“This is about drugs?” the dean asked, turning to Ms. Williamson. “Drugs? I thought this was about money—”
“Are you also on the E?” My father was studying my face.
Exhausted, the headmistress put up her hands. “Everyone, please. Lena. Are you aware that the issue here isn’t what substances your friend was abusing, but that she had money stolen from her?”
Lena was a genius. An absolute genius. By the time this giant mess she was creating was cleared up, the money would be either confirmed missing or nonexistent, the freshman girl would get help for her drug issue or, at the very least, a stern talking-to—and in the meantime, while the police went after yet another Sherringford dealer, we might have a chance to investigate the situation ourselves.
Beginning with who Anna was working for.
Lena frowned. “You’ll really have to check with her about that? I don’t know. Mostly she was talking about E. Or MDMA? I don’t really know the difference.” She paused. “Maybe she did both? Jamie, you’d take a drug test, right? Neither of us took anything.”
I hadn’t done E, or anything, really, for that matter, except for the occasional drink when I was in Europe, where it was legal. Even if I’d felt some draw toward pills or pot, my personal history with the police was a long and storied one, and I hadn’t really ever felt like adding another chapter to it.
“I’ll totally take a drug test,” I offered. That one, at least, I could pass.
My father’s phone chirped with a text. He ignored it.
“Who was at the party?” the detective asked me, pulling out a notepad. “I need a complete list of names.”
“The curator still wants to talk to you,” the headmistress’s assistant said. “He’s on his way.”
With a sigh she capitulated, stepping out to take the call.
“The party,” the dean said. “Lena. Who was there?”
“Oh.” Lena looked genuinely surprised at the question. “I’m totally not going to tell you.”
“You’re not.”
“Social suicide,” Lena said. My father passed her a cup of coffee. “I just ratted out Anna, and I can, like, feel my stock plummeting. Plus it’s my senior spring. Not worth it. Do you have any milk?”
There was a long silence. The headmistress came back in, frowning. “Why aren’t you taking Lena’s statement?” she asked Shepard, who’d stopped writing.
“I can’t interview her without a parent present,” Shepard said. “Remember? It’s your policy.”
“Everyone is getting snippy, don’t you think?” my father whispered to me. “Caffeine jitters, perhaps?”
“We might have to suspend you if you don’t,” the dean of students said to Lena. “Tell us who was at the party. Not the detective—”
“Shepard can interview Jamie, his dad’s here,” Lena said. “Do you all have any sugar?”
My father passed her the sugar. His phone chirped again. He ignored it.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” the dean asked.
“Everyone, please,” the headmistress said. “Again, for the cheap seats—Jamie, who was at the party?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. If I went to burn this building down with all of us inside, I didn’t think anyone would stop me. We were all already in hell, anyway. “Social suicide.”
“Lena—”
“My dad was talking about donating a new dorm,” she said, idly. “I know you all like the three he’s donated already.”
“This isn’t about the party!” I said. “This is about Lucien Moriarty! Look, I’m doing it right this time. I’m telling you about it. You are literally the authorities. Can we just actually get ahead of this shitshow, for once?”
“All of you. Please.” Ms. Williamson crossed her arms over her blazer. “I am very, very tired. Jamie, I have a curator coming in with a delivery that is about to make your life a lot more complicated—”
“Is that possible, though? For it to be more complicated?”
“—and I suggest you stop telling tales about some Mori-whatever scapegoat and actually cooperate.”
“Ma’am?” Harry said, sticking his head in. “The curator’s here, with his assistants.”
“It is midnight,” the dean said loudly. Her phone was quacking again. “Midnight. I am a single mother. I have four children, and my neighbor is watching them. My neighbor, who I woke from an actual dead sleep. How many more people are we going to pull from their beds because the students are cavorting in the access tunnels again? How is this in the least surprising? Which janitor did you pay for the key code this time, Lena?”
Lena opened her mouth like she was going to answer and then thought better of it.
“We all have children,” Shepard said grimly. “We all have responsibilities. A girl’s been stolen from—”
The dean stepped between him and the headmistress, physically cutting him off. “Really, what is the point, Headmistress. So this boy is having a bit of a nervous breakdown in his senior spring. Stop the presses! It doesn’t make him a thief, or a—a druggist—”
“Druggie?” my father supplied. “I think ‘druggist’ is actually the word for pharmacist. Or perhaps you meant dealer?” He stopped short. I had clamped my fingers around his arm.
“Dealer,” the dean said. “Yes. Fine. Can we please go home.”
“One moment. Send Bill in, please,” the headmistress said to Harry-the-assistant, who was still helpfully holding the door open.
Bill the curator turned out to be a harried-looking man with white hair and a pair of assistants who looked like Harry’s fraternal twins. The two of them were dragging along giant framed portraits with such carelessness that I was shocked; one smacked his against the doorframe, swore, and kept on going.
The headmistress, to her credit, didn’t look surprised. “I assume these are the portraits we had commissioned for the Sherringford centennial? And that something awful has rendered them un-showable, since you’re treating Headmaster Emeritus Blakely’s face like that?”
The blond assistant blinked rapidly. He had the painting turned in to face him so that Headmaster Emeritus Blakely’s face was resting against his crotch. “I’d left my glasses—I’d been wearing my contacts to work, but I had my glasses back at the museum and it was late, and I needed them because of the eye strain, and I went back and someone had defaced these.”
Bill raised a bushy eyebrow. “A bit confused, but that’s the long and short of it. These were delivered this afternoon from New York. I’d expected professional art handlers, but they had come in a truck, in a stack. I hadn’t unwrapped them yet. My assistant here came in tonight to find the wrappings everywhere, like some art raccoons or something had gotten in, and the portraits looking like this. I brought the most, er, eloquent ones along here to show you. Didn’t figure we’d have to handle them gently anymore.”
The other assistant turned his portrait around. It was Headmistress Joanne Williamson, cut large and magisterial, beautiful shadows on her face and neck, and in her arms a bound copy of the Sherringford honor code. It had a certain mood to it—windswept, romantic, a bit melancholy. It was a terrific portrait. It looked, in fact, just like the Langenberg forgeries we were hunting down in Berlin.
Except that someone had scratched out her eyes and written in hot-pink spray paint WATSON WUZ HERE.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Lena said, abruptly, and left.
“Seriously?” The words flew out of me. “Are you serious? Are you actually, totally serious?”
My father looked faintly worried. “Jamie,” he said.
“‘Wuz.’ They spelled it ‘wuz.’ ‘Wuz’! I’m in AP English! I read a lot! I read books. Big fucking books! I read Tolstoy, and Faulkner, and—‘wuz’?”
Detective Shepard bit his lip. “You haven’t been anywhere near the museum?” he asked, busying himself with his notebook. “Recently?”
“I didn’t even know we had a museum!” I was sounding sort of shrill. “Why on earth do we have a museum?”