Authors: Tom Dolby
O
n Thursday nights, Genie went out, a rare weekly event when she attended a ballroom dancing class and then went to a diner afterward for coffee and pie with her friends. Because of this, Patch decided to offer up their apartment for the emergency meeting. For a few hours, they would have the place to themselves. He had wanted to make it nice for everyone, and though there was no way it would ever compare to the opulence of Lauren’s apartment, he had straightened up the living room and even bought sodas and baked a roll of chocolate chip cookies.
Thad, Phoebe, and Lauren recounted all the sabotage that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. Thad was still lobbying his school’s administration to keep the incident with the gin bottle off his permanent record. Phoebe was recovering from the vermin infestation and would need a follow-up meeting with her doctor to make sure she hadn’t been infected by the bite. Lauren was waiting for the verdict from Sebastian Giroux about the jewelry found in her bag.
“There’s something else,” Lauren said. She pulled out her phone from her handbag and showed everyone a text message she had received that day.
It read:
AQ EKEPRLE FMPYD QZP OQL RMYD QPDRL?
“Looks like gibberish,” Phoebe said.
“It’s not gibberish,” Thad said. “It’s a cryptogram.”
“A crypto-what?” Nick asked.
“It’s a code where each letter stands for a different one. Lauren, give me your phone.”
She handed her phone to Thad, and he punched the series of letters into his own iPhone, copying over the cryptogram.
His face grew dark. “I think I know what it means. I used a cryptogram solver. It’s a little bit . . . well, it’s a little bit scary.”
“Come on, what is it?” Phoebe asked.
He looked at Lauren. “Go ahead,” she said.
“It reads—and I think this is correct: ‘Do sisters watch out for each other?’”
“That’s weird,” Phoebe said. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“It makes sense to me,” Lauren said.
“Why’s that?” Nick asked.
“The text wasn’t originally sent to me. It was sent to my little sister, Allison.”
The group was silent for a moment.
“She’s not even in the Society,” Phoebe said after a moment.
“Maybe that’s the point,” Patch said. “They want us to know that they’re not afraid to get to our families.”
“Why Lauren, though?” Phoebe asked. “Why not any of the rest of us?”
“They think Lauren’s vulnerable right now,” Thad said. “And she’s the only one who has a younger sibling who’s not in the Society.”
“That’s true,” Patch said. “I’m just trying to figure out a pattern here. The rats were destroying Phoebe’s canvases. Phoebe’s an artist; that hits her where it hurts. Lauren, they put your job designing jewelry at risk. And the message to your sister is a further warning. But what about the bottle of gin? They could have done that to mess with any of us. Why Thad?”
“You’re right; it doesn’t match up,” Nick said.
Thad spoke slowly. “They must know more about my family than I usually tell people. My mom has been sober for ten years, but she used to have a drinking problem. They must have known that this would really bother me.”
Lauren gave his arm a supportive squeeze. “Hey—it would have bothered anyone.”
“What kind of sick stuff is this?” Phoebe said. “I can’t believe this—they’re not only messing with us physically, it’s like they’re trying to get to us psychologically. How do we know what’s next? If they could manage to screw up our lives this much in the last forty-eight hours, who knows what they could do?”
“We need to lay off,” Lauren said. “I mean, this is my sister we’re talking about. She’s a freshman at boarding school. It would be so easy for them to get to her. We need to go to the meetings. We need to do what they say.”
“I have a plan,” Nick said. “And it won’t put us in danger. I just need to work it out a little more before we get going on it.”
“What kind of plan?” Patch asked warily.
“I need you guys to hang tight for a couple of days. Can I fill you in on the weekend?”
Everyone nodded.
“In the meantime, maybe we all need to pretend to be model citizens, at least for a little while,” Thad said. “We need to get to know the other members.”
“I just don’t know if I can bear it,” Phoebe said. “They’re all like zombies. Claire Chilton going on about how the Upper East Side isn’t like it used to be. Who the hell cares?”
Lauren jumped in. “Speaking of Claire—I had an odd confrontation with her on Tuesday. Phoebe, I told you about this, right?”
Phoebe nodded.
“I ran into her at the Ralph Lauren store. She said that everyone had noticed that three of us were missing from the meeting, and then she started going on about how the Society was all about cultural advancement and how there was going to be a benefit for the museum. About how the Society was all about making the world a better place.”
“Oh, if only that were true,” Nick said sarcastically. “She’s totally bought into the whole thing. Her parents are both members. You know how seriously they take it.”
“There’s something else: they’ve given us a name. The five us are ‘the Infidels.’ That’s what the older members are calling us. I looked it up; it’s like when you don’t believe in a religion that everyone else believes in.”
