Down to the Liar(9)

“There was a pattern?”

“None of the posts were uploaded at the same time.”

“So? They were probably posting from different places randomly.”

“That’s what I thought at first, but when I looked closer, the posts weren’t uploaded randomly. They were added linearly, one post moments after the previous one, over different accounts. All the accounts. And each series of posts was always uploaded to each of the accounts in the same order.”

“Murphy, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I don’t think it’s a group. I think it’s just one person.”





The Crush


Valerie Updike. Notorious gossip and cattiest person alive. Also my current conversational companion. She gets up to go to the bathroom, and I pantomime hanging myself. Yaji smiles and shakes his head at me.

So far, I’ve haven’t managed to get very much out of our good friend the gossip. No one knows who’s pranking Skyla or why. Skyla is universally liked and respected. She’s not the best player on the tennis team, but not the worst, either. She has pretty good grades, but she’s not in the top ten percent, which means she’s not a threat to any wannabe valedictorians, not that she’s a senior anyway, so even if she were in the top ten percent, the valedictorian theory would be a stretch.

She doesn’t have any siblings, jealous or otherwise. She’s squeaky clean, but not so squeaky as to be obnoxious. At this point, the only person with an axe to grind against Skyla is me for making it so hard to pin down who her enemies are.

“Well, girl, I gotta bounce.” Val springs back to our table with a boundless energy incongruous with her tiny frame. She dashes bejeweled fingers through her pixie cut as she scoops up her purse and kisses me on the cheek. “Red 7 waits for no woman.”

Pretty sure Red 7 is a salon, but I couldn’t swear to it. In any case, that was an hour wasted. I text Murphy, who’s upstairs in the office, running background checks on Skyla’s closest friends.

“Oh, there is something, actually,” Val says just before walking out the door. “One of the tech geeks is in love with her. What’s his name? Carlton? Carlisle?”

“Carter?” My hand tightens around my phone.

“That’s it,” she says. “Carter. Hope that helps.”

Valerie takes her leave as a thousand angry hornets zoom around in my head. Carter. Murphy’s tech-club buddy. There’s no way Murphy didn’t know about Carter’s crush. Which means either he’s a complete idiot, or his loyalty to Carter is greater than his loyalty to me. Murphy’s been working with me long enough now to know better, which means it’s a loyalty issue. That boy is so dead.

I stomp all the way upstairs to the office and slam the door behind me. Murphy jumps.

He takes one look at my face and sighs. “Someone told you about Carter?”

I can feel steam coming out of my ears. “The point is, you should have told me about Carter.”

“It isn’t relevant. Carter would never—”

“He had his greasy, weasel hands on my laptop, Murphy! My laptop! He could have done anything to it.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.” Uncertainty flickers across his face. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”

“Well, thanks. I feel so much better now.” The level of incompetence I put up with is staggering sometimes.

Murphy frowns at me. “Having a crush on a popular girl does not make you a sociopath.”

Ah, I get it. This isn’t a loyalty problem. It’s actually a Bryn thing. Carter is the Murphy from last October—hopeless nerd pining after the popular girl. Only Murphy paid me and Sam to help him out. Now Murphy’s dating the popular girl, and he’s happy. But Bryn’s still popular and Murphy’s still a nerd, so at heart, he still identifies with Carter.

Knowing all this, I should let him off easy. But will I? Mmmm, no.

“The problem is not that Carter has a crush on Skyla, Murphy. The problem is that you knew and you didn’t tell me.” My anger seems to be stuck at volcanic. “From now on, if you know something that connects in any way to a job we’re working, you tell me. Is that clear?”

“Crystal.” He turns his back on me.

My phone rings. I answer without looking at the caller ID.

“What?” I snarl.

“Whoa, Dupree. What’s got you in a snit?” Mike says.