Pushed

by Franklin W. Dixon

  I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I jerked my head in that direction. A figure moved through the shadows at the far end of the room, heading for the door.

  I leaped out of bed and raced toward the figure. Frank right behind me. We weren’t going to let whoever had been threatening us get away.

  The person was fast, but we were fast too. We tore down the hallway. Then down the stairs. I tackled the figure just as we hit the first floor. I couldn’t believe who it was when I stared down at the face.

  “Lily!” I burst out.

  I scrambled to my feet. Frank helped Lily up, keeping a grip on her arm. “We need to talk,” he told her. He pulled her into the empty common room. I shut the door behind us and hit the lights. I could see red splotches of nail polish on her hands, but I still found it hard to believe she’d been the one who left us those messages, and those dolls.

  “What’s going on, Lily?” asked Frank.

  “Why didn’t you believe me when I told you Evan’s father killed him? Why did you break into Tess’s office? Why?” she cried.

  “You don’t get to ask the questions right now,” I told her. “Not until you tell us why you’ve been threatening us.”

  “Right. What’s your connection to Evan’s death, Lily? What are you so afraid we’re going to find out?” Frank asked.

  “I would never have hurt Evan. I loved him. Have you guys even listened to anything I’ve said?” Lily pressed her hands over her face and shook her head.

  “I don’t buy it,” I said. “If you loved him, you’d want us here. You’d want us to find out if someone killed him.”

  Lily jerked her hands down. Her eyes blazed as she stared at Frank and me. “I don’t want you to die, okay? It won’t bring Evan back.”

  “Die?” Frank repeated.

  “Yes, die. As in dead. Because that’s what going to happen if you two stay here, digging at things. You’re going to get killed. Just like Evan. And now Mark. He found out whatever Evan did. I know it. And he got killed for it too,” Lily insisted. “But it’s not too late for you yet. Just go. Go back home to Bayport and help somebody track down a lost kitten or something. Don’t try to find out what’s going on here.”

  “So . . . what? You left us those notes and the dolls because you were trying to protect us?” I asked.

  Lily let out her breath in a long sigh. “I don’t understand how you guys are these famous local detectives. You’re both incredibly stupid.”

  “You never thought Evan’s father killed Evan, did you?” Frank asked, his eyes locked on Lily’s face.

  “I just wanted to get you away from here,” Lily admitted. “I figured you’d be out in Long Island for days, doing a stakeout or whatever. And it’s not like you’d end up blaming Mr. Davis for something he didn’t do. You wouldn’t get proof, and you’re all about getting proof.”

  “Let’s sit down,” Frank suggested.

  “Yeah. It seems like this is going to take a while,” I agreed. I sat in one of the armchairs. Frank and Lily sat on the sofa across from me. “So you didn’t think Evan’s dad had anything to do with his death?”

  “You should have seen Mr. Davis at Evan’s funeral. I was there—just in the back.” She gave a harsh laugh. “It’s not like I was invited. Anyway, Evan’s dad, you could tell he was torn apart. And he made this speech about how his son would still be alive if he had been a better father. He cried. It was horrible. I felt so bad for him—even after he’d been so harsh to Evan that day we went to his house.”

  “You knew he was innocent even before the funeral, though, didn’t you? You knew who killed Evan as soon as it happened. Am I right?” asked Frank.

  “You need to drop it, okay? You need to go home,” Lily urged. “Just walk out the door right now and never come back.”

  “We can take care of ourselves,” I told her. “We’re not leaving until we have absolute proof of who killed Evan.”

  I didn’t mention Tess. Neither did Joe. We wanted to hear what Lily had to say without putting any ideas into her head.

  “We could really use your help,” Frank said. “You know things about Evan that no one else does.”

  “I don’t want anyone else to die. I couldn’t take it,” she said. Her face was so pale, especially next to her black hair.

  “We don’t want anyone else to die either,” I stated. “We can stop that from happening. Together. Just tell us what you know, Lily. Who is it you’ve been trying to protect us from?”

  “Tess,” she said. “Tess killed Evan. And Mark. I’m sure of it.”

  “Why?” Frank asked. “Why did Tess do it?”

  “I don’t know. I keep trying to figure it out, but nothing makes sense,” Lily replied. “All I know is that Evan told me Tess had betrayed him. He was furious with her. He said he was going to bring her down. He said he had a plan—that was the day he died. He told me he had a plan and that he’d tell me everything when he got back. But he never came back. Mark was Evan’s closest friend—besides me. He must have started snooping around, and then . . .” She closed her eyes for a minute.

  “We know that Evan had an appointment with a reporter named Gwen Anderson that day,” I said. “We think he was going to tell her something about the Haven, probably something to do with Tess. But we don’t know what.”

  “So you think Tess killed him too?” Lily asked.

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “We found out that she had Mark’s body taken from the morgue and buried in an anonymous grave where no one would find him. That makes her look pretty guilty. She didn’t want his death investigated.”

  “But we don’t have proof,” I added, sounding like my brother for a minute.

  “We think one of these people might be able to help us with that.” Frank pulled the list of names from Tess’s files out of his pajama pocket. He handed it to Lily. “Do you know any of them?”

