Scarlett Undercover (7 page)

T
he address Emmet gave me for Quinn Johnson’s family put them in a part of town where the right bank account bought you a prime view of Christie Park. A doorman sat just inside the lobby of their building, watching his phone with one eye and the street with the other. Doormen could be a brick wall or your best friend depending on how you played them. I turned around, hoofed it six blocks north to a flower shop, and came back.

From the way he studied me before he even looked at the bouquet of purple dahlias in my hand, I could tell
the guy knew his stuff. Good doormen, the ones worth their holiday tips, always checked faces first.

“These are for the Johnsons,” I said, keeping my eyes wide and innocent. “I’m Scarlett. I was a friend of Quinlan’s at Chandler Academy.”

He gave a sad nod.

“Awful thing,” he said. “Just awful. Hold on a sec.”

He picked up an old-fashioned intercom receiver and punched in an apartment number.

“There’s a young lady down here with flowers,” he said. “Says she knew Quinn. Shall I send her up?”

He looked me over some more while the person on the other end talked.

“Sure thing.” He put the receiver back on its hook. “They aren’t taking visitors right now, sweetheart, but you can leave your posies with me, and I’ll make sure they get where they’re supposed to.”

I blinked a few times and made my smile extra innocent.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m kind of relieved. I was nervous about seeing them. Didn’t want to say the wrong thing, you know? Paying my respects just seemed like the right thing to do.”

I started to hand him the flowers. Stopped midreach.

“Say,” I said, as if the thought had just hit me. “Sam isn’t home, is he? I should check on him, see how he’s doing.”

The doorman got a soft look on his face and nodded.

“Lemme check.”

He picked up the receiver to try again, gave me a smile and a wink as he talked.

Pay dirt.

“Housekeeper says Sam’s coming down,” the doorman said when he was through. “She thinks it’d do him good to see a friend.”

“Oh.” I shifted my smile from wistful to relieved. “That’s great!” I gave the door a drawn-out glance. “You know, it’s such a beautiful day, I think I’ll wait for him outside.”

“Good idea.” Half the doorman’s attention had already drifted back to his phone. “I’ll send him your way.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He tipped his hat. I gave him one last dazzling smile.

Playing it nice had been the right call after all.

Sam Johnson was short, round, and topped off with a shock of indignant red hair. He walked fast, like he’d made up his mind about something and wanted the world to know it.

“Did they send you?” He was all fury, and dangerous as a bad case of hiccups.

“My name’s Scarlett,” I said. “I’m so sorry about your brother.”

He planted his fists on his hips. “They
did
, didn’t they? Well, you tell them they can all just go to hell!” The freckles across his cheeks merged into angry red blotches.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m not sure who you think I am, but how about we start over?”

He glared at me like an angry garden gnome.

“I’m Scarlett,” I said, handing him one of my cards. “I’m a private detective, and I work for Gemma Archer. You know her, right?”

He looked at the card.

“This is from the crapper at school!”

I smiled, bright and encouraging. “That’s right. I put some in the restrooms there to drum up business.”

“You’re not from the Ch—I mean, you’re really not one of them?”

“I don’t know who ‘them’ is, Sam. Like I told you, Gemma hired me to help her. Maybe I can help you, too.”

He eyed me warily. “Did you put the cards in the boys’ bathroom yourself?”

“I did.”

“You’d have been toast if Stokes caught you.”

“Is he the security guard at Chandler?”

“Uh-huh.” Sam sounded wary now, but his fury was fading. Defying Stokes had earned me some cred.

“I had lots of practice dodging guys like him when I was in school,” I said. “It was good training for what I do now.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Mosley.”

“They’ve got a good basketball team.”

“Yeah. The best.”

He frowned and shook his head like he was reminding himself not to trust me. “How do I know you’re not one of them?”

“Honestly, Sam, I can’t answer that until you tell me who ‘them’ is.”

He looked up and down the street and back again.

“You really don’t know?”

“I really don’t. Gemma came to me because her brother…”

“Oliver.” Sam spat the name out like sour milk.

“Right. Gemma came to me because Oliver’s been acting funny lately. She said he had a fight with Quinn at school. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I thought you might know what was going on between the two of them.”

“Everyone thinks Quinn killed himself. Even my mom and dad.” Sam looked down at his feet and scuffed at the concrete.

“What do
you
think, Sam?”

His eyes lifted, full of raw hurt.

