Safe House

by Jenny Carroll

  I was too tired to ask what she meant. I didn't care. I truly didn't. Claire Lippman, I was convinced, was lying dead somewhere, and it was all my fault. What was my brother Mike going to say when he found out? He'd been in love with Claire for as long as I could remember. Granted, he'd never uttered a word to her in his life, that I knew of, but he loved her just the same. That year she'd starred in Hello, Dolly, he'd gone to every single performance, even the kiddie matinee. He'd gone around humming the title song for weeks afterward.

  And I hadn't even been able to protect her for him. The love of my brother's life.

  "Jessica," Special Agent Smith said. "Listen to me a minute. Amber. Amber Mackey, you know, the dead girl?"

  I looked at her. There was enough energy left in me—not a lot, but enough—to go, very sarcastically, "I know who Amber Mackey is, Jill. She only sat in front of me every day for six years."

  "Agent Smith," Special Agent Johnson said in a sharp voice. "That information is confidential and not for—"

  "She was pregnant," Special Agent Smith said. She said it fast and she said it to me. "Amber Mackey was seven weeks pregnant when she was killed, Jess. The coroner just completed his autopsy, and I thought—"

  I blinked at her, once. Then twice. Then I said, "Pregnant?"

  Mr. Goodhart, who'd been leaning against Helen's desk, watching us, went, "Pregnant?"

  Even Helen went, "Pregnant? Amber Mackey?"

  "Please," Special Agent Johnson said. You could tell he was way annoyed. "This is not something we want spread around. The victim's family hasn't even been told. I would ask that you keep this information to yourself for the time being. It will, of course, get out, as these things invariably do. But until then—"

  But I wasn't listening to him anymore. All I could think was: Amber. Pregnant. Amber. Pregnant. Amber. Pregnant.

  Which meant only one thing, of course. That Mark Leskowski was the father. The father of Amber's baby. He had to be. Amber would never have slept with anybody else. I mean, I was surprised she'd slept with him. She just hadn't been that type of girl, you know.

  But I guess I'd been wrong. I guess she had been that type of girl.

  But I'll tell you what type of girl she wasn't: The type to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. Not Amber. How many bake sales had she organized to raise funds for the single moms of the county? How many car washes had she held to help out the March of Dimes? How many times had she passed me a Unicef carton and asked for my spare change?

  Suddenly, I wasn't feeling tired anymore. It was like energy was pouring through me . . . almost like I was filled with electricity again, like I'd been that day I'd been struck by lightning.

  Okay, well, not quite like that. But I was no longer exhausted.

  And I'll tell you something else: I wasn't scared.

  Not anymore.

  Because I had remembered one more thing. And that was that the fear I'd seen in Claire Lippman's eyes? Yeah, that hadn't been there when she'd first started speaking to me. No, the fear hadn't shown up until later. Not until Mark Leskowski—Mark Leskowski—had strolled out of the guidance office and said hello to us.

  Mark Leskowski. The father of Amber's baby.

  Mark Leskowski, who'd sat at Table Seven—the make-out table—at Mastriani's and told me, when I'd asked him what he was going to do if his plans of making it to the NFL didn't work out, "failure is not an option."

  And your sixteen-year-old girlfriend giving birth to your baby, out of wedlock, the same year you were being scouted by colleges? That, to Mark, would certainly fall under the category of "unacceptable."

  I stood up. My books fell to the floor.

  But I was still holding onto Claire's sweater. It had never left my fingers, all afternoon.

  "Jessica?" Jill climbed to her feet as well. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  When I didn't answer her, Special Agent Johnson said, in a commanding voice, "Jessica. Jessica, do you hear me? Answer Special Agent Smith, please. She asked you a question. Do you want me to call your parents, young lady?"

  But it didn't matter. What they were saying, I mean. It didn't matter that Helen, the secretary, was looking up my home number, or that Mr. Goodhart was waving his hand in front of my face, yelling my name.

  Oh, don't get me wrong. It was annoying. I mean, I was trying to concentrate, and all these people were hopping around me like Mexican jumping beans or whatever.

