After Lana leaves for the police department the next morning, I stay in my room checking county and city property records Web sites hoping to find information on the Larsens. That’s a lot of Web sites because there are a ton of cities and counties in the metro area. Everybody within a thirty-mile radius of Atlanta says they’re from here, even if their address says differently. Since I’m only working on a hunch that the Larsens are from around Atlanta, I have to check them all. So far, I get nothing on their names, but that only means I haven’t looked widely enough or they never owned property, which seems pretty unlikely for people with Powerball money.
I decide to call Bethanie to see if she has Cole’s address for me yet and, oh yeah, find out if he’s on the run from the law. But first I need to butter her up into thinking I support this crazy plan of spending the weekend with him. If I can manage that, I might be able to get some information out of her about her family.
“Can you ever call or visit someone at a decent hour?” Bethanie says, sounding like she just woke up.
“Sorry, I keep forgetting I’m two hours ahead. But it’s six there; you should be getting up for school, anyway.”
“I’m thinking of skipping.”
“Remember you have to keep the charade going for your parents, right? Smythe will call home if you don’t show, and she might be ready to kick you out of Langdon if you keep it up. It’s just one more day and then you’ll be hanging with Cole.”
“I suppose that’s true. Why are you suddenly all Miss Supportive?” she says, sounding more awake and a little suspicious.
“Because I’ve been thinking about what you said. I probably am just jealous of you since Marco dumped me.”
“So you’re sure it’s over between you?”
“Pretty much,” I say, even though I haven’t talked to Marco since that hallway conversation. But he made it pretty clear—I just didn’t want to believe it at the time.
“That’s too bad. Maybe you guys can still work it out.”
“Maybe, but for now I have to live vicariously through you and Cole. Did you get his address yet?”
“Yeah, I’m at his place now. I’ll text it to you when I hang up.”
“What’s it like?”
I imagine Cole lives on a polo field, probably because when I first met him, I thought he might be a Ralph Lauren model who got his clothes on employee discount because that’s all he ever wears. And maybe Hilfiger when he’s slumming.
“Nothing special,” Bethanie says.
“Really?”
“Don’t get excited, Chanti. It isn’t that he’s broke. It’s just temp housing—you know, one of those executive apartments until he decides whether he’s staying in Denver. Hopefully I’ll be influencing that decision.”
Oh, there are so many tangents I could go off on after that statement, but I stay focused.
“So what’s the big plan?” I ask.
She goes silent for a second.
“Still there?”
“Yeah. I’m just bummed because there is no big plan. I thought since he suggested I spend the weekend with him, we’d be doing something more than the usual. Now it sounds like more of the same, except I’ll get to hang at his place and eat pizza.”
“Well, that leaves a lot of time for romance, if you know what I mean.”
“I can still hold out hope for that, but he hasn’t even kissed me yet.”
“Seriously?” It’s killing me that I can’t figure this guy out. What kind of guy wants to get his girl alone for three days and just order pizza?
“The most exciting thing we ever do is play poker. Now I wish I’d never taught him how.”
“You taught him?” This makes me all kinds of relieved. Lana’s fugitive would already know how to play poker.
“We needed something to kill all the time we don’t spend making out. Maybe I should teach him strip poker, but I’d have to throw a lot of games since he isn’t very good. I think that’s the only way I’ll get him to notice I have other assets.”
“Other assets?” A-ha! So I was right about that part. Cole really is trying to get Bethanie’s money. Maybe she’s figured it out, too.
“He thinks I’m wasting my brain.”
“How’s that?”
“He says I put up all these fake personas. Homegirl who doesn’t have interest in good grades. Rich, vacuous diva. I made the mistake of telling him I’ve got a one hundred fifty-nine IQ and he just won’t—”
“Wow, I thought I was smart. You beat me out by a few points. He’s right—you definitely hide that.”
“You saying I’m not too bright?”
“Obviously you’re smart. So why do you get grades that are just good enough to stay in Langdon, and talk about Fashion Week and shopping like they’re critical to achieving world peace?”
“Maybe I was tired of being the human calculator. I wanted to be like other girls—talk about clothes, go to parties, have a boyfriend.”
“And you never did those things before because you were a ... human calculator?” I don’t know what exactly she means by that, but I’m pretty sure there’s a clue in there somewhere.
“Math. That’s my thing. I’m brilliant at it, according to my teachers. Before Langdon, back at my old school, I was taking college level courses starting in eighth grade. But the minute people find out, there goes all the fun.”
“So why did you tell him about it?”
“I didn’t. He figured it out when I kept beating him in poker. Math helps you figure out the odds. I guess a lot of the professional poker players are math geniuses or something.”
“There are worse things you could be than a math genius. You could probably get a full scholarship to MIT or Cal Tech.”
“I don’t care about that right now. What I care about this weekend is making sure I won’t be the only virgin in twelfth grade next year, and I can’t even get a kiss.”
