The Cipher (21 page)

167

IF THIS COULD
be any more humiliating, Melanie wasn't sure how. She and Jenna trudged from the hot tub to the mudroom at the back of the house, where her dad waited with his arms crossed over his chest.

They didn't even have towels to cover themselves. They had to make their way in full view of him, wearing only their soaked shirts and shorts. Melanie could only imagine what he thought of this picture; they must have looked like they'd been holding their own private wet T-shirt competition. Or like they'd been off on some secret lesbian holiday.

Her dad held the door open as they walked to the cabin, wood chips clinging to their bare, wet feet. His mouth was a tight slash of anger.

“Get cleaned up and meet me in the kitchen,” he said, and marched inside.

At least they'd left towels for themselves in the mudroom. Melanie tossed one to Jenna and grabbed the other for herself.

“This is really bad, huh?” Jenna whispered.

Melanie could only nod. Her brain was simultaneously going a hundred miles an hour and unable to function. It was spinning in place—that's what it was doing.

Somehow, her dad had found out that she never made it up to Smith College. Melanie thought she was in the clear after checking in with Katie, but she should have known it would get back to her parents somehow. That explained all the calls last night. And now that he'd shown up, it was easy to see how he'd tracked her down. It wasn't even a matter of tracking—it was just logic. He knew the Smylies' cabin was one of her favorite places in the world. He knew she had access to the key. It would be the most obvious place to check for her.

And if he knew all that, he might know all the rest—that she'd been looking into the mystery letter, and Rose's death, and her dad's involvement in all of it.

Melanie hadn't been thinking straight at all these past few days.

She dried her hair as best she could, then wondered for a long time what to do about her basically transparent T-shirt. She settled on taking it off and wrapping the long towel below her armpits. Jenna followed suit.

“So he's, like, super mad? On a scale of one to ten, would you—”

“Oh, it's a ten,” Melanie said. “I've never done anything like this before.”

“I'll just tell him about my homecoming experience this year.” Jenna smirked. “You'll look like the picture of maturity by comparison.”

Melanie couldn't even muster a laugh, but she was more thankful for Jenna than ever. “Time to face it,” she said.

Her dad was sitting at the head of the kitchen table. He turned off his phone—a sure sign of the apocalypse—and used both hands to point at the chairs beside him. Melanie shrunk into her designated seat and summoned the courage to meet her dad's eyes. “Does Jenna have to be here? I'm the one who brought—”

“That's a yes, at least until I get some questions answered.”

In the brief silence that followed, Melanie half hoped Jenna would start in with her homecoming story. Instead, her dad placed his elbows heavily on the table.

“You asked me,” he said pointedly to Melanie, “about a former employee of Alyce the other morning.”

Melanie held her head, rubbing her temples. This was the worst-case scenario. This wasn't just going to be about Melanie going off on her own for the weekend. It was about Andrei Tarasov, and whatever her dad had to do with him. The fact that he wasn't using Tarasov's name scared her all the more.

“I have a feeling this trip of yours has something to do with that question.”

Melanie nodded, feeling small.

“Okay. And Jenna, do you know anything about this former employee?”

Melanie wanted to save her from the inquisition, but any hope that she could control the situation was long gone. Jenna shrugged. “Barely. I mean, neither of us knows very much at all.”

“Well, what
do
you know about him?” He was directing the question at Melanie now. “Let's start there.”

Her dad's careful wording was freaking Melanie out—he didn't want to say any more about Tarasov than he had to, so he was establishing the limits of their knowledge first. It was like some kind of lawyer's trick: figuring out the other side's evidence so you could fit your own story around it.

A small part of Melanie became angry with him—for lying to her about Tarasov in the first place, for causing her so much stress over the last few days, and for the possibility that he'd had something to do with the sudden death of Smiles's stepmom. And for the way he was treating her now. There was no kindness in his eyes, nothing parental in his voice. Looking at him, she saw only a man trying to save himself.

The seed of anger took root, and she decided not to spare him any details. “Well, we know that when I asked you about Andrei Tarasov—that's his name, you know—you lied about not remembering him. We know that because he died on Mr. Smylie's front lawn. Shot in the head, probably by himself, but who knows? I don't. Either way, it's not something you'd really forget.”

