My Own Worst Frenemy (19 page)

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Authors: Kimberly Reid

BOOK: My Own Worst Frenemy
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“I guess that leaves Lissa and the clones.”
“The who?” she asks. She pushes a button on the dash and the top starts closing, my cue that the interview is almost over.
“Never mind. So when you went inside, it looked like the place was ransacked, right? You knew right off the place had been robbed.”
“No, that was the weird thing. Everything looked the way we left it, as far as I remember. We didn't know anything was missing until we went to turn on the TV. That was the most obvious thing gone. Then Lissa helped Annette look around the house, and Annette started crying about the missing figurines and how her parents were going to kill her.”
“The figurines?”
“Yeah. Remember Lissa showed them to us during that boring tour of Annette's house? Come to think of it, everything missing we saw on that tour. Unless they found more stuff after I left. They called the cops then.”
“Whose idea was it to call the police?” I ask as I follow her lead and get out of the car.
“That was definitely Lissa's suggestion. Annette didn't want to. She said her parents wouldn't be back until Sunday night and she'd just try to replace everything so they'd never know there was a party or a break-in. But Lissa convinced her to call the cops. You know how those girls are—they'd follow Lissa off a cliff if she asked.”
“So why do you want to even hang out with them?”
“Two minutes are up, Chanti. I'll be late for class.”
“I appreciate the information.”
“Yeah. Good luck,” she says as she walks toward Langdon, and I believe she means it.
Chapter 28
W
hen I get back to the Langdon driveway, Marco is there waiting in his car.
“Need a ride?”
“You don't mind being seen with me?” I say as I get into his car.
“We're both jailbirds, right? Birds of a feather and all that.”
“We'd
better
stick together. All we have are us.”
Right away I feel like I shouldn't have said that, since it not only sounds like something on a Hallmark card, but it also smacks of wannabe-your-girlfriend desperation.
“What gets me is that they tagged us only because we're scholarship kids.” Marco is always so laid-back, but right now he sounds angry. I guess being suspended for something he didn't do is enough to unnerve even Marco.
“Apparently being broke is a motive these days,” I say. “When you think about it, that's the motive for most breakins. People need the money.”
“I suppose, but it still seems like a kind of prejudice. Like fiscal profiling. I mean, in this economy, who isn't broke?”
“Everybody else at school. Langdon has to be a connection, if not for the Mitchell client thefts, definitely for the Annette Park burglary.”
“But they didn't charge us for that one,” Marco says, merging into morning rush hour traffic on Alameda.
“Yeah, but it's only a matter of time, at least for me. They can tie me to that one, too. They'll probably say you were an accessory.”
“Accessory?”
“Yeah, that you were in on that one, too. How else could I have stolen a TV without a car? Besides, they have us on more than being broke. There's also means and opportunity.”
“Which means . . . ?” Marco asks.
“We had a way to do it, because working for Mitchell, we knew the homeowners would be gone. Since no one believes we were together in the park that evening, we had a chance to do it. Sometimes it doesn't matter what really happened, only what you can prove happened. There are a lot of innocent people in jail.”
“You sound like you know what you're talking about.”
“Because I do.” I have zero faith in my ability to seduce a boy, or even walk across a room in heels without falling on my behind, but you won't find a detective out there with more confidence than I have in my ability to solve a crime. Especially when it's my fate on the line. “Do you mind if we go back to the park?”
“You mean the scene of the crime?”
“No, that's the scene of the alibi no one believes. We're the only people who know the truth, which means we're our best chance of figuring out what really happened. If we go back there, I can think better, maybe find a clue that I missed.”
“Why would there be clues at the park if that isn't where the crime happened?”
“No, I mean clues in my head. I know it sounds crazy, but it's the way I think. It's how I solve crimes. I mean, you know, the mysteries of life.”
“I have this feeling there's a whole side of you I don't know about,” Marco says, turning to look at me while we wait at a red light. “This isn't like that show from back in the day where cops posed as high school kids, is it?”