“My brother wouldn’t ever do that. Not unless someone made him.”

“I think you’re right,” I said.

His forehead smoothed out. His fists unclenched.

“You do?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the Children of Iblis didn’t send you?”

I thought back to Emmet’s cult theory. In Islam, Iblis was an evil jinn who defied Allah. He was
Shaytan
. The devil. Maybe a group of nut balls out there had latched on and started worshipping him or some such.

“They didn’t send me,” I said. “I’ve never even heard of them. Is that who Quinn had been hanging around with lately? The Children of Iblis?”

Sam ran the toe of his sneaker along a crack in the sidewalk and nodded.

“You know,” I said, “it would really help me if I knew more about them.”

“Help you how?”

“I want to figure out what made Quinn do what he did, and I want to keep Gemma safe. A lot of weird stuff has been happening in this town. It needs to stop.”

“What kind of weird stuff?” Sam asked.

“Well, for one thing, two women have been following me ever since I met Oliver.”

“Do they have gold rings in their eyes?”

My pulse started jumping rope.

“Yes. Have you seen them before?”

“No, but…”

His voice faded to nothing.

“Are they part of the Children of Iblis, Sam?”

He nodded. “I think so.”

“Can you tell me how Quinn got involved with them?”

Sam hesitated, but not for long.

“It started at Xeno’s Paradise. That’s an arcade with real old games like
Pac-Man
and
Galaga
and stuff. Quinn liked hanging out there. You know it?”

I said I didn’t.

He scrunched up his lips. “Anyway, one day he came home all excited about how this really hot girl with gold rings in her eyes had come over to watch him play
Street Fighter
and stuck around afterward to talk. She let him take her out for pizza. That’s when she told him about the Children of Iblis. She said their games were way better than the ones at Xeno’s.”

He paused, nervous.

“Did she say why?” I asked

“Uh-huh. They do real-life role-playing games.”

“Like
Dungeons and Dragons
?”

“No. That’s pretend. The Children of Iblis go on quests for real things in the real world.”

“Like what, Sam?”

“Like this old ring that supposedly belonged to a king from the Bible. And some bottle Quinn called a
shooba
.”

My pulse switched to double Dutch. “Was it maybe a
Shubaak
?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Anyway, Quinn said he
wanted to join, so the girl started texting him little missions. Fun stuff, like scavenger hunts to antique shops. He took me along sometimes.”

“What was her name, Sam?”

“Quinn wouldn’t tell me. Members’ names are supposed to be secret. I knew about Oliver, though.”

“What did you know about him?”

“I heard Quinn on the phone one night telling Oliver how awesome the Children of Iblis were. He said they’d asked if he and Oliver were friends, and did he think Oliver would join them. I could tell Oliver didn’t want to at first. He’s kind of a dick.”

“I’m with you on that one, kid,” I said.

The sheepish look on his face melted into a short, sweet smile that lasted only until he spoke.

“So Quinn talked Oliver into joining, but after a few weeks he told me he wished he hadn’t. He said that with Oliver there, it was like they forgot all about him.”

“The Children of Iblis forgot all about Quinn?”

“Yeah.” Sam’s mouth scrunched up again. “After that he stopped talking to me about them and started going out all the time. He was acting really strange. Scared, even.”

“Your dad works for Archer Construction, right?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Does he keep a lot of work stuff at home?”

“Some, I guess.” He did the scrunchy lip thing again. It was a cute tic. He probably hated it.

“Can you tell me anything more?” I asked.

His shoulders slumped. “You mind if we sit down?”

I steered us over to a nearby bench. As we sat, the slump spread to the rest of his body.

“You okay, Sam?”

He nodded. Looked at the ground. “Yeah.”

I scooted closer and bumped him with my elbow. His eyes lifted. Searched mine. Found whatever it was he’d needed to keep going.

“So one day Dad came home really upset because someone had broken into his office at The Parker site.”

“Did he say if they took anything?”

Sam shrank into himself and dropped his voice so low I could barely hear him.

“No.”

He was holding something back.

“Sam?”

He looked so scared I wanted to hug him and make it go away.

“I’m going to help you, kid.”

He sniffled.

“Quinn did it.”

“Did what?”

Sam swiped at his face with his sleeve and mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

“What?”

“Quinn broke into the trailer, okay? He’s the one who did it!” Sam shouted. Waves of pain and anger rolled off his rigid body like heat from a furnace.

