Higher Learning (The Charlie Davies Mysteries Book 4)

by Clare Kauter

  Julie just stood there with her mouth agape, unable to form words.

  Adam stepped in. “Helen, I believe you’ve misread the situation,” he said. “They weren’t fighting.”

  “Then what were they...” she began, then her eyes widened and her jaw dropped open. “Oh.”

  “We weren’t – we were just – the shirt being unbuttoned was from an unrelated event!” I cried.

  “What on earth is happening?” asked Julie. She looked at Adam. “Who are you? Why is no one shocked about what I’ve just told you?”

  Adam gave me one of his looks before turning back to Julie. “I’m Adam Baxter,” he said, standing and shaking her hand. “I’m Charlie’s boss. She’s not actually a student; she’s a PI, and she and James here have a long history of... doing this kind of shit.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “We have a long history of doing stuff, but it’s generally not this kind of shit. It’s other kinds of shit.”

  Adam gave me another look. I shut up.

  Julie frowned. “Oh...”

  “Julie, you need to keep this knowledge to yourself,” said Skinner. “It’s of the utmost importance that no one else finds out about this.”

  Julie nodded. “Of course. But why...”

  Everyone paused for a moment, trying to figure out how much we should tell her.

  “We’re chasing a serial killer,” I said. “We have reason to believe he’ll strike here next.”

  “He targets teachers,” James added.

  “We don’t want to cause a panic,” I said. “It’s best if you just keep it to yourself. If he knows that you know about him...”

  Julie’s eyes were as wide as saucers. She nodded quickly.

  “I – I just –”

  She ran from the room.

  James and I turned back to Adam and Helen.

  “I’m so sorry, Helen,” said Adam. “This is not... ideal.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I stopped trying to control these two many years ago.”

  Adam turned to us, standing from his seat. “Can I talk to you two outside?”

  The three of us left the room and Adam led us to the front of the school. There were no students or teachers around here, so there was minimal chance of anyone listening in. Adam turned to me.

  “You told me this wouldn’t be a problem. You specifically told me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But, like, it’s going to be fine. It was just one teacher who saw us.”

  “What if that teacher is the person who’s responsible and you’ve just blown the whole operation?”

  “I don’t think it is,” I said. “As far as I can tell, she doesn’t have anything to do with the cheerleaders.”

  “But you don’t know for sure,” he said. “Why aren’t you taking this job seriously? Have you forgotten that a kid died?”

  “No, I –”

  “And James, what the fuck? I would have expected better from you.”

  James looked at the ground.

  “I know.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Adam continued. “Six months of you two being too awkward to so much as talk to each other, then you decide to get it on in a classroom while you’re meant to be undercover.”

  “We weren’t –”

  “Shut up. You should have sorted this out at the time and not let it get in the way of an investigation. Jesus, you couldn’t even wait another two hours for school to finish and then just go to one of your houses?”

  I tried to explain. “It wasn’t – we didn’t – I just –”

  Eloquent, I know.

  “I’m sorry, Adam,” said James. “I fucked up. This was my fault, and I deserve to be punished for it, but really, Charlie didn’t –”

  “James, it’s nice of you to lie for me, but don’t even try. Adam will know.”

  James sighed. “Yeah, OK. I thought it was worth a shot.”

  I gave him a small smile. I appreciated the effort.

  “Adam,” I said, “I really am sorry. I – I know that nothing I can say is going to make this better, so I’m not going to bother with excuses.”

  “Good,” he replied.

  I took a deep breath. “Adam, please don’t tell the police about this.”

  James frowned at me. “I appreciate that, but I don’t know if now is the right time to –”

  “It’s important,” I said, giving Adam a significant look. A flicker of realisation crossed his face. He knew what I was getting at.

  James thought I was trying to stick up for him as he’d done for me. And I kind of was – but not totally. The thing was, if his boss found out that James and I were – uh, friends – James would definitely be in trouble. Unless, of course, James was on Harcourt’s side and was only hanging out with me to get information. I doubted it, though. The six months of awkwardness had kind of killed that theory.

  “I won’t dob you in, James. I’ll ask Skinner to keep it quiet too,” Adam said. Then he turned to me. “And I won’t tell Harry, but if you fuck up one more thing, Charlie – I don’t care how small – you’ll be fired for real this time.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The last period of school that day passed relatively uneventfully. I sat with Abhati and waited to hear about my luck with getting on the cheerleading squad. Finally, as the last bell rang, Chelsea approached me.

  “You’re on the team,” she said. “Provided Mr McKenzie doesn’t veto you after what happened in PE class earlier.”

  I smiled. “Oh, I don’t think he’ll be a problem.”

  She gave me a stern look. “Seriously, you have to rein it in. You don’t want to get kicked off before you get started.”

  I nodded. “I’ll behave from now on. I promise.”

  She smiled. “Good. Because we have training during sport tomorrow.”

  I saluted her and she rolled her eyes at me, but she was smiling. We were friends now. Well, at least that was one thing I’d done right. My stomach tightened as I remembered Adam’s threat at lunch to fire me over any small thing I messed up. I had no doubt that he would make good on it, either – I needed to tread very carefully from now on. Which would be a lot easier if I wasn’t so clumsy and prone to tripping.

