Corbett got on his walkie-talkie, and two seconds later a middle-aged security guy was leading her over to our cart, stashing her in the backseat. He drove us in silence toward the first tee, and Tina shot out of the cart before he even stopped in front of the clubhouse entrance.
The security guy smiled at me. “Spitfire, eh?”
“Give me two seconds,” Tina said.
We were standing under a moose head. The crowd in the clubhouse had multiplied by three.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“Just stay here.” She pointed to the bookshelves lining the walls. “Read a novel or something.”
She headed toward the executive offices. I wanted to stop her from doing something stupid like breaking into Alexander Corbett’s files, but something in Tina’s tone told me I shouldn’t mess with her at the moment. I found an empty chair by the magazine rack to wait her out.
“We playing skins?” a voice behind me said. It was Lawrence Lovell, in plaid knickers and pink stockings. Actual knickers. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or making an ironic comment on bourgeoisie sport fashion. Not ironic, I decided. I turned away quickly and hid my face behind a magazine.
“You’re on,” said one of the guys with Lovell. From all the clinking and clunking, it sounded like they were taking inventory of their golf bags.
“Twenty bucks a hole?” Lovell said.
The clinking stopped. A third guy whistled.
“Watch out, boys, he must have fixed that slice. Either that or they gave you a fat pension.”
They all chuckled, Lovell the hardest. “Yeah. Right before she put her foot in my ass.” So Lovell wasn’t hiding the fact that he was getting pushed out. Not to his golf chums, anyway. Somehow I doubted he’d told Tina about it when he got her into bed.
“Well, look who’s here,” Lovell said brightly, and I chanced a look.
Tina. She flashed me a thumbs-up signal before rushing over to give Lovell a distressingly intimate hug. I didn’t know what her signal meant, since she didn’t have any purloined files in her hands, and they probably would have squeezed out of her bag considering the force with which she and Lovell were rubbing up against each other.
“Hello to you,” she said, and kissed him on the lips.
Lovell introduced her around to his mates, who had prurient thoughts written all across their faces. He promised to catch up to them in a second.
“Great duds,” Tina said, and pulled the magazine down from my face. “Chris, you remember Larry.”
I shook his hand. “Christopher. Nice to see you.”
“Yeah.” He shook his wrist out. Maybe I had squeezed a little hard. “What brings you over here? Breaking news on the tournament?”
“Something like that,” Tina said. “Are you playing in it?”
“No, I’m afraid I’m not celebrity material. But members get to go on the practice rounds early in the week. They’ve got the course in top shape, so why not?”
He looked at me like I’d understand this principle perfectly. “Righto,” I said. “Why not, indeed?” I really wanted to slip in a comment about the knickers but I couldn’t make it work.
“So, as long as we’ve got you here,” Tina said, “could we ask you about Kate Warne?”
I didn’t like the thought of Tina spilling all our secrets to anyone, much less Lawrence Lovell. I prepared myself to interrupt at any moment, encouraged slightly by the alcohol smell on Lovell. Maybe he was plastered and wouldn’t remember this conversation in an hour.
“Is this about Mitch?” he said.
I gave Tina a nudge. “Not really.”
“She’s not married, right?” Tina said.
Lovell pulled a water bottle from his tank-sized golf bag and had a swig. “Nope.”
“Is she seeing anyone?”
Lovell listed backward a little. “Not me, if that’s where this is going.”
“I know that,” Tina said. Sex dripped from her words. She pulled a cigarette from her bag.
“I don’t think you can do that here,” Lovell said.
“Screw them. They hassled us.”
Lovell kissed her impulsively. “You’re priceless, babe.”
It seemed to satisfy Tina for the moment. “So, how does Kate get along with the mayor?”
“He used to practice at our firm, so he came by the office sometimes. They used to have some cases together. They were friendly. Where are you going with this?”
It might have been too late, but I didn’t want Lovell to get a firm idea that we suspected an affair between them. “Did you ever hear about Mitch having a partner?”
“Like a partner in crime?” Lovell laughed.
