Higher Learning (The Charlie Davies Mysteries Book 4)

by Clare Kauter

  Somehow I doubted it, though.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was so lost in my thoughts that at first I didn’t hear the person calling out my name. Then finally it clicked. Someone was calling out to me. And they weren’t calling me ‘Charlotte’. They were saying...

  “Charlie!”

  I turned around and found myself face-to-face with a schoolkid I kind of recognised but couldn’t quite place.

  “Hi,” I said blankly.

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Jared,” he said. “You followed me home last year.”

  “Jared!” I said. “Oh my god! I didn’t recognise you.”

  “Yeah, I got that, thanks.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I think you’ve grown.”

  “Wow. You sound like an old person.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, sorry. I really do. It’s true, though – you’re giant now.”

  And he was. Last time I’d met Jared – when his mum had thought he was dealing drugs in his spare time and I’d followed him around, only to be discovered about ten seconds in – he hadn’t been than much taller than me. Now he was like a giant oak, towering over me. Of course, most people towered over me. I was pretty short.

  Wait – Jared’s mum had suspected Jared of dealing drugs. He’d said that she’d just been watching too much Breaking Bad, but what if she’d been right?

  “Uh, Jared?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You haven’t been dealing any drugs lately, have you?”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “Have you forgotten how this ended last time? I don’t do drugs. I do dragons.” He leaned in close and whispered, “Dungeons and Dragons.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I remember.” I’d actually ended up joining him at a D&D meeting one afternoon, and worryingly I hadn’t hated it. In fact, I’d actually considered going back. I know, I know – I shouldn’t sacrifice what little reputation I have left.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Who are you spying on this time?”

  I considered what to do briefly and decided to tell him the truth. After all, he already knew who I was. Lying now wasn’t going to do me much good. I grimaced as I thought of Tim listening in on my conversations this morning. First Elliot, now this. I was going to have a lot of explaining to do at lunchtime – right after detention with Mucus.

  I sighed. “You know the cheerleader who died?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, Gabby. What about her?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who her dealer was.”

  He nodded again, more slowly this time. “Right. Any ideas?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “I don’t suppose you have any clue?”

  “I might,” he said.

  “You might?”

  He shrugged. “Depends. How well do you know the cheerleaders?”

  I rolled my eyes. He had a crush on a cheerleader? How original. “I don’t like where this is going.”

  He looked down at the ground. “It’s – it’s not...”

  “What?”

  He dragged his eyes up to meet mine. “Do you know Abhati?”

  I was taken aback. For some reason I’d thought this would be about Chelsea. “Oh, um, yes. She’s cool,” I replied.

  He nodded, his eyes lighting up. “Could you introduce me to her?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Sure,” I said. “In exchange for some information.”

  “I don’t know for sure, but there are a couple of guys who hang around the school. I think they might be into drugs.”

  I nodded. “Got anything more for me?”

  He shrugged. “They hang around with Chelsea and her friends. They’re all older than us. Graduated last year, I think.”

  “Weird that they hang around with high school kids,” I said, trying not to think about Elliot again.

  “Exactly.”

  “Think you could point them out to me?” I asked.

  He nodded. “If you give me your phone number I can text you when I see them next.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and we exchanged numbers. “Shoot me a text if you see them hanging around the school.”

  He nodded. “Um, are you going to introduce me to Abhati now?”

  “Right, of course. Do you know where she hangs out at recess?”

  He nodded eagerly and led me to the main sports oval. She was sitting with the other cheerleaders but she was off to the side with a smaller group, not the main cheerleaders that Chelsea usually hung out with. I began to walk towards the group and Jared grabbed my arm.

  “What?”

  “I – I can’t talk to her while she’s in a group. I need her alone.”

  I frowned at him. “Dude, you know how creepy that sounds, right?”

  “I don’t mind if you’re there,” he said. “It’s just... those other cheerleaders are scary.”

  I sighed. That was a fair call. Abhati was definitely the least threatening of the bunch. “Fine,” I said. “I don’t know how to sort that out now, though. How about I text you some time when I’m alone with her and you can come and meet us?”

  He nodded eagerly. “Sure. That sounds great.”

  “And you’ll message me if you see those guys again?”

  He nodded.

  Excellent. I had an inside man.

  The bell rang for the end of recess and Jared and I went our separate ways.

  In my next classes, English and geography, I was going to try to speak to Chelsea again, but I didn’t get the opportunity. Instead I sat with Abhati and told her that I’d met a nice guy from another class who I thought she’d get along with. Jared couldn’t accuse me of not having his back. (Plus, I wasn’t even lying. Jared wasn’t super cool, but he was an OK kid. I wouldn’t be unhappy if he and Abhati started dating.)

  On my way to detention, I shot Jared a message saying I’d laid some groundwork for him with Abhati. I sighed as I approached Mucus’s classroom. Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about my grades or anything these days. I could say whatever I wanted to her and the worst she could do was put me in detention. If I hadn’t known that Chelsea would be here, I wouldn’t have even bothered showing up. What was Mucus going to do about it – call my parents? Tell Principal Skinner?

