Word of Georgia Nolan’s impromptu visit had spread, and that only served to remind people that my sister had some very powerful friends. What money was at most schools, power was at Hardwicke. It wasn’t about who had the nicest car or the biggest house. It was about who had the best connections. Through no fault of my own, I’d edged my way back onto the A-list—a problem I’d deal with later. For now, all I needed to do was prepare for my meeting with good old Uncle Carson, who thought he was being interviewed for some kind of school project.
“What’s step three?” Vivvie asked me, just before the final bell. Dr. Clark cast a warning look at us, but a second later, the bell rang. Vivvie and I made our way into the hallway.
“Step three,” I said, “is finding some leverage.”
When the reporter met with me, he probably wouldn’t be happy to find out that I’d arranged the meeting under false pretenses. He definitely wouldn’t be in the mood to volunteer his source’s identity.
Even if he could be persuaded to do so, I could hear the First Lady saying, he would want something in return.
And that meant that I needed something the reporter wanted.
And that meant that I needed Henry Marquette.
CHAPTER 47
Henry wasn’t just ignoring me. He was avoiding me. When he saw me coming his way, he made his excuses to the group he was talking to and ducked into the boys’ bathroom.
Presumably, he thought that I would not follow him.
He obviously did not know me very well.
Henry cast a glance at the door when it opened behind him, then did a double take when he realized it was me.
“Really?” he said dryly.
I leaned back against the door, blocking his exit.
“Get out of my way, Ms. Kendrick.”
“Ms. Kendrick,” I repeated. “We’re not even on a first-name basis anymore?”
He didn’t reply. I didn’t know how much of his avoiding me was because he was angry at me for being Ivy’s sister, for trusting her, even a little, and how much of it was him being angry at himself for telling me about his father.
“Must we do this?” Henry asked, his voice painfully polite.
“I’ll get out of your way once you’ve listened to what I have to say,” I told him. “Otherwise, we can stay here and stare at each other.”
He glared at me. I offered him a lazy smile in return. He snapped.
“Talk,” he ordered crisply.
“I’ve got a plan for trying to figure out who leaked the story about Pierce.”
Henry’s face didn’t move a muscle, but he couldn’t quite squelch the flicker of interest in his eyes. “I thought the sum total of your plan was to let your sister do her job.”
Now that I knew where Henry’s feelings about Ivy came from, I couldn’t steel myself against them in the same way. Objectively, maybe Ivy had done the Marquette family a favor by making Henry’s father’s death seem like an accident, but I couldn’t expect Henry to be objective about something like that. He was the one who had to live with the secret. His father wasn’t here. His grandfather wasn’t here.
Ivy was the only one left to blame.
“My sister has been otherwise occupied,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “She doesn’t think this is a lead worth following up on.” A hint of interest sparked in Henry’s eyes. I pushed on. “I do.”
Henry cracked the barest of smiles. “And you have a plan.”
“It’s not really a plan,” I said, “so much as a gamble.”
Someone attempted to open the door to the bathroom, and I leaned back against it harder.
Henry cleared his throat. “Would it be possible to talk about your gamble in a slightly less inappropriate location?”
“If you really want to.” I eased off the door and opened it, ignoring the stare of the boy on the other side. Now it was my turn to arch an eyebrow at Henry.
“After you.”
I texted Bodie that Vivvie and I needed to work on a project after school. To add credence to that story, Henry and I met the reporter at Vivvie’s—or, more specifically, in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, where Vivvie and her aunt were staying until her aunt could find more permanent lodging. Vivvie watched from a nearby coffee shop. Her aunt was with her but had her back to us.
Let’s hope it stays that way, I thought.
I looked at my watch. The reporter from the Post was supposed to meet us here any minute.
“Tess Kendrick?” A red-haired man with a reddish brown beard approached. His eyes flicked over to Henry, and I saw a spark of recognition.
Good.
“Carson Dweck?” I said. He nodded.
“I hear you need to talk to a reporter for a school project.” The man’s lips curved up slightly. “Hardwicke—very big on projects, aren’t they?”
I wondered if he would have said yes to his honorary niece’s request if I hadn’t gone to Hardwicke. And then I wondered if he would have said yes if my last name hadn’t been Kendrick.
“You wrote the piece on Edmund Pierce,” I said, deciding it wasn’t worth beating around the bush. “The one that said Pierce was a shoo-in for nomination and the president was moving at an unprecedented rate toward seeing that nomination through.” Whatever the man had been expecting me to say, it wasn’t that.
“Kendrick,” he said, turning the name over in his mouth. “As in Ivy Kendrick?”
Like he just figured that out, I thought.
“And you’re Henry Marquette,” the man continued, turning an eagle eye on the boy standing next to me. “My condolences on the loss of your grandfather.”
Henry gave a brief nod. “Thank you.”
The reporter held Henry’s gaze a moment longer, then turned back to me. “This is about the Pierce piece?” he said. “Annika led me to believe you needed input on some kind of school project.”