“Yeah. Like maybe somebody who used to work with him here?”
“Wouldn’t shock me,” Lovell said idly. “But I told you I don’t know anything about that.”
“Well, okay then,” Tina said.
Lovell sensed her dejection. “Good luck with your story, whatever it is.” He leaned in and nibbled her ear, at which point I turned away in horror. “Let me know if you figure out who shot JFK while you’re at it.”
A voice came from behind us—Bob the ex-boyfriend, walking over from the office area. “Hey, Larry, what’s up?”
“Bob!” Lovell happily shook his hand. “I should get going,” he said to us.
Tina pointed between them. “You guys know each other?” It had to be a little awkward for her, but her voice didn’t betray it.
“An old client,” Lovell said. He patted Bob on the shoulder and headed out to meet his friends.
“Uhh, Tina,” Bob said, looking at the cigarette she still had in her hand. “Sorry, but you can’t smoke in here.”
She kissed him on the cheek and we left.
Tina and I sat on the hood of the Trans Am in the parking lot.
“Why do you hate him so much?”
She was talking about Lovell. “Tina, he’s a loser. I wasn’t going to say anything, but Dana told me he’s, like, a gambling addict. Do you know that Kate Warne is kicking him out of the law firm?”
“Nobody wants a company man, Chris. They’re dull.”
“Fine, but did you see those clothes?”
“What can I say? Preppy guys turn me on, especially rich ones. It’s always been that way—I can’t explain it.”
“Preppy’s one thing. Pink socks are another.”
She tucked her chin into her chest, playing coy. “Christopher’s so hot when he’s jealous. Oh, and now look at him blushing.”
“So, uh, what happened up in the office, anyway? Did you get some good news?”
“You saw Bob?”
“Big Bob the ex-boyfriend?”
She got off the hood. “Yep. Guess I didn’t burn that bridge too badly after all.”
“Why?”
“Do you promise to be nice to Larry first?”
“I promise.”
We got in the car. “Well, because Bob loves me dearly, tonight he’s going to stay late, go through the records that are supposed to be off-limits to him, and get us a list of employees from two weeks before Mitch Blaylock left the country club.”
Tina backed up and peeled out of the lot.
Mike had left me a note saying he’d taken Daniel over to his house. I did mail duty again (no more love letters from Abby) and headed over to join them. I hadn’t been going full-tilt on the supervisory front since my parents left, so I figured a relaxing afternoon with Daniel and Mike was in order. Maybe we’d even catch that movie, I thought, when I found the two of them on the back deck.
They were lounging in deck chairs with sunglasses on and their pasty stomachs exposed, playing Las Vegas tycoons. From what I gathered, Daniel was lecturing Mike on how he should collude with other local bookies to jack up his profits.
“It’s all in here,” Daniel said. He leaned over and produced a library book from his backpack. It was about a thousand pages long and called
Anti-Trust Violations in Maturing Markets: A Case Study of the Petroleum Industry, 1873-1915
. “Those robber barons knew what they were doing,” he said.
“Your little bro is an evil genius,” Mike said as he hefted the book open. “Hey Daniel, go get my master spreadsheet in my room—I need some more of your advice.”
“Thanks for watching him,” I said to Mike as Daniel disappeared into the house.
“No problem. So how’d it go this morning?”
“Eh. It kind of turned into nothing. I thought Mitch’s partner might have worked with him at the country club, but we didn’t find out much.”
“Can I help?” Mike asked.
I rubbed my ear. “Excuse me, but I could’ve sworn you just asked me if you could help out, after you’ve been telling me to give this up all summer.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mike laid the book aside. “You know, I still haven’t even seen Tina, and Daniel says she’s smokin’.”
“Ahh, so that explains it.”
“Can you blame me? I’m back on the market. Lock up your women, Petoskey.” He spread his arms out, shouting it into the forest. A tiny echo was thrown right back at us, like nature didn’t believe in Mike’s talk any more than he did. When it faded away, Mike raised a single eyebrow at me. “Julia Spencer would be a pretty good catch, don’t you think?”
“Is this your way of asking my permission to take her out?”
