The Fixer (20 page)

I stopped, then waited for the first blow to fall.

“I’m not mad at you.”

I could picture her face fighting against those words. I wasn’t sure if she believed them or not.

“Are you . . .” I wasn’t sure how to finish that question. I certainly wasn’t going to ask if she was okay.

“We’re burying him this morning.” Vivvie let those words drop and said nothing in the silence that followed them.

“Do you want me to come?”

There was another long pause after my question.

“It’s supposed to just be me and my aunt,” Vivvie said. “And the honor guard. It’s a military funeral, but they want it quiet. Because suicides don’t look good.”

Suicides don’t look good.
The brutality of that statement made my stomach lurch.

“I keep telling myself that I did the right thing.” I could hear Vivvie suck in a breath of air. “I keep telling myself that, Tess, and I almost believe it, but I need to know that this isn’t—” She cut off. “That it’s not just going to . . .” She couldn’t finish that sentence, either. “I need to know that my going to your sister matters, that it made a difference, that it wasn’t for
nothing
.”

“It wasn’t.” I wished I could make this better for her. I wished I could give her something more than that. “Ivy flew to Arizona today. She wouldn’t say why, but it has to have something to do with Pierce.”

On the other end of the phone line, Vivvie was quiet for so long that I thought she might have hung up.

“What if my dad didn’t kill himself, Tess?” Vivvie’s question caught me off guard. “Ivy said this was dangerous. That’s why she wanted to keep you out of it.” The full force of her pent-up emotions crept into those words. “What if someone realized Ivy was looking into things? What if someone found out that she knew about my dad? If my dad could identify the people he was working with, he was a threat to them.”

“Vivvie—”

“Or what if my dad told someone he was worried about getting caught? What if he got freaked out that the phone was missing, and he
told someone
? Pierce, or . . . or . . .”

Or whoever else was involved.

It had been easy for me to believe that Vivvie’s father had killed himself. With the phone missing, he had to have known things were unraveling. He’d lost his job at the White House. Maybe he even hated himself for hurting Vivvie.

What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that Vivvie’s father wasn’t the only one who stood to lose something if he got caught. I hadn’t thought about the fact that he might have been able to identify the other people involved.

He put a bullet in his own head
, William Keyes had said, staring straight at me. And maybe Vivvie’s father had.

But now that Vivvie had raised the issue, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe—
maybe
—he hadn’t.

CHAPTER 40

I got to school late. In English, I could feel Henry’s eyes on me across the room. In physics, he sat down at my lab table. The day’s experiment was on centripetal force.

“You asked if I could find out where my grandfather was the night before his heart attack.” Henry’s attention seemed one hundred percent focused on the knot he was tying around a tennis ball. His expression gave nothing away: the very portrait of the dedicated student. “He was at a fund-raiser for the Keyes Foundation.”

Keyes. As in William Keyes. Adam’s words echoed in my head.
The president is rarely the most powerful person in Washington.

“There were over four hundred attendees,” Henry said, testing the security of his knot. “Not to mention the waitstaff. It wouldn’t have been that difficult to slip something in my grandfather’s drink.”

Poison the justice. Send him to the hospital. Have the White House physician declare it a heart attack. Have him operate. Twice.
By the time the justice died, the poison would have been out of his bloodstream.

The perfect murder.

In my mind, I could still hear Vivvie telling me that she needed having gone to Ivy with her suspicions about her father to have made a difference. To
mean
something.

“Any idea who those four hundred attendees were?” I asked Henry, my eyes locked on the instructions for our lab.

“My mother got me a list.” Henry’s eyes flickered toward mine, only for a second. “She doesn’t know why I requested it.”

He won’t tell her
, I thought, reading his expression.
Not until he knows more.
In his position, I probably would have done the same thing.

There were times when I thought Henry and I were a lot alike.

