“You mean the whole children-of-employees get a free ride deal?”
“That’s right. His mama was in charge of the cafeteria.”
“Ms. Ayotunde is in charge of the cafeteria, and unless fair-haired Brent is adopted . . . well, they don’t look much alike.”
“I said was in charge, past tense. When Smythe decided to end the program, me and Mrs. Carmody were the only employees whose kids qualified. Of course, you know how Smythe got rid of Reginald.”
I do—she had him expelled for defacing school property when Justin Mitchell was the real culprit. I figured it out and Reginald was reenrolled. Now Mildred will be my friend and informant for as long as we’re both at Langdon.
“Well, she couldn’t find a way to get rid of Brent, so she got rid of his mama, firing her based on job performance.”
“Maybe she just wasn’t a very good cook. If so, I’m glad she’s gone because Ms. Ayotunde throws down like she studied in France or something.”
“Well, she wasn’t as good as Ms. Ayotunde, that’s true. But she weren’t no slouch in the kitchen, either.”
“So you think Smythe railroaded her, too?”
“You know how she is, only wanting the upper-crust gracing her precious school.”
Oh, I know better than anyone. I imagine Smythe had a fainting spell the day the Langdon school board announced they were letting economically disadvantaged Marco and me in here on a scholarship.
“So why is Brent still here?”
“That’s the mysterious part. Me and his mama weren’t what you call friends, more like colleagues, but I know for a fact they can’t afford this tuition or that car. I’ve been to their place a few times when I gave her a ride home. A single mother making a cafeteria lady’s income lives pretty much like you’d expect. Her neighborhood had seen its best day thirty or forty years ago. Nice clean home, but small, nothing fancy by any stretch.”
“Maybe she can afford the tuition and car because she didn’t put her money into her house, and because she was the head cafeteria lady.”
“Uh-uh. I’m the head custodian so I know better. When Reginald got expelled, he went to public school. And you know the old beater I drive.”
“But they somehow came up with the tuition for Brent to keep coming here? Smythe must have had a fit.”
“Guess she should have found some false charge to get the boy thrown out like she did Reginald, instead of firing his mother,” Mildred says, using the last bite of her dinner roll to sop up the dregs of the sauce from her pork saltimbocca. Now I regret skipping today’s stop on the café’s tour of Italy.
“Well, I’m no fan of Smythe, but she mistook Reginald for Justin. She didn’t make up a charge.”
“We’ll agree to disagree on that. Either way, I don’t know how that boy can still be here, but I’m glad he is. Must make Smythe cringe every time she sees him.”
“Mildred, you make a good point,” I say, remembering my original reason for coming to see her. “If Brent is as scary as his reputation has me to believe, seems like Smythe could have easily found some reason to kick him out. He must violate the Langdon code of honor regularly.”
“There’s another mystery about that boy. As far as Smythe and the teachers know—even me for that matter—he keeps his nose clean. Of course, I always figured it was the usual reason when you see a poor kid acting like he anything but. Every school got one, even this one. That boy is just good at hiding it.”
“You think he’s Langdon Prep’s drug dealer?”
“I’m only guessing, but what else could explain it?”
“Loan shark?” I offer.
“Hmph. You need money to loan.”
“Maybe he’s both—sells drugs to make the money to loan, which makes him even more money.”
“Could be, but I’m leaning to just drug dealer. What these rich kids need a loan shark for? They got everything they want, and then some.”
“You have a point there.”
“Brent must be pretty smart, I’ll give him that. Whatever he did to earn his rep, only the kids know about it, and even then, I don’t think they all do,” Mildred says, starting on her dessert—tiramisu. I reeeally shouldn’t have skipped lunch today.
“From what I can tell, everyone’s afraid of him.”
“That’s the beauty of reputations, or the curse, depending on what it is. Only a few people need to know how you earned it, but eventually everyone will believe it.”
“Any ideas who might really know how Brent earned his?”
“The only kids I ever see him with besides his little crew are the sports crowd, but that’s all I know. For the first time, you’ve stumped old Mildred. You want some dirt on Brent Carmody, you’re gonna have to ask one of these spoiled delinquents.”
*
When the end-of-lunch bell rings, I thank Mildred for her help and hurry to study hall, where I find the spoiled delinquent I recently befriended. Bonus that she’s a member of the “sports crowd.” If cheer isn’t considered an actual sport, it’s like a groupie of the actual sports, and Annette probably knows something useful about Brent, like why he only hangs out with jocks.
She got to class early enough to have claimed one of the prized personal study rooms.
“Guess who’s been avoiding me?”
“No one’s avoiding you, Chanti. I’ve just been busy.”
“Oh, that’s right. Was the cheer squad able to come to a decision?” I ask, sitting on the table in her room because there’s only one chair.
“What meeting?”
Yeah, I thought so. Annette’s already forgotten her lie. She’s so lucky she never got caught during one of her mall adventures. Before we were enemies-turned-friends, I busted her on her shoplifting tendencies, but it turns out Annette isn’t a thief. She’s got a mild case of kleptomania, but she’s in treatment for that, fortunately. You need to be a good liar to be a good thief, and Annette would not pass that test. When it comes to foreign languages, she’s brilliant—the girl speaks seven fluently—but not so much on the lying. I let her off about the meeting.
