Liars' Games (Project Chameleon Book 1) (18 page)

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

They sat quietly for a while.

“You know,” Claire said, “It’s really cold out here. Would you like to get something warm to drink? There’s a coffee shop down the street. It’ll be on me.”

He looked around, then said, “I guess that’d be okay.”

After the waitress brought drinks, Claire said, “You can talk to me. I’m a good listener. Although I’m not good at much else, I am good at that.”

He looked surprised.

“The other kids, well, they’ve been teasing me. A group of jerks stuffed me in my locker yesterday. I couldn’t get out. I kept banging and screaming. Finally, another student heard and let me out. It must have been fifteen minutes later. I got a tardy slip from Mr. Owens. He sent me to Mr. Baker. I got detention and my mom yelled at me for causing trouble.”

“Did you tell Mr. Owens or Mr. Baker what happened?”

Curtis bent his head. “No,” he whispered.

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t rat on bullies like that.”

“Didn’t you want to make sure they didn’t do that to you again, or to anyone else?”

“They woulda got detention and that woulda pissed them off. They already stuffed me in a locker. What do you think they would do if they were really mad at me?”

Claire studied the boy. She had so many questions she wasn’t sure which one to ask first. Finally, she said, “Why did they stuff you in the locker if they weren’t mad at you?”

He looked up again, this time making eye contact.

“Smart kids mess up the grading curve. That’s what they said.”

“Are you a smart student?”

He nodded.

“Straight-A student?

He nodded.

“What are you best subjects?”

“Math and science. I love numbers and theories.” He paused and then said, “You won’t tell anyone, will you? People already think I’m a nerd.”

“I won’t tell anyone at school. But I will drive you home. Maybe I can talk to you mom or dad. Would that be all right?”

“I guess so.”

At his house, his mother raised her eyebrows when she saw Claire.

“Hello, Mrs. Browne, I’m Claire Constantine, the principal at Midland High School. Could we talk for a moment?”

“What did my boy do? He got detention already. You expelling him? He’s not a bad kid, maybe goofs off sometimes, but he never does anything mean or disrespectful. I’d smack him upside the head if he did.”

“No, no. Nothing like that. I’m worried about him, actually. He tells me he’s having some problems with bullies. They’re teasing him for being smart.”

“Oh, that. Curtis takes after his daddy. Smart never did him any good, either.”

“I really don’t like the way the other kids are treating him. We need to nourish his strengths. He has the potential to go to college and make something good of himself.”

“Yeah, what are you gonna do about it? Who’s gonna take care of him? You?”

“Will you come into the school next week and speak with our assistant principal or maybe the school’s counselor? Maybe they can figure out a way to help your son. I can arrange the meeting for you.”

“I don’t go into that school. Besides, there’s nothing anybody can do to help.”

“Shouldn’t we try, Mrs. Browne? His future isn’t already written.”

The woman stared at her disbelievingly, and said, “Oh, yeah?”

A
FTER TALKING TO Curtis’s mom, Claire drove to the nanny’s home and picked up Marcus. They ate an early dinner, she read to him for a while, and then she put him to bed early. She needed time to think.

Sitting on the sofa, she sighed and closed her eyes
to think, but her mind veered back in the direction of the attack, which morphed into a rehash of her problems at school and her being stuck in the witness protection program. This time, though, instead of blaming herself entirely, she blamed Callum, too. If not for him, she would still be a respected mathematician and none of her problems would ever have happened.

She remembered
vividly how it had all started. She’d opened her computer one morning, a Wednesday morning, and went to her documents folder to work on a file for her latest project. It wasn’t there. Instead, she saw oddly named folders. What the bloody hell, she’d thought. Further investigation revealed she had taken Callum’s computer to work by mistake. Her first impulse was to close it up, but something about those file names nagged at her. She found her way into one and immediately knew something was wrong.

When she’d questioned him about it
at home that evening, he’d explained it and said she was so unworldly that she didn’t understand these things. He’d called her naïve.

That memory almost made
Claire laugh. She certainly couldn’t be called naïve any more. She would give almost anything to go back to the way she was. Life sucked. For the first time, she now understood why her mother had taken her own life. Joe Powell used to call his wife, Amelia, naïve, too.

The vision of
Claire’s—Juliet’s— mother on the day she’d died, popped into her mind. Her mother sitting in the driver’s seat of her rusted-out Bentley that she’d bought second-hand after her divorce from Joe.