  But it didn't matter. It didn't really matter what they said or did, because I had Claire Lippman's sweater. Her pink cashmere sweater that her mother, I now knew—though there was no rational way I could know this—had given to her for her sixteenth birthday. The sweater smelled like Happy, the perfume Claire always wears. Her grandmother gave her a new bottle every Christmas. People complimented her on her perfume all the time. They didn't know it was just Happy, from Clinique. They thought it was something exotic, something super expensive. Even Mark Leskowski, who sat in front of Claire in homeroom every day—Leskowski, Lippman—had said something about it once. Asked her what it was called. He'd wanted to buy a bottle, he'd said, for his girlfriend.

  His girlfriend Amber. Whom he'd killed.

  Just like he was going to kill Claire.

  Suddenly, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe because it was so hot. It was hot, and something was covering my mouth and nose. I was suffocating. I couldn't get out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.

  Something hard hit me in the face. I started, and then found myself blinking into Mr. Goodhart's face. Special Agents Johnson and Smith had him by both arms.

  "I told you," Allan was yelling, "not to hit her!"

  "What was I supposed to do?" Mr. Goodhart demanded. "She was having a fit!"

  "It wasn't a fit." Jill looked really mad. "It was a vision. Jessica? Jessica, are you all right?"

  I stared at the three of them. My cheek tingled where Mr. Goodhart had slapped it. He hadn't hit me very hard.

  "I've got to go," I said to them, and, clutching Claire's sweater, I left the office.

  They followed me, of course. It wasn't easy, though, because no sooner had I stalked out into the hallway than the bell rang. The last bell of the day. Kids poured out of the classrooms and into the corridors, slamming their locker doors, high-fiving one another, making plans to meet up at the quarries later. The halls were teeming with people, crowded with bodies, everyone streaming toward the exits.

  And I let them take me. I let the tide sweep me away, through the doors and out toward the flagpole, where the buses were waiting to take people home. Everyone but the kids who'd come in their own cars or who had to stay after for ball practice or tutoring or detention.

  Everyone but Claire. Claire wouldn't be making her bus today.

  "Jessica," I heard someone yell behind me. Special Agent Johnson.

  Somebody was waiting by the flag pole. Somebody familiar. He was easy to make out in the hordes streaming toward the buses, because he was a head taller than most of them and was standing still, besides.

  Rob. It was Rob.

  A part of me was glad to see him. Another part of me didn't notice him at all.

  "Jess," he said when he saw me. "Oh, my God. I heard what happened last night. Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine," I said. I didn't slow down. I walked right past him.

  Rob, falling into step beside me, went, "Mastriani, what's the matter with you? Where are you going?"

  "There's something I have to do," I said. I was walking fast, so fast that I was pretty sure I had lost Special Agents Johnson and Smith somewhere back in the crowd in front of the buses.

  "What do you have to do?" Rob wanted to know. "Mastriani, why are we here?"

  Here was the football field, off to one side of the student parking lot. It was under the metal bleachers surrounding the field that Ruth and I had ducked, that day last spring when we'd been caught in the storm. The storm that had changed everything.

  It didn't look much different, the football field, than it
had that day, except that now it was in use. Coach Albright was standing in the middle of it with a whistle in his mouth, as his players streamed out from the locker room for practice. Most of the cheerleaders were already there. They were holding auditions for Amber's position. It was sad and all, but what were they supposed to do? They couldn't do a pyramid with just nine girls. They needed a tenth. The bleachers were crowded with girls eager to take Amber's spot. When they saw Rob and me, they stopped chatting amongst themselves and stared. Maybe they thought I was there to try out. I don't know.

  "Jess," Rob said. "What is the matter with you? You're acting really weird. Weirder than usual, even."

  Coach Albright noticed us and blew his whistle. "Mastriani," he yelled. He knew me only too well from my many altercations with his more fractious players. "What are you doing here? Are you here for the tryouts?"

  I didn't answer him. I was scanning the field, looking for one person and one person only.

  "If you ain't here for the tryouts," Coach Albright yelled, "get off the field. I don't need you around, making my boys nervous."

  I saw him, finally. He was just coming out from the gym, his shoulder pads making him look bigger than he actually was . . . though of course, he was pretty big without them. The bright sun shone down on his bare head as he hurried, helmet in hand, toward the rest of the team.