Jenna eyes were nearly popping out of her head. They screamed at Melanie,
Umm, what exactly are you doing?

Her dad retracted from the table and wiped at the sides of his mouth. He was furious. “You should be careful about what you're saying,” he said, but the warning only grated further on her nerves. “Anything else?”

“Actually, yes,” Melanie said, and saw Jenna shut her eyes in terror. “I know that Mr. Smylie's wife—Rose—was in touch with you about something to do with Andrei Tarasov. Apparently you were putting her off for some reason. But then she suddenly died before she could do anything about it.”

“Enough,” her dad said sharply. He held his words for a moment, taking labored breaths through his nostrils.
He's going to have that heart attack after all
, Melanie thought.

“And you came here why?” he said at last.

“When I found all this out, I was pretty upset.” Melanie tried to keep her tone even. “So I started looking into it. Why would my own dad lie to me about Andrei Tarasov, and Rose? I couldn't get it out of my head. Still can't, actually.” Her dad didn't react. “I'm not going to Smith anyway, so I decided to ask Jenna up here to figure it out.”

“It was more just a fun girls' weekend, really,” Jenna said airily, scrunching her nose.

“And I don't suppose your parents know where you are, either?”

“They, uh, know I'm with Melanie, but they might sorta think we're at your house.”

“We'll deal with that,” he said, and Jenna cast a stone-faced look at the table. Melanie would really have to make this up to her someday. “For now,” her dad said, “why don't you tell me what you've found out?”

“Nothing.” It was true. Melanie's lame attempts at digging into the mystery had gotten her nowhere. She'd gotten warned off by a cop, looked at some pictures, and talked to a senile professor—that was about it. Scratch private investigator from her list of career options.

“Okay, then.” Her dad had calmed down a little. He rose from the table and poured himself a glass of water from the refrigerator, looking out at the crisp spring day that had been ripped away from Melanie. Neither she nor Jenna dared to move from the table.

“You didn't find out anything because there's nothing to find out.” Her dad sipped from his water, dragging his attention back from the lake. “Nothing except a sad story that would have been better left buried. But since the two of you haven't been able to leave it alone, I'll tell you.”

“Dad, Jenna isn't really the one who—”

“She's not as much to blame as you, I know. But you're both here, and you're both going to keep what I say to yourselves. Right?”

Melanie murmured her agreement along with Jenna, getting her first inkling that this investigation may have been a colossal life mistake. Her dad drummed his fingers on the distressed wood of the table, finding a starting point for the story.

“Andrei was an extremely talented mathematician. A brilliant young man,” her dad said. “He came to the United States and studied under Mr. Smylie at Harvard. And when Mr. Smylie received a government grant for a research project on encryption, he selected Andrei to help him. A great honor for any graduate student, that was. And do you know how Andrei repaid it?”

They found out that Tarasov had been stealing research and handing it over to the Russian government
. Jenna's words from Friday's lunch played back to Melanie. “He spied for the Russians on the research project,” she said with a blossoming sense of shame.

“Well, you know more than you said you did,” her dad said. “He betrayed our country, and he betrayed Mr. Smylie in a very personal way. It could have ruined Mr. Smylie's career—would have, really, if his reputation hadn't been so good to begin with.”

Melanie tightened the towel around her. She hadn't once thought of Mr. Smylie's feelings in this whole thing—the great Mr. Smylie, who revolutionized computers and was such a decent man on top of it all.
And for her next act, Melanie Hunt will dig needlessly into the secret past of Mahatma Gandhi
.

“Andrei was stopped, but it was all kept quiet. The government doesn't like to advertise that it has been spied on. He was deported, and if that had been all that happened, it would have been bad enough.” Mr. Hunt seemed to be enjoying the reverent embarrassment on the faces of Melanie and Jenna. “But it got worse. A few years later, after Mr. Smylie started Alyce Systems, Andrei snuck back into the United States illegally under a new name, Tarasov, and got himself hired as a low-level programmer at Alyce.”

A tiny gasp escaped from Jenna's mouth.