  “Charlotte,” said Mucus as I walked into the classroom.

  “Dolores,” I replied.

  “Excuse me?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, it’s Prudence, isn’t it?”

  “It’s Miss Lucas,” she said. “And you just got yourself an extra ten minutes of detention.”

  “More time for us to get to know each other,” I said with a wink. I walked away before she could respond and took a seat one table across from Chelsea. Chelsea didn’t look at me but I saw her jaw tighten. She was clearly still annoyed with me for getting her in trouble. I bit the inside of my lip. How was I going to fix this? Mucus wasn’t going to let me talk to her, despite the fact that she knew I was undercover and not really here as a student. She didn’t care that kids were dying of meth overdoses – she just cared about exerting her limited power over whoever she could, even if it meant more kids dying.

  Basically, she was vile.

  Mucus instructed us to write lines. Mine was I will not be an obnoxious brat which was not only rude but just a straight up lie. I was going to be an obnoxious brat forever. That was my only personality mode. Chelsea’s was I will not be a monkey and copy those idiots around me when I know better, which seemed especially rough seeing as it was twice as long as mine. We sat in silence, wrote our fifty lines and then finished up at about the same time. (Chelsea was a lot faster at writing with a pen and paper than I was. Seriously, who bothered writing long passages with a pen and paper these days? That was probably the first skill to go when I left school.)

  “Sorry about getting you in trouble,” I said as we left the classroom.

  Chelsea didn’t answer.

  “I’m pretty sure she only keeps people back at lunch time because she doesn’t have an
y teacher friends to hang out with and she’s super lonely.”

  Still no response.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why are you so annoyed with me?”

  “I just ended up in detention because of you,” she said. “I wasted my lunch time writing lines because you were stupid enough to talk back to Miss Lucas.”

  “Mucus,” I said without thinking.

  “What?”

  “Oh, that’s what I call her in my head. Mucus. Because she’s slimy and annoying.”

  For a second I thought Chelsea might smile, but she didn’t. Instead she said, “I can’t get into trouble like that. I’m cheer captain. I’m meant to be a role model.”

  “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said. “I used to cheer at my old school and I heard that you were going to have tryouts here soon. I was hoping –”

  “People who talk back to teachers don’t usually end up on the cheer squad,” said Chelsea. “The school principal doesn’t really want the school to be represented by people who aren’t model students. We’re not even meant to hang out with people who don’t uphold the school’s ethos.”

  “Really?” I said, thinking again about how two past cheer captains had fallen in love with people who killed people. What exactly was the school ethos? “I didn’t realise. OK, I’ll rein it in. Sorry. Can I still try out?”

  She sighed. “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she said. “But you’d better be absolutely perfect, or I’m not letting you in. You’re too much of a loose cannon.”

  She turned on her heel and stalked away. Wow. Who knew that cheering was such a serious business? As I walked to the library, I thought about our conversation. Chelsea hadn’t seemed so bad. Sure, she was a little uptight, but not because she was necessarily a bad person. She just cared a lot about school and she liked to win. She probably just had pushy parents whose expectations she was trying desperately to live up to. Despite her warning that I needed to be perfect in my cheerleader tryouts (like that was going to happen), I actually felt better about things after our conversation. Chelsea seemed like a human now. She was more Hermione Granger than Regina George. I had a chance.

  I made my way to the library as fast as I could so I could check in with Tim before I had to head back to class. As I sat down across from him, munching on today’s lunch (a felafel wrap with harissa hummus, caramelised onion and spiced roast pumpkin), we discussed the meth case. Well, that was the plan. Except when I introduced it, Tim seemed to have other ideas.

  “Uh, honey,” he said, “if you think we’re going to gloss over the events of this morning, you are sorely mistaken.”

  “You mean my sick burns in maths class?” I said. “I know, I definitely took Mucus down a peg. Which means she is in negative pegs.”

  He folded his arms. “No, I’m talking about your hella weird conversation with your science teacher for one, and the kid you were meant to follow in secret who not only recognised you but also knew you were a PI.”

  “Don’t worry about him,” I said. “I’ve got solid blackmail material. He wouldn’t risk outing me in case I told everyone that he plays Dungeons and Dragons. Also how’s he ever going to get Abhati’s number without me?”

  Tim shook his head. “I don’t know how you managed to screw up tailing a high school kid.”

  I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m talented,” I said.

  “That’s not the word I would have used,” he said.

  “Don’t tell Adam,” I said. “Please. I don’t want to be fired.”

  Tim sighed. “Fine. I won’t bring it up unless it looks like the kid is going to get in our way. But I’m not happy about it.”

  “That’s fair enough,” I said. “It is kind of embarrassing.”

  “For the company as a whole, not just for you.”

