by Sara Shepard
It’s not like I have to tell her everything. I just have to tell her enough.
My fingers grapple for my phone, which I finally locate between two cushions. I will say this, and then I will press RECORD.
“You’re right,” I admit softly. “I was upset about that doctor. Greg. He and I were . . . close.”
Alexis’s whole body seems to thrum. “Were you Lolita?”
I arch my neck, staring at the constellations, and then I’m transported back to the Mannings’ kitchen. Greg was watching me, considering me. Our bodies were just inches from one another. I thought what I saw in his eyes was desire. I thought we were going to crash together, all lips and arms and torsos, and that I’d have him where I wanted him.
But then he crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re better than this, Raina.”
It felt like he’d dumped a bucket of water over my head. I stepped back. “What?” I spluttered.
“I wasn’t Lolita,” I tell Alexis now. “Greg and I weren’t even together. But . . . well, he was giving me money. He was paying my Aldrich tuition.”
Alexis blinks. “He was? How’d that happen?”
Greg guessed about me that night. He somehow knew I’d tried to seduce Alfred and was planning to try the trick on him next. When Greg questioned my motives, I spilled it all so quickly, almost like I’d been waiting for the chance. To this day, I don’t know why. Maybe because of the caring in his voice. Maybe because I needed someone to listen.
I told Greg I’d come to Aldrich only to milk Manning; I’d done my research, reading up on a bunch of high-powered men in high-powered places, and I thought a university president would be the perfect, trusting mark, the sort of man who didn’t have much experience with women or blackmail or anything treacherous and seedy. It also helped that Aldrich was only a simple drive away, and I could rent a hideout cheaply while I played out the con—something I couldn’t do in a more expensive city, like Philadelphia or New York. And most of all, I knew I was smart. I knew I could blend in at a college better than at my high school. I wanted a better life for myself, and this felt like a stepping-stone. Okay, a somewhat questionable stepping-stone, but I had to make do with what I had.
To infiltrate Manning’s life, though, I had to pose as a student. It wasn’t much of a stretch. I’d applied to Aldrich the prior year—and I’d even gotten in. But I’d torn up the admission letter. Aldrich was a place full of rich kids, entitled kids—I wouldn’t belong.
But as it turns out, I liked pretending to be a student. A lot. I wished I didn’t just audit the Aldrich classes—I wished I could go for real. Greg had looked at me with sympathy. “You’re smart,” he’d said. “You should.” And then a light had come on in his eyes. Resoluteness. “I’ll fund you,” he said. “I’ll send you to Aldrich. But you have to promise me two things: One, you can’t tell anyone. And two, you have to use it for school—nothing else.”
But I can’t say this to Alexis—I can’t show my hand. Instead, I describe my poor upbringing instead. How my parents didn’t care about saving for my education. How I wanted a better life for myself, but they just rolled their eyes. Then I paint a picture of Greg and me hanging out in the kitchen alone and all of this pouring out of me. It isn’t far from the truth.
“I told Greg the only thing I wanted was to stay at Aldrich—I’d fallen in love with it by then. But I couldn’t afford the tuition,” I explain. “And Greg said he was trying to make some positive, charitable changes in his life, and that funding me to stay at Aldrich would be one of them.” A wistful feeling swoops through me, remembering how joyful I’d felt that night. It was like I’d been given a reprieve from the gallows. “He made good on his promise. We met every month. He wanted to see how I was progressing in my classes. He was like my advisor, in a way. And he always gave me the money. Sometimes through an app, but sometimes cash.
“But then . . . he was killed.” A lump grows in my throat. “I couldn’t believe it. He was such a good guy. That Lolita bullshit people found out about him—I don’t know what that was all about, but I never saw that side of him. And now I’m stuck. I don’t know how I’m going to stay in school after this semester. I’m so . . . lost.”
The patio is silent, save for the chirping crickets. I glance at Alexis, figuring she’ll move in for a hug. Or maybe, just maybe, she’ll tell me that she’ll pay my tuition. How wonderful would that be? I wouldn’t have to scam her. I could just . . . be with her, and she’d pay my way through school, and we’d be so happy.