  Lily studied the list. “I never actually met any of them. Well, except Joe, of course. But I heard Tess got this one girl, Emma Cassidy, a scholarship to go to Parsons and learn to be a fashion designer. And supposedly she got Philip Stevenson money to go to Harvard. All four years. People still talk about that sometimes.”

  Frank took the list back. “I have one other question for you. If you think Tess killed Evan—”

  “I know she did,” Lily interrupted.

  “Then why are you still at the Haven?” Frank finished.

  Good question. It really didn’t make sense that Lily was living here.

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have any cash. I couldn’t pay rent on any job I could get. I didn’t even graduate high school,” Lily admitted.

  “There’s no chance you could go home?” I asked.

  Lily shook her head. “My mom and dad decided to separate. And it’s like my mom went nuts. She had to know where I was and what I was doing every second. She even put one of those teddy bears with a camera inside it in my bedroom. I figured if she was going to spy on me, I’d give her something she definitely wouldn’t want to see.” Lily closed her eyes for a long moment. “It was stupid of me. We ended up having this monster fight. She said she never wanted to see my face again. So I left. What else was I supposed to do?”

  “You were fighting. People always say stuff they don’t mean when they fight,” Frank said.

  “She meant it,” Lily insisted. “If she couldn’t control every single move I made, she didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  “What about going to a different shelter?” I wanted to know.

  “I went to another one before I got here. There was a knife fight in the middle of the night,” Lily answered. “I was so happy I found this place. It seemed so safe. And I thought Tess was awesome. Pretty stupid, huh?”

  “It doesn’t seem stupid to me,” Frank told her.

  “I’m doing this receptionist training program. Sandy got it set up with the people at Kelly Services—the temp agency. When I finish, I should be able to g
et a job that will pay enough for me to get out of here. But until then, this seems like the best place to live. I just have to keep my head down, stay out of Tess’s way. . . .”

  She stood up. “I need to go get dressed. I have kitchen duty this morning.” She started to the door, then turned back to face us. “I’m sorry I left those signs for you. And the dolls. But I was afraid of what would happen to you. I still am. I still think you should get out of here—before you end up like Evan and Mark.”

  15.

  WHERE’S THE MONEY?

  Parsons wasn’t too far from the Haven, so we decided to walk over there. We needed to talk to Emma Cassidy. We thought she could be the link we needed to figure out why Tess had all those photos Olivia had taken in her office.

  I knew I should be reviewing the case. But I was distracted. “I keep thinking about Lily,” I admitted to Joe.

  “Me too,” said Joe. “She really put in a lot of effort trying to save our necks.”

  “Yeah. But the part I was thinking about was how she feels like she has to stay at the Haven. Like she has no choice.” Thinking about never being able to go home—it made my brain freeze up. I couldn’t even really imagine it.

  “There’s gotta be someplace else she can go. Someplace that’s not run by a homicidal maniac,” Joe reasoned. “Where there aren’t any knife fights. And where she doesn’t have to sleep outside—in November.”

  “We’ll have to work on that. . . .”

  “As soon as we get the proof we need to close Evan’s case. And Mark’s,” Joe finished for me. “That’s Parsons over there. I recognize it from Project Runway.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Both of them.

  “It was on in the common room, remember?” he said as we crossed the street and headed inside. We passed glass cases with clothes—some of them pretty weird—on display as we looked for the administration office.

  It wasn’t too hard to find. A guy wearing a shirt with these puffy flowers on it looked up from the front desk as we stepped inside. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “We were wondering if there’s a student directory we could look at,” I answered.

  “You look a little on the young side to be students here,” the guy commented.

  “We’re not. But my brother’s girlfriend goes here. He likes older women,” Joe said. “He wants to surprise her.”

  The guy looked us up and down, and I suddenly remembered how grubby we were, in our runaway teen gear. “We came on the bus from Ohio,” I told him. “I guess maybe I should have grabbed a shower before I showed up here. But I was just, um, so excited to see Emma.”

  “Don’t you have her home address?” the guy asked.

  “She’s not at home. We went there first. We thought maybe we could get her schedule so my brother could surprise her between classes,” Joe explained. “Nice fleurchons, by the way.”

  The guy ran his fingers over one of the puffy flowers. “Thanks. I made them myself.”

  “Do you go here?” asked Joe.

  “This is my last year,” the guy answered.

  “Emma just started this year. Emma Cassidy. It’s the first time she and my brother have been separated.” Joe was on a roll. I just let him go. “That’s why we were on a bus so long. He had to see her. So can we find out where she is right now?”

  “It’s against the rules,” said the guy. “But I don’t want to stand in the way of true love. Just give me a minute.” He disappeared into one of the inner offices.

  “Fleurchons?” I mouthed at Joe.

  “Hey, he’s doing it, right?” Joe whispered. “I think it was the fleurchon compliment that pushed him over the edge. I might start watching Project Runway routinely. It’s already been useful twice today.”

  “Emma Cassidy, you said, right?” Fleurchon Guy asked, coming back to the front desk.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Any weird spelling or anything?”

  “No, just the usual.” I spelled out Cassidy for him.

