The Finishing School (19 page)

The problem was, the ledgers
had
been accessed—twice, earlier this morning, without her authorization. Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out how that had happened. Both sets of books were on the Holbrooke computer system, but both were carefully disguised and password-protected. Patricia had fired the school’s development director several months ago, for the very purpose of preventing anyone from discovering her scheme. Since then only one person other than Patricia herself had had access to the password. That person could not possibly have pulled up the books without her knowledge. So who had, then? James? But how had he managed? Someone else? Then who?

She checked her watch again, more anxiously this time. Patricia was in over her head, and she knew it. How had things gotten so crazy? She’d only intended to better herself, like any red-blooded American girl. Had she aimed too high? Twenty-five years ago, when her credentials weren’t strong enough to land a job in the public-school system, Holbrooke had hired her happily. All they cared about was her look—young, pretty, blond, and fashionably dressed, appropriate for teaching the daughters of the rich. She’d had no idea what she’d be exposing herself to. The money was unthinkable, overwhelming. It took years of watchful coveting before Patricia even comprehended the full scope of it. The most important clues were also the subtlest. The quiet Hermès handbag that only a connoisseur knew cost fifteen thousand dollars. The fact that all the mothers had the same perfectly sculpted arms, courtesy of a few pricey society trainers who wouldn’t work with outsiders even if they had the cash. The offhand mentions of staff, private jets, third and fourth homes that slipped out in casual conversation, things one toted up in full only after years of knowing a family. But over time she saw how it was, and the crush of jealousy just shriveled her.

Patricia’s own attempts to marry money had failed. Once she hit her late thirties and had pretty much stopped meeting eligible men, she’d had no choice but to admit that to herself. The game was up. Then the only thing that slaked her bitter disappointment was exercising power over the families at school. Fortunately, her power was limitless. She held their daughters’ futures in the palm of her hand. The mothers endlessly sucked up to her. It was not uncommon for families to let Patricia use their vacation homes, to give her a lift on their private jets and host her in Aspen or Bermuda, to take her out to lavish dinners or even give her expensive gifts at Christmas. They tripped over one another to do it, in fact, and nobody ever objected. Who’d make a fuss when Patricia had the final say on college recommendations? Everybody acted like it was completely normal. She’d even perfected the art—when college of choice hung in the balance—of wrenching nice, fat contribution checks out of the wealthier families. She’d simply drop a hint that a deficiency in the girl’s record could be counterbalanced by the family’s becoming more significant benefactors of the school. Colleges paid attention to the bottom line, Patricia would remind the parents, and were more likely to take on a middling student if the family were reliable donors. Patricia handled the whole process so deftly that families viewed it as realpolitik rather than extortion and even—pathetically—thanked her for her candor. When she skimmed money off those contributions, she was extremely careful. Nobody had ever so much as raised an eyebrow.

But ultimately her machinations were poor consolation. Patricia suspected that the mothers knew this as well as she did herself. When James came along and held out the hope of an eleventh-hour victory, was it any surprise that she leaped at the chance? That she fell hard? Did what he asked? And now, after she’d compromised herself, was it all to come to naught, because her plan had been discovered?

Patricia had no way of determining who had accessed the endowment account. If the Holbrooke computer system had some method of keeping track, she wasn’t versed enough in its complexities to know. Asking somebody else to explore the issue for her would just rouse suspicion. So she’d considered her options and decided there was only one way. She’d called all the suspects in one by one and reminded them to toe the line. Reminded them of the consequences if they didn’t. She had a little something on everyone. Teachers were human beings, after all, and human beings had their weaknesses. Holbrooke wasn’t any worse than the outside world in that respect, but neither was it any better.

She’d dealt with Ted Siebert first, right after speaking with James this morning. She was certain Ted coveted the endowment money for himself. He also hated James with a passion—some feud stretching back years, having to do with James’s embarrassing Ted at a board of trustees meeting. Ted watched Patricia’s interactions with James with an eagle eye, suspecting something, looking for any evidence. But she’d been careful enough. There was nothing solid to go on. More to the point, Patricia knew things about Ted that his own wife surely didn’t—for example, he regularly used the school’s computer system to access gay-porn Web sites. It disgusted her, and yet it gave her power over him.