Emmet had said it was an inside job—that whoever broke in had used a key but wasn’t authorized to be there after hours. I moved away from Sam on the bench. Gave him space. Time. And slowly, slowly, he came back to me.

“Sorry,” he croaked.

“Don’t be,” I said. “You’ve got every right to be mad.”

“I do?” He was exhausted.

“Hell yes. If my sister got sucked in by these Children of Iblis people, I’d be more than mad. I’d want to destroy them.”

He sat up taller.

“You would?”

“I would.”

He watched a pigeon peck at a stray candy wrapper. I waited.

It paid off.

“I saw something in Quinn’s room,” he said. “A note. From the guy who’s building The Parker.”

I thought back to the
Globe
articles I’d dug up, found the guy’s name filed away in my brain under “Stuff I Shouldn’t Forget.”

“George Fagin?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“What did it say?” I didn’t speak gently, didn’t baby him. We were allies, Sam and I.

“Not much. It was a thank-you note to an architect for blueprints he’d done.”

“What were the blueprints for?”

“A new wing for some old building. That’s all the note said.”

“Do you remember the architect’s name?”

“Nope.” He shook his head.

“Was there a return address?”

“Uh-uh. I didn’t see the envelope, and the note wasn’t typed or anything. It was really short. Fagin wrote it himself.”

“Where’s the letter now, Sam?”

He got quiet again, but he didn’t shut down.

“I think Quinn took it with him to the bridge.”

I gave the moment time to breathe and braced for the hardest question of all.

“Why did Quinn go to the bridge, Sam?”

His voice broke as he spoke, but Sam did not.

“He went because of me.”

“How do you know that?”

Sam shuddered. “The day it happened, I heard a text alert go off in Quinn’s room. He was in Dad’s office with the door shut and couldn’t hear. I snuck in and read it.”

“What did the text say, Sam?”

A sob shook his body. I put my arm around him and shot a dirty look at the woman staring at us from the sidewalk.

“If I give you Quinn’s phone,” Sam said, his words coming out in hitched little bursts, “you’ll get them, right? You’ll get the Children of Iblis and prove my brother didn’t want to kill himself?”

I hugged him tighter.

“Yeah, Sam. I’ll get them,” I promised. “I’ll get them.”

I
liked the library near our apartment, liked hanging out with schoolkids and homeless people and moms with toddlers, all of us breathing in the smell of old varnish and ideas. I liked the librarians who were happy to help you. I even liked the ones who weren’t. It was the kind of place where you could lose yourself, which was why I went there after my visit with Sam.

The best spot in the whole joint was a dusty room on the top floor filled with rows and rows of flat, wide drawers. Each held a map, along with the promise of someplace better. Melvin, the room’s librarian, nodded
at me when I walked in. I gave him a wave and went straight to my favorite drawer.

Inside it, the world on paper was as beautiful as ever. I ran the tip of my finger from Las Almas all the way across the Atlantic, south through Africa and the Indian Ocean, to Bali. Bali was where I went when things got too crazy. I closed my eyes, pictured blue water, white sand, the feel of sun on my skin. It was always quiet in Bali. And with any luck, if what
Ummi
and
Abbi
had taught me about
Qadar
was true, maybe I was destined to end up there someday.

The funny thing was, I’d always been a skeptic when it came to
Qadar
. I didn’t like the idea that everything was already set, that no matter what choices I made, my path through life had been mapped out a long time ago. But ever since Gemma had shown up at my door, fate had yanked the steering wheel from my hands and hit the gas pedal hard. This case wasn’t just about some rich kid getting messed up by a cult. It was about old devils and new ones. It was about my faith. My family. About me.

Melvin sneezed loud enough to cut my trip short. I opened my eyes, caught him watching me. He went back to his book. I said good-bye to Bali, sat down in front of the room’s only computer, took out Quinn
Johnson’s phone, and pulled up the last text he’d ever received.

That was the message from Oliver that Sam had intercepted, the one that scared him bad enough to make him hide his brother’s phone to show his parents. Only Quinn had left before they got home. Left for good.

Every other text on the phone had been deleted, except for the one Quinn had sent to Oliver half an hour earlier.

I plugged Oliver’s number into my own address book so I’d know it if he called. Checked Quinn’s email folder. Cursed when it came up empty. Melvin gave me the evil eye.

“Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t. Quinn had scrubbed his phone clean. No mail, no other texts. But thanks to Sam, I knew the Children of Iblis were after Solomon’s ring,
Abbi
’s
Shubaak
, and a rich guy named George Fagin.

It was a start.

I switched to the computer and ran a search.
Thousands of hits came back for the name George Fagin, but the more I went through them, the more I knew there was a whole lot of nothing there.
Reclusive. Elusive. Mysterious
. Those words showed up a lot.
Billionaire
, too. George Fagin didn’t give interviews and wouldn’t communicate directly with the press. Hell, he’d never even been
seen
. From what I could tell, the guy was a pro at three things: making money, giving it away, and keeping the whole wide world from finding out a damned thing about him.

No matter how many newspaper articles and bits of gossip column trash I read, each hit seemed to say less than the one before it. My eyes got so bleary I could barely see.
One more
, I thought, clicking on a link that read
REWARD FOR FAGIN
.

The page loaded.

A long whistle slipped through my teeth before I could stop it. Melvin looked ready to pass a kitten. “
Shh!
” he hissed.

Black words stood out against the screen’s bloodred background.

Underneath that was a thick-lined image of Solomon’s knot, and, at the bottom of the page, in smaller letters:

“Melvin,” I said, “if I were a millionaire, would you run away to Bali with me?”

Melvin put his book down and gave me his scariest librarian glare.

I told him I’d thought that was what he’d say.

He scowled. I got up.

“It’s your call, Mel, but you’ll be sorry when all you have to remember me by is a postcard.”

He scowled some more.

I smiled, blew him a kiss, and walked out, thinking what a good thing we had, Melvin and me. It was simple. Straightforward. Easy. And nothing—nothing at all—like the complicated world outside the library doors.

Out on the street, the wind had picked up, and Decker was on my mind. I hadn’t called or texted since the
night before, because I wanted him keeping track of me like I wanted a fresh paper cut. But it had been a hard day, and I needed him, needed to
feel
his voice, not just hear it. To breathe in the soap and spice smells of him. For that, a phone call wouldn’t do.

I hoofed a circle two blocks wide around the Laundromat in case my tails were still there and headed north to the Rubicon. Deck usually worked the dinner shift on Sundays. With any luck, things would be busy enough for me to slip into the kitchen unnoticed. Just thinking about being next to him in the warm, tight space was enough to nudge me into a jog.

But when I got there and saw the General sitting in a room full of empty tables, I knew straight off that luck wasn’t doing me any favors that night. The General looked up from his meal, the one Delilah fed him every Sunday for free, and gave me a cheery wave through the window.

“Hey, General,” I said, pushing open the door. “What’s cooking?”

He never had a chance to answer. Delilah barreled out of the kitchen like a one-woman stampede.

“Scarlett!” She pulled me into a hug so tight I couldn’t talk. “You’re here!”

I saw our reflection in the front window, Delilah,
short and sturdy, me all arms and legs. I looked surprised as hell.

“Play along,” she whispered in my ear. “Manny will explain everything tomorrow.”

Right after that, Reem came through the kitchen door, looking more relaxed than I’d seen her in a long time.

Delilah squeezed me even tighter. “The less Reem knows, the safer she’ll be.”

“I thought you were working tonight,” I said, flashing Reem a happy-to-see-you smile as Delilah finally let go.

My sister rolled her eyes. “I told you last week they changed my schedule, Lettie. For a detective, you’ve sure got a lousy memory.”

“Right,” I said, glancing back at the kitchen. Delilah noticed.

“Decker went home, hon,” she said. “Things were too quiet to make him stay.”

I was trapped, and I’d done it to myself.

“But I’m so glad you’re here,” Delilah went on. “Because I owe the two of you an apology.”

My lips clamped down just in time to keep me from smarting off, asking if the weather service had just issued a frost warning in hell.

“Like I was telling Reem,” Delilah said, “I’ve been in an awful state since my ex showed up again. Deck’s father, I mean.”

I started to point out that Deck’s father was dead, but Delilah cut me off.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve always let folks assume he died. But that was just my way of not having to think about him. See, he’s the sort that won’t leave ancient history alone, and I try to keep him away from Decker as much as I can. From the both of you, too. He was a friend of your folks once upon a time, but he’s got no business bothering either one of you now.”

Reem was watching Delilah with the intensely sympathetic look I imagined she got when she listened to her patients. It was no wonder they all loved her.

