Parrish

by Shannen Crane Camp

  “Gross,” Deacon said. “Do you guys want to go to jail? He’s probably like seventeen.”

  “What are you even talking about?” I asked. “We’re going to go talk to him about his father. There’s nothing illegal about that.”

  “Plus he’s in college, so he may be legal,” Jefferson said from the back seat.

  “Would you guys stop saying ‘legal’?” Brighton asked. “I just said he was handsome. Besides, I’m not going to do the talking. That’ll be all you guys, while I sit safely inside and listen through my earpiece.”

  “What is this event we’re going to?” I asked, finally sitting back in my seat with my shoulder touching Jefferson’s.

  “It’s a back-to-school mixer for the State University of New York, which is actually in New Paltz, about twenty minutes from here,” Brighton recited, reading off of her phone. “But the mixer is for prospective law students and is in a smaller venue here in Kingston, so we don’t even have to drive far to get there.”

  “I still don’t understand how you figured this all out so quickly,” I said.

  “I literally just read Logan’s Facebook status,” she replied. “He’s not very subtle about his rocky relationship with his dad, so that part was easy to figure out, and the mixer created a Facebook event that he joined with the time and location. Everything we need to know.”

  “It would be so easy for me to be a serial killer in this day and age,” Jefferson said. “I wouldn’t even have to try. Facebook is like a menu.”

  “Those are the kinds of comments we keep to ourselves,” I said, partially joking.

  “There are a lot of comments I keep to myself,” he responded, giving me one of his penetrating stares.

  Why on earth was he so moody today? I thought we had gotten our friendship to a good place.

  “All right, well, just keep holding it all in,” I answered.

  “I swear, you two fight like an old married couple.” Brighton turned around in her seat to look at me. “By the way, this mixer is a semi-formal masquerade.”

  “Seriously?” I groaned. “How cheesy is that? This whole leg of our investigation is honestly turning into a bad episode of Murder She Wrote.”

  “If Murder She Wrote was mixed with The Vampire Diaries, where they have a formal dance every other episode,” Brighton agreed.

  “And they somehow all manage to pull together amazing outfits at the last second,” I said, “which, by the way, how on earth will we find clothes for this thing if we aren’t blessed with a magical Mystic Falls free formals store?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” she said. “I may be fully incapable of interacting with humans, but I’m a snappy dresser and a fast shopper.”

  “True enough,” I agreed, as we pulled into the parking lot of our hotel. “And what time does this start tonight? I’m really worried Anthony is going to go back to his house and move the envelope before we can convince his son to help us out.”

  “Good point,” Brighton agreed, looking worried suddenly. Glancing up at Deacon, she raised her eyebrows at him questioningly.

  “Oh no. You have a boring job for me, don’t you? That’s the only reason you’d give me that look.”

  “The law firm, the Meyer house, and the venue for the mixer tonight are all in close proximity to each other,” Brighton began. “So you wouldn’t be out of range of the earpieces. We could still communicate.”

  “Just come right out and say it,” he answered in a resigned tone. “What awful, boring job do you want me to do?”

  “I need you to hold onto the laptop and camp out at the café next to the law firm so you can keep eyes on Anthony Meyer and let us know if he leaves.”

  “And you’ll be where?”

  “I’ll be in the Jeep outside of the mixer with our home base set up while Sadie tries to get Logan to help us inside. Of course I’ll be dressed for the occasion in case I need to crash the party.”

  “And where is Jefferson in all of this?” Deacon said.

  “Assisting Sadie,” Jefferson himself answered matter-of-factly. “If worse comes to worse and we can’t persuade him, maybe she can just distract him while I pick his pocket for his house key. That way we aren’t technically breaking and entering.”

  “Somehow I don’t think that’s how that phrase works,” I said. “And I just want to point out to everyone that we’re trying to steal from a lawyer and we’re all most definitely going to jail.”

  “You’re the one who said we needed the envelope,” Jefferson said.

  “We do,” I agreed with a groan.

  I wasn’t sure I was really ready to believe some random dream I’d had, but if I was really listening to my gut, I knew that envelope and whatever it contained were of the utmost importance. We had to get our hands on it. I could only hope that whatever it contained was important enough to justify stealing it from Anthony Meyer.

  “Then what’s the plan for right now?” Deacon asked.

  “Obviously Sadie isn’t going to meet with Anthony,” Brighton said, “but unfortunately, we’re going to need eyes on him right now so we can be sure he’s actually at his office, which means we need to drop you off at the café with the equipment.”

  “What am I supposed to say if someone walks up and asks why I’m watching a video of a receptionist?”

  “Have it in a small window in the corner of your screen and pretend you’re writing the next great American novel or something. Just keep your headphones in so you can hear what’s going on in the office.”

  “Headphones and an earpiece—that won’t get confusing.”

  “You’ll manage.” Brighton smiled, which made Deacon grin involuntarily and quickly look away. “And the three of us need to get semi-formal clothes with almost no money.”

  “And masks,” I said.