“But why?” Melanie said.

Her dad toyed with his empty glass. The moisture sang as he traced a finger around the rim. “He knew that Mr. Smylie was the one who discovered his spying, and he became obsessed with him. That happens to people, unfortunately. Something goes wrong in their life, and instead of addressing their own problems, they fixate on something external to them. For Andrei, that something was Mr. Smylie. It was very sad, and very scary for Mr. Smylie. We didn't realize he was working at Alyce until he shot himself on Mr. Smylie's front lawn. His way, I suppose, of making some kind of confused statement.”

Jenna wore the solemn look of a funeralgoer. Melanie probably did, too. She couldn't help asking: “Dad, what was Rose doing asking you about Andrei?”

He shook his head. “That's the saddest part. At the very end, he was making elaborate claims about the great work he was doing and how he deserved to be running the company. It was all part of his unraveling. The first one to pay any attention to it was Mr. Smylie's first wife, Alice. You never knew her, but she was a soft-hearted person then. The kind of person who would try to understand a man like Andrei, even though there was nothing to understand. Of course the suicide right on their front lawn was extremely traumatic for them. She didn't respond well. I'm not a doctor, so I don't know if it'd be right to call her reaction a breakdown, but she left Mr. Smylie after that. Which, of course, only deepened the wounds that Andrei had inflicted.”

“Oh, God,” Jenna said, and then realized she'd spoken aloud. “So that's why you never talk about him, then?”

Mr. Hunt nodded. “To Mr. Smylie, Andrei represents the darkest time in his career and the failure of his first marriage all wrapped into one.” Turning to Melanie, he said, “To answer your question, I think Rose learned about it from Alice. Though why Alice would want to stir up that trouble, I have no idea. And no, I wasn't eager to deal with it again.”

“Of course,” Melanie said. She would have apologized, but nothing she could say would even scratch at the depths of her embarrassment.

That happens to people, unfortunately. Something goes wrong in their life, and instead of addressing their own problems, they fixate on something external to them
. Her dad had been talking about Tarasov, but he might as well have been talking about Melanie. Breaking up with Smiles was too much for her to deal with, so she had distracted herself by constructing a conspiracy theory with her dad at the center. It had nothing to do with anything except her own misplaced energy. Her time would have been better spent on UFO sightings. At least that way, she wouldn't have hurt her dad so much. A minute ago, she had been on the verge of accusing him of murder. Melanie wondered if, somewhere, there was a fast-moving bus that she could step in front of.

“Time to go,” her dad said. “Get your things and I'll meet you out front. And Jenna, we're going to call your parents.”

They made for the bedrooms on the spiral staircase, which no longer enthralled them the way it had when they'd arrived. Melanie apologized profusely to Jenna as they packed.

“It's okay, Mel,” Jenna said, jamming clothes into her bag. “Glad we got all the real dirt, anyway. What a story.”

“My God, you're nice,” Melanie said.

She felt like she was defiling Mr. Smylie's house with her mere presence in it. She couldn't wait to get out of the place. They bounded down the stairs with the Pollack in full view.
Happy now, Mel? Your life is as messy as that painting
.

They locked up and handed her dad the key on the front porch. Melanie was about to tell him about its hiding place out back when a car pulled up and her life got even messier.

It was Smiles. And he was with a girl.

173

“WHAT THE . . .”

Smiles had seen some odd things in the past couple of days, but the sight of Mr. Hunt, Melanie, and some bug-eyed chick standing together at the front of his dad's cabin had to be right up there. Highly unexpected, anyway. Not to mention awkward.

An encounter with Mr. Hunt was going to be uncomfortable enough after the way they'd left things at his office. The presence of Melanie, though, took it to another level. Smiles's flight instinct kicked in, but he'd pulled too far down the driveway to back out now. He shut off the engine in defeat. Erin stared through the windshield. “Is that Mr. Hunt?”

“Yep.”

“So which one's your ex-girlfriend?”

“Give me some credit,” Smiles said. “On the left.”

“Hmm. Hottie. You reconsidering?”

