Deprivation House (8 page)

“And where did he get it?” I added. “Could someone have slipped him something?”

“You're with Mikey? You think somebody tried to murder Bobby T?” Frank asked.

I held out my arms in a got-me gesture. “I think we have to consider it, don't you?”

Frank nodded. “Let's start searching, working our way out from where he fell,” he suggested. “We're
thinking there wasn't much time between eating and falling.”

“It's going to look pretty strange on the tapes if we start tossing the room,” I said.

“Yeah.” Frank thought for a moment. “Maybe we can use our cover story. You grew up rich. I grew up not so rich. Maybe I'm not so happy about that. Maybe I don't really like you so much.”

“You not like me? Impossible,” I joked.

Frank didn't laugh. He has no sense of humor. “Maybe you think I'm jealous. Maybe you think I stole your fancy sunglasses or something.”

“Then I start ripping the whole room apart,” I finished for him. Then I kicked the bathroom door all the way open and pushed Frank out. This was going to be fun.

“I know you took them!” I shouted. “Where did you stash them?” I gave Frank another push, then dove toward Bobby T's dresser and yanked open the top drawer.

“That's not even my dresser,” Frank told me, as I started throwing Bobby T's stuff on the floor, moving from drawer to drawer, trying not to miss anything.

I started checking the floor around Bobby's bed. Frank began loading everything back in the dresser, getting a second look.

Nothing on the floor. I flung the covers off Bobby T's bed and shook them out.

“Idiot, that's not my bed,” Frank shouted.

“I'm not an idiot. I go to the best prep school in Connecticut,” I yelled back. I hoped I looked furious enough to be out of my head as I patted down Bobby's pillows.

“Well, I go to public school, but I definitely know an idiot when I see one. And I'm looking at one,” Frank snapped. “I didn't take your sunglasses. But if it'll make you happy, I'll buy you a new pair.”

“With what? Those Diesels are almost three hundred bucks,” I told him. I widened my search.

Frank snorted. “You're kidding me. You really are an idiot.”

“Hey, look who adopted me and who adopted you,” I shot back. “I think my family's a little more high quality.”

We managed to keep the argument going until we'd searched the entire room. Me hurling things around. Frank putting them back in place. Finally Frank shoved me back into the bathroom.

“I got nothing,” he said.

“Me either.” I turned on the cold water and took a drink. Trashing a room is thirsty work. I knocked a couple of toothbrushes into the sink as I lifted my head.

“You don't need to destroy the bathroom, too,” Frank told me.

“Actually, it's close enough to the bedroom,” I answered. “If Bobby T swallowed something in here, he could have gone into shock and fallen by his bed.” I put the toothbrushes back in place.

“Toothbrushes,” said Frank.

“Yeah, that's what they are. Toothbrushes. You
did
learn something in public school.” I gave him a congratulatory pat on the shoulder.

Frank shrugged my hand off. “Pretty much every-one brushes their teeth at night.”

I got it. “So if the toothpaste was somehow contaminated with peanuts . . .”

“It wouldn't take much. Even a little peanut oil would be enough,” Frank said.

“How would the perp know which tube was Bobby T's? Do you think someone's been watching him that carefully?” I asked.

“Why not just infect all the tubes? It wouldn't hurt anyone else,” Frank answered. “It would only take a dab of oil. You could put it in with an eyedropper. Or dunk a little twist of Kleenex in the oil, then touch it to the paste.”

“Pretty genius,” I said. Frank frowned. “Evil genius,” I corrected myself.

“Let's test the theory,” Frank suggested. He took
a small plastic bottle out of his jacket pocket and shook a short, narrow test strip into his palm. He touched the strip to one of the tubes of toothpaste, and we watched as it turned a murky green with a lavender center.

I pulled out my cell, took a picture of the strip, and zapped it off to Vijay with a text that said, GOT PEANUT OIL?

Vijay's fast. He interpreted the colors of the strip in less than a minute. CONFIRMATIVE, he texted back.

I looked at Frank. “So it's confirmative we had an attempted murder tonight.”

I
stared up at the ceiling. It felt like I was looking at the sky. The scale of the rooms in the villa was massive.

It wasn't the sound of Hal's snores that was keeping me awake. Or even the occasional stink bomb Bobby T emitted, now that he was back home from the hospital safe and sound.

No. The problem was that my mind had gone all hamster on a wheel. Joe and I had confirmed that someone had put peanut oil in Bobby T's toothpaste tonight. Everybody knew about Bobby T's peanut allergy. He'd told all us contestants that eating anything with peanuts could kill him. And Veronica said all the crew and staff knew about the allergy too.

That meant everyone in the house was a suspect. But who had a motive to want Bobby dead?

All the contestants—except me and Joe—had reason to want him out of the way. Like Mikey said, so far Bobby was the front-runner. He'd won the first competition. And he'd been on the way to winning the one that had been . . . interrupted. That made him a threat.

I ran through the contestants. Ripley. Kit. Mikey. Brynn. Mary. James. Olivia. Wilson. Rosemary. Hal. And Silent Girl.

The one who leaped out at me was James. He was so crazy competitive. But any of the others could be as competitive as he was—and want to win as badly. James might just be the only one who couldn't keep his mouth shut about it.