“Let’s call it a school project on the Pierce piece.” I bared my teeth in something vaguely resembling a smile. “You cited an anonymous source, saying that the decision was all but made. I’m wondering what made you think this information was legit.”
“You’re wondering who my source was,” the reporter translated. He was starting to look like a man who wanted a drink. “You might want to look into shield laws,” he said. “For your project. Or”—he flicked his eyes over to Henry—“you could look up what the Supreme Court has to say about the somewhat narrow circumstances in which a reporter can be compelled to give up a source.”
“That would be of interest,” Henry said politely, “if we were attempting to acquire the information via a legal subpoena or in conjunction with state or federal government.”
Carson Dweck huffed, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Look, kids, all I can tell you is that my source wishes to remain anonymous, but that the facts I was given have since been verified.”
I had a feeling he’d delivered a slightly less condescending version of that statement to multiple people in the hours since the article had gone up.
“What if we had something you wanted?” I asked pointedly. “Could you point us in the right direction then?”
Those words seemed to take the man by surprise. He smiled slightly. “And what is it that you have that you think I would want?” he asked in a tone that told me he was humoring me.
“An exclusive with Justice Marquette’s grieving grandson.” I saw a flash of interest in Dweck’s eyes. Theodore Marquette’s death was big news, and Henry wasn’t just a tragic figure—he was young, handsome, wealthy, and tragic.
“Sounds like more of a People magazine piece than something for the Post,” the reporter commented. But he didn’t say no.
“Does that mean you’re not interested?” I asked point-blank.
“It means,” Dweck replied, “that I’m not going to violate journalistic integrity for a fluff piece.”
“What if it wasn’t a fluff piece?” Henry countered.
I stared at him. What was he doing? This
—whatever this was—hadn’t been part of the plan.
“No offense, son, but what could you possibly have to tell me that could get me a Pulitzer?”
A warning bell went off in my head. He wouldn’t, I thought, horrified. I tried to catch Henry’s eye.
“Off the record?” Henry ignored me, his attention focused solely on Carson Dweck. The reporter nodded.
“I have reason to believe my grandfather was murdered. And,” Henry continued, “I have reason to believe that the White House is covering it up.” He took a step forward. “Now,” he said, his eyes glittering, “who’s your source?”
CHAPTER 48
Twenty minutes later, the reporter was gone, and I was considering ending Henry Marquette.
“You,” I started to say, but that was all I could manage. “You,” I said again.
“I went public,” Henry supplied calmly. “You got what you wanted, and I insured that your sister is not going to be able to sweep this under the rug.”
Ivy was going to kill me. And I was going to kill Henry.
“That wasn’t the plan,” I told him, poking him in the chest with my index finger.
“That wasn’t your plan,” he replied. “I never said that I didn’t have one of my own.”
Apparently, his plan involved taking everything we knew—the fact that Vivvie’s father had been implicated in Justice Marquette’s death, the doctor’s subsequent suicide, the existence of the burner phone, the suspected involvement of other players with powerful political connections—to the press. And the kicker was that I’d helped him do it. I’d set up the meeting myself.
“They won’t print anything on your word alone,” I told Henry.
“Which means,” he emphasized, “that your sister isn’t going to be the only one looking into this. Our friend at the Post is already thinking of this as his Watergate.”
Henry had a rare gift for sounding reasonable no matter what he was saying.
“If you’re done silently judging me,” Henry commented, “might I turn your attention to the information we got in exchange for what I was willing to barter?”
I pictured myself actually wringing his neck. It was therapeutic, but possibly not productive. Begrudgingly, I thought back over what Carson Dweck had told us about his source for the Pierce story.
“I’ll tell you what I told your sister,” he’d said, pointing a finger at me. “The tip came from inside the West Wing, and that’s all I’m going to say.”
Fighting back a sinking feeling in my stomach, I tried not to think about the first half of that sentence.
“Inside the West Wing.” I focused on that part, saying the words out loud. That revelation shouldn’t have been surprising. Where else would a tip about the president’s plan for nominating a Supreme Court justice have come from?
I thought he was going to tell us the tip came from William Keyes. I hadn’t even realized that was what I’d expected to find until we’d heard differently. Keyes was the one who’d attempted to coerce Ivy into supporting Pierce. He was the one who’d arranged the Camp David meeting.
“Inside the West Wing,” Henry repeated. “That means we’re talking about the president and his immediate staff.”
I was fairly certain that meant we weren’t talking about an intern.
“Even if we knew who in the West Wing had leaked the information,” Henry continued, “we couldn’t rule out the possibility that the order to leak it came from President Nolan.”
In Henry’s mind, this was damning. The president had been at Camp David with Pierce and Vivvie’s father. The president had been at the Keyes Foundation gala the night before Justice Marquette’s so-called heart attack. The president’s office had leaked a story designed to build momentum for Pierce’s nomination.
“Ivy cleared the president,” I said abruptly. Henry and I hadn’t had this conversation yet. He’d been too busy ignoring me for the past few days for me to tell him what Ivy had said. “If someone poisoned your grandfather at the gala that night, it wasn’t the president. There were cameras on him practically the whole time.”
