“And me? Is there no end to mine?”
I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down until we were eye to eye. “Your torment will also have to wait until tomorrow.” I kissed him quickly and spun around him to walk freely toward the door. But at the last minute I ran back to him and handed him the envelope with the drawings in them. “More evidence for my case.”
He nodded, his expression sobering a bit. “Yes. I’ll hold on to these for you. See if I can find all the things you missed.”
I pulled him down toward me again, which seemed to brighten his mood back up. “Shall I give you a hint?”
“Are we playing a game?”
I nodded. “The artist is not the one sending me the cards.” I released the front of his shirt and called out, “Tell me when you see it!” as I left his lab.
“I’ll know before tomorrow!” he called after me. And the smile in his voice meant he hadn’t seen the fear in my eyes.
“I might be in jail tomorrow,” I told the staircase as I made my way back upstairs. One last class until I had to face Mallory, and I had no idea what to do. One last class.
Chapter 16
Lily sat next to me in drama, to the open shock and dismay of her friends. She didn’t say a word to me, however, ensuring they didn’t completely implode. It was an odd development, but I tried not to take it too seriously, tried to be the same as I always was.
Once Miss Francis had properly addressed her teacher duties, she left us to study for other exams while she finished up grading the last few final performances. Lily, as usual, reached for her music scores, but her bag tipped over, spilling paper and folders out onto the floor. I scooped up the pages that fell at my feet and as I handed the stack to Lily, her necklace fell from under her shirt.
It was the first time I’d seen Lily’s bronze cross up close, a Celtic cross with vines wrapping around it. The image was instantly familiar, though it took me longer than usual to put together just where I’d seen it before.
“The attic,” I said to myself minutes later, when everyone else had gone back to minding their own business. Thankfully, only the two people closest to me heard what I’d said, and one was Lily, who didn’t even bother to look up from her cello scores.
But the symbol was on a box in my attic—a box housing cash and a lock pick with a really heavy lid. And, really, I should’ve put it together much sooner than I did. Even without seeing Lily’s cross, the box was obviously what had been buried at Patel’s murder site. The money must have been Patel’s getaway cache, which meant the empty wrappers once contained money my father had spent.
It was suddenly intolerable to spend even one second more in the theater that afternoon. So I feigned sick to a distracted Miss Francis, and as I stood to leave, I dropped a note in Lily’s lap that said, “Right after class. Park. Important.” Then I left to sneak home somehow and fetch Lily’s money.
? ? ?
I got to the tree first and realized that the last time I’d been to the place in daylight, Sadie had been with me and I’d been looking for the clover symbol and proof of Lock’s and my theories of the crime. Had that really been only a few weeks ago? I lined myself up with the clover symbol, just like I had before, and paced toward where Sadie had stepped into the box’s previous burial site. When I reached it, I could see another carving just ahead in a tree not six feet from where I stood. The etching was rudimentary and dirty, but a recognizable Celtic cross. The box had been buried exactly in the middle of the two.
I placed the container right above where her dad had hidden it and then sat next to it to wait. Lily was there before school ended, carrying flowers and beer, which meant she hadn’t managed to stay through all of the drama herself. I thought for sure she’d recognize the symbol on top of the box, but she didn’t even look at it.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
I nodded toward where a bundle of wilted flowers had been kicked behind the clover-marked tree. “You first.”
She followed her ritual, though she seemed more aware of my presence this time. Once the beer was poured, she came over to sit next to me in the dirt and watched the foam settle. I probably should have shown some kind of respect for her thoughts, but my patience didn’t extend for more than a minute or two. I pushed the box wordlessly in front of her crossed legs and watched for her response.
She clutched the pendant to her chest and traced the cross on top of the box for a few long seconds. “Where did you find this? How do you have it?”
“Was it your father’s?”
Lily started to shake her head, then stopped and said, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before. But it must be, right?”