“So wait,” Alexis says slowly. “You have no more money coming in?”
I shake my head. “Greg gave me just enough to pay for tuition, room, and board for the next two semesters—so summer and next fall. After that, I’ll have to figure something out. I can try for financial aid, but . . .” I’ll have to face my parents again if I want aid, and that isn’t something I like thinking about.
Then I look at Alexis again. She’s frowning. Actually, she looks pissed. “Why does this matter?” I ask tentatively.
Alexis’s arms drop to her lap. She breathes out a plume of air, sending her bangs fluttering. “You were supposed to be loaded. I can’t fucking believe this.”
I frown, certain I’ve heard her wrong. But she still looks so furious. And not, I sense, at the situation—at me. “I’m sorry?” I squeak.
Alexis holds up her phone. The video app is on the screen—the very same video app I use. It reflects my image back to me. I see the time ticker in the corner, still running. “I just recorded you confessing your deal with Strasser,” Alexis says in a low voice. “I was going to use it to blackmail you into giving me his money. And now I find out you have none?”
The heat from the lamp bores into the top of my head. I feel like I’m trapped in a dream, all of the puzzle pieces shifting. I scuttle away from her. “Y-You wanted money from me?” I look around at the house, the fire pit, the sparkling pool. “But why?”
Alexis’s teeth gleam orange. The flames lick against her face, making her look ghoulish. “This isn’t my house,” she spits. “I house-sit for these people. I grew up in the city. In a shitty house probably not that different from yours.”
I blink hard. “You don’t live here? There’s no birthday party? No . . . Trip?” I’m not making sense, even to myself.
She snorts. “Of course there’s no Trip.” She turns, stiff-shouldered, her hands balled into fists. “I made up a boyfriend because you seem like someone who likes a challenge—like I’d only be interesting if you could steal me away.”
My eyes dart back and forth. Alexis’s mouth is moving, but she’s making no sense.
She goes on. “I’ve been tailing you for weeks. I saw you paying your tuition in cash a few days ago. I’ve seen you and Sienna Manning together. I knew there was something up with you that wasn’t totally kosher. I knew you were getting the money illegally, I just didn’t know how. But I thought he gave you tons.”
I’m standing by now, backed up so far from the couch that my spine is pressing up against the stone wall in the outdoor kitchen. My brain scrambles. Alexis can’t be using my methods. Recording someone’s confession—that’s my role, not hers. I run my hands up and down my arms, trying to feel if I’m still awake, still real.
Alexis is . . . me? I’ve been duped by another version of myself?
My hip bumps into the brickwork around the gas grill. “I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.” Alexis holds up her phone; the video recording is still running, the time ticking away at the top of the screen. “Did you forget I have this on you? What will people think if they hear you got the murdered guy to pay your tuition? Did you tell the police any of this?”
My breath catches in my throat. Of course I didn’t tell the police, but it’s not like I did anything. It’s not like I killed him. “I’ll tell them,” I insist. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be.” She crosses her arms. “You really think they’ll accept you at Aldrich if they find out you’re the skanky scammer from the wrong side of the tracks?” She throws back her head to laugh. “It’s pretty clear you want to be part of Aldrich, Raina, but if people know who you really are, they’ll never let you into the inner circle. It’s happened before. Check the hack—admissions rejected people with better records than you. After I release this video, they’ll look at your file and stamp it with a big red No.”
My jaw drops. It chills me how good she is at this—better than I am, even.
“What do you want from me?” I repeat, my knees shaking.
Alexis waves her phone. She’s stopped the video. On the screen is a freeze-frame of my profile; I look scared and drawn, almost skeletal. All at once, I notice that the fire has died out. The cool, close, fragrant air billows around us. I want to run. I want to scream. These were the same words I used with Dr. Rosen, the same bargaining chips. Do I deserve this? Is this karma? My penance?
