The Finishing School (40 page)

“What the fuck, Stew, pullin’ me outta general population at three o’clock on a Friday! Looks bad. All the MS-13 guys gonna think I’m telling,” Juan Carlos complained.

“Talk to
her
,” Stewart replied, waving at Melanie. “Believe me, I’d rather be home now myself. She’ll dismiss your charges if you help locate this Carmen Reyes person, but she wasn’t willing to wait.”

“Yo, Ms. Vargas, you messing with my shit here.”

“Tell them it’s a defense-attorney visit, Juan Carlos,” Melanie said. “No reason to think you’re talking to the law.”

“Right before Christmas? Who gonna believe that? Ain’t no defense lawyer in this town working this afternoon.”

“Stewart is Jewish. He doesn’t celebrate Christmas. This is a convenient time for him.”

Juan Carlos paused, then nodded. “Oh, okay. My shorties stupid enough to buy that one.”

“Are you ready to proceed?” Melanie asked Stewart.

“One thing I need to clear up. My client believes you view him as a suspect in the Holbrooke ODs case,” Stewart said.

“The investigation has progressed significantly since I last spoke to Juan Carlos. I can represent to you that he’s no longer a suspect,” Melanie replied.

“Okay, good. We’re under standard proffer-agreement terms, I take it?” Stewart asked.

“Yes. I have the agreement right here.”

Melanie removed a piece of paper from her briefcase, signed it, and handed it to Stewart, who signed as well.

“Very well. Juan Carlos, I’m recommending that you speak to Ms. Vargas.”

“Yeah, awright. What you wanna know?” Juan Carlos said to Melanie.

“Your lawyer says you have information about Carmen Reyes being involved in an embezzlement scheme. Tell me about that.”

“She ain’t involved herself. Somebody trying to use her.”

“Who’s trying to use her?”

“Peoples at her school. Carmen work in the office there.”

“How did
you
find out about this?”

“A few days before she go missing, me and Carmen meet at a Star-bucks near her school for our regular tutoring. She real upset, so naturally I’m concerned. Carmen good peoples. I don’t like to see her low.”

“When exactly was this? Do you remember?”

“Last Thursday. We always meet on Thursday afternoons. That’s why I tell Stewie here to call you yesterday, because I remember it Thursday. It make me think of her, and I’m gettin’ real agitated for her safety, you feel me?”

“You did the right thing. So you’re meeting with Carmen, she’s upset, and what does she tell you?”

“Well, at first she ain’t tell me nothing. She just say she got problems at school or whatever. But then
I
say, ‘When it come to trouble, girl, I got life experience you
ain’t
got, so maybe I be of assistance.’ And that musta convince her, because she look over her shoulder and all around, then she tell me real quiet-like what be going down.”

“Which was?”

“Okay, Carmen working in what she call the development office at the school, right, where they keeping track of all this money rich peoples be donating. Carmen original boss get fired by the head of the school, a real nasty bitch named…uh, Andrew, Landau, wait a minute—” He snapped his fingers.

“Andover?”

“Yeah, that it. Mrs. Andover. Anyway, this Andover bitch trains Carmen on some spreadsheet programs and shit so she can do the fired lady’s job, right? But she think Carmen too stupid to get what going down, because little by little this Andover be telling Carmen skim off money and send it to funny accounts. At first Carmen think she imagining it, so she start making records and keeping real careful track. Pretty soon she convinced this Andover bitch be robbin’ the school big time.”

Melanie stared at Juan Carlos in utter astonishment. Whatever she’d thought Patricia Andover might be up to, she’d never imagined something like this.

“Are you
sure
, Juan Carlos? Because that’s a serious accusation.”

“Sure, I’m sure. I’m sure that what Carmen
say
anyway, and she ain’t got no reason to lie to me.”

“So what did Carmen do with this information?”

“Well, that what she trying to decide when she talk to me.”

“Did you tell her to go to the police?”

Juan Carlos grinned. “Not exackly.”

Melanie sighed. “What did you tell her, Juan Carlos?”

“Look, Carmen say they millions of dollars in those accounts, and ten million more due to come in. Come in sometime
today
, if I remember right. What normal person not gonna be tempted by some Benjamins like that?”