“Not that he’s a bad man, of course,” Delilah said. “Though I suppose he can come across that way. Truth is, Asim’s one of the good guys. He’s just a little hard to take.”

Asim.

The name spun through my head like a blown-out tire. Asim was Delilah’s ex. Delilah’s ex was Decker’s father. Decker’s father had broken into our apartment the night before and stolen
Abbi
’s bottle replica, which was somehow tied up with King Solomon and his
missing ring and George Fagin and Quinn Johnson’s death. What the hell was going on?

Delilah shot me a look meant to keep me quiet. I was too busy wondering whether coincidence or
Qadar
was running my life to make a peep.

“I understand,” Reem said, even though she understood as much about what was going on as I did about open-heart surgery. “And I appreciate you trying to protect us, Delilah.”

Delilah waved her hand. “Bah! You’re tough cookies. You don’t need my protection anymore, even though I sometimes wish you did. Maybe that’s why I called you yesterday, Reem. I got real worked up thinking about Asim being back, and overreacted when Scarlett told me she had a new case. I upset you for nothing, hon, and I’m sorry.”

Reem smiled and squeezed Delilah’s hand. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I don’t know what I’d do if you and Mook weren’t keeping an eye on Scarlett for me. Before you know it, though, I’ll be done with my training, and Lettie will be off to college. She’s going to do great things once we get her out of Las Almas. Just you wait and see.”

“Oh,” Delilah said, “I suspect our girl here will do
some pretty amazing stuff even before that. In fact, hard as it is for me to admit, something tells me she’s right where she’s supposed to be at the moment. Right where she’s
meant
to be.”

She looked at me, grave as an undertaker, then turned to Reem. “Each of you girls has a gift,” she said. “You’re a healer, Reem.”

Her eyes came back to mine.

“And you, Scarlett? You’re a warrior. It would be wrong for me or anyone else to try to hold you back. I see that now.”

A warrior? Asim had called himself the same thing in our apartment.

Reem laughed. “I don’t know if I’d go that far, Delilah. I’m only a resident, and Lettie’s just nosy and stubborn.”

Delilah’s face lightened a bit. “You’d be surprised, sweetie,” she said. “Besides, every girl needs to know that the people who love her believe in her, too. For the record, I believe in both of you. That’s why I asked Reem to come see me, Scarlett—so I could apologize for making her worry so much about you. I know you’re a good girl doing what you’re meant to do, and I feel bad for not making peace with that sooner.”

Reem stepped closer to Delilah and drew her into a hug of her own. “You’re one of a kind, Delilah. Mom loved you, and so do we.”

Delilah watched me over Reem’s shoulder. Perky as she’d managed to sound, her eyes were filled with a sad kind of knowing.

“So I guess this means I should lay off you some, huh, Lettie?” Reem said as she let Delilah go.

“Nah.” My voice sounded rough. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Reem laughed. I was a better actor than I thought.

“In that case,” Reem said, “I don’t suppose you got the laundry done today, did you?”

I groaned and smacked my forehead.

“Big surprise,” she said. “Good thing I keep a pair of underwear in reserve.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” I promised.

Delilah smiled. “You two go home now, before it gets too late. I’m gonna lock up early once the General finishes his supper.”

“Always happy to keep a lovely lady such as yourself company,” the General called.

“Ears like a fox, that one has,” Delilah said, tugging her shirt down over her waistband. “Now scoot.”

She hustled us out of the diner, flipping the sign in the window from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
behind us.

Reem adjusted her
hijab
and shoved her hands in her pockets. “It got cold,” she said.

“Sure did.” I turned right without asking Reem which way she wanted to go. Left would have gotten us home just as fast, but by way of the Laundromat. And since I wasn’t in a gambling mood, I didn’t want to risk running into my tails.

“It’s nice to be outside, especially with you here,” Reem said.

I thought of Sam, of how deep and awful the hurt of missing his brother must be.

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

Other than the occasional metallic clang of shop gates closing and an echo of Cuban-tinted Spanish from the courtyard behind us, the street was quiet.

“And it’ll be good, saying the
Isha
prayer together,” Reem said. “When was the last time we got to start and end a day together?”

I took in a breath of cold air and looked past the lights of Las Almas, toward the stars they blotted out. Told her I couldn’t remember. And then we walked the rest of the way home in silence, two sisters alone under a hidden sky.