Henry latched on to the same word in that sentence that I had. “Practically.”
I glanced over at the coffee shop. Vivvie was staring over at the two of us. Sooner or later, I’d need to fill her in on what was going on.
A second later, Vivvie’s aunt turned to look our way.
I grabbed Henry’s arm. “Look natural,” I told him, turning my head and pasting a smile on my face.
His hand curved around my shoulder in response. “I always look natural.”
We started walking. Vivvie’s aunt turned back around, but Henry didn’t drop his arm from my shoulder. “Did it ever occur to you,” he said to me, his voice low and pleasant, “that the president might not have to do his own dirty work? Even if you believe that he didn’t poison my grandfather, that doesn’t mean he didn’t have it done.”
The same logic could apply to William Keyes—or to anyone else in that photograph, or anyone else at Camp David that weekend not pictured in the photograph.
I said as much.
“Who else was there?” Henry asked me.
I didn’t know how many other people had been there—but I knew that Ivy had been. I couldn’t tell Henry that. Not with the way he felt about my sister.
“It occurs to me,” Henry said, his voice still sounding so reasonable, so calm, “that according to our dear reporter friend, your sister got to him before we did.” Henry finally dropped his arm and stopped walking. “Everything we know, she knows.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” I said, but all I could think about was Ivy telling me to trust her, Ivy telling me that the reporter wasn’t worth checking out.
“My sister is not a part of this,” I told Henry, shutting out those thoughts. “She’s on our side.”
Henry reached out for me again, his touch light against my skin. “She may be on your side,” he said quietly. “She’s not on mine.”
On the other side of the lobby, Vivvie and her aunt stood, getting ready to leave the café.
“Am I on your side?” I asked Henry. “Or am I the enemy, too?”
He’d used me to set up this meeting, and the whole time, he’d had a plan of his own. I couldn’t blame him for that. If it were my grandfather who’d been killed, I might have done the same thing.
“You aren’t the enemy,” Henry said, dropping his arm to his side once more and taking a step back. “That doesn’t mean our goals are aligned.”
CHAPTER 49
The next day was Saturday. I was still grounded—school projects aside—which apparently, in Ivy’s book, meant that my job was sitting around the house doing nothing while she was out doing who knows what. I had the vague sense that the case had taken a turn, but what that turn was, what she knew, what she was hiding—I had no idea.
I’d caught Vivvie up on what I knew. She’d caught me up on the fact that her aunt had recognized Henry but not me. Apparently, the woman had assumed that I was Henry’s girlfriend. Because that’s not disturbing.
My cell phone rang at half past three. I answered it, glad for the distraction.
“It’s your favorite person,” Asher informed me.
“No,” I said, leaning back against my headboard. “You’re not.”
“I won’t embarrass you by proving I am,” Asher replied, unfazed. “We have bigger problems.”
“Problems?” By Asher’s definition, that could mean any number of things.
“More like problem, singular,” Asher amended. “I just talked to Henry. He’s planning to go with his mother to a state dinner tonight.”
That seemed like something Henry would do. “And?”
“And,” Asher said emphatically, “Henry is planning to go with his mother to a state dinner tonight.” He paused, presumably for an audible reaction on my part.
He got none.
“Henry avoids white-tie events like the plague,” Asher elaborated. “His mom ge
ts invited to these things all the time—her family is, shall we say, well off, with a lot of international holdings. But no one would expect her to put in an appearance this soon after Theo’s death.” Asher finally paused for a breath. “My spidey senses tell me that Henry’s mom was not overcome by a sudden desire to honor the queen of Denmark.”
“You don’t have spidey senses,” I told Asher automatically.
“I do have a Henry sense,” Asher said firmly. “And I’m telling you, he was acting super shady when I talked to him. I think he actually convinced his mother to go tonight. That means he’s willingly donning a tailcoat and bow tie and venturing into a bedazzled crowd of people, all of whom will tell him how sorry they are for his loss.”
I thought bedazzled was probably overstating things a bit, but focused on the rest of what Asher was saying. “You really think going to this thing with his mom was Henry’s idea?”
“I do,” Asher pronounced. “I just can’t figure out why.”
Unfortunately, I could. “Who attends state dinners?” I asked with a sinking feeling.
“Three hundred of the president’s closest colleagues and friends.” Asher paused, thinking. “Members of the cabinet and staff, the vice president and his family, assorted governors, donors, lobby firm executives, Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes, philanthropists, congressmen, and a half-dozen partridges in a governmental pear tree.”
I paused for a second. “What’s Henry’s phone number?”
After he gave it to me, I hung up, glared at my phone, then made the call.
“Hello.” Henry answered the phone with trademark calm.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” I asked him, without bothering to identify myself. He must have recognized my voice, because he didn’t ask who it was.
“Currently, I’m reading The Economist.”
“You’re going to a state dinner?” I gritted out.
“I take it Asher called you?”
“What’s your endgame here, Henry? Why are you going?”
“My mother needed an escort.” Henry was a good liar. But not good enough.
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