“Me, a cop? That'll never happen. A good cop needs a certain personality, like not being afraid of your own shadow for starters. But being a good detective? That's mostly in your head—more brains than bravery.”
“You know way too much about police stuff.”
“I watch a lot of TV.”
“I hope that's all it is. I'd hate to be really into you . . . well, as a friend I mean, and then you break the news you're actually a thirty-year-old cop with a husband and kid at home.”
Just when I was getting comfortable talking to him one-on-one, he goes and lets it slip that he's really into me and now I'm all tongue-tied. We ride in silence all the way to the park, although in my head I've come up with a thousand things to say. As we walk to the picnic table, the little flags are gone from the grass, but this section of the park is still empty. That probably has more to do with it being nine o'clock on a weekday morning than with pesticides. I really have no idea what I hope to find here, except that whoever set us up has probably been here before and knows how isolated it is, and being here might trigger a clue of who that person is. And it's where Marco first suggested that we were something more than friends, even if his confession was drug-induced, and even if he's claiming today that he's only into me as a friend.
But right now, it's all about the business, the most serious case I've ever had to work. Love comes later.
“Whoever the perp is, he knew about those two homes being empty, and that the owners were Mitchell clients,” I say, taking a seat at the table. “How about Malcolm?”
“Wouldn't the perp also have to know about Annette's party and be watching the house so he'd know when to burglarize it? How would Malcolm know all that?”
“I don't know—maybe Lissa was at her dad's office and Malcolm overheard her planning the party and staked it out.”
“Why would Malcolm do any of this?”
“Because he's stealing from Mitchell's clients and doesn't want to get arrested again. Maybe he's a second-striker. Did he ever tell you what he was in jail for?”
“No, but Malcolm didn't do it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because he's a good guy, for one. Accusing him would be the same thing everyone else is doing to us. He's been to jail, so he must have stolen that stuff. How's that different from, you're broke, so you must have stolen stuff?”
“I didn't say he did it.” I'm completely surprised by Marco's allegiance to Malcolm, who, I'm sorry, is just one strange dude. “But we have to look at everyone, and rule people out. That's all I'm doing.”
“Well, you can rule him out. He didn't steal so he doesn't need to blame anything on us.”
I remember what Tasha said about someone hating me. That's another possible motive.
“Marco, what if he didn't frame us to cover up his crime? What if he did it because he hates working with us? He's always asking to go back to his old team.”
“That's a stretch, Chanti. He could get Paulette to reassign him more easily than setting up a burglary. Besides, he has an alibi—his probation officer. He told me he has to meet with him on Friday evenings.”
“That's an odd time to meet a probation officer.”
“Not when your probation officer is also your AA sponsor and he meets you following your meeting with a whole room full of people who can vouch for your whereabouts.”
“Okay, so he's out. And he has a lot of issues.”
We're quiet for a minute; then I say what I've wanted to say ever since I found out Marco was in the other interrogation room.
“Do you hate me for getting us into this mess?”
“How did you get us into it? I thought you said someone set us up.”
“Yeah, but I think I was the target and you just happened to get caught up in it.”
“What makes you think I wasn't the target? Or that whoever it is wasn't trying to get us both?”
He has a good point. Lana is forever telling me how it isn't always about me. Could she be right?
“Is there anyone that angry with you that they'd set you up to go to jail?” It was hard for me to imagine, but of course, I'm biased.
“I don't know if you've heard, but I was supposed to start in the season opener. Hard to do when you've been suspended from school.”
“Justin Mitchell?”
“Who did you think it was if not him?”
“Now that you've ruled out Malcolm, my next guess is his sister.”
“What did you do to piss her off so much she'd want you in jail?”
“Nothing, really. I mean, she's evil, but I can't think of anything that I did.”
Maybe it really isn't all about me. I did know about her best friend's little shoplifting habit, but there's nothing about Lissa that makes me think she'd go this far to protect a friend. Herself—no doubt. But a friend? Unlikely. That's the kind of thing MJ Cooper would do, or maybe even Tasha. Not at all Lissa's style. Marco might be on to something.
