The Finishing School (24 page)

Lulu reached into her coat pocket and fingered that lady’s business card. She’d been thinking about calling the number and telling everything she knew, but now she definitely wouldn’t. In fact,
he
told her she’d better call up that lady and lie. Throw suspicion onto somebody else. He’d even carefully given Lulu the name. She didn’t want to do it, but what choice did she have? That man would kill Carmen without a second thought.

Lulu was getting choked up thinking about how much she wanted to call that lady. It would be such a relief to let an adult take this mess off her hands. But no, she was being weak. Babyish. For years now, Lulu had positively
longed
to have a grown-up take care of her. But she was determined to outgrow that nonsense. Grown-ups couldn’t be trusted. Mami had gone and died on them. Papi was helpless and lost, like a child himself, needing
them
to take care of
him
. The teachers at school were evil, full of double talk, slaves to the rich girls. Carmen was the only one Lulu relied on, and now look at what
she’d
gone and done! Lulu
told
her to mind her own business. But no, Miss Smarty-Pants thought she knew everything. Had to be such a Goody-Two-Shoes and go tattle. So now
this
mess. He’d explained to Lulu very carefully tonight what she needed to do, what would happen to Carmen—and Lulu herself—if she didn’t. Lulu had every intention of living a long, happy life, getting rich and famous and having tons of clothes and boyfriends, so she planned to follow instructions. But what if…what if she made the wrong choice? What if he killed Carmen anyway and she could’ve stopped it? How would Lulu live with that?

She ran to her room, snapped on the light, and fell to her knees beside her bed, still wearing her parka, staring at the picture of the Virgin hanging above the nightstand. Lulu folded her hands together and prayed with all her might.

“Hail Mary, Mother of God,
look
. I’m gonna cut to the chase. I know you’re mad at me about the stuff with boys. But I wouldn’t let Tyler Cole go to third base at the mixer Saturday night, like you told me, even though he’da let me wear his St. David’s swim jacket if I did. And that jacket is fly, okay? So I don’t think I deserve this. I know it was really bad about going to second with Jake Cooper, but I repented a lot, and besides, you already punished me when he forwarded my e-mails to all his friends. I’m trying. Really I am. I know this is your decision and all, and I’m not telling you what to do. But it seems to me you picked a punishment that hurts Carmencita worse than me. And we both know
she
didn’t do nothing wrong. I mean, that girl, all she does is study and work and take care of this house. All she wants is to go to college. Okay, me, I’m boy crazy. I admit it, I’m bad. Definitely. But Carmen isn’t like that! She’s
good
. So why are you letting this happen to her? Why punish
her
for
my
sins? If you don’t care about me, think about Papi! What’s he supposed to do if shit gets messed up and Carmen dies? Who’s gonna take care of him then, when you already took his wife?
Huh
? Our Lady? Are you listening?”

Lulu stared desperately at the picture, trying to discern any movement or change of expression in the Virgin’s face. But the image was completely inert. Tears began falling in earnest from Lulu’s eyes, and her shoulders heaved with suppressed sobs. “
Please! Please
!” she pleaded. “Dear Lady, I need an answer. Before it’s too late.”

Lulu buried her face in the stiff, scratchy bedspread, eyes and nose streaming. She remained on her knees for a long time, until she was so exhausted that she climbed on top of the bed and fell into a fitful sleep, still wrapped in her parka.

MELANIE WAS on her second Starbucks of the morning, but aside from bad caffeine shakes and a couple of trips to the bathroom, it was having zero effect. She was in a complete daze. As exhausted as she’d been last night, she’d barely slept. And she
needed
her brain to function today. The team would be here any minute to write the wiretap application for Jay Esposito’s cell phone. The team, including Dan.
Concentrate, goddamn it. Stop thinking about him
. It was Wednesday morning, and between getting Main Justice approval and going before the judge, they were pushing it to be up on the cell phone in time for the Friday shipment as it was. She’d put all her credibility on the line with Bernadette and Lieutenant Albano, convincing them the wiretap was necessary, so she couldn’t afford to fuck it up by obsessing over some
guy
.