“I’m pretty sure you won’t be the only one,” I say, ’cause there will at least be me in the club, especially after Marco just dumped me. And I’m pretty sure half the girls who claim to have done it, haven’t.
“I gotta get ready for school. My parents think I’m going to your house after class tomorrow, so they’ll probably call tomorrow night.”
“What if they want to talk to my mother?”
“They won’t. They think you walk on water and will show me the error of my ways. But if they do, just fake it. It isn’t like they know her voice.”
After she hangs up, I realize I didn’t get much information about her family, except for that human calculator thing. When my phone rings, I hope it might be Marco but I’m sure it’s Bethanie with some instruction she forgot to tell me on how I’m supposed to help her lie, so I’m surprised when I hear MJ’s voice.
“I haven’t seen you around for a couple of days and wondered what’s up,” MJ says, not wasting time on subtleties, like a greeting.
“MJ, is that you?”
“24/7/365. Look, we haven’t talked since that morning in front of the bodega—”
“And you were wondering if I’ve been so quiet because I’ve been looking into what you know about the robbery, who Eddie is and how he plays into it, right?”
“Something like that,” MJ says, sounding a little peeved that I’ve read her so well.
“As interested as I am in learning what you know, I’m working on something else right now that needs my full attention.”
“Like an investigation?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in,” I say, not ready to share my theories on Cole. At this point, it’s all a hunch, a crazy-sounding one that Bethanie just upended when she told me Cole doesn’t know how to play poker. But I’m certain about him being after Bethanie’s bank account.
“I’m interested as long as it doesn’t involve me. Maybe I can help.”
MJ has a point. It always helps when I can talk through clues with someone else, especially if that someone else is a reformed criminal. She’
ll have insight from the other side, and if I keep the information generic, she doesn’t need to know that she probably is involved if she knows something about the bodega robbery. But right now, that’s the least important aspect of the Cole mystery.
“A friend at school is involved with this guy I think is bad news.”
“I know all about that kind of guy. Seems like the only kind I attract,” MJ says, and she ain’t ever lied. Associating with her last boyfriend is what got her two years in juvie.
“The girl is crazy rich and this guy is really pressing her hard, all charming and everything, and she thinks he’s in love with her.”
“But he’s really after the cheddar.”
“I can’t make her see it, though. She keeps giving him opportunities to take their romance to the next level, and he won’t even kiss her.”
“That’s weird. Maybe he isn’t into girls.”
“No, it’s definitely not that.”
Cole is a mystery, but that I know for sure. No guy could charm a girl—even just look at a girl—the way he can and not be straight. If I wasn’t mad about Marco and Cole didn’t give me a bad feeling, I’d probably be trying to get him alone for a weekend myself. Not that I’d know what to do with him, but you know what I mean.
“Seems like he’d take her money and whatever else she’s throwing at him. That’s just how guys are.”
“That’s what I thought. I just talked to her before you called and I think he’s after a different part of her body—her brain.”
“What?”
“This girl is a math genius. She says all the time they’re together, he’s taking her to the racetrack, having her teach him to count cards and play poker using statistics and probability, encouraging her math skills. That’s all they ever do. No movies or putt-putt golf or concerts. None of the usual date stuff.”
“If this chick is rich and math smart, he sounds like a gambler who has hit the lottery,” MJ says, not knowing how right she is about that lottery part.
“But she had to teach him to play poker. What hard-core gambler doesn’t know poker?”
“Maybe he’s taking a page from the girl handbook of dating.”
There’s a handbook? Somebody should have told me because I could seriously use it right about now. “How do you mean?”
“You know, act like you’re stupid about something to make a guy feel brilliant. Personally, I think that’s some bull—”
“So you’re saying he knows how to play,” I say, interrupting MJ, back to thinking I did see what I thought I saw last night. “But he’s pretending not to know so she can teach him to play better.”
“She can teach him to play better and he can use her to fund his habit.”
“Thanks, MJ, you helped a lot, but I gotta go now,” I say, glad she helped me brainstorm. But now I’m ready to think through some things on my own.
“About the bodega thing—”
“I swear, MJ, don’t worry. That’s the last thing on my mind right now. Talk to you later.”
What I told MJ was partly true. I’m not concerned with her involvement in the holdup—for now—but I’m more certain than ever that Cole somehow staged the whole thing. Now I’m thinking he isn’t just a guy with a girl who is so crazy about him she can’t see that he’s not at all crazy about her, at least not the way she wants him to be.
All those blue ribbons on Bethanie’s corkboard in her room—I bet they were for her math skills. They have math bowls that are like spelling bees. They don’t get as much press as spelling bees, but if you’re good enough to win as many times as Bethanie has, you’ve probably made the news once or twice. Maybe Cole learned about Bethanie when they were both here in Atlanta—about her math skills and her father’s winning lottery ticket—and he tracked her down in Colorado to turn her into his ATM and math coach. What if Cole really is the guy Lana is looking for?
