“I believe you,” I said, loud enough for Michael to hear.
The noises from inside the bathroom stopped altogether, and then I heard him shuffle closer, heard the latch tap against its casing as he leaned back against the door. Someone knocked at the front door downstairs, and Alice cried, “Who is it?”
“Grocery,” was the muffled reply.
“Who’s at the door?” Michael asked, a shade of panic in his voice.
“Alice called for grocery service,” I said. “You don’t have to go to school for a while. We don’t even have to leave the house.”
“How long?” he asked, then hiccupped and blew his nose into some tissue.
“Until it all dies down,” I promised, though I wasn’t sure how long that would take. I wasn’t sure what Dad would do next. He definitely wouldn’t be happy about Alice being our guardian. And there was still the severed hand in our bin. So many things that could all go so wrong. But for now I supposed I could promise Michael anything I wanted.
“You really believe me? About the van?” It sounded like he was speaking right up against the corner of the door and doorjamb. The image of that made me smile.
“You’ve never made up a story like that in your life. I believe you.”
I heard the lock click and stayed very still as Michael pushed open the door a few inches. Our eyes met and he brushed a wad of tissues under his nose before crawling out next to me. His little eyes were puffy and red, and his cheek looked swollen, like maybe he hadn’t been spared a knock or two during Fred and Sean’s street brawl. I lifted my arm up, and Michael’s expression crumpled as he crawled under. He didn’t fit on my lap anymore, but he still tucked the top of his head under my chin.
“Tell me about the van?”
His voice was muffled, like he had the wad of tissues right in front of his mouth while he spoke. “It was black and followed us all the way home from school.”
“Do you think it was a van from the news station?”
“It wasn’t!” He sat up in a panic, and the anguish in his eyes nearly killed me. “You said you believed me!”
I tried on my most reassuring grin. “I do. But I need to know why you think it wasn’t. Tell me what happened.”
Michael took his time to think things through, as he always did. “There were only two people in the van,” he started. “They hadn’t any cameras. They just stared at us while we were walking. And when I ran ahead, they followed me and pulled along the side of the road in front of us so I’d have to walk by them.”
I waited for him to gather his next thoughts.
“And I recognized one of them.”
“From the people gathered out front?”
Michael shook his head. “He was the one who said Alice wasn’t our auntie last night.”
Officer Parsons. Now that was interesting.
“You’re sure that officer was in the van?”
“He was wearing different clothes and he was driving.”
My anger must have bled through into my expression, because Michael curled up to hide again, tucking his head back under my chin. “You’re not in trouble,” I said. “I’m just . . . upset.”
Michael didn’t move for a while, and I let him be still. I probably couldn’t have said much of anything to Michael right then anyway. My mind was too busy trying to connect the dots between what had already happened and what it could all mean. If our father was planning something and having my brothers followed, I had to find out what it was before they went back to school.
“What happened at the school?” I asked.
Michael’s head dropped down.
“What is it? You can tell me.”
He shook his head so that his hair tickled my chin.
“I should probably know, don’t you think?”
I felt his body sag a little, and then, in his quietest voice, Michael said, “Freddie said we shouldn’t have the taxi take us all the way to school or everyone would stare at us. So we got out a block away and walked, but these older kids from our neighborhood were waiting for us at the school gates.”
“And then what?”
Michael covered his face with his hands, muffling his voice further. “They called you a killer. Said Dad was going to prison in your place, which wasn’t right.”
“And so Seanie got mad?” I smiled a little, thinking about my youngest brother attacking the group of older boys to protect me. It would be like him.
“He said some things, but that’s not why the fight started.”
“Was it Freddie, then?”
Michael dropped his hands and leaned back to look up at me. “It wasn’t them.”
I waited while Michael looked from the floor and back to me several times. Then, with the softest glint of mischief in his eyes, he said, “I slapped Toby Parker.”
I immediately laughed, though I knew I shouldn’t. “Did you? For my honor?”
Michael was trying not to laugh with me but failed. “Then I told him to watch his trash mouth, and then he slapped me back and Freddie punched him in the eye. By then all the boys joined in and Freddie had to fight them off so we could run away.”
“Well,” I said, through a few more eruptions of laughter that I couldn’t control. “I feel properly avenged.”
Michael blushed and covered his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You ready to go downstairs?” I asked him.
He stood slowly, but stopped after taking only the first step down and looked back at me.
“Aren’t you coming?”
I nodded. “Let me make a quick call first.”
I pulled out my phone and wandered into my room as Michael went down, searching through my call history for the number.
“Junior,” DS Day said once the call connected.
I felt my lip curl. “Set it up.”
“What now?”
“Set it up. I’ll meet him.”
It was silent on the other end of the call, which wasn’t what I’d expected, and then DS Day asked, “What’s the catch?”
I sighed. “Set it up or don’t. But make it soon, before I change my mind.”
“Right.”
“And you’ll need to find a way to get me out of here unseen. There are cameras everywhere thanks to his little stunt.”
“His what?”