  I walked home, trying not to get stressed out by work. How was I going to pay my bills if I lost my job? I wasn’t. Of course, my landlord happened to be the reason I was going to lose said job, but I still didn’t want to ask if I could live in his house rent-free. What other profession could I go into? I couldn’t handle working behind a counter again, so supermarkets and retail were definitely out. Trouble was, they were about all I was qualified for. I wasn’t even really qualified to be a receptionist, and they were hardly going to miss me now that they had John. I mean, sure, I had a PI licence, but I wouldn’t have a great track record.

  Tell you about my previous experience? Well, I’ve worked on two cases. The first time the kid I was following spotted me and the second time I was fired for blowing my cover in a somewhat spectacular fashion.

  Hardly an impressive résumé.

  No, I couldn’t even think about losing my job. I needed to sort out this mess as quickly as possible and remain employed. The only way to do that was to get to work on my case and be amazing. Or at least be alright. I needed to solve this as fast as possible.

  Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to stop thinking about being fired and began to focus on the case. What should I do now? I hadn’t found out anything interesting whatsoever so far. Abhati was the only cheerleader I’d managed to get close to and she wasn’t into drugs, that much I was sure of. I’d seen her turn down coffee at that morning’s cheer tryouts. She wasn’t exactly hard-core if she couldn’t even handle coffee. (I knew that for a fact, seeing as I also couldn’t handle coffee and I most definitely wasn’t hard-core.)

  Chelsea seemed to be warming to me, but I needed to see her in a context outside of school if I really wanted to talk to her properly. Apart from that one time at de
tention, I’d only ever seen her surrounded by minions. She was way more likely to open up to me if I could talk to her one on one. I needed to try and get myself invited to a party where I knew she’d be. She seemed to be pretty well behaved at school, but that’s what Adam told me everyone had said about Gabby, the girl who overdosed. Maybe Chelsea was just hiding her wild side. Really well.

  When I pushed through the front door to my house, Arnold rushed over to greet me. I knelt down and gave her a hug and a back rub, then she and I headed for the kitchen to find ourselves some snacks. I handed Arnold an apple while I searched for something more satisfying and comforting and less healthy. I raided the fridge, cupboards and drawers and found nothing. I sighed and picked up the bunch of bananas from the fruit bowl. I peeled one and handed it to Arnold (who had already finished the apple) and then peeled one for myself. Then I peeled the other four for Arnold.

  We finished eating at about the same time and turned to each other. Her eyes reflected my own feelings.

  “That was not a satisfying snack. At all.”

  She snuffled in agreement.

  “You’re right, Arnold. We’re going to have to go for a walk to the shops.”

  She squealed in excitement and ran to get her lead. Most people don’t realise this, but pigs are smarter than a lot of kids. (And, honestly, a lot of adults.) She knew exactly where we were going and why.

  After changing out of my uniform and into my orange thermal onesie (it was cold, OK?), I fitted Arnold into her harness and we set off for the shops. It had been a hard day, even before Adam threatened to fire me for gross incompetence (which felt a bit rude, if we’re honest – yes, I was incompetent, but did he really have to call me gross?). Firstly there had been the weird thing with Elliot, not to mention running into Jared, yet another thread that could potentially unspool this entire tapestry. Maybe he’d turn out to be a help, but I doubted it.

  On a whim, I decided to head to the CBD via Green Meadows, the park where Gabby’s body had been found. It wasn’t a nice place to go walking by yourself, but people tended not to bother me when I was out with Arnold. They kind of assumed that I was a crazy lady when they saw me strolling along with a pig on a leash. Not to mention that Arnold could be pretty threatening when she wanted to be. Like me, she was not a people person. Or a people piglet.

  My whim paid off. As I was walking through the park, I noticed a couple of guys I’d seen hanging around the high school at lunch times. They’d stood out to me since they’d been standing outside the school fence, but I hadn’t been entirely sure if they were just students who weren’t wearing their uniforms. I was sure it was the same guys now, though. The fact that they were here in the park that the cheerleader had been found in seemed suspicious at best. Were these the guys Jared had told me about?

  I crouched down and under the guise of taking a picture of Arnold, took a photo of the two guys lounging against the children’s playground. Luckily all Baxter & Co. employees were issued with company phones that had very good cameras precisely for use in situations like this. Now that I could see their faces up close, these guys looked very familiar. As I walked away I wondered if I’d known them before seeing them at the school this week. They could have been at school when I was there, I realised. In fact, they probably were. It wasn’t unusual that I hadn’t immediately recognised them, though – it was a big school and not everyone knew each other. Case in point: no one had recognised me yet.

  Arnold and I headed into the supermarket and I heaved her up into a trolley to give her trotters a break. We zoomed straight to the lollies and chips aisle and grabbed the essentials before stopping off in the freezer aisle for what some would describe as an obscene amount of coconut ice cream. I also picked up some two-minute noodles for Arnold and we headed for the self-serve checkout. (Having been a checkout chick in the past, I knew that I could scan up my items faster than 95% of the people working here.) Once it was all paid for, we headed for the door. We managed to make it out without anyone calling security on us, so all in all it was a successful trip. (That had happened before – apparently people think that pushing around a pig in a shopping trolley is ‘odd’ and ‘possibly a sign of mental instability’.)