Glancing up to make sure that we hadn’t attracted the attention of the teacher—or anyone else—I reached into my bag and pulled out my copy of the photograph from Raleigh’s office. After a moment’s hesitation, I slid it across the table to Henry.

Ivy had told me to stay out of it. But Ivy had told me a lot of things over the years.

Henry had a right to know.

Across from me, he unfolded the picture and studied it for a few seconds, then set it aside and returned his attention to our project.

“Any idea where it was taken?” he asked.

“No. I can identify five of the men.” I indicated which five.

Henry weighed the tennis ball and made a mark in his notebook. “The one next to the president is John Thomas Wilcox’s father.”

That made six.

“And how many of those men are on the list you got from your mother?” I asked Henry.
How many of them might have had the opportunity to poison Theo Marquette?

Henry didn’t have to consult his list. He held up two fingers.

I considered the men in the photograph, setting aside Vivvie’s dad and Pierce.
The Hardwicke headmaster. The minority whip. The president. The man behind the scenes.

“Which two?” I asked.

Henry arched an eyebrow at me, and I answered my own question. Looking down at the photograph, I pointed first to one man, then the other.

William Keyes.
That was easy. Given that we were talking about a Keyes Foundation gala, that went without saying.

My heart beat viciously in my chest as I slowly moved my finger to my second guess.
Not the headmaster. Not John Thomas’s father.
My finger hovered over the president’s face-you-could-trust. After a long moment, I pressed my finger down.

I wanted Henry to tell me that I was wrong.

He didn’t.

CHAPTER 41

At lunch, Henry was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t at his usual table. Asher hadn’t seen him. Even my short acquaintance with Henry Marquette was enough for me to know that he operated according to a series of predictable algorithms. He did what he was supposed to do. He was reliable. Responsible.

Missing.

I found him in the computer lab. The door closed behind me seconds after I stepped into the room. Henry barely glanced away from the screen.

“I’m trying to narrow down a time frame on the photograph,” he told me. “Look at this.” He pulled up two digital images. “Congressman Wilcox shaved his mustache off last spring, so wherever the picture you found was taken, it’s recent. Six months ago or less.”

I processed that. Six months ago or less, Judge Pierce and Vivvie’s father had been in the same place at the same time.

Six months ago or less, the president and William Keyes had been there, too.

“It might not mean anything.” I wanted to be the voice of reason, but I didn’t
feel
reasonable. I felt like we were standing on the verge of something cavernous and unthinkable and
real.
“The picture. The guest list for that party. It might not mean anything,” I continued, grappling for objectivity like a climber trying to hold on to the edge of a cliff. “We don’t know for sure that someone poisoned your grandfather at the gala that night, let alone if it was someone in that picture. The fact that the president and William Keyes were the only ones in both places could be a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences, Tess. Sometime in the last six months, the man who killed my grandfather and the one who paid him to do it had a little sit-down. I’ve looked for another connection between Bharani and Pierce. I skipped my morning classes to look, Tess, and I couldn’t find anything. The only connection is this photo. This meeting, whatever it was.”

I was surprised that Henry Marquette had skipped class. I wasn’t surprised that his next move had been the same as mine: to look for connections, to figure out what—besides the murder—tied the judge and Vivvie’s father together.

“There was another number on that disposable phone.” Henry was implacable. “That means there is at least one other person involved.”

Someone with access to the justice. Someone who could get close enough to poison him. Someone who could make sure Pierce was positioned to be nominated in his place.

“We don’t know a lot of things, Tess.” Henry’s voice was curt. I was starting to recognize that tone as an indication that he
was clamping down on his emotions, refusing to let them gain control. “We don’t know if Pierce approached Vivvie’s dad or the other way around. We don’t know who masterminded this whole thing.” He paused. “We don’t know who your sister is working for now.”

That took me off guard.

“We don’t know what her endgame is,” Henry continued forcefully.

My mouth felt like it had been filled with sawdust. “What are you saying, Henry?”