  Fleurchon Guy frowned. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but your girlfriend isn’t here.”

  “You mean she doesn’t have any classes today?” Joe asked.

  “I mean that she’s never been registered at this school,” Fleurchon Guy stated. He looked over at me. “Sorry, dude. Girls lie. It’s just a fact.”

  “Thanks for trying,” I told him as Joe and I headed for the door.

  I pulled out my cell and punched in 411.

  “Who are you calling?” asked Joe.

  I held up one finger as I asked the operator for the number of the Harvard admissions office. I chose the option of having the number dialed for me. ATAC can afford it.

  “Hello, I’m Frank Hardy over at admissions for Columbia,” I said when a woman in Harvard’s undergraduate admissions office picked up. “One of your students, Philip Stevenson, is applying for graduate school here and I wanted to have his transcripts sent over.”

  The woman put me on hold.

  “Nice,” Joe said.

  “It was no fleurchon, but I think it worked,” I answered.

  After a minute or two of classical music, the woman picked back up. “I found a Philip L. Stevens who graduated in 1995. Is that correct?” she asked.

  “No, it would definitely be more recent than that,” I said. “I, uh, spilled coffee on part of his form. He either graduated in the last few years, or he’s interested in transferring over here to finish his undergrad work and then continue on to grad school.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told me. “There’s no more recent student of that name.”

  I thanked her and hung up.

  “Not there?” Joe asked.

  “Not there,” I replied.

  “I bet you know what my next question’s going to be,” he said.

  I nodded. “Where did the money go if it didn’t go to pay for Emma and Philip’s school expenses?”

  Joe and I broke into Tess’s office for the second time that night. We needed to get a look at her bank account.

  But we were having a much harder time hacking into her computer than I’d had with Mr. Davis’s.

  “Breaking into Tess’s wall safe was easier,” Joe complained. “And faster.”

  “If we find out that the money Tess raises for the kids at the Haven ends up in her personal account, we’ll have gone a long way toward getting the proof we need,” I reminded him.

  “We’ll definitely have motive,” Joe agreed. “She has to have raised millions of dollars over the years. That’s the kind of money people kill for.” He tried typing in another password. No go. “Hey, it’s almost time for people to start waking up,” he said.

  “I have another idea. Another way we might be able to link Tess to the murders.” I hesitated. I thought the plan would work. But it was dangerous.

  “Well, what is it? Because what we’re doing isn’t working,” Joe said.

  “Here’s the thing,” I told him. “My idea involves using you as bait.”

  16.

  BAIT

  I knocked on Tess’s door the next morning. As bait. I was bait. A pink, squirming worm on a hook.

  “Come in,” Tess called.

  I did, and she smiled, like I was the person she most hoped would come walking through the door.

  “What can I do for you, Joe?” she asked, waving me to a seat on the sofa in front of her desk.

  “I was thinking about what we talked about,” I began.

  “Now that’s something I like to hear,” said Tess. She smiled warmly. It was so hard to believe this nice, helpful woman was a killer.

  My palms were sweaty, but I didn’t want to wipe them against my pants. I didn’t want to look nervous. “I went to the library, and I did some reading about lawyers, and what kind of schooling it takes to be one and everything.”

  She nodded encouragingly, and I rushed on. “It sounds really cool. But I don’t think I could get into college. I skipped a lot of high school. It was stupid. I’d just
go and hang out at this doughnut place.”

  “Everybody at the Haven has made mistakes,” Tess told me. She reached out and touched my hand. It was hard not to pull away. “Scratch that. Everybody has made mistakes. Period. I know I’ve made some.”

  Some big ones, I thought. Although I guess you couldn’t call theft and murder mistakes exactly.

  “I just don’t know if I’d be able to pull down the grades to go to college, even if I go to school every single day. No doughnuts. I mean, from what I read, some of the guys who want to be lawyers start at, like, kindergartens for geniuses or something. Then they go to prep school.”

  “Prep school!” Tess exclaimed. “That’s exactly what you need. A couple of years at a good prep school and you’ll be in great shape for college.”

  “Can I even get in?” I asked.

  “I’m sure I could work something out,” she told me. “First we need to get you the money.” She tapped her lips with one perfectly manicured fingernail. “There’s a silent auction being held at a little gallery downtown tonight. The profits are going to the Haven. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll give a little talk. You can meet everyone; it helps so much to have a face—a young person the possible donors can actually meet. And we’ll put all the money from the auction toward prep school for you.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. Meet me here at my office at eight,” Tess told me.

  I think she’s taken the bait, I thought as I walked out.

  “That was awesome!” I exclaimed as I climbed out of the cab after the silent auction.

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Tess said as she led the way back into the Haven. “I knew you were a good choice. You charmed everyone with that innocent-looking face of yours. The bids on items were ridiculous. One painting went for ten times its actual value. And its actual value was not cheap.”

  “So how much money do you think I got? Enough for two years of prep school?” I asked.

  “Come into my office and let’s discuss it,” Tess said. I figured this would be a discussion Evan had had with Tess before he died. Probably even Emma and Philip. And Sean. I thought I might be able to find out where their school money had gone.