But focusing her bleary eyes on the computer screen was more than Melanie could manage. She’d gotten only so far as typing the cell-phone and ESN numbers into the caption before she’d wandered off into her mental torture chamber, reliving the events of last night. The expression on Steve’s face when he’d seen Dan. Worse, the expression on Dan’s when he’d seen Steve.

“UH-HUH
,”
Steve had said, nodding so knowingly you would’ve thought he caught her like this every night and twice on weekends
. “
I’m obviously interrupting something. Your mother said you were working, Mel. Did you misinform her, or was she covering for you
?”

“Steve, this is my friend Dan O’Reilly from—”

“I know who he is.” And he did. Steve had seen them kissing in a car once, months ago, right when he and Melanie had first separated.

Dan nodded at Steve grimly. “How you doing?”

“
I
was
doing fine. Planning to have a little holiday celebration with my wife, if you don’t mind,” Steve said, gesturing with the two glasses of champagne in his hands
.

“Your ex-wife. Almost,” Melanie said hurriedly. “That’s nice of you, Steve. And thanks for stepping in to watch Maya, but I have other plans right now.”

“Apparently. You might want to fix your lipstick.”

“Steve, come on, we’re separated. As a matter of fact, Linda told me she saw you at a club Saturday night with some—”

“Hey,” Dan interrupted, speaking to Melanie but eyes still on Steve, who stood there acting aggrieved in his expensive clothes and perfectly barbered hair. Melanie cringed inside. She knew Dan O’Reilly well enough to be pretty sure what was coming next.

“Dan…” she began, but he wouldn’t look her in the face.

“It’s late. Now that I got you home safe, I really gotta run, okay? Have a good night.”

“Dan—”

“Gotta go.”

“No, please, wait!”

But he’d already turned decisively on his heel and plunged through the fire door to the back stairwell, choosing to walk down eight flights rather than wait for the elevator.

RAY-RAY WONG strode in carrying a bunch of file folders. Melanie had been staring off into space, turning over in her mind what she’d say to Dan if he showed up first, alone. She had to admit she was kind of relieved to see Ray-Ray instead. Maybe Dan would just quit the case. But no, that would be awful. The fact was, she couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in the elevator last night. Oh, God, his mouth, his body, the way he was in such a hurry that he was kind of rough with her.
Muy erótico
. What she
really
wanted was to get past all the awkwardness about Steve and head straight back to that elevator. Any elevator. Get stuck between floors with Dan, for at least an hour. Mmmm.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Ray-Ray asked.

Stop, Melanie Vargas. Stop this instant.

“I’m sorry. I was worrying about this requirement in the Title III statute, whether we meet the criteria or not,” she said.

“I’ve got something a whole lot more interesting, ma’am. Remember you told me what that guy Hogan said about Whitney Seward’s blog?”

“Oh, right.”

“Well, I located it last night, with some help from a friend of mine on the Tech Squad. It’s pretty unbelievable. I have the Web address. May I?”

“Please.” Melanie got up and came around the desk, and Ray-Ray went to sit in her swivel chair. “Just minimize my document. There’s an icon for Internet access,” she said.

Ray-Ray fiddled around with the computer. Melanie sat in a guest chair, trying not to think about Dan, which was only possible if she made her mind a complete blank.

After a few minutes, Ray-Ray frowned and said, “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“It keeps telling me the page isn’t available. Let me see if I can get my buddy from Tech on the line.”

Ten minutes went by, during which Melanie leafed through the file folders Ray-Ray had brought while he consulted by telephone with the Tech guy. Work always made Melanie feel better. She busied herself marking the various subpoena responses with yellow Post-its. The details of telephone billing records and flight manifests between New York and Puerto Rico soothed her overwrought mind considerably. At the very least, by the time she’d finished, she felt like she could face Dan O’Reilly without either ripping off his clothes or bursting into tears and running away.

Finally Ray-Ray hung up. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said.

“What?”

“The blog’s gone. Vanished from the Web.”

“You’re kidding. Who did that?”

“Apparently somebody using Whitney’s username and password. Happened at 2317 hours last night.”

“Did you make a record of what was on it?”

“Naturally, ma’am. Copied everything to a disk in that folder there yesterday. That’s not the issue.”