  I headed toward him, meeting him halfway.

  "Jess," he said, in some surprise, looking from me to Rob, who stood just behind me, then back again. "What's up?"

  I held out my hand. The hand that wasn't clutching Claire's sweater. I held out my hand and said, "Give them to me."

  Mark looked down at me, a half smile on his face. He was playing it cool.

  "What are you talking about?" he asked.

  "You know," I said. "You know good and well."

  "What's going on here?" Coach Albright demanded, stomping over to us. He was followed by most of the rest of the team—Todd Mintz, Jeff Day—and more than a few of the cheerleaders. It wasn't every day a civilian walked out onto the field and interrupted practice.

  Especially one who wasn't even part of their crowd.

  "Mark, this girl giving you a hard time?" Coach Albright asked.

  "No, Coach," Mark said. He was still smiling. "She's cool. Jess, what's going on?"

  "You know what's going on," I said, in a voice that didn't sound like mine. It was harder than my voice had ever been. Harder and, in a way, sadder, at the same time. "You all know." I looked around at the other ball players. "Every last one of you knows."

  Todd, blinking in the strong sunlight, went, "I don't know."

  "Shut up, Mintz," Jeff Day said.

  Coach Albright looked from me to Mark and then back again. Then he went, "Look, I don't know what this is about, but if you got a problem with one of my players, Mastriani, you bring it to me during office hours. You do not interrupt practice—"

  I stepped forward and sank my fist into Mark Leskowski's gut.

  "Now give me," I said, as he dropped to his knees with a gasp, "your car keys."

  Everything happened at once after that. Mark, recovering with amazing quickness, lunged at me, only to find himself in a headlock, courtesy of Rob. I was yanked off my feet by Jeff Day, who planned, I think, on hurling me over the nearest goalpost. He was stopped by Todd Mintz, who grabbed him by the Adam's apple and squeezed.

  And Coach Albright, in the middle of the fray, blew and blew on his whistle.

  There was a jingle, and something bright fell from Mark's waistband into the grass. Rob snatched it up and said, "Mastriani." By that time, Jeff, unable to breathe with Todd crushing his larynx, had dropped me. I reached up and caught the keys on the fly, one-handed.

  And then I turned around and started for the student parking lot.

  "You can't do this," I heard Mark bleating behind me. "This is illegal. Illegal search and seizure. That's what this is."

  "Consider yourself," Rob said, "under citizen's arrest."

  They were following me. They were all following me, Rob and Mark and Todd and Jeff, Coach Albright, and the cheerleaders. Like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, leading the village children to their doom, I led the Ernest Pyle High School football team and pep squad to Mark Leskowski's BMW, which was parked, I saw when I got to it, just a little bit away from Ruth's Cabriolet and Skip's Trans Am.

  "Oh, my God," Ruth said, when she saw me. "There you are. I've been looking all over for you. What's . . ."

  Her voice trailed off as she got a look at what was behind me.

  "This is bullshit," Mark bellowed.

  "Mastriani," Coach Albright yelled. "You put those keys down. . . ."

  Only I didn't listen to him, of course. I walked right up to Mark's car and put the key in the lock to the trunk.

  Which was when Mark tried to make a break for it. Only Rob wouldn't let him. He reached out almost casually and grabbed hold of the back of Mark's shirt.

  "Let me go," Mark screamed. "Lemme freaking go!"

  Only he didn't say "freaking."

  I turned the key, and the BMW's trunk popped open.

  And that's how Special Agents Johnson and Smith found us, a minute or so later. With the entire in crowd of Ernest Pyle High School crowded around Mark Leskowski's BMW, while Rob Wilkins hung onto Mark, and Todd Mintz hung onto Jeff Day (who'd also tried to get away at the last minute).

  And me half-in, half-out of Mark Leskowski's trunk, trying to get Claire Lippman to start breathing again.

  C H A P T E R

  20

  "Well, that certainly sucked," Claire said, later that evening.

  "Tell me about it," I said.

  "No, I mean, really. Like, I was sure I was going to die."

  "You looked dead," Ruth pointed out.

  "Really?" Claire seemed very interested in this piece of information. "How, exactly, did I look?"