“No, this is my way of suggesting you do it yourself.”
I was about to dismiss his comment when something crashed inside the house. Daniel. “I’ll check on him.”
“Don’t worry about it. . . .” Mike said, but I was already walking inside.
I found Daniel in Mike’s room, standing in a small puddle of pencils and paper clips and 3x5 cards. Lying on the floor beside them was the bottom drawer to Mike’s desk. He’d accidentally pulled it all the way out, which was an easy thing to do. The drawer didn’t catch at the end, so it slipped right out when you pulled. It had been broken like that forever, and as long as I’d known him Mike had stashed secret items in the well beneath the drawer.
“I barely touched it, I swear,” Daniel said.
“Yeah, I know, it’s okay. Did you find the spreadsheet?”
“No.”
“Okay, go wait by the door.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to check a secret spot.”
“Why can’t I see it?”
His questions could make your head hurt. “Just wait by the door,” I said, and crouched to look into the well at the bottom of the desk.
Something tingled inside me as I did. I had been with Mike when he stashed a lot of stuff into that compartment (a prized note Dana passed him in sixth grade, some mini liquor bottles he’d swiped from a plane, a business plan we’d drawn up for a window-washing company that we’d never done anything about). The bottom of that desk was a time capsule of Mike. I smiled to myself, preparing for an onslaught of innocent memories.
But sometime in high school, Mike must have emptied it out. There was nothing there—well, almost nothing.
There, lying on the dusty pine board, was just a single item. It wasn’t innocent at all.
The desk had been made of real wood, and the bottom of it used to smell like the needles that carpeted Duncan Woods. Maybe it still did, I couldn’t tell. I’d stopped breathing.
My skin tingled in a different way now. My arm sizzled as I reached in for the Vista View memory card.
“What’s wrong?” Daniel said.
“Go out to the car.”
“Why?”
“
Go to the car!”
I shouldn’t have yelled at him like that, but I had my reasons.
The card was missing its plastic casing. A Vista View memory card without its plastic casing. I knew, of course, where the matching casing was: in Dr. Mobley’s office. It would be way too much of a coincidence for them not to be a pair.
I shouldn’t have been holding the memory card with my fingers. It was going to be evidence someday, because I knew what kind of pictures Mitch had been taking. I was holding the blackmail evidence in my hand, right on that card. And I’d just found it in Mike’s desk.
It felt like a steel bolt sliding into place, locking me up alone. I wanted to scream.
22
I
’ve been on this amusement park ride called the Demon Drop. You stand in a steel box with three other people, thick harnesses over your shoulders, and you zoom straight up in the air a few hundred feet. It’s like an elevator ride to the clouds. Then the box inches forward from the elevator column, and it’s just hanging there with nothing beneath it. The floor is made of wire mesh so you can see straight down to the ground. You can barely make out the details so far below you—the lines of people, the food carts, the gigantic tents like umbrellas in a drink. Little kids hold balloons that toss in the wind, and you get dizzy at the sight. And then the ride
click
s, and it releases you in a free fall to the ground.
That’s what I was feeling like when Mike walked in.
“What’s going on?” he said. And then he saw the card in my hand.
I couldn’t think of anything to say. My head was full of air, whisking downward.
I was struggling to hold out hope that there was some crazy mistake here. If there wasn’t . . .
Then the reason Dr. Mobley had only the casing, and not the card itself, was because Mike had gotten to it first.
Mike said, “You found it.”
“Yeah.” I waited for more, but nothing came. “Guess this is why you didn’t want me bothering with the case, eh?”
He took off his sunglasses. White circles of flesh surrounded his eyes; the rest of his face was pink. It looked like he was embarrassed, but it was just the sun. Mike wasn’t flinching.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“I didn’t kill him, Christopher.” It was supposed to be reassurance, but the words landed hard in my gut. Mike wasn’t denying what I’d known—those were Mitch’s pictures in my hand.
“Who did it, then?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was cold and clipped, with the emotion of a stone. He had shut something off inside himself. I’d seen him like this with his parents.