“Yeah, I hear you. First, Whitney’s cell-phone memory was selectively erased, now this. Somebody’s out there impeding our investigation.”

“And based on the content of the blog, I have a pretty good idea who it is.”

Melanie handed the disk across her desk. “Okay, then, let me see what you downloaded.”

She walked around to stand behind Ray-Ray as he pulled up the blog. The main page popped up, boasting a picture of Whitney sitting on her bed in her Holbrooke uniform, leaning back against her pillows with her legs spread, smiling broadly, wearing no panties.

“
Whoa
!” Melanie exclaimed, startled.

“It gets worse. Or better, depending on your point of view,” Ray-Ray said, with a twinkle in his eye. “This girl was twisted, but you can’t deny she’s wicked hot.”

“Ray-Ray! I’m surprised at you.”

“My interest is purely professional, ma’am.”

“Yeah, right. Hey, is that the Holbrooke crest at the top of the page?”

“You bet. Whitney’s yearbook photo’s in here, too, and even copies of her term papers and exams. It’s partly the Holbrooke image that she was selling.”

“Selling?”

“Yup, that was the whole point. She posted lists of items she wanted visitors to her site to buy for her, and whoever bought her the stuff first would get an e-mail back with their own private smutty picture. Whitney had a personal shopper at Barneys handling the orders for her, and the…uh, customers, I guess you could call ’em, would phone in their credit-card numbers to buy particular items. When the purchases went through, she’d send out a JPEG with the new picture as payment. We were able to track the correspondence, and it’s pretty unbelievable. Men all over the U.S. and in other countries, too.”

“Wow. This raises all sorts of new possibilities for the case.”

“Like what?” Ray-Ray asked, frowning.

“First of all, this could be some weird kind of sex crime dressed up to
look
like a drug crime. To cover the bases, we should investigate every one of the men who visited the Web site.”

Ray-Ray shook his head. “That’s a shitload of names, ma’am.”

“I realize that. But it needs to be done. And that’s not all. If Whitney was running an Internet porn site trading on the Holbrooke name, I think we need to look more closely at
Holbrooke
.”

“I’m not following you.”

“This may sound far-fetched, but think how crazed they are at Holbrooke right now over this endowment campaign. Not just the headmistress but the general counsel, too, who—remember—has some fetishes of his own. Think about the devastating impact Whitney’s little business would’ve had on Holbrooke’s fund-raising if it came to light before the campaign closed. The timing is exactly right. Their campaign ends Friday with some big gala.”

“Let me see if I understand this,” Ray-Ray said. “You’re suggesting the headmistress or the general counsel of Holbrooke could’ve whacked Whitney Seward in order to shut down her Web site so it wouldn’t interfere with the Holbrooke fund-raising campaign?
And
made it look like an OD?”

“Yes. Well put.”

“Due respect, ma’am, that’s one of the craziest ideas I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not crazy. It’s thinking outside the box. It might even be the right answer.”

“Right, and if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a trolley car. Look, ma’am, I think I can tie Whitney’s Web site right back into Jay Esposito and the drug angle. That theory makes sense to me. But yours?
Wicked
crazy.”

“Fine. But I’m not dropping my Holbrooke idea.” To make her point, and also since she didn’t trust herself to remember
anything
this morning, Melanie carefully wrote, “Look at Holbrooke/Andover/Siebert involvement in deaths” on a yellow legal pad, circled it twice with black marker, and put a star next to it.

“Now, most of the pictures Whitney sent to her customers were pretty tame,” Ray-Ray continued, glancing at her note with an exasperated smile. “They showed her alone, only partly undressed. A guy buys Whitney a pair of Jimmy Choos, he gets his own private JPEG of her in her Holbrooke uniform flashing some titty. That sort of thing. But bigger-ticket items got you more graphic pictures. One in particular I want you to see. In my humble opinion, ma’am, it explains the blog getting erased, and it figures a helluva lot more heavily in the girls’ deaths than your so-called
Holbrooke
theory.”

Ray-Ray brought up a copy of an e-mail that Whitney had sent to one “sugardaddy69” and clicked on the attachment.