped a beat. Sabine and I locked eyes. 186

I felt tingles all over every inch of my skin. This was it. They had come for Ivy.

"Yes, sir. I understand," Headmaster Cromwell's voice echoed down the hall. "I understand that, but I have the academy's lawyer right here and she has looked over the warrant. Everything appears to be in order."

Quaking with excitement and uncertainty, I crept over to my door and cracked it open. Two uniformed police officers strode by my room along with the Crom, who was on his cell, and a rotund woman in a gray suit who was reading over some legal document. Bringing up the rear was Detective Hauer in his thick wool coat, looking grim. The officers stopped and one of them knocked on Ivy's door. His blue vinyl jacket swished with every movement he made.

"Ms. Slade? Ms. Crane? This is the Easton Police Department."

"What's going on?" Sabine asked, trying to see through the crack by leaning into my shoulder from behind.

I closed the door quietly and looked at her, wide-eyed. "It's the police. They've come for Ivy!" I whispered.

My God. They must have found her fingerprints on my photo. I had finally done something right.

"Right now?" Sabine asked, clutching her hands together.

"What's going on?" I heard Ivy ask from next door. "Shhh!" I said to Sabine, putting my hands out and freezing in place as if doing so would help me hear better. All up and down the hall, doors were opening and closing as my floor mates checked out the drama.

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"Miss Slade, we have a warrant to search your things," one of the officers said.

"What? What for?" Ivy blurted, sounding angry.

"Yes, sir. Yes. She's right here," Headmaster Cromwell said.

He must have handed Ivy the phone, because in the next second I could hear her rambling right outside my door.

"Daddy! Yes, there are three of them and they're going through all my stuff! What is going on? "

She sounded on the verge of tears. I would have given anything to have been able to open my door, but everyone was crowded right outside. My appearance would have been way too obvious. So all I could do was stand there and imagine. Imagine how scared Ivy must have looked as she realized she was finally about to be brought to justice.

There was another squeal of the walkie-talkie and a voice came through. "Detective Hauer, sir, we have the Coolidge boy. Should we take him right to the car?"

"Gage?" Sabine mouthed.

"Yes, Officer Crosby. We'll meet you there as soon as we wrap this up," Detective Hauer responded. My pulse pounded in my ears. Now that this was all happening, it seemed so very out of control. Had they decided that Gage was some kind of accomplice? Was I right in guessing that he had lied to the police to protect Ivy? I actually felt a thump of guilt at the thought of Gage being dragged off campus by the police. Who knew I had any sort of soft spot in my heart for that jerk?

"Miss Slade? Care to explain this?" Detective Hauer asked.

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"What? Dad, hang on," Ivy said. There was a pause. "Wait a minute. Who did this?" Ivy asked.

"Are you trying to tell me you didn't deface this photo yourself?" Detective Hauer said.

"No! No, I didn't," Ivy said. "I have no idea who did that, but it wasn't me."

I rolled my eyes at her obvious lie. That was it. I couldn't take this anymore. I opened the door and stood in the doorway with Sabine just behind me. Everyone looked over at us. Headmaster Cromwell with his pinched expression. Ivy, looking waxy and pale, clutching the cell phone through which her father was barking orders. Detective Hauer, holding the X'd-out photo of Cheyenne, Noelle, Ariana, and Ivy in his gloved hand. Even the lawyer lady looked me up and down.

"Miss Brennan, Miss DuLac. This is not a theater matinee," Headmaster Cromwell said bitterly, crossing his arms over his chest. " Kindly wait inside."

"Fine. I just want to say one thing to Ivy," I told him. Then I looked her in the eye. Looked right at the girl who had spent the last two months doing everything she could think of to ruin my life, and slowly smiled. "I hope you get everything that's coming to you," I said firmly. Her jaw dropped slightly, and her eyes filled with confusion and ire. But I didn't care. I just slammed my door right in her face.