Emancipated minor, Juliet,
had arrived home from work that autumn day thirteen years ago, had opened the garage door, and found Amelia’s car there. Nothing unusual in that since Amelia had been practically hibernating in Juliet’s leased house for two months because she was too depressed to do anything. But as Juliet had driven her car into the garage, she’d realized the other car’s engine was running and saw old rags stuffed into the tailpipe. The car was filled with smoky fumes. She’d jumped out of her own car and rushed to the driver’s side. It was too late. The sight of her mother’s cherry red skin and lifeless eyes had sent Juliet into hysterics.

Her mother had given up, and Juliet
now understood why. Joe had clipped Amelia’s wings soon after their wedding and kept them clipped for eighteen years. He wouldn’t let her visit with friends or go anywhere without him. Only when he was out of town could she have a social life, and after all those years she had decided she couldn’t stand it anymore. Not confident enough to ask him for a divorce, she had gone in a different direction and had started taking advantage of that small opening in her cage by going out to parties while he was away. During one of those parties she’d met a man and had started an affair. Juliet had discovered it by accident. Amelia had begged her to keep her secret, and Juliet had tried.

Of course back then, Juliet had been an even worse liar tha
n she was now. When Joe had come home early from one of his trips a few months after Juliet had made the promise to cover for her, he’d questioned Juliet about where her mum was. Juliet had made up some story about her having gone to the doctor. Joe had drilled her, because he didn’t believe her, and Juliet had run to her room. When Amelia had returned that evening, they fought. Her mother screamed, and fearing for her mum’s safety, Juliet had taken her mum away. Amelia moved in with her lover and she seemed happier than Juliet had ever seen her. Months later, after the divorce, Amelia had caught her man in bed with another woman and her fairytale romance had vaporized.

She’d given up on life. She hadn’t been perfect, but she had so much to offer. What a tragedy, what a shame.

Claire opened her eyes and sat up. Was she really thinking about giving up, too? What would happen to Marcus if she took out that gun and ended her own life? She couldn’t do that to him. Her stomach knotted up. All these years she’d beaten herself up repeatedly over her role in her parents’ divorce and her mother’s suicide. The guilt was almost unbearable. Maybe Marcus wouldn’t suffer from guilt, but he most definitely would suffer loss. He’d already suffered the loss of one parent. She jumped up and went into Marcus’s bedroom. He lay there wrapped in blankets. So peaceful and innocent. She had done everything she could to shield him from harm, and here she was, about to give up. She shook her head. No way could she do that to her son. She thought about Curtis, too, and his mother. The woman clearly loved her son, though she didn’t seem the kind of mother who would fight for him. Who was going to do that? Maybe Ron, but he didn’t have the time or the resources.

She reached down and patted
Marcus’s head, tucked his blanket around him, and left his room. When she entered the hallway, she caught her reflection in a wall mirror. She stared, taking a good long look. Well, Claire Constantine wasn’t doing too well. She was no speechmaker, no great leader. Maybe it was time to go back to who she really was. Dr. Juliet Powell.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

AFTER CLAIRE DROPPED off Marcus at his nanny’s apartment Friday morning, she sat in her car in the car park outside Nanny Kate’s building and called Ron.

Having made a decision, Claire said,
“I’m taking the day off, but I’ll be back at work on Monday.”

“
God, Claire, we thought you’d walked off the job yesterday,” Ron said. “I wasn’t sure whether to call Frank and tell him, or not.”

“Oh, no! You didn’t call him, did you?”

“No. I didn’t have the time, to be honest.”

“I’m really sorry. I was in a really bad place. I needed
more time to think, without interruptions. I hope you understand.”

He didn’t answer.

“Ron, I will be back. I haven’t given up yet.”

“
Well, that’s good to hear.”

The tone of his voice didn’t exactly match his words. Was he disappointed that she was coming back, or was it something else? Better let it go for now.

“Will you let Kim know?”

“Sure.”

After she ended her phone call, Claire pulled out of her parking space and drove to an office supply store on East 120
th
Avenue. She had put together the beginning of a shopping list last night. Now it was time to take action. She started with a Quartet Inview Magnetic Whiteboard identical to the one she’d used in her office at Weymouth. Next, she found, a dry erase eraser, dry markers, magnetic clips, a lightweight presentation easel, a 60” by 30” white folding table, a 25” by 30” flip chart and markers, and a plastic file tote. What else? She stood motionless in the middle of an aisle momentarily, thinking. Oh, yes, printer paper, highlighters, sticky notes and flags. That should do it.