  “I live in semi-formal clothes, so I don’t need any,” Jefferson said. “I’ll get us masks and leave the shopping to you two.”

  “Probably a good decision,” I agreed, giving him a look that said he was not being very friendly today.

  I didn’t care if he had mood swings, but he didn’t need to take out his angst on me for no reason at all. He looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes for a moment before sighing deeply and looking away again.

  I almost wished we were alone so I could ask him what his problem was, but at the same time, I was grateful I wouldn’t be forced to deal with his crazy when we were just about to pull off an impossible task that I wasn’t ready for.

  “Deacon, we’ll drop you off at the café and take the Jeep to the mall,” Brighton said.

  I wasn’t sure when she’d become such a leader.

  “We still don’t have much money,” I said, hating to be the bearer of bad news.

  “We have enough,” Jefferson said, still looking sullenly out the window.

  “Since when?”

  “I told you guys my mum gave me less than she did so that we would try really hard to keep it within our means; then when we inevitably went over budget, we wouldn’t be stranded somewhere,” he said.

  He still wasn’t looking at me.

  I opened my mouth to scold him for not telling us about the extra money when we’d been eating the worst and cheapest food imaginable for the past week, but thought better of it and just shook my head.

  “Well, that solves that, then,” Brighton said. “After we drop Deacon off, we’ll head over to the mall and plan to finish up in an hour?”

  “I wish we had watches to synchronize or something,” Deacon said with a laugh. “Make things so much more official, don’t you think?”

  “Do you at least have some cool gadgets for us, Brighton?” I asked. “You know, like an exploding pen or dental floss that . . . does something?”

  “Doubles as an explosive wire?” Jefferson offered, coming out of his funk ever-so-slightly.

  “Sure,” I agreed.

  “I’ll work on that for our next i
nvestigation,” she said. “Until then, let’s just stick with earpieces and try not to mess this up too badly.”

  Chapter 27

  Brighton hadn’t been kidding when she’d told me she was a fast shopper. My guess was that it had something to do with hating to be around other people. The second she saw a salesperson approaching her, she suddenly became very efficient and developed an inhuman ability to find cheap, cutes clothes in seconds.

  It was a gift.

  I knew she’d said it was something she had always been good at, but even with her anxiety around people and her dislike of being in public places, I had to give Brighton some respect. Since we’d left on this trip, she’d managed to come out of her shell a bit more and get the job done, even if it meant putting herself into an awkward situation. I wasn’t sure she would have been able to do half of the things we’d done these last weeks if we’d stayed in Portland in our boring jobs and boring lives.

  As we sat outside of the mall waiting for Jefferson to come pick us up, I riffled through my bag. Even though Brighton had insisted on dressing me for the mixer, I hadn’t made out too badly. I had been worried she would stick me in some awful pink dress, but she actually listened to me when I told her yellow was my favorite color, and I’d ended up with a yellow knee-length dress.

  The bodice was all sequins, which I kept trying to pick off, hoping there was some normal material under there. Brighton slapped my hand every time I started pulling the dress apart. A yellow satin sash was tied around the waist and the skirt was a full yellow tulle skirt that poofed out way too much for my taste.

  “I’m going to look like a lemon cupcake,” I said, still trying to pick the sequins off of the bodice.

  “A gorgeous lemon cupcake,” Brighton reiterated, slapping my hand.

  “What’s gotten into you? You’re so . . .” I paused, unable to think of a good word. “Leadership-y.”

  “Leadership-y?” she asked with a laugh at my made-up word.

  “You know what I mean. Why the sudden take-charge attitude?”

  “I’m just feeling good,” she answered with a shrug.

  She was being elusive on purpose.

  “Any particular reason? Or you just suddenly feel good?”

  She glanced from side to side for a moment, as if someone might be listening in on our conversation even though we were the only people outside of the mall. Then she looked at me with a wide grin.

  “I think Deacon might like me,” she finally said, as if she were revealing a big secret.

  I wasn’t sure if I should play along or laugh at her for making such an obvious observation.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And I think he might actually like me,” she said, thinking maybe I had missed it the first time.

  “Brighton, everyone knows that Deacon likes you. I mean, literally everyone. This isn’t exactly a revelation.”

  “No, we always thought he might like me, but we didn’t know,” she said, careful to differentiate.

  “I take it back—everyone but you knows this,” I said. “We’ve talked about this already. How could you really not know?”

  “Did you hear what he said on that recording last night? He thought he was talking to me, and he was all embarrassed when we watched the video. It was so cute.”

  She was actually sounding like a normal person rather than her anxiety-ridden self. It suddenly all made sense how she could have possibly missed the not-so-subtle hints that I didn’t hate Jefferson quite so much anymore. I had been worried that Jefferson and I were being too obvious, but in reality, Brighton and Deacon couldn’t have cared less because they were caught up in their own thing.

  “So, what are you going to do about it?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at her.

  “Oh, absolutely nothing,” she said, giving her head a fervent shake.

  “What?”

  “I’m really happy that he likes me, but I have no idea how I would even go about talking to him about it,” she said as Jefferson pulled up.