It wasn't really Smiles's choice to reconsider—Melanie had been the one to break up with him—but he didn't point out that technicality. Instead he watched as Mr. Hunt directed the girls to Melanie's car, and then started walking to the Infiniti.

Erin cleared her throat. “This is where you say, ‘No, are you crazy? Not in a million years.'”

“C'mon,” Smiles said. “Let's see what's going on here.”

He heard Erin sigh as he got out of the car. She joined him against the hood as Mr. Hunt approached. He was wearing aviator shades and a frown, both of which made his shuffle out to the Infiniti more imposing than it otherwise might have been. When he arrived, he held out a single key on a plastic chain with the Harvard shield. It was the key they kept in the fake rock out back. As soon as Smiles reached out his hand, Mr. Hunt dropped it and turned for his own car, all without a single word. It was pretty anticlimactic.

Melanie's taillights brightened first, then Mr. Hunt's. He drove a Bentley with white leather seats and an exterior blue color that was probably called something like Sapphire Dreams. It started up like distant thunder.

Smiles lurched toward the Bentley, his chance for an explanation escaping. “Mr. Hunt, wait. What are you doing here? What's going on!?”

Mr. Hunt ignored him. The Bentley slipped away, and Melanie followed. Smiles caught her eyes as she backed out. They were empty. A corner of her mouth turned up, but it wasn't a smile—she was holding off a cry.

“Mel, wait! What's the deal?”

Erin held him back by the shoulder. “Let 'em go, Smiles.”

He did.

At least Operation Hot Tub was working. They had scraped together a dinner of hard pretzels and gourmet mustard and spent most of the night on the deck. At full dark Smiles told her it'd be a shame to let a good hot tub go to waste, and Erin had gone for it.

She dipped her shoulders under the water, giving him eyes with unfathomable sex appeal. Still, she kept to the opposite side of the hot tub, holding her distance. “So you know how I said I have a big ego?”

“Yeah.”

“That's one fault. There's another one you should probably be aware of. I'm pretty good with the old self-sabotage routine. When I start thinking I might really like somebody? I start finding problems that aren't there. Like, just for instance, maybe criticizing their perfectly healthy and actually kind of adorable interest in domesticated fish.”

“Ahhhh. Good, 'cause I like them.”

“Right. So maybe if you could just wipe that episode from the record books? Or file it under Erin's Endearing Quirks or something?”

“Done,” he said. “Any more faults I should know about?”

She pondered the stars theatrically. “Nope. Other than that, I am perfection.”

“Just as I thought,” he said, and then they were kissing. Eventually she pushed away from him with her feet.

“You never answered me earlier,” she said.

“What?”

“About that girl. Wish you were still with her?”

“Nah,” Smiles said. And actually, he didn't. Which was kind of weird. He'd known Melanie forever, lusted after her for almost as long. He wasn't feeling the need to be with her anymore, though, and Erin was the reason. She stretched her arms out along the lip of the hot tub. Her hair pooled at her shoulders, waving in the bubbling water.

“So why am I the lucky one? I want to hear it. Flatter me.” She blinked her eyes at him, playing cute.

“Uh, you know, I'm not really good at talking about this stuff. I mean, why does anybody like anybody? You can't put it in words. You just do.”

“Well, try. Because that last answer isn't doing much for me.” She flicked water from her fingertips at him.

Smiles looked up at the stars, brighter out here than they ever were in Boston. The stars at Squam Lake always reminded him of the laser light show he'd gone to the first time he got truly stoned. He was feeling that kind of disoriented now. He was definitely into this girl, and if he wanted things to keep going well, he probably should give her some kind of answer.

“Okay, well, it's sort of hard to be with Melanie. It's, like, work. Not because she's high maintenance or anything. She's just this
perfect girl
, so it feels extra-bad if you're not winning the Nobel Peace Prize or something. It's different with you. You're . . .” Smiles reached for the rest of the sentence, realizing he'd painted himself into a corner.

“Far from perfect? Deeply flawed? Perhaps this is where we should review the meaning of ‘flatter.' Would that be helpful?”

At least she was smiling. “Hey, I warned you I'd be bad at this,” he said.

“Not
this
bad.”