She paid for her purchases, which set her back
almost three hundred dollars, and drove home. Making several trips back and forth between her condo and car, she carried everything inside and set it in a pile near the front door. Now came the hard part. Where was she going to put it all?

The living room was really the only possible place for a makeshift office,
the best spot being in the front corner near the window where her furniture sat. Seeing no choice, she slid the coffee table over, and then moved the loveseat out of the way. She then struggled with the sofa which was almost impossible to budge. Eventually she managed. Although the new arrangement was rather cramped, she could live with it.

First thing after setting up her makeshift office, she placed her computer and printer on the table, pulled up a chair from the kitchen table, and brewed
herself a pot of coffee.

Tired from her labors
, she plopped down on the sofa with a cup of coffee and took a break. All right, she thought. I have everything I need. Now what?

Ideas
began swirling around in her head. As usual, though, her mind soon drifted back to her banishment. Her genius with numbers, analysis, and logic had put her into this situation. Of course, when you got down to it, Callum’s corruption was the root cause, but if she hadn’t been so good with numbers and algorithms, he might have given it up, or at least she might not have contributed to the crime.

It had really begun
, not just by her inadvertently taking Callum’s computer to work with her, but by her digging around on it and finding a suspicious looking folder. In the first document she’d opened, she had seen columns of figures and blocks of equations. Meat and drink to her and almost without consciously thinking she began seeing patterns emerge. She’d started to see amounts she recognized, sums given in grants to the University, which she had heard discussed; other sums which had been reported in newspapers. All these entries represented vast amounts of money, manipulated, and transferred, page after page. There were dates, too, and some also meant something to her both from the news and from her own life. She had that kind of memory, that kind of ability to see links and relationships between numbers.

She’d questioned him about it that evening at home.

“You’re so unworldly,” he’d said. “You don’t understand these things. You really are an innocent when it comes to business, honey.”

She’d hesitated. Maybe he was right. What did she know about business?
Still, she couldn’t get the numbers out of her head.

“But it’s the University’s money I saw and it was being manipulated. I know you handle their finances, but it doesn’t look right. I know numbers.”

“Juliet, I know how you are with figures. But you’re not equipped to understand my situation. My work is complicated. Leave it to me.”

Only s
he couldn’t let it go. They’d argued, and he had tried to bully her into forgetting about it, which was unlike him. She’d cried and eventually gave in. “I guess you’re right. I must have been mistaken.” Throughout the next day, she’d tried to tell herself she’d made a mistake. Callum was intelligent, basically honest, and he was a nerd, as was she. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d get caught up in something unscrupulous. There was no way she could have misjudged him all those years they’d been together.

Th
e next evening, Callum didn’t come home from work at his usual time and she had worried that he was still angry with her. She did her best not to let Aidan see that she was upset. After she had put him to bed, though, she sat up all night, waiting, biting her fingernails, and listening for Callum’s key in the lock. During those dark hours she had recalled odd conversations she’d overheard, phone calls she’d answered only to be hung up on, nights when Callum had to leave to run some errand. He’d sometimes be gone for two or three hours and would return long after she’d gone to bed. He thought she was asleep. She wasn’t. She’d suspected an affair. The numbers, the money, the dates pointed to something entirely different, though.

Something else
had niggled at the back of her mind. She had looked back through the files on her computer and found the program she’d written six months earlier for Callum. He’d told her he was working on a presentation for his department—a presentation on accounting fraud—and he’d asked her to create an algorithm which would transfer funds from accounts and deposit them into other accounts in such a way as it would be hard for anyone to notice. Like an idiot she’d done as he asked and given it to him without question, believing it was part of his presentation.

She shook her head at the memory. The other thing he’d called her—naive— had been right. It was hard to believe she’d ever been that gullible. She returned to the memory.

He finally returned very late that night. She was awake and pressed him for the truth. He eventually admitted he’d gotten involved with a syndicate.

“You can
give up your job and drop all ties with the syndicate,” she’d told him. “I’ll quit my job, too. We’ll move our home and start again. It’s not too late.”

He shook his head and squeezed his eyes closed. “I can’t tell them I want out. It doesn’t work like that. They’d never let me walk.”

“You got me involved, too. I can’t let them continue stealing, Callum. You know me better than that. You know what happened with my parents.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Bugger. Why did I have to go and fall in love with the Pope? Problem is, now that you know about the plan and refuse to look the other way, you
put yourself and Aidan in danger. These guys aren’t amateurs. This is bigger than you know.”

She searched his face. What was he saying?