  As we were walking home, my phone began to ring. I apologised to Arnold for the interruption to our conversation and answered. It was Tim.

  “Honey, we need to talk.”

  I bit my lip. “About today?”

  “That, and about some other stuff. Are you at home?”

  “I’m out walking Arnold at the moment, but I’ll be home soon.”

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ll meet you there. I hope you have snacks.”

  I smiled. “You have no idea.”

  When I arrived at the house, Tim was sitting in his car with the heating on. I tapped on the window with my knuckle and we walked to my door together.

  “OK, I now see that my concern about snacks was entirely unwarranted,” said Tim, eyeing my shopping.

  “It was all Arnold’s fault,” I said, as I turned the key in the lock. Tim opened the door for me, seeing as my arms were so weighed down with bags. I noticed that he was carrying a folder under one arm.

  “Sure it was,” he said.

  After I made Arnold a bowl of noodles, Tim and I sat at the dining table and shared a bag of Skittles. “So, what were you up to at lunch today?” I asked. “Seeing as you certainly weren’t helping me out.”

  “Hey, you made that bed,” said Tim. “And you were way too keen to lay in it.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “If I make one more mistake, Adam’s going to fire me.”

  “I know.”

  “What do I do?”

  Tim put his hands in the air, palms up. “Don’t make any mistakes?”

  “Great. Thanks for that.”

  “You got on the cheer squad,” he said. “That’s a big step in the right direction. Still, there’s a chance that this case will take time. You have to gain Chelsea’s trust before she will tell you anything. Don’t try to rush it just to please Adam – you’re better off taking your time and getting the information you need. You don’t want to freak Chelsea out.”

  I nodded. He was right, of course. I needed to play it cool. It was just a little hard now that my job was hanging in the balance. I felt all jittery.

  “So, why did you come here?” I asked.

  “Partly to roll my eyes at you,” he said. “McKenzie? Really? How original.”

  I sighed. “Then roll them.”

  I crossed my arms as he gave me a hugely exaggerated eyeball rotation.

  “Great,” I said. “Are you done?”

  “Not quite. What the hell, what the fuck, you should know better, et cetera,” he said. I raised my eyebrows and he explained, “I felt like I should probably chastise you for putting the investigation in jeopardy.”

  “Consider me chastened.”

  “So are you and McKenzie a thing now?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? Don’t mention it to anyone, though.”

  “Fine. But do I need to have a word with him?”

  I frowned. “No. Why would you?”

  “Because I’m your surrogate big brother until we find your real one.”

  I gave him a smile that promptly dropped off my face at the thought of Topher finding out that James and I had kissed. “If you’re trying to be like Topher, you aren’t acting nearly freaked out enough.”

  “That you and James kissed?”

  “That we lived this long without murdering each other.”

  He snorted. “How do you think he’d react?”

  I thought about it for a moment, then realised I was stumped. “I genuinely have no idea,” I said. “It’s so far outside what I would have considered the realm of possibility five years ago that I don’t know if he could even comprehend it.”

  Tim nodded. “Alright, then I won’t have a word with James unless I need to.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

 
“Good. Let’s hope it stays that way.”

  I frowned. “OK, Timmy, I’m going to change the subject now, mostly because I’m a little freaked out,” I said. I nodded at the file he’d brought in with him, which now lay on the dining table. “What’s that?”

  He pushed the file across the table towards me. “Stuff I’ve managed to find out about your real big brother. I finally found his file in that cupboard I’ve been using as an office for what feels like the past thousand years.”

  “It’s been three days,” I said, flicking through the file. “Did you find anything in here?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing that stood out. I was hoping you might have better luck.”

  I began to shake my head, then stopped when I caught sight of a particular sheet of paper. It had a drawing on it that I’d seen before – Topher’s tech drawing assignment of a building that had burned down just after he disappeared.

  “This might be significant,” I said, handing the picture to Tim.

  “You recognise it?”

  I nodded. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “Where?”

  I hesitated.

  “Oh, honey. What?” asked Tim, looking apprehensive. “Where have you seen it?”

  “In Harcourt’s office.”

  Tim’s jaw dropped.

  “You broke into his office?”

  “I was a minor and I was never caught.”

  Tim shook his head at me. “Charlie, one day you are actually going to get yourself arrested.”

  “I’m sorry, did I just hear that coming from someone who cleaned out a casino owner’s safe and had to flee the country?”

  “I’m not saying I’m squeaky clean. I’m just saying that I worry about you.”

  “Would you like to hear what I found in his office or not?”

  “I would.”

  I took a deep breath. “He had a locked filing cabinet. In the bottom drawer there was –”

  “Hold on, how did you get the key to the cabinet? Surely he didn’t leave that in the office.”

  “I picked the lock.”

  Tim’s eyebrows headed skyward. “How did you know how to pick the lock?”