  “You’re not going to do anything?” I asked.

  She shrugged with the wide, happy smile still in place, and then got into the back seat of the Jeep, forcing me to take the front.

  “Did you have fun, ladies?” Jefferson asked.

  “So much fun,” I deadpanned. “Did you get the masks?”

  “For you,” he said, handing a black feathery mask back to Brighton in case we needed her backup at the party. “For me,” he added, pulling out his own simple black mask that would cover only his eyes. “And for you.”

  He handed me a beaded black and yellow mask.

  “You knew to get me yellow,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation like it probably would have been a few days ago. Now the gesture actually brought a small smile to my face.

  “We’ve got about two hours until we need to be at the mixer,” Brighton said. “Do you think we should check on Deacon to make sure he’s not losing his mind on surveillance duty?”

  I glanced back at her with a meaningful look, trying to wordlessly encourage her to stop being a coward where her feelings were concerned, even if I was the last person to be handing out that advice.

  “You should definitely check on him,” I said in an overly serious tone.

  “Never mind, I’m sure he’s fine,” she said. It only took her a moment to get back to being her normal self as she wrung her hands over the thought of an actual conversation about her feelings for Deacon. “Let’s just head back to the hotel and get ready.”

  “I’m ready,” Jefferson said, driving away from the mall.

  “Don’t you have an older, dustier, three-piece suit you can wear?” I asked, being sweetly sarcastic and batting my eyelashes at him. “I don’t think this one is quite old enough.”

  “I could always use the suit they buried my grandfather in,” he said, furrowing his brow. “But there’s still some dirt on it. That was a fun night, though.”

  “Why are you so creepy?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

  “I’m not creepy, I’m passionate—which you, of all people, should know.”

  My mouth dropped open at his blunt observation and I turned around in my seat to make up some excuse as to why he’d said that, but Brighton was looking down at her phone and smiling. I squinted at her screen and saw Deacon’s name on her text message.

  Jefferson was lucky she was preoccupied or else I would have broken his fingers.

  Really, Brighton probably always tuned us out once we started arguing, so it made sense that she was still in the dark about our “relationship.”

  “I’ll take your silence as avid agreement that you enjoy my passion.” He smirked, not looking at me.

  At least he was in a better mood, even if he was being totally inappropriate.

  “If you ever want me to enjoy it again, you’ll stop talking right now,” I whispered.

  “What are you guys fighting about?” Brighton asked, not really sounding interested.

  “Nothing,” Jefferson began innocently. “Sadie was just telling me how much she enjoys—”

  “Investigating . . . with you guys. And being out here on the road. It’s been great, right?” I asked, sounding like a crazy person.

  “It has been,” she agreed. “And tonight we’ll get that envelope from Anthony’s house and figure out what all of this investigating has really been about.”

  “And we’ll get our reward so we won’t be so ridiculously poor anymore,” I added. “Maybe you and Deacon will be able to pay your own rent after this.”

  “You only paid it once,” Jefferson said “And I’ll be paying you back soon.”

  “All I know is that I’m buying tons and tons of fruit when we get back home with our money,” I said. “I’m going to get scurvy from all this fast food.”

  “Deacon would think you’re going to get botulism,” Brighton added.

  It was a little ridiculous how manic she was just because sh
e’d found out something we all already knew, but it was pretty adorable, if I was honest.

  “Do you think you can rein in your happiness well enough to make me not look ridiculous in that dress tonight?” I asked.

  I was still skeptical.

  “I’ll make you look like a little ball of sunshine,” she said, in a way that had the opposite effect of what I’m sure she had intended.

  ~

  The mixer was in a beautiful historic building in downtown Kingston, although that shouldn’t have surprised me, since the entire city was full of beautiful historical buildings. It probably would have been a more impressive feat for them to find a modern building to hold the mixer in.

  Brighton, who was decked out in a black, silk, floor-length dress, opted to stay in our beat-up old Jeep, keeping ears on us and Deacon at the same time, while Jefferson and I crashed the party together.

  Ever since I’d emerged from the bathroom where Brighton had styled my pixie cut into a curly pomp with an Audrey Hepburn-esque quality and made my eyes look five times bigger than they were using the magic of fake lashes, Jefferson had been throwing me secretive little looks and grinning to himself. I would have been flattered if I could be absolutely certain he thought I looked nice. As it was, I was half convinced that he was internally making fun of me, and that every time he smiled, it just meant he had thought of some new joke.

  I would have come right out and asked him since I knew he was into the whole “brutal honesty” thing, but we had earpieces and mics on and I didn’t really want Brighton and Deacon listening in on that particular conversation.

  Jefferson and I walked arm in arm into the mixer. I’d expected it to be very quiet and slightly boring since it was for future law students, but it just resembled every other college party with its too-dark interior and too-loud music. The only difference was that this particular party took place in a beautiful old building.

  “I thought this was put on by the school,” I said, looking around at the rowdy college students in formal wear.

  “It’s put on by a student organization within the school,” Brighton clarified in my earpiece. “So it might be a bit . . . loud.”