“So what do you think was going on between Marco and Brent last week?”
“Look, all I know is what Dexter—”
Annette stops mid-confession, apparently distracted by something behind me. I turn around expecting to see Ms. Hemphill at the door, but find Brent standing there.
“Can we help you with something?” I ask.
Normally I avoid confrontation, but this is the guy making Marco’s life miserable. Maybe because I’ve been hanging out with MJ Cooper so much, or it could be the self-defense moves Lana’s been teaching me after seeing my difficulty staying out of trouble, but I’m starting to get a little feisty when people mess with me and mine.
Brent stares me down a few seconds, but doesn’t say anything before he goes in search of an empty table.
“I told you, Chanti. You don’t want to mess with that guy.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me why.”
“Because . . . you just don’t.”
“Do you know anything about him and Marco? All I know so far is that he owes Brent money.”
“Owes him money? Like I have any idea,” Annette says, making a point not to look at me when she says it and digging around in her backpack instead. At least she knows that lie tactic.
“Can you at least tell me what Brent did to earn his bad-boy rep?”
Annette’s head is now practically buried in her backpack. “Where the hell is my pen? I know it’s in here somewhere.”
“I have an extra. Take mine,” I offer, but she won’t even look up at the Paper Mate I’m holding out to her, and instead moves the now-frantic search to her purse.
“These study rooms are only meant for one person, you know. You’d better get out before Ms. Hemphill comes over. I don’t want to lose the room.”
I leave to find a study table. Annette didn’t want to come off the information, but questioning her wasn’t a total b
ust. At least I confirmed she knows something about Brent’s story. Maybe Mildred’s guess is as good as any. Whatever he is, Langdon’s resident badass is at least scary enough to make my friend too afraid to talk about it.
Chapter 11
After talking with Mildred and Annette, I can’t get Reginald’s veiled warning about Marco out of my mind. It’s one thing for a princess like Annette to be afraid of a wannabe gangster like Brent. I think she might actually be royalty, about ten times removed. She’s a descendant of a Korean emperor or something. Girl has never known what it’s like to live hard. Aurora Ave isn’t in the hardest neighborhood in metro Denver, but it’s a long way from being the easiest. If Annette and I ever get to be real friends, I know I’ll never invite her to my house. Not only would she have no idea know where it is, once she figured it out, she’d be in the awkward position of explaining how there’s no way in hell she or her brand-new Lexus IS would ever be caught in Denver Heights.
But it’s a whole other thing for Reginald to be worried. He’s from the Heights too, the south side like Marco, and even if he kept far away from any local trouble, sometimes you just can’t avoid the circumstances of where you live. No doubt he’s had a few run-ins with dealers, gangsters, and all the assorted criminals who call the Heights home. And it was clear from the assist he gave Marco in the gym last week that he can handle himself. He may have spent the last six years at Langdon Prep, but at the end of the school day, he had to come back home. If he thinks Marco has something to worry about from Brent, it would be stupid to ignore his warning, especially now that I know he’s crushing on Annette and not running down Marco just to make a play for me. Not that I’m mad at him about that. Much.
I should be studying for tomorrow’s French exam but the only thing I can focus on is how Marco’s problem may not be bad karma at all. I’m beginning to think getting jumped by Brent and then mugged Saturday night isn’t just a coincidence, either. After replaying the mugging for the umpteenth time, I found there were a lot of things not quite right about it. I need to know whether my hunch is right. Lucky for me, I have my very own source at the Denver police department.
“Perfect timing. Dinner’s ready,” Lana says when I find her at the stove dishing food onto plates.
“What are we having?” I ask, but what I mean is, What scary concoction will you be subjecting me to tonight? Lana’s cooking is . . . let’s call it imaginative.
“Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I found some recipes in the paper.”
Okay, that all sounds normal. The fact that she used a recipe is a good sign, though my mom is convinced that her little “tweaks” are what make a recipe all hers. She could not be more right about that.
“This doesn’t taste like mashed potatoes,” I say after I brave a forkful.
“Because it’s really mashed yucca. Tastes just like potatoes.”
Not really.
“I’m trying to cook healthier. The meatloaf is actually made from black beans and tempeh.”
I don’t even ask what that last thing is, just drown it in half the bottle of ketchup that she has thankfully put on the table.
“The other night you were warning me to stay off the Sixteenth Street Mall. Have they figured out who the perps are?”
“Downtown isn’t in my zone, so I don’t know many details, but the only thing they know about the suspects is that they’re kids.”
“You mean like my age or in their twenties?” I have to clarify because Lana thinks anyone under twenty-five is a kid even though she’s only eight years older than that herself.
“I mean juveniles. They surround the victims so they can’t run, then make them hand over money, jewelry, phones—whatever they can sell later.”
The guys who jumped Marco and me were definitely over eighteen. And I made it easy for them by just handing over my bag, but they wouldn’t take it.