Kit's name popped too. She had a big reason for wanting the money. It would change her life. A million bucks would change anyone's life, but for a lot of people it would mean a lot of cool stuff. For Kit it meant being able to stay in L.A. and keep trying to be an actress—which seemed like the only thing she cared about.

Joe said Wilson came on the show to get a girlfriend. Sending Bobby T into anaphylactic shock wouldn't help with that. But could a girlfriend really be the real reason he was here? There had to
be easier ways. Not that I know from experience or anything.

I really didn't get how Ripley would be willing to kill for a million dollars. It seemed like she could buy anything she wanted to right now. She'd definitely shown up with more suitcases than anyone else.

Hal was clearly deeply obsessed with his planet project. Once he got past the planning stages, it would take some serious money to produce the game he wanted to create around L-62. After spending so much time working on the project, the money to make it happen had to be really important to him.

I realized I had no idea what Olivia, Mary, Mikey, Brynn, Rosemary, and Silent Girl wanted to do with the money. Which meant I didn't understand what possible motive any of them might have for trying to kill Bobby T. Man, I didn't even know Silent Girl's name. Joe and I had—

A hand wrapped around my ankle.

I jerked upright—and saw Olivia standing over me. “Frank, I need to talk to you,” she whispered. “Meet me in the library.” She scurried out of the room.

I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans. I was already wearing a T-shirt. I left the bedroom as quietly as possible.

What could Olivia want with me?
I wondered as I
headed to the library. I didn't think I'd even had a real one-on-one conversation with her.

“Uh, hi,” I said as I stepped into the book-lined room.

Olivia waved me into the chair next to hers. “Don't worry about the cameras. This is one of the times they're off.”

“How do you know?” I asked. Veronica had told us the union would only allow us to be filmed a limited amount of hours a day, but that she wasn't going to tell us which hours those would be.

“I have my ways,” Olivia answered, all mysterious.

I just looked at her. Sometimes that's a good way to get people to say more.

“Okay, I got Mitch to tell me,” Olivia admitted. “He's pretty cool. He told me this was the little girl's bedroom before it got turned into the library. You know, the little girl who saw her father kill her mother. He knows everything about the house.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about. Without cameras,” I said.

Usually I have this blushing problem around girls. But right now, Olivia didn't feel like a girl to me. She felt like a suspect. Joe calls this feeling his Spidey sense. I call it instinct. Instinct combined with experience.

“It seems like we've got two groups of people
here. People who actually need money. And people who don't,” Olivia said. “Like you—what would you do with the money if you won?”

“College,” I answered automatically. “Help my parents pay off the house.” I go over my cover story a lot so I can answer things right away like that.

Olivia nodded, like she'd guessed something right. “And what about your brother?”

I hesitated. “I don't know. I don't really know him. We kind of just met.”

“Yeah. You were adopted by different families. Seeing him with his Diesel shades and his two-hundred-dollar jeans has to be hard,” Olivia said. She reached out and touched my hand.

I still kept getting the suspect vibe from her.

“Kind of,” I answered, because I figured it was what Frank Dooley would say.

“Joe doesn't need the money. Ripley certainly doesn't—she's just here for PR anyway. James would probably blow it all in six months. And, let's face it, Kit should go back wherever she came from. She's a lousy actress. Have you seen her mugging for the camera? It's embarrassing.”

I wanted to ask her what she meant about Ripley being here for PR. That seemed important to the case. But I didn't think Frank Dooley would go there right away.

“That guy Bobby T doesn't need cash, that's for sure,” I said. “He got some big bucks when they optioned his blog.”

“Yeah, and I was reading on Purple Girl's website that he's already blown it all,” Olivia told me. “A guy like that, who can blow a million five—which is what he got—doesn't deserve a second chance. He's not getting the
Deprivation House
money if I can help it.”

I couldn't help wondering exactly how far Olivia would go—or had already gone—to make sure Bobby T didn't win.

“Bobby T spent all that money?” I asked. “Is that even humanly possible?”

“Clearly you don't hang around the right humans,”

Olivia answered. “Not that I do.” She shook her head. “Or maybe they are the
right ones. Just not the rich ones. Anyway, according to Purple Girl, Bobby spent that money and more. He's in debt up to his eyelids.”

“Whoa,” I said.

“It would be immoral for him or anyone like him to end up with a million dollars,” Olivia continued. “That's what I wanted to talk to you about.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “How would you feel about forming an alliance?”

“An alliance,” I repeated. Repeating stuff is also a good way to keep a suspect talking. And I wanted to know as much about what was going on in Olivia's mind as possible.

“I'm thinking me, you, and maybe Wilson—I'm still deciding about him. Maybe even one other person, if there's someone worthy,” Olivia went on.
“I think we should include four people, tops. If any one of us wins, we split the money equally.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand each. That's a lot of money,” I said.

“I know.” Olivia's eyes were shiny with excitement.

“Why'd you decide to ask me?” I said.

“Because of the situation between you and your brother. It's so unfair,” she explained. “And because I like how you keep your head in a crisis. You didn't hesitate when you pulled Leo out of the pool. You went into CPR immediately.”

“So did Joe,” I reminded her.

“Joe.” Olivia sneered. “Joe's been eating off a silver platter since birth. He doesn't deserve any more.”