“You and the baby have to go away.”

“No.
We’ll all go. We’ll go together. Tonight. Pack a couple of bags. Take the baby, and go back to England.”

He opened his eyes and stared at her. “You’re not listening. I’m not leaving. I can’t. And England is the last place you should go. Go to Taiwan. Or Singapore. Or South Africa. But not England.”

“Then we’ll go to the authorities. We’ll tell them everything. They’ll give both of us immunity. They’ll protect us.”

“It’s not th
at easy for me. You can go to the authorities. Get protection for yourself and Aidan. Or you can take your chances and run. It’s your decision.”

“Why can’t you go to the authorities with me?”

“I can’t do that,” he said, pacing across their living room. “It’s a lot more complicated than you think.”

“
You can’t continue with their plan. Please tell me you’re not going to help them steal.”

He became more agitated, running his hand through his hair as he paced. “There’s one thing I can try
. But I’m telling you, if it doesn’t work . . . you’ll have to run or go to the authorities. Give them my computer. Tell them what you know.”

Before she had a chance to let his words sink in, Callum
grabbed his coat off the back of the sofa and dashed to the front door.

“
What are you going to do?” she screamed. “You’re scaring me. Callum. Please don’t do something foolish.”

He hesitated, and she thought he would turn around
. He didn’t.

In the morning she
had driven to work and stopped in his office in the university’s finance department. His co-workers told her he hadn’t come in and hadn’t called, either. She went through her work day, anxiety ridden, as best she could, and then got in her car to drive home. Five minutes into her commute a dark sedan pulled up beside her and someone shot at her window. She’d sped up and the shooter had missed her, but hit the back seat. She panicked, lost control of the car, and slammed into another car. Fortunately no one was hurt, and luckily she hadn’t picked up her son from daycare. She was thankful for that, but wanted to kick herself for not getting the license plate number as the sedan sped away.

She pulled her
thoughts back to the present and refocused on her school problems. Callum had been wrong about her not being equipped to understand his situation. She certainly had understood his situation, and knew what he had done. He really was manipulating money, embezzling and, according to the FBI, was still involved with the syndicate. They just hadn’t caught him yet, because he moved around so much.

N
ow, she was in a situation in her job that she understood, but wasn’t really equipped to deal with. Her government protectors having abandoned her, she somehow had to fix this school, fraught with money problems, dangerous student gang elements and educators who had given up, or quit and go off on her own. Claire decided that Dr. Juliet Powell was not going to be a quitter. Could she use her genius with numbers to change things?

S
he gulped down the last of her coffee, then remembered the gun in her handbag. She took it out and locked it inside her file cabinet. That done, she strode to the whiteboard, wrote Aims as a heading and created headings for three columns: Students; Faculty; Community. As she began populating the columns she realized this work paralleled her study at Weymouth and a rush of excitement coursed through her.

After she had the basics
listed, she turned to her computer. Now she was ready to get down to business. Public schools, school operations, and how to fix troubled schools—those were the questions she needed to answer. She searched the internet and learned everything she could about ways other educators had turned around their troubled schools.

She read an article from
a major newspaper describing how to target and respond to troubled students. An article entitled ‘How to Get Principals to Think Like Managers’ caught her attention, but when she clicked on she found a message that the page no longer existed. She read several more articles and then tried a different approach, typing in ‘improving school safety’ in the search box. Numerous other results popped up, and she clicked on one. This was a large site with useful information, safety checklists, and links to other resources.
Wow! This is what I need.

She opened up
a safety check list.
Must be twenty to thirty items here. Good.
She began reading:

• The school building
  and its entrances, parking lots, and grounds are monitored and/or supervised at all times.
  

We’ve definitely failed this one.

• The school’s policies and procedures strive to inhibit weapons from being brought into the building, and outline consequences of any violations.
  

O
bviously not
.

• Gang-related
  identifiers and activity are prohibited on the school campus, and the staff is periodically given in-service training to keep them abreast of what to watch for.
  

Oh, my God. Are we doing anything right?

• Strategies for ensuring structured passing periods are in effect. These strategies include maximizing staff visibility, monitoring hallways, teaching students what the school’s hallway expectations are, and outlining consequences for inappropriate hallway behavior.
  

N
ot even that
.

• The school’s polic
  ies and procedures include an Anti-Bullying program.
  

Nope
.

• The school has a positive discipline model for all teachers to follow,
  and teachers receive appropriate training, allowing for 80 to 90% of disciplinary actions to be handled in the classroom.