“Have there been any assaults so far, or just the thefts?”
“So far, seven cases have been reported, and in two of them, the victims resisted and got beaten up pretty badly. One of them was in critical condition for a few days.”
“I don’t get these people who resist a gun. Bullets always win over fists.”
“That’s true, but none of the witnesses reported weapons used of any kind. These kids are just using their numbers to intimidate the targets. They work in a group of seven to ten, surrounding the victims so they can’t run.”
Our muggers were just two guys, and even if there were more of them, I get the feeling they like to rely on guns, not numbers.
Lana stops pretending she’s enjoying the meatless meatloaf to give me a hard look. “Why do you want to know all this?”
“Just making conversation.”
“You’re asking too many questions to just be making conversation.”
She’s about to turn the interrogation around on me, so I throw her off kilter by making my next question completely unrelated to the mall muggings.
“So what’s the latest on him?”
My question has the desired effect; Lana never saw it coming and takes a moment to answer. When she finally does, it’s after she goes to the stove for a refill on the potato-less mashed potatoes. She stays at the stove stirring the pot, her back to me again.
“You know his name. Why don’t you ever say it?”
“Because that makes him a real person. Because it’s pretty much the only thing I know about him and until I know more, I don’t want him to be real.”
The part I don’t say? I want to avoid disappointment if it turns out that’s the only thing I ever do learn about him.
“His record was expunged. He never served a day of his sentence. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s significant to my investigation.”
“Because it means you were wrong and he never went to jail,” I say, my tone accusatory.
“As much as you’d like that to be true, it isn’t,” Lana says, her tone implying something, too. I just don’t know if she means I want it to be true that my father never served time, or that she may have lied to me about the whole your-dad’s-a-dangerous-con story.
“But you said he never served a day.”
“I also said his record was expunged,” Lana says, joining me at the table. “An expunged record is still a record. He was charged, found guilty, and sentenced. There was even a prison order of where he was supposed to do his time. But someone made it all go away.”
“Who can make something like that happen?”
“My guess is the people he tried to steal from.”
“I thought it was just a B&E.”
“You know as well as I do that B&E is never the only charge. There’s a reason people break and enter.”
“So how could these people get his record expunged and sentence dropped?”
“Because they were very powerful. I’m guessing they made some kind of deal with him in return for what he had to offer.”
“What does a high school kid have to offer people powerful enough to make criminal charges just disappear?”
“Can I bring you some more beans?” she says, which means she doesn’t plan on answering my question.
“Will you at least tell me who the powerful people are?”
“Until I learn more about where he is and what he’s doing now, it’s better you don’t know.”
One thing about my mother and me is we can read so much into the words that neither of us says. I imagine it’s like the connection between twins. From what I’ve seen of my friends and their mothers, most of the time they don’t have a clue about what the other one really wants or means. That’s never been the case with Lana and me, even when we try our best to conceal our real intentions. She’s a cop so her job is to hide and reveal what she wants while getting the real story out of others. Thing is, I’m her mini-me. Which means I know what she really means by that last line: it’s safer that I don’t know.
Chapter 12
Langdon Prep was buzzing all day a
bout the Great Eight game tonight. There was the obvious stuff like banners in the hallways, locker-decorating contests, and the seventh period pep rally Headmistress Smythe surprised us with. But even without all that, you could just feel this current of excitement and anticipation sizzling through every L-Prepster—except me. I’m not bummed about last night’s conversation with Lana, though I ought to be. I’m too busy worrying about Marco despite my promise that I wouldn’t. When I saw him this morning, I faked it, reminding him about his jump shot issue and assuring him he’d be a rock star on the court. Unfortunately, my cheerleading attempt was a fail because he didn’t seem very excited about the game, either.
Now I’m sitting with Annette in the Denver Coliseum where the final three rounds of the playoffs will be held. High school sports (well, any sport) is serious business in this town, so the big games—Great Eight, Final Four, and the championship—move out of the school auditoriums into bigger venues. All eight teams play today, so it’s packed. We already watched Milton Academy win in the last game. Milton is our big rival and the team we’ll play if we make it to the championship game, but first we have to beat the Galloway School tonight. That current I felt all day at school has not only found its way into the Coliseum, but it must have gotten a supercharge because I’m starting to believe my own lie that everything is going to be just great. Until I see Reginald Dacey making his way toward us.
I haven’t figured dude out. He says he wants me to introduce him to Annette, but he’s still giving these signals. Then again, while I can see all the signs of a robbery about to happen or spot a shoplifter in the middle of a crazed, day-after-Thanksgiving sale, my playdar is pretty weak. But what other reason could he have to come over? I know I used him to make Marco jealous during our on-again, off-again phase, but I told Reginald that was over. Marco and I are so good we deserve one of those celebrity couple names, like Chanco or Marcti.
I’m all ready to tell this boy that I appreciate him helping Marco out in the gym but he and I can never be when he steps right over me and takes the open seat on the other side of Annette, which had been holding our coats.
Guys, Lies & Alibis Page 6