Alexis tilts her chin, slips her phone back in her pocket. When she takes my hand, it’s almost kind and loving . . . but I know better. “You and I are going to team up,” she says smoothly. “We’re going to scam someone else as a team. And this time, it’s going to work.”
24
KIT
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017
I squint in the dim, dingy light of the Saloon. It’s a bar right next to the giving department’s building; I can see the parking lot from my office window. But I’ve never actually been here until now. The high-top tables are chipped and worn, the leather banquettes have what looks like a layer of grease to their upholstery, and signs for local beers hang on the walls. People, mostly men, have gathered around the TVs over the bar.
I choose a booth at the back near the bathrooms. One of the twenty TVs isn’t playing sports, and I notice the closed-captioning on the news: Authorities may have tracked the Ivy Hacker to socialist “hacktivists” in New York who want free higher education for all.
My father pops onto the screen. Aldrich University President Alfred Manning Not Connected to Any Hack Scandals Thus Far, but Noted for Erratic Behavior. What does that mean? I’ve barely gotten to speak to my father about all the stress he’s under aside from the trading of e-mails on certain press releases I need to communicate to the donors. Most evenings, he’s at meetings, or dealing with detectives, or addressing the board, trying to put out fires. Normally, I’d be in on some of these meetings, as so much of Aldrich’s activities are things the donors want to know about, but it seems George is doing the bulk of the work.
I lean forward, trying to hear what Marilyn O’Leary is saying to the reporter. “Alfred Manning is fine,” she insists. Her lipstick is a weird shade of orange. “He’s understandably stressed by the situation, personally and professionally.”
And then, inevitably, the reporter reminds the viewers of Dad’s ties to me: “President Manning is also dealing with the death of his daughter’s husband, Greg Strasser.” The picture of Greg and me in Barbados pops on the screen. I slide down in my chair, covering my face with my hair.
“What’s the matter?” Willa slides into the bench across from me.
I glance toward the TV. “Oh, you know. I’m just on the news again.”
Willa wrinkles her nose. “They’re saying Dad seems exhausted,” she says. “Do you think we should be worried?”
“Marilyn says he’s fine.”
Willa snorts. “Marilyn’s probably the one who planted the story in the first place. Something about her rubs me wrong. I think she’s after Dad’s job.”
I ponder this for a moment, trying to imagine Marilyn O’Leary, a blond, slightly haggard, with a take-no-shit, Kellyanne Conway–thing going, taking over as Aldrich president. It makes me a little ill. Marilyn tried to date my father about ten years ago, when the stuff with my mom was still fresh. She threw herself at him. Acted completely ridiculous. I was surprised when, after he rejected her, she gracefully backed down. She’s always struck me as one of those rat-sniffing terriers, stopping at nothing to dig for what it wants.
Willa looks disdainfully at the plate of fries I’ve ordered. I figure I’m going to get a lecture about trans fats, but then she sighs, plucks one from my plate, and stuffs it into her mouth. “Thanks for meeting me on your lunch break.”
“It’s not like I was busy,” I mutter. “What’s going on?”
Willa’s throat bobs as she swallows another fry. “I thought you might want to know about some of the questions I asked Raina Hammond.”
I stare at her. I just can’t believe Willa cornered the feisty, slippery girl and got answers out of her. “Did she admit to something?”
Willa pokes a stirrer through the ice cubes in her water glass. “Greg was giving her money.” She looks at me uneasily, maybe thinking I’m going to have some kind of ballistic reaction. I just gape. “All in all, he gradually transferred about fifteen grand into a Venmo account in her name.”
“Fifteen thousand . . . are you kidding?” I splutter. A few guys at the bar look over. I hunch down in the booth, my head whirling. I feel hot, then cold, then dizzy. “Are you sure?”
Willa nods. “Positive. Raina scammed a guy in her hometown—some doctor. They had sex, she admitted to him she was underage, and got him to pay her. I have a feeling she tried to seduce Dad in a similar way, though she swore to me that it backfired. She turned to Greg next.” She crunches another fry. “Except he didn’t bite, either.”