“Is football really
that
important to a guy?”
“Not to me, but to some guys, it's everything. There was a college kicker who broke his replacement's leg and tried to make it look like a random attack. Just like Tonya Harding.”
“Who?”
“The Olympic skater?” He must be able to read the cluelessness on my face because he moves on. “Justin's grades suck. If his father wasn't such a big booster to the team, and if he didn't have an amazing arm, he wouldn't still be at Langdon. All he had was his football rep, which used to be legit. I mean, when I was at North High, I wanted to
be
him. Always in the prep section of the sports page. You'd see him around town with the hottest honeys.”
I think he just noticed another look on my face, as much as I tried to act like I didn't care, because he starts backpedaling as fast as his mouth will take him.
“But the girls didn't matter to me. He had crazy skills, awesome stats. He was on his way to All-American. Then he got so deep into the weed that he couldn't keep his plays straight toward the end of last season. Since practice started, he's late every day, and even missed a couple of days.”
“Well, it makes the most sense. Whoever it was knew exactly what to steal—everything I'd written up on that assessment sheet. That's why I thought it was Malcolm. But Justin has access to his father's office.”
I almost say my next thought aloud, which would bust me as an eavesdropper. Whoever set us up knew we'd believe those messages telling us to meet at the park. I thought maybe my crush was so transparent that anyone who'd ever seen us together might know. And she did. Lissa questioned me about Marco at Annette's party. She must have told Justin how I was into Marco, maybe that was the text she sent just before I stormed out. That's probably when she told Justin Annette's house would be empty for a couple of hours, then made Bethanie drive around on a food treasure hunt just to make sure.
But it might not have worked if Marco wasn't just as willing to meet me, and Justin knew from that conversation at Mitchell's last weekend that he was. Now I don't know which discovery makes me more excited—that I have my man, or that
I have my man
. But I'm a girl with focus when it comes to solving a crime, especially when my name's on it. Like I said. Love comes later.
 
Marco drops me off at home and as much as I hate to see him go, I need some alone time to go over what I've learned. Even with a court date looming, a guy that fine can still be a distraction. I check the messages and the first is Lana, saying she's got a late stakeout tonight. The next message is Smythe telling my “foster parents” that I've been suspended until further notice.
Delete
. I figure this information won't help Lana, and will only hurt me. If she knew, she might take some time off and start hanging around the house to keep an eye on me.
What I need right now is room to figure out how I'm going to prove Lissa and Justin set us up. Not that I've completely ruled out Malcolm. He told Marco that story about his probation officer and AA meeting, but until I verify it myself, he's still on the suspect list. If I'm the target, it could be Malcolm working with Lissa instead of Justin. If Tasha was right about someone's motive being hate for me, that's a long list. And I'm not including all the other people who don't have a connection to Mitchell's but wouldn't mind seeing me fall: Donnell, MJ, that big, scary girl poor Robert Tice was going out with. After I exonerate myself, I really should work on my people skills.
Lana would be my first choice in helping me, but seeing as how she'd lose it if she knew I was running my own investigation and not “letting the professionals do their job,” that's not an option. So she'll have to stay in the dark about my school suspension for as long as I can keep it hidden from her, which means I only have a long weekend at best. If I make sure I'm in bed before she gets home, that's one less chance for her to question me and figure out something's up.
Hanging out at the park didn't really give me any clues, except that I remembered Lissa saying her maid lived nearby, off Lexington. That must be how she knew that section of the park was fairly quiet and witnesses would be unlikely. That's helpful information, but it isn't anything I can take to Lana. There are only two places where I might find the proof I need, and one of those places has suspended me until further notice. The other is Mitchell's, and tomorrow is payday. I'm sure I'm the last person they want to see, but they have to give me my final paycheck and fire me properly. I just have to come up with a story that'll get me the information I need.

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