  Ruth, sitting on the windowsill across from Claire Lippman's hospital bed, glanced at me, as if unsure whether or not to answer the question.

  "No, really," Claire said. "I want to know. So in case I ever have to do a death scene, I'll know how to look."

  "Well," Ruth said, hesitantly. "You were really pale, and your eyes were closed, and you weren't breathing. But that was on account of the tape over your mouth."

  "And the heat," Skip pointed out. "Don't forget the heat."

  "It was a hundred and ten inside that trunk," Claire said cheerfully. "That's what the EMTs said, anyway. I would have died of dehydration way before Mark got around to killing me."

  "Uh," Ruth said. "Yeah. About that. That's the part I'm not real clear on. Why did Mark want to kill you, again?"

  Claire rolled her pretty blue eyes. "Duh," she said. "Because he saw me talking to Jess."

  Ruth looked over at me, where I was sitting between the dozens of huge floral arrangements people had been sending to Claire ever since she'd been admitted. She was due to be released in the morning, so long as the results of her CAT scan confirmed she had not, in fact, suffered a concussion. But still the flowers kept coming.

  Claire Lippman was actually a lot more popular than I had ever realized.

  "Explanation, please," Ruth said.

  "It's really very simple," I said. "Amber Mackey got pregnant—"

  "Pregnant!" Ruth cried.

  "Pregnant!" her twin brother echoed.

  "Pregnant," I said. "And she told Mark she wanted to keep the baby. In fact, Amber wanted him to marry her, so they could raise their child together, be a little happy family. That's what they were talking about that day at the quarry, when Claire said she saw Amber and Mark keep going off together, alone. Amber's pregnancy."

  "Right," Claire said. "Only a pregnant girlfriend was not part of Mark's plan for the future."

  "Far from it," I said. "Getting married, or even paying child support, was going to totally mess up Mark's football career. It was, in his book, 'unacceptable,' So, near as we can figure it out—and he hasn't confessed, mind you
—Mark beat Amber up, in the hopes that she'd change her mind, and left her somewhere—probably in his trunk. They're checking it for fibers now. When that didn't manage to convince Amber to see things his way, he killed her and tossed her body into the quarry."

  "Okay," Ruth said. "I can see all that, I guess. But what about Heather? Wasn't Mark with you when Heather disappeared?"

  "Yes," I said. "He was. That was the point of Heather's attack. Mark was starting to feel the heat, you know, with the Feds breathing down his neck, so he figured if another girl got attacked at a time during which he had a rock-solid alibi, he'd be in the clear."

  "And what's more rock-solid," Skip said, "than the fact that he was with the FBI's friend, Lightning Girl."

  "Right," I said. "Well, more or less. And you know, it worked. When Heather disappeared, no one suspected Mark."

  "Except you," Claire pointed out.

  "Well," I said, a little guiltily. "I didn't exactly suspect Mark." Quite the opposite, in fact. I'd been convinced no one as hot as he was could be a criminal. Stupid me. "But that house … I knew there was something up with that house. So when I started asking around about it, Mark got scared again and had Jeff Day—the same guy who'd kidnapped, and then later beat up, Heather—make some threatening phone calls. And then, when that didn't seem to be working, Mark and Jeff broke into Mastriani's, poured gasoline all over the place, then lit a match and burned the place down."

  At least according to Jeff Day, who'd started crying like a baby the minute the cops arrived, then spilled his guts like a squashed caterpillar.

  "Mark's biggest mistake," I went on, "was enlisting the help of someone like Jeff Day in getting him out of his little jam. I mean, on the one hand, it makes sense, since Jeff is used to taking direction from Mark, on account of Mark being the team quarterback and all. But Jeff needs a lot of direction. He was always coming up to Mark and asking him what to do … especially right before the first class of the day, homeroom."

  "Where Mark sat in front of me," Claire said. She was taking her role as victim very seriously, and waved her arm, the one with the IV in it, as much as possible, to bring attention to her infirmity. "So of course this morning, when he and Jeff were whispering before the bell rang, something about the way they looked … so sneaky . . . triggered something. I just knew. I can't say how I knew. I just put two and two together. But you can't go to the police, you know, with a hunch. But I figured I could go to Jess—"