But if Bethanie already has the money and is clearly willing to share her wealth with him, why would he need to gamble at all? I like MJ’s theory about the scam he’s running on Bethanie, pretending to know nothing about the game so she can teach him, because what girl can pass up the chance to turn a guy into a project? Cole is new to Denver and from what I can guess, he arrived about the same time as the Larsens. Add all that to the fact he has no job but lives large without taking Bethanie’s money (so far, anyway), and won’t give his last name, and you can see how I’d jump to conclusions.
Lana would probably say my theory is a stretch—too much speculation and not enough evidence. But until I can get another look at the photo in her file, a theory is all I’ve got.
Chapter 15
When Lana gets back from the Atlanta PD, I realize I’ve spent an entire day on the Net and turned up nothing. I feel like a bum not only because my research time meant I didn’t hang out with my grandparents as much as I should have, I also wasn’t able to tell Lana how I single-handedly solved her big case. I was planning to produce proof of my theory that Bethanie was a local math genius in Atlanta on the run from something I haven’t figured out yet, but who was followed to Denver by Lana’s missing witness because he wanted to use her math skills to win lots of money gambling, like Tom Cruise’s character in Rain Man. Seriously, that is what I was planning to tell her until this very moment when I realize it sounds insane without proof. I already checked our room. No sign of her case files anywhere. I guess after my snooping last night, she’s on to me.
Since I couldn’t find any proof on the Net, I need to go right to the source. I find Lana downstairs in the kitchen with my grandmother, helping her clean chitlins at the kitchen sink. The stench hit me before I even got to the kitchen, and yet they’re laughing and having a good old time standing over a sink full of pig innards. Yuck!
“You want to help us clean these?” my grandmother asks like she’s offering me tickets to a sold-out Jay-Z concert. “We can make room for you.”
“Uh, no, I’m fine over here.”
“What Southern girl doesn’t like chitlins?”
“I was raised in Colorado. People there don’t even know what that is. For good reason.”
“But you were born here,” my grandmother reminds me, “and you still got South in your blood. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I do. But I play nice because I need some information from Lana.
“So how did work go today? Any closer to catching that guy?”
“No closer.”
“Any new leads?”
“Nothing new.”
Okay, this is getting me nowhere. Lana usually likes to talk a little about her cases, and she wasn’t holding out on me last night, but now she’s all super quiet. Probably because Grandma’s around. She never liked Lana being a cop, thought it was too dangerous for a single mother. She’d really hate it if she knew how much Lana shares her job with me or knew how I secretly want to be a cop—if I can just get over my serious dislike of confrontation and my wussiness in general. I leave them to their mother-daughter bonding over pig intestines and go find my grandfather in the backyard splitting wood.
“Baby girl, you finally come out of your room to visit with me?”
“Sorry I’ve been AWOL. Trying to keep up with schoolwork since I missed a few days.”
“Reminds me of your mama. She stayed in that room all the time, too, when she got to be about your age.”
I can’t imagine that since when she was my age, she was about to get pregnant with me. Clearly she was leaving her room occasionally.
“You’re like her in more ways than one.”
“Really? I never thought that at all.”
Especially since Lana is fearless, always in control, about four inches taller, and probably never worried about losing ten pounds. And when she was about to turn sixteen, she had a boyfriend with whom she went way past one serious kiss. I present myself as exhibit A.
“Oh, sure. When you were both little girls, you had this curiosity about the world
and the way people move through it. It makes your grandmother a little mad, but I wasn’t a bit surprised when Lana called us to say she was enrolling in police academy. She tells me you got a little case of the detective bug in you, too. Says it worries her because you’re so good at it she can’t keep you out of trouble.”
“She said I was a good detective?”
“Don’t tell her I said so,” he says, adding a laugh.
“How else are we alike?” I say, so glad I came to see him.
“Stand away, back there. Don’t want any flying wood chips to get you,” Papa warns before he raises the ax and brings it down hard against a big piece of white oak. “One thing you definitely have in common is you’re both so independent. Act like you don’t need anybody or anything.”
“That means we know how to take care of ourselves.”
“It also means one day when you need some help, and we all do eventually, you won’t know how to ask for it.”
“We ask for help all the time.”
“Only when it comes to helping someone else, never yourself. That doesn’t count. Strength is acknowledging where you are weak.”
As I watch Papa swing the ax, I don’t imagine he has any weaknesses. That’s probably because he’s the youngest grandfather I know. He’s not much older than Tasha’s father. I wonder what he thought when Lana first told him about me, and whether she asked him for help then.
As though we conjured her up, Lana comes out to the yard.
“We’ll have a nice fire tonight,” Papa says.
“Weather this warm would be reason to break out the shorts in Denver, right, Chanti?” Lana says. She sounds happy. I don’t know if it’s because she’s back home or because of the big case, but she’s in the perfect mood for me to get some information out of her.
“I know you probably didn’t want to talk about the case in front of Grandma, but—”
“Not this time, Chanti, not after the morning I just spent learning about it. The less you know about this case, the better.”
Creeping with the Enemy Page 11
