The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(32)

That was a pity, now that I thought about it.

At the subway stop, I checked the weather again. Then my email. Then my bank account balance, and when I saw the number, I swore out loud. I had to refill my coffers.

I made three calls and got on the train, my nerves already shot. My day had taken a turn.

I would have to spend the next few hours reading celebrity gossip blogs.





Eleven


Jamie


THE YELLING WASN’T THE KIND FROM A FIRE OR AN EXPLOSION. It was panic, for sure—how else could I hear it through the heavy door?—but from what, I didn’t know. All I knew was that there wasn’t any screaming.

At least not yet.

Elizabeth looked at me, her face white, her hand on the push-bar of the door. We were seconds from making it out of this unscathed.

“Go,” I told her. “No one’s seen you.”

Elizabeth had always been smarter than me. She didn’t protest or ask what I’d do. She didn’t take my hand and refuse to go. Without another word, she bolted into the open air.

I pounded down the tunnel toward the party. The overhead lights cast shadows down the hall, catching in the doorways, making monsters, policemen, Moriartys.

By the time I reached the door, the noise had stopped.

Somehow that was worse.

There were twenty people at the party, and they were all clustered around something on the floor. Someone had turned the music down instead of cutting it completely, and the sound skittered crazily above us, a voice howling get it get it get it get it while the strobe light flickered in time. The power strip was by the door. I jerked the cord out of the wall.

Everyone looked up at me.

“That’s him,” someone said.

“Watson?” Kittredge said, incredulous.

“Tom said his laptop got all fucked up—”

The girl on the floor, curled up with her arms around her knees, crying and crying.

“What happened?” I asked. “What did she take?”

Murmuring. Exchanged glances. Randall clambered to his feet, his eyes hard. “What do you mean, what did she take? What did you give her?”

The feeling like I’d done this all before, that I knew how it would end.

“That’s the girl who brought pills with her. Right? I saw she had a baggie with her. She dropped them in the hall. I didn’t pick them up because clearly I didn’t want her to take them—what is going on. Is she sick? Does she need a doctor?”

Randall did that rugby-player thing I’d never been good at, where he squared his shoulders to make himself look bigger. “Someone stole her poker money. She had a grand with her.”

“A grand?” Usually the buy-in for a game was two hundred, which was already too rich for my blood. With a grand, you could buy an entire car. A crappy one, but still. “Are those the new stakes? You guys are out of your mind.”

“Of course they aren’t,” Randall said. “Anna was staking her friends. Because she’s nice like that. And someone took it right out of her bag. Which you picked up in the hall.”

Whatever the saying was about good intentions and the road to hell . . . “I hope you’ve all turned out your pockets already,” I said.

“We all did,” Kittredge said, still on his heels. He had a hand on the girl’s—Anna’s—back. “You haven’t. Do it.”

I reached into my pants and pulled my pockets inside out, then the pockets of my jacket. I kicked off my shoes and shook them out. I tossed everything I had onto the floor—which was nothing except an almost-empty wallet and my mobile phone.

“He was out in the hall after Tom came back in,” Anna said. She lifted her chin. “He could have stashed it somewhere.”

“Tom, you were there. Did you see me take any money?”

He was staring at the ground, unresponsive. Right, I thought, I’m the bad friend. The reversal didn’t bring me any satisfaction. “Is this thousand dollars for real?” I asked. “Did your friends see it?”

Her friends looked at each other. “I saw it,” the brunette girl said, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.

“I’m calling the police,” Anna said. “This is so messed up, I can’t even believe you guys.”

Kittredge rocked back. “Whoa. No. We’ll settle this here. No one is calling the police.”

“No one is getting expelled, more like,” Randall said. “Because we all would if they caught us here.”

“Where did you put the money, Jamie?” Kittredge snarled. “Just tell us and we can pretend it didn’t happen. There are like a million rooms down here—”

“The mythical money. The money no one’s seen.” I stared at him. “The money you’ve arbitrarily decided that I’ve taken. Don’t condescend to me, Kittredge.”

“You’re the one who sounds condescending,” Tom said into the sullen silence.

“Hello?” Anna was saying into her phone. “I’m calling to report a theft—”

Randall looked at Kittredge, who looked at Tom, who looked at the girls who’d come in with the girl on the floor. Everyone waiting for permission to do the shitty thing, and leave.

“Just go,” Lena said from the corner. I hadn’t seen her; she was sitting silently on a folding chair in the corner, flanked by the rows of bikes on the wall. She had her top hat on, the one she always wore to parties, but tonight it made her look like a sort of sad clown. “I’ll stay. If you’re so sure Jamie’s done it, then he can wait here for the cops too.”