“Ten million today,” Melanie said under her breath. She looked at her watch, saw again that
today
was rapidly waning.

“Natural response, you feel me?” Juan Carlos said.

“So you told Carmen to steal the money.”

“I
suggest
it. It was already gonna get stolen anyway, right? I jus’ point out she could win big, get a payday, and she maybe give me a commission to help her figure shit out.”

“What did she say?”

“She say no. That’s Carmen. She honest as a motherfuckin’ nun.”

“So then what?”

“Then I drink my chai latte and be on my way. I ain’t pressure her or nothing.”

“That’s it? You just dropped the subject of the money?”

“Carmen say she got somebody she trust, that she gonna tell about it and ask for help.”

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t give me no names. But somebody legit. Important, like.”

“Did she say anything else about this person?”

“I know it a man because she call him a ‘he.’ But that it.”

“Do you know whether she went through with it and confided in this guy?”

He shrugged. “After I left the Starbucks, I ain’t heard from her no more.”

Melanie fell silent, her mind reeling with all of this new information. As far as she could tell, none of it had anything to do with the deaths of Whitney Seward or Brianna Meyers, or the use of Holbrooke girls to mule heroin, or anything else they’d been spending law-enforcement resources on investigating for the past week.

“Let me ask you something, Juan Carlos,” Melanie said. “Did Carmen ever mention any drug smuggling going on at Holbrooke, or a guy named Jay Esposito, or anything like that?”

“No, never.”

“Huh.” Melanie was totally confused.

“Are we done?” Stewart Steinberg asked, looking at his watch.

“Just a minute, I’m thinking,” Melanie said. “Juan Carlos, what makes you think the embezzlement scheme is linked to Carmen’s disappearance?”

“Whoever want this money need Carmen, or at least they need her fingers,” Juan Carlos said definitively.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because. The accounts got what they call biometric protection. Ain’t no money goin’ nowhere without Carmen fingerprints to verify the transaction.”

CARMEN SHOOK HER HANDS OUT, feeling the blood rush back into her tingling fingertips. She rubbed her wrists where they’d been tied together, then stood up so quickly that she saw stars and began to sway.

“Whoa, careful there,” Bud said, steadying her.

Like he cared. He just needed her in one piece for a few more hours. Carmen knew that the biometric triggers didn’t work if she was dead, or else he would surely have cut off her fingers and discarded the rest of her. She couldn’t believe she’d once trusted this man. How stupid could you be? She touched the lump on the back of her head. The hair covering it was crusty with blood. She thought about asking for a doctor, but she knew he wouldn’t listen. He was only letting her out now because it was
time
. She knew where he planned to take her. Her best bet was to act all cooperative and wait for the right moment to make her move. She
had
to find a way to escape. Because knowing what she knew about him, he’d kill her for sure after they finished their business tonight.

He read her mind.

“Just in case you get any bright ideas, remember this,” he said, and pulled his big black gun from his coat pocket, displaying it for her.

Carmen stared at it with wide eyes.

“I’ll use it, too. I already have,” Bud bragged.

“On who?” Carmen’s voice, untried for days, came out as a hoarse croak.

“None of your business,” he said.

Carmen visualized her sister dead, and her eyes overflowed with tears.

“Shit! Stop blubbering. How the fuck am I supposed to take you out on the street like that?”

The tears rolled unchecked down Carmen’s cheeks. She just couldn’t help it. She was feeling so weak, physically and mentally. Really, she didn’t see how she could beat him at this game. He held all the cards. And now she was convinced he’d killed Lulu.

“It wasn’t anybody you know!” he exclaimed, exasperated. “But if you give me trouble, it
will
be. Remember, I can get to your sister whenever I feel like it.”

“No-oo, ple-ease!” Carmen wailed.

“I don’t know why you’re so fucking broken up over her! Lulu hasn’t done
shit
for you, Carmen. We both know she saw me at Whitney’s the other night.”