“Your sister solves problems. Professionally. Whoever the other number on that phone belonged to, I’d say they have a pretty big problem right now, wouldn’t you?”

I’d underestimated just how much Henry mistrusted my sister. It had never occurred to me that he might believe that instead of working to uncover this conspiracy, Ivy might be working to cover it up.

“Your grandfather and Ivy were
friends
. She would
never
—”

“What do you think fixers do, Tess?” Henry’s voice was maddeningly calm. “They cover things up. Even if there’s a cost. Even if they have to break a few laws to do it.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said fiercely.

“Vivvie’s father’s suicide didn’t make the papers,” Henry continued. He was like a train chugging its way toward a tunnel at a steady pace. Never slowing down. Never stopping. “Someone kept that away from the press.”

I thought of Ivy, wrangling the press outside Justice Marquette’s wake. If my sister wanted to keep something like that out of the papers, could she?

Yes.

“Everyone knows your sister works for Georgia Nolan,” Henry said. “Can you honestly tell me she doesn’t troubleshoot for the president, too?” He didn’t give me a chance to answer. “And William Keyes? He’s rich. Rich enough to pay her whatever it takes for her to protect him and his image.”

“She’s not working for Keyes.” It took everything I had not to raise my voice. “They don’t even get along.”

“Then why did his son pick you up from school last week?” Henry arched an eyebrow at me. “Word travels fast at Hardwicke, Tess. Whether you like it or not, you have to accept that there’s at least a possibility that your sister may have a conflict of interest here. And the side she comes down on may not be the right one.”

Ivy had told me not to tell anyone.
To protect me
, I thought desperately.
She did it to protect me. And Vivvie
.

“Tallyho, friends of Asher!” Asher had impeccable timing. He waltzed into the room and hopped up on the computer table, his legs dangling down, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Like the tension in the room wasn’t thick enough that you could have cut it with a knife.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked blithely.

Just Henry telling me he thinks my sister might be working to cover up his grandfather’s murder.
Henry must have read something in my expression, because a hint of remorse flashed across his features.

“You’re not interrupting anything.” Henry pulled his gaze from mine and turned to Asher. “Tess and I were just having a bit
of a debate.” His green eyes found their way to mine again. “I may have pushed my case a little too hard.”

“You?” Asher said, feigning shock. “Never.”

As Asher launched into a story that seemed to involve a cupcake and a remote-controlled airplane—clearly meant to dissolve the tension—I had to fight the urge to stare at Henry until I knew exactly what he was thinking.

What had Ivy done to convince him she was capable of something like this?

I turned my head away from Henry. I could just barely make out our reflection in the glass pane that separated the computer lab from the hall: Asher constantly in motion, and Henry and I sitting still as statues, neither of us looking at the other.

Movement on the other side of the pane forced my attention away from the reflection.

Emilia.
She opened the door to the lab a second later. I saw the moment she registered the fact that Henry, Asher, and I had gone silent at her entrance.

Her chin jutted out, her perfect posture going even more erect.

“Did you need something, Em?” Asher asked.

“Not from you.” Emilia’s tone when she addressed her brother was a mix of comfortable and blunt. Henry stood up, obviously expecting Emilia to address him, but she just gave him an icy look, then turned to me.

“I need to talk to you.” Emilia had a knack of issuing statements like orders. I was going to ask her if it could wait, but something in her eyes made me hesitate.

She took a step forward. “It’s about Vivvie.”

That was all it took for her to have my complete attention.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Emilia said softly. “She looks . . .” Emilia bit her bottom lip. I hadn’t pegged her for the lip-biting type. “She’s not okay.”

“Vivvie’s here?” I interrupted.

“Listening comprehension,” Emilia snapped back, looking more like her usual self. “Yes, she’s here. And something’s wrong.”

“Which bathroom?” I asked, a feeling of dread taking up residence in my stomach. Vivvie had buried her father this morning. Why would she have come to school? And how bad must she have been for Emilia to come get
me
?