Likewise, the director of admissions had a gambling problem, and the head of the English department had three DWIs in the last ten years. She suspected each of them of being closet rebels, carrying chips on their shoulders, conspiring against her. And she’d now reminded each of them that she had the upper hand, simply by letting it slip that she
knew
but that she wasn’t doing anything with the information. Not yet anyway.

That left one more candidate to deal with. Here he was now, rapping so self-effacingly on her office door.

“Come in!” she called.

“Hey, Patricia,” Hogan said, strolling in like he hadn’t just kept her waiting for an hour. He sat down in the chair in front of her desk. “I got the message you wanted to see me. What’s up?”

“Where
were
you, Harrison? I’ve been looking for you for quite some time.”

“Down in the lower gym, schmoozing with some of the junior class. These girls are going to need a lot of attention in the coming weeks, Patricia. We haven’t even
talked
about the fact that this happened right before the holidays, when kids are already stressed to the max.”

His earnestness bugged the hell out of her. She’d wipe that self-righteous smirk clean off his face.

“Students crying on your shoulder, hmm? It doesn’t do to get too close to the girls, Harrison. I thought you were smart enough to understand that,” she said.

Hogan positively blanched. Hah! This was going to be fun.

“What are you talking about?” he asked quietly.

“This is rather delicate. But it’s my duty to speak up. It’s come to my attention that you were engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Whitney Seward.”

He sat up straight for once. “
What
? Who told you that? It’s a complete lie!”

“Be silent, Harrison, and hear me out. This is a deeply serious matter, for Holbrooke and for your own future. I have solid evidence. I think you know what it is. You weren’t particularly careful, were you?”

“Whitney was my student and my advisee,” Hogan protested. “If we spent time together, it was only—”

“Please.” She held up her hand. “I need to caution you not to speak further without representation.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Patricia’s tone was quiet, menacing.

“What is this really about? You have an agenda here, Patricia, I know it.”

“Don’t try to weasel out of it. You were naughty, and you’ve been caught with your hand in the honeypot. Normally I would suspend you immediately, but I don’t think the Holbrooke community could handle that right now, on top of these overdose deaths and with only a few days until the endowment campaign closes. But I felt it only fair to let you know, I have the evidence, and I could use it at any time. Do I make myself clear?”

CARMEN DRIFTED IN and out of consciousness. When she was awake, sometimes she was lucid, sometimes she wasn’t. When she knew what was happening, damn, it hurt so bad! She couldn’t stand it. But not for herself. She thought only of Papi, wherever he was—home, somewhere, looking for her, waiting, going crazy. He must be tearing at his hair, pounding himself with his fists. Every second she felt Papi’s agony. She imagined her captor, saw his cold eyes, remembered the gun he’d brandished at her. But in her mind she wasn’t herself; she was her father, consumed by these terrible worries about his daughter. She saw her own death, bullets piercing her flesh. But she was Papi, visualizing her murder while sobbing over her dead body. It was his pain she experienced, not her own.

Eventually time stretched out and lost its meaning. Carmen began hallucinating. She knew she was hallucinating, but that didn’t matter. The visions were blindingly real. A woman started visiting her in the closet, a woman who looked strangely like her dead mother. But she didn’t talk like Mami had. This woman talked fancy, whereas Mami’s English had barely been passable. And this woman was mean, whereas Mami had been very loving.

“Life is a nanosecond,” the woman said. “Death is what lasts. Don’t fight it.”

“I can’t die. Papi would be too sad. You already left him. He needs me.” Carmen said this, even though she knew this woman was not her mother but rather a stranger masquerading as her mother.

“We don’t choose when to die, Carmen. Death finds us, just like this man found you. When he comes back, he’s going to kill you.”

“No. I don’t think so. Not right away anyway. He needs me to do something for him first.”