It was true. Lulu had seen him there earlier that night, had told Carmen about it. Ironically, his presence was part of what had made Carmen feel comfortable going upstairs in the first place when Whitney called her. Even at that late date, Carmen hadn’t suspected a thing. It wasn’t until the final, horrible moment in Whitney’s bathroom when she turned around and found him standing behind her that everything fell into place. She realized how corrupt he was, realized she’d picked exactly the
wrong
person to tell about the money. But by then it was too late. She was already caught.

“Lulu doesn’t know,” Carmen protested. “Just because she saw you, that doesn’t mean she understands.”

“Oh,
she
understands. Lulu’s a lot quicker than
you
are, Carmen. But she’s smart enough to look out for herself, so don’t expect her to come to your rescue.”

He put the gun away, grabbed a loose black overcoat and knit cap off a nearby armchair, and shoved them at her.

“Put these on. It’s time to go,” he commanded.

Looking into his dead eyes, Carmen saw no other choice. She swallowed her tears and did as she was told.

LEAVING THE JAIL after talking to Juan Carlos Peralta, Melanie was convinced of two things: First, Carmen Reyes was still alive. Second, she wouldn’t be staying that way for long.

Melanie’s suspicions of something sinister afoot at Holbrooke had been right on the money. Literally. Carmen had stumbled across a major embezzlement scheme, one that couldn’t be completed without her fingerprints transferring the final ten million. Once the money moved—presumably shortly after seven-thirty tonight—Carmen became not only unnecessary but a huge liability, which meant Melanie had to find her ASAP. And while she’d love to march right into the Holbrooke benefit and haul Patricia Andover off for a haute couture perp walk, she didn’t have enough hard evidence. She needed to let the scheme unfold and pounce at the right moment.

But there was something major that Melanie just didn’t get. What did any of this Holbrooke stuff have to do with the heroin case she’d been assigned to investigate? Melanie couldn’t ignore the significance of the drug angle. Just look at all the people who’d died because of it. Whitney Seward and Brianna Meyers. Fabulous Deon and—though she could barely stand to think of it—possibly Trevor Leonard as well, for informing on Esposito. And Esposito himself, killed overnight, his murder made to look like a suicide. She’d originally been convinced that the drug case held the key to finding Carmen, but now she wasn’t so sure. Were the two schemes linked at all? The only point of intersection Melanie could even think of was the fact that Carmen Reyes had last been seen at the Sewards’ apartment the night Whitney and Brianna died.

The hair stood up on the back of her neck.

For a while now, Melanie had a strange sense that somebody was out there, pulling the strings, doctoring the evidence, trying to throw her off. She hadn’t listened to this instinct before, but now she felt certain of it. Call him the unseen hand. She didn’t know who he was, or where to find him. But she knew where he’d
been
—at the Sewards’ the night Whitney and Brianna died and Carmen disappeared. And if he’d been there, she could think of one person who just might have seen him.

FOR MELANIE the most difficult thing about paying a visit to Charlotte Seward was that it brought her closer to her own apartment than she’d been in two whole days. The temptation to rush home and cuddle with her little girl was overwhelming. But she reminded herself that Maya was safe, snug, and well cared for, whereas Carmen and Trevor were still out there somewhere, lost in the cold night.

And night it had become. The sun had set while Melanie was on the subway heading uptown. The wind blew furiously down Park Avenue, whipping a fine spray of crystallized snow into her face. She put her head down and rushed into the Sewards’ lobby, where she stood stamping her feet while the doorman called upstairs. Melanie was almost surprised when he gave her the okay to proceed to the penthouse.

At the Sewards’ a uniformed maid escorted her to an opulent sitting room. The maid took Melanie’s coat and disappeared without a word, only to return a few minutes later with a harassed air.

“So sorry, ma’am. The missus change her mind. She’s not feeling well enough to receive you after all.” Her facial expression suggested that such whims were a regular occurrence.

“Look, tell Mrs. Seward this isn’t a matter of choice. I’m investigating a crime. Either she talks to me or she talks to the grand jury.”

“She won’t care, ma’am. She don’t listen.”

“Where’s
Mr
. Seward?” Melanie asked—not because she thought he’d be of assistance, quite the opposite. Melanie was half convinced James Seward
was
the unseen hand. Certainly he’d been in this apartment on the night in question, and his whereabouts during critical hours were still unaccounted for.

“He went to Whitney’s school for a party.”