“So why did he still give her money, then?”
Willa picks at her nails. “She said he took pity on her. He wanted to offer her a way out of a life as a scam artist. She said her true dream was to be a real student at Aldrich. She wasn’t even a matriculated student when she was Dad’s assistant, if you can believe it. She lied her way into that job so she could get close to him to milk him out of some cash.”
I stare up at the dusty, faux-Tiffany pendant lamp above us. How could my husband feel so much sympathy for someone he barely knew? He wasn’t a bleeding heart. Maybe I’m biased because of those sickening e-mails, but I feel there’s more to the story.
“I don’t buy he was doing it just to be nice,” I say.
“Yeah, I didn’t at first, either,” Willa says, shrugging. “No offense. But she seemed genuine—and believe me, I’ve interviewed enough liars. She even let me look at her bank accounts—the girl has about twenty bucks to her name right now. Apparently, she paid the bursar right before Greg died. I called the bursar, too—Raina’s last payment, which isn’t registered on the hack, actually took place the day all the systems were down. She paid cash.”
“Do you think Greg paid her in cash, or she just withdrew cash from her bank account?”
“I don’t know, though I’m not sure it really matters. But if she’s telling the truth—and I think she is—if Greg was helping her pay for college, Raina has no reason to kill him. It explains why she was so upset about his death, too. You wouldn’t have wanted to see the town this girl was from, so I get why she’d do anything not to go back there. Aldrich is a ticket to something better.” Willa bites into another fry, then gives me another sheepish glance. “She also showed me empirical evidence that Sienna wasn’t anywhere near your house all night, too.”
I hitch forward in my chair. “Really?”
“The girls follow each other on Find My Friend. It’s a pretty common app—”
“I’ve heard of it,” I interrupt. “In fact, I’ve used it, with the girls. But I’ve become lax with it, lately. They’re good kids . . .”
Willa drums her fingers on the table. “Raina’s app has a history of where Sienna was that whole night—it’s a little square around campus, and that’s it. Though she did say that if I made public what I’d figured out about her, she’ll delete the evidence. I tried to bluff, saying Sienna’s alibi doesn’t matter, bu
t Raina must know Sienna isn’t innocent in all this. Maybe Sienna slipped that she wrote the Lolita e-mails. Raina knew it was a good bargaining chip.”
“Shit,” I whisper. Then again, proof that Sienna wasn’t anywhere near the murder was good. Just in case the cops ever figure out she’s Lolita. Then I lean forward. “Did she say anything about why she lied to me about when she found out about Greg’s death?”
Willa frowns, confused, and I explain to her how Raina said she was right next to Sienna when she actually wasn’t. “That’s why I was suspicious of her in the first place. I thought she was trying to cover up for having snuck to my house and killed him.”
Willa shrugs. “She showed me her own data for Find My Friend. She really was at that party. Same as Sienna. I guess they just were in different rooms or something.”
“Is there a way to fake Find My Friend?” I ask.
“I mean, I guess.” Willa takes another fry. “One of them could have planted their phone at the party, I suppose. But that requires quite a bit of forethought. Also, Raina’s data shows the phone moving around, like someone naturally would at a party.”
I settle back, trying to think this through. Maybe Raina was just confused, then. Or maybe she said she’d found out with Sienna because that’s how she wanted it to go down, even though it hadn’t. It was hard to know.
Willa twists her mouth. “How do you feel about all of this?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the truth. Getting the news about Sienna being Lolita was brutal enough. I still can’t wrap my mind around it, and I still don’t know if not saying anything to the police is the right move. A few times, I’ve peered at the card Ollie Apatrea gave me at the funeral, wondering if I should call him. Maybe he’d be a good sounding board. Maybe we could talk off the record. But then, he’s still a cop. It’s probably still too dangerous.
But now finding out Greg was paying a random girl to go to Aldrich? Couldn’t he have used that money for charity? For us?