“You’re not going to do it, are you?”

“I have to. Otherwise he’ll kill Lulu. He told me.”

“And you believe him?”

“Of course I believe him. He killed Whitney and Brianna. He has the devil inside him, I know.”

“Then you’re making a deal with the devil. That’s not smart, Carmen. You’ll burn in hell. Resist him, say no. Let him kill you. It’s not so bad where I live. Come, and we’ll spend time together.”

“Please, don’t tell me to do that!” Carmen cried. “I need to save Lulu! I need to see Papi again! What the man’s asking is wrong, but it’s not so terrible. Who will it hurt if I do what he asks? Then maybe I could even escape—”

“
Escape
? You’re a foolish girl if you think that’s possible. Look at the way he tied you up. You’ll never get out of this closet,” the woman said.

“He
has
to take me out eventually, if I’m going to do what he’s asking. Maybe I could escape then.”

“No you can’t. He has a gun.”

“So maybe he won’t use it.”

The woman just laughed, an ugly cackle, nothing like Mami’s.

“What’s so funny?”

“
You
are, the way you fool yourself. How much time do you think you have left, Carmen? A day? A few hours? You don’t even know how long ago it was that Whitney and Brianna died, do you? You have no clue.”

“It can’t be
that
long, because I’m still alive. If I’d gone a week without food and water, I’d be dead. I mean, I
am
still alive, right?…Right?” Carmen asked nervously.

“I’m not going to tell you the answer to that one.”

“Someone will find me!” Carmen cried, in tears. “Someone will come rescue me, I know!”

“What are you talking about? Stupid girl! What makes you think anybody’s even looking for you?”

THE TEAM HAD AGREED to stage out of a pub a block from the Worth Street subway stop. When Melanie and Linda arrived, the place was overflowing with drunken Wall Streeters who’d begun their Christmas revels early. Melanie stood near the door and scanned the crowd. After the bracing wind outside, the sudden heat and noise made her dizzy. No sleep and very little food—she was running on fumes. She shrugged out of her coat, taking a deep breath.

“You see your friends?” Linda shouted over the din.

“Not yet. Looking.”

“Hey,” Linda called after a moment. She leaned closer to Melanie. “There’s a major hottie in the corner checking you out like you’re a thick, juicy steak and he’s a starving man.”

“Where?”

“Over there, but— No, don’t look, you no-brain!”

“That’s Dan.”

“What?”

“C’mon,” Melanie said, grabbing Linda by the arm.

Dan
was
staring at her. And somehow, in these clothes, in this place, she could handle it. As she walked toward him, their eyes locked, and everything else fell away. Blood pounded in her veins. She forgot about their almost love affair, their sort of breakup, the nights she’d spent alone obsessing over the way things had ended. She looked right back at him and let herself remember how he kissed.

“That’s
him
? His body is
sick
,” Linda said.

“Shut up now, or I’m gonna smack you,” Melanie said.

Bridget Mulqueen and Trevor Leonard, sitting on bar stools beyond Dan, popped into view as they drew near. She waved to them, not even trying to make herself heard over the racket. Dan stood up.

“Look at
you
,” was all he said, but there was a soft light in his eyes that she wanted to memorize.

“My sister dressed me up so I could pass muster. This is Linda. She’s gonna get us into Screen.”

Dan shook Linda’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Linda said. “Mel mentioned you once or twice.”

“Oh, yeah?” He glanced at Melanie, looking gratified.

“Enough small talk,” Melanie said. “We need to go over our plan.”

“Was she always so serious like this?” Dan asked Linda.

“Yeah, since she was a kid. That’s how she got into those fancy schools.”

“I admire that about her,” he said.

“Will you guys stop?” Melanie said, though she was eating it up. “Let’s talk business.”

She had told Linda that they were investigating heroin dealing at area nightclubs but given no indication that Esposito himself was their target or that the case was relating to the Holbrooke girls’ deaths. She’d disclosed enough to warn Linda of the risks of the operation, without giving her details that could compromise their plan or put Linda in additional danger.