I growled internally, wondering just how my father put up with a lackey who was dense as concrete. “Just call me when you have a time. Better yet—send me a text. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
I ended the call and dropped my phone on the bed, trying to convince myself that this was the right move. I was giving my father what he thought he wanted. But Michael said he saw Officer Parsons following them home from school in a van, and I believed him. I also knew without a doubt that Parsons was one of my father’s men, which meant Dad had a plan. I just needed to figure out how to make him tell me those plans so I could stop him.
I changed out of my uniform and washed my face, and on my way down the stairs, I heard Alice shout, “I arranged a whole week off for you three!” A cheer erupted from the kitchen. Alice was standing in the doorway. She slid her mobile into the back pocket of her jeans. “Your makeup homework packets will be here in the afternoon tomorrow!” she cried just as enthusiastically. There was no cheer for that.
The lack of response didn’t faze Alice. Her smile was still wide when she turned toward me. “Mail managed to get here before all the chaos, and these came for you.” She handed me two envelopes. “Your snack is out on the back patio.”
She winked at me, which made it seem like she was up to something. I even heard her say, “Adorable,” from inside the kitchen, but I was too tired to question, so I wandered to the French doors. Through the glass, I saw a trifold room partition standing in the middle of the small space. It had a light wood frame with pink lacy curtains that were getting soaked in the May drizzle. I found Sherlock on the other side of the curtain, staring at his tablet under a giant umbrell
a in one of two deck chairs that looked almost exactly like the ones for hire at Regent’s Park. Between the chairs, one of the little tables from what was now Alice’s room held two sandwiches, two packets of crisps, and two bottles of fizzy water.
“Why?” I asked, gesturing around us. I actually had quite a few questions, like why he wasn’t at school and why all this stuff was out here, and why there was so much food when we’d only just eaten porridge an hour or so ago. But in the end “Why?” seemed to embody all of that in a word.
Lock glanced up from his tablet to where I stood in the rain and, without a word, reached out to pull me under the umbrella. He didn’t answer at first, and his cheeks went slightly pink as he quickly went back to reading his tablet. “I know you hate being stuck in the house.”
I pressed my lips together and bit down on them to keep from smiling, which only made Lock furiously swipe through pages of something on the screen. I sat down and traded my mobile and letters for one of the bottles of water. “How did you get in?”
“Pretended to be grocery delivery.”
I twisted the top off and waited for the bubbles to settle before I asked, “By actually delivering groceries?”
Lock nodded and read with a diligence notable even for him, but I watched as the soft pink skirting his cheeks darkened to a nice rose color.
I should have left him alone or at least said thank you, but it was so much more fun to torment him. “Alice thinks you’re adorable.”
“Yes. She said.”
I took a long drink to suppress my next smile when he scowled toward the French doors and Alice beyond, I was sure. But then my phone rang and the name that flashed across the screen stole away all my amusement. He was supposed to send a text.
“What?” I answered.
DS Day got right to the point. “Tomorrow at seven a.m.”
I glanced at Lock and said, “I’ll be there.” I frowned a little at the slight rise in Sherlock’s brow—a sure indicator that he was going to ask questions I didn’t want to answer.
“I’ll pick you up, so don’t be late.”
I hung up and dropped my phone onto the table, then waited for the inevitable interrogation.
“Who was that?”
I paused to consider lying but thought better of it. “Detective Day.”
“Are you going to see him, then?”
I knew he meant my dad, but I feigned ignorance. “Yes, he’s coming to the house tomorrow.”
Lock stared down at the screen. “For what?”
“More questions from Mallory, I suppose. He’s taking me to the station.”
A lie and a truth, but Lock didn’t comment on either. I picked up one of the letters and ripped it open, expecting something from the school or maybe a letter from my grandmother, full of gossip about the village where she lives and pretense that she didn’t know what was happening to us. Instead, I found a white card with the words THANK YOU embossed in silver across the front. I opened it and the entire inside was covered, corner to corner, with a highly detailed drawing. A drawing of me.
Only it wasn’t quite me. The girl in the picture was wearing an elaborate medieval-looking gown and had long, flowing hair that was braided and curled down her back. She stood at the edge of a body of water of some sort, with a giant willow tree behind her, and held a sword out in front of her that she seemed to be passing along, hilt-first, to a dark, scaly hand that jutted out of the lake.
The scene was framed by tree trunks and branches that wove together to form an oval frame, and in the foreground, peeking around the trees to watch the woman, was a man, dressed much more modern, in jeans and a T-shirt. He had dark hair and a balding patch at his crown. The illustration showed only the back of his head and body, but the back pockets of his jeans bulged out like they both had wallets in them. A rubbish bin was to his right, like the bins at the park, and he held what looked like an aluminum can in his right hand. To his left stood a woman in full period dress, complete with ornate side hair buns and tiara, who was leaning in to whisper in his ear.
The picture was as beautiful as it was eerie. It was so intricate, I thought at first it had been printed onto the card, but when I moved my thumb, I realized I had smudged the lines a bit. The scene had been drawn onto the card. In pencil. Someone had created an odd, fantasy version of me, throwing my father’s sword into the Regent’s Park lake while someone looked on. Perhaps the artist had drawn himself?