  I crossed my arms at him. “Excuse me, have you forgotten who rescued your kidnapped niece?” I said. “OK, so I screwed up my first case slightly, but I still found out where the kid was going, which was what I was meant to do anyway. And it wasn’t even my fault! He recognised me from when I went to school here. The first time.”

  Tim sighed. “I won’t tell on you, don’t worry. I guess it’s not entirely your fault if he recognised you. But setting that aside for a moment, we have another topic that we need to discuss. What the hell is going on with you and that Elliot guy?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Did Adam not tell you about last night?”

  “He did not.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed before looking back at Tim. “My friends were throwing a dinner party and Elliot showed up part way through. James McKenzie all but called him a paedophile and then Adam came around to see how my first day of school went, but he found the Elliot situation so hilarious that he decided to jump in on the conversation too. Then Elliot left.”

  Tim looked scandalised. One thing you may not know about Tim is that he loves a bit of drama.

  “I cannot believe you or Adam didn’t tell me about this straight away,” he said. “James McKenzie was impolite to someone other than you?”

  “I know, right? I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Why did he call him that? Do you think there’s any truth to it?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came out.

  “Right,” said Tim. “I’ll take that as a yes. Why? What did he do?”

  I shrugged. “When I was in high school, he and I dated.”

  Tim raised his eyebrows. “So James is just jealous.”

  “No,” I snapped. “Elliot was at uni. I was fourteen.”

  Tim looked horrified. “OK, James was right. This guy’s a creep. That explains the weird conversation you had with him earlier.” Tim bit his lip, lost in thought. “Do you think he’s our dealer? Like maybe he’s pulling a Walter White?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That seems like a stretch.”

  “Right, he’s OK with dating children but he draws the line at dealing drugs.”

  I sighed. “This is why I didn’t tell you.”

  “You’re starting to think he’s a creep too,” said Tim. “Don’t deny it.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know what he is, but I’m not entirely comfortable around him.”

  Tim nodded. “I’m sorry to say this, honey, but that’s exactly the reason you’re going to have to spend more time with him.”

  “I know,” I said, resting my head in my left hand while I shoved the wrap into my mouth with my right. He knew the cheerleaders, had access to the kinds of materials you needed to run a meth lab, and just generally seemed to give people the heebie-jeebies. Not conclusive, but definitely cause for further investigation.

  “Anyway, back to Chelsea. I’m making progress, right?” I said, totally not because I just desperately wanted to change the subject. “I mean, she doesn’t seem to hate me anymore. She said I had a chance of getting on the squad. I mean sure, it’s a pretty slim chance given that I dance like a wounded elephant and I probably cheer even worse than that, but at least there’s a chance. That’s something.”

  Tim nodded. “I think you should get your housemates to help you out tonight. Choreograph something easy but impressive. Don’t go too fancy – I want to minimise the chance of you doing any permanent damage to yourself when it all goes horribly wrong.”

  “You mean if it all goes horribly wrong.”

  “Sure,” he said. “If.”

  I took a deep breath. Tim was right. Tomorrow was just about guaranteed to be a total disaster. I tried to distract myself.

  “What about our other case?” I asked.

  Tim shrugged. “Nothing impressive yet. I’ve been searching the boxes in here for any information on your brother, but no luck. The info in the computer didn’t help – it was just school records. His grades and whatever. Nothing particularly insightful.”

  I nodded, trying not to look disappointed. It had been a long shot, I knew that, but I’d still gotten my hopes up. “Right,” I said.
r />   “It’s early days,” said Tim.

  “Not really,” I said. “It’s been years.”

  He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “You know what I mean. It’s early days in me looking into it. And just in case you’ve forgotten, I’m the best PI in the business.”

  I folded my arms. “Not Adam?”

  He shrugged. “He’s a part time PI. He doesn’t count.”

  “Does that mean I don’t count either?”

  “Oh, honey,” said Tim, “you’re not even in the same league as me.”

  I crossed my arms. “Fine. I’ll believe that when you make some progress.”

  He smiled, then grew more serious.

  “What is it?” I asked, knowing Tim well enough to know that he was about to say something I might not want to hear.

  “It’s just... I don’t know how you should go about it, but you need to get your hands on one of those other letters. Will or James, take your pick.”

  I chewed my mouthful of food which had suddenly become claggy and tasteless at Tim’s mention of James. With some difficulty I managed to swallow.

  “I... I don’t...”

  “I know it’s not ideal,” said Tim, “but you’ve got to try. They’re most likely to be our best clues.”

  “But mine didn’t say anything informative at all,” I said. “What if theirs didn’t say anything either? They both claim they weren’t useful to the investigation and that’s why they didn’t show the police at the time. Maybe they’re telling the truth.”

  “Maybe,” said Tim. “Or maybe Topher just didn’t trust his fourteen year old sister with the details and he told the others more.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know how to get them to show me their letters.”

  Tim took a sip from his cup of coffee and swallowed slowly before leaning back in his chair and saying, “Maybe you shouldn’t ask.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked me dead in the eye. “You know perfectly well that there are other ways to get your hands on something than to ask for permission.”