“Well, I always like to exceed expectations.” Smiles pushed off from the wall and moved gently across the water. He grasped her hands and Erin pulled to the edge of the seat, their bodies half floating close to each other beneath the wisps of steam. “Okay, here goes,” he said. “You know how I said I was a screwup? I meant that. I got kicked out of school last fall and pretty much have no clue where my life is going. My plans last for about twenty minutes each. Know why I can't settle on anything?”

Erin waited to hear it.

“Because the only thing that I've ever really wanted to do was to run my dad's company. It's been stuck in my head since I was little. It seems pretty dumb now, 'cause I don't know anything about computers or encryption or any of that. But it's all I could ever seriously imagine myself doing.”

“So why don't you—”

Smiles shook his head. “I'm not gonna, like, go to college and, you know, cut to a
Rocky
montage of me studying up at night and turning into a brain. I'm not smart like that, but that doesn't even matter. The point is, I've had that idea fixed in my mind since I could walk. And I've always held on to a sliver of it. But when we were in Mr. Hunt's office, he told me it's not happening. For sure. None of my dad's stock is going to me—none of it. I'm not going to have anything to do with the company at all.”

Erin rubbed her hand along his arm, but Smiles didn't need to be soothed. “I'm not telling you for sympathy. I've known for a long time that my dad doesn't trust me like that—this just makes it official. I'm telling you because I
can
. If I said this to Melanie, it would just make me feel worse.

“I don't feel judged by you, understand?” he said. “I don't feel like you're waiting for me to screw up. I don't know how that sounds to you, but for me it's pretty awesome.”

Erin nudged off the seat and hugged him. She whispered in his ear, “Oh, Smiles, you just exceeded my expectations.”

She was waiting for him in the master bedroom. Smiles had stayed down in the kitchen, insisting on cleaning up their plates before they went to bed. Better to do it now than early tomorrow morning, when they'd have to get on the road to the bank. That's what he'd said, and it was true. But he was also thinking of Melanie's strange appearance at the cabin, and all those calls she'd left on his phone. Something real was happening with Erin tonight, and Smiles had a feeling that he owed it to Melanie to hear her out before things went any further.

He put the last dish away and dialed voice mail, cringing inside. A string of messages in which Melanie stated her desperate case for getting back together weren't going to make fun listening. He shouldn't have been worried; in the three voice mails she'd left, she hadn't brought up their relationship once.

Instead, Smiles listened gape-jawed as Melanie's static-ridden voice told him what she'd been up to the last couple of days. The girl had gone nuts. First, she had
broken into his mom's email account
and found some old messages to both his birth mother and Mr. Hunt. They all had to do with the letter Smiles was supposed to get on his eighteenth birthday and/or some ex-Alyce employee named Andrei Tarasov, who had
shot himself on Smiles's front lawn
years ago. Because all of that wasn't bizarre enough, Melanie had contacted some professor at Northeastern and was planning to skip school to meet him on Monday. In the meantime, she had decided to
go AWOL and
hole up at his dad's cabin for the weekend
while she tried to figure it all out. Unbelievable.

The skipping class part, actually, might have been the strangest of all.

A grin crossed Smiles's face. He had to hand it to Melanie—it sounded like she'd stirred up a bunch of trouble. Not that he could begin to grasp what it all meant. It was definitely weird that Smiles had never heard about this guy who offed himself, but that sounded like ancient history. Plus, through Melanie's frantic voice mails, it was difficult to draw any connection between the guy and the letter from his mom. Which Mr. Hunt had destroyed, anyway.

He'd looked pretty pissed off when he handed Smiles the keys to the cabin. That scene at the front of the house made more sense now; Melanie and her friend were being involuntarily returned from their weekend frolic as detectives/runaways.

Smiles's finger hovered over the phone, readying to call Melanie. What was the use, though? She'd broken up with him, end of story. At some point, Smiles would talk to her again and find out more about the suicide guy. But for the next twenty-four hours, he had to worry about getting his money from the bank, getting the cipher, getting Ben back, and saving Alyce Systems.

And right now there was a hot girl lying on a bed upstairs, waiting for him. Smiles took his hand away from the phone and headed for the bedroom.