“What’s that?” Lock asked.
I ignored him and lifted the card to get a better look at the envelope. “No postal mark.”
Lock took the card from me and studied it while I opened the second letter. This one was postmarked Camden High Street, which was just north of the park. The minute I ripped down the side, the smell got my attention. The thing reeked like some kind of chemical—like the glue Freddie used to put together his models. The smell only got worse when I slid the paper out and unfolded it.
Like a clichéd scene from an ancient crime show, this letter was a message made up of cutout letters that had been pasted on the page like a collage:
ADMIT YOUR CRIMES OR A WITNESS WILL COME FORWARD.
If I was meant to feel afraid or intimidated, it was a colossal failure, because I almost instantly started to laugh. “Honestly. What kind of dramatics are these?”
Lock sat up and pulled the letter from my hands. He grinned at first. “Clever.” But his amusement quickly faded. He just kept looking back and forth between the drawing and the collage, painting them both with his gaze like I’d seen him do at a crime scene once.
“It could still be my father. He does love to cause a scene.”
Lock shook his head and held out the collage. “A woman did this one.”
“A woman?”
He looked between the items once more. “Both might have been done by a woman, but not the same woman.”
I grabbed the message back from him, sure that I’d see that he was just guessing. But he wasn’t. Not this time. He’d seen what I didn’t even look for—where the letters had come from.
“Cosmopolitan,” I said, like we were playing a game of “Tell Me When You See It.”
Lock smiled, because I’d found the first clue. “Glamour,” he added.
Take a Break magazine, ELLE—every letter had been taken from a magazine’s title page. The word “witness” was a blaring clue all on its own. The letters all seemed to come from Women’s Fitness magazine, like she’d just taken the bright pink F off and replaced it with the gray W from “Women’s.”
Lock was staring at me when I looked up.
“It could still be from him. He could have asked someone else to do it,” I said.
He shook his head. “She has to be in her forties at least. She probably has a son.”
“The model glue.”
Lock looked pleased at first, possibly that he didn’t have to explain to me all that he’d found, but then he frowned and looked at the drawing. “I think we should be very careful from now on.”
“Of a woman in her forties who owns a stack of cut-up magazines?”
“Of two women,” he corrected. “And possibly this man, who witnessed your crime. And of a fourth unknown figure who dropped a rotting body part in your bin. We don’t know what any of them want. Not really.”
Four people playing games with my life, according to Sherlock, but he had failed to mention the fifth. My father. And I knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted me dead.
Chapter 7
I’d been to the West End Central Station a few times—enough to know that guests weren’t often allowed to bypass the front desk when they visited. So when Detective Day sneaked us in on the level of the holding cells, I had to wonder if maybe mine wasn’t an approved visit. It was fitting, though, to start my first meet up with my father in a hallway filled with holding-cell doors on both sides, the rustling footsteps, groans, and snores of strangers echoing out at me.
Day was quiet as we walked, though that wasn’
t the blessing it should have been, as it only gave me too much time to ponder things, like what I was even doing there? To show my father I wasn’t afraid of him? I wasn’t. Not really. I was afraid of me—afraid I’d launch myself at him and make an ass out of myself, that he’d somehow take the upper hand while we spoke, that I’d give him what he wanted and get nothing back, leaving him to return to his cell with a self-satisfied smile that I’d be unable to scratch from his face.
I’d arranged the meeting to make him tell me what he was planning, but the closer I got to the room where Day had stowed my father, the more my confidence waned. I knew he wanted me out of the way so he could get out and reclaim my brothers as his sons. But did I really expect he would tell me how he planned to accomplish that? It was more likely he would leave me to guess. And if I guessed wrong, if I planned wrong, then we would all be in danger. Somehow, I had to get him talking, get him angry and make him tell me something.
And I always could get him angry.
One of the cell doors behind us slammed open and two officers came out, dragging a shackled prisoner between them. Watching the prisoner struggle to keep up with the officers’ strides, when he had a chain between his ankles restricting his movements to a short trot, was almost painfully frustrating, even as a mere observer. And something about that made me feel strangely better.
I suddenly found myself fantasizing about my father’s trip from his cell to where he and I would meet. I was actually smiling when we turned the corner, imagining how humiliated he would feel to engage in a silly little trot like that in front of his fellow officers. I could envision him being pushed out from one of the cells right in front of me, so that I could smirk along with them.
But that wasn’t to be. We made our way through card-locked double doors and then stood in front of a door marked INTERVIEW 3.
DS Day put his hand on the door handle and looked back at me over his shoulder. “You ready?”
I met his eyes without answering, and he quickly looked down like the submissive dog he was, then opened the door for me.
Stepping into my father’s interview room was perhaps the most surreal of the collection of moments I’d had all week. I thought I’d been transported back in time, or to an alternate universe where he’d never been caught, where I’d become someone who visited my father at work, where the police invited their daughters to observe interviews and we were still waiting for the criminal to be brought into the room.
Mind Games Page 6