“Well, that would be us,” Phoebe said.
Nick gave a half smile. “Maybe we should print T-shirts.”
“Yeah, right,” Patch said. “Talk about wearing a bull’s-eye on your back.”
“So let them call us that,” Thad said. “Let them think the group is about cultural advancement. We still need to fly under the radar. Don’t let them think we have anything planned.”
“Because the truth is, we don’t,” Patch said.
“That’s not entirely true,” Nick said. “I think I can figure something out. I just need some more time.”
“What should I tell my sister?” Lauren asked.
“Tell her that she’ll be fine. Tell her it doesn’t mean anything,” Nick said.
“How can you be so sure?” Phoebe asked. “I mean, we all thought that skipping a meeting wasn’t a big deal, and look what happened.”
“They’ve made their point,” Nick said. “From now on, we don’t miss any more meetings. Give me a few days—in fact, clear your Saturday, if you can. I’ll keep you posted.”
“You’re sure you can come up with something?” Patch asked.
Nick nodded. Nothing more had to be said. Patch trusted his friend, and the rest of them did as well.
After everyone left, though, Patch kept wondering about the Society, about its methods, and how they had gotten to Lauren by threatening her sister.
All he had in his family were Genie and his mother. And he wondered which one of them could be next.
O
n Friday morning at school, the junior class had a meeting with Chadwick’s director of college advising, Mr. Gregory. He went on and on about the importance of their grades and extracurricular activities, particularly in the second semester of their junior year. This would be the second-to-last official set of grades that admissions committees could use to evaluate the candidates from Chadwick, and for those who were applying for early admission to places like Yale, it would be the last full set of grades available before an admissions committee would make its decision. Phoebe noticed some of the students sitting in the back, their feet perched rudely on the desks in front of them, as if none of this applied to them. Phoebe wasn’t going to make any assumptions; she knew she still had to keep her grades up. She had met with a few alumni who were on different admissions committees last semester at a meet and greet sponsored by the Society. It had all been done under the auspices of a “private gathering sponsored by a group of helpful alumni.” But she didn’t feel like she could just coast on through.
Phoebe tried to focus on Mr. Gregory’s talk, but something had happened last night that she couldn’t get out of her mind. When she asked to use the bathroom at Patch’s apartment, he had directed her to Genie’s, as he said that his own was a mess. Phoebe had developed a terrible habit of snooping when she was in other people’s houses, and she couldn’t help taking a peek into Genie’s medicine cabinet. Besides, she was curious about the woman. There was something Genie wasn’t telling all of them about her past, and Phoebe was anxious to know what it was.
Just a few weeks ago, Genie had told Phoebe and Nick about her broken engagement with Palmer Bell in the 1940s. But Phoebe sensed that there was more to the story. Why had Genie ended up in the same apartment building as Palmer’s son and his family? Was it simply coincidence that Nick and Patch had become such good friends?
Phoebe imagined that Genie’s secrets might help them unravel the mysteries about the Society that they had been trying to uncover. She hadn’t wanted to pry Patch when he was so new to the group, but there were things she had noticed: the wistful, far-off look in Genie’s eyes when she had talked about Palmer that afternoon a few weeks ago, the way she fiddled with the locket around her neck, how Patch seemed to have such a strange relationship with the Bell family, as if he were both an outsider and a close family friend.
“Phoebe!” Nick tapped her on the shoulder. “We have to go. The presentation’s over.”
She nodded distractedly, only able to think of one thing: as she had stood in Genie’s bathroom the night before, amidst cold cream, perfume, and prescriptions, she noticed a blue glass bottle of tuberose perfume. It was vintage, not something Genie would have bought recently. From the gold script on the bottle, it might have been forty or fifty years old. Phoebe gently opened the bottle and held it to her nose, and the smell brought her right back to the same scent in that velvet-lined sarcophagus in the warehouse on Gansevoort Street at the Night of Rebirth.
A
dding to all the confusion over the past week, Patch had been unable to reach Simone Matthews, his producer on
Chadwick Prep
, the television show that they had been hoping to pitch to a number of network and cable TV outlets. In the fall there had been some real traction on the project, and they were getting interest from foreign as well as domestic networks. It had been everything Patch ever wanted, from the first time he had picked up a video camera: to have his own show. And now it had been so close, so within his grasp, it was almost as if he had already reached his goal.
Almost.
Ever since Simone had started putting together the footage that Patch already had, she had said she needed something more. Something more exciting, something with what she called “a throughline.” She wanted real drama, and the only way Patch could deliver that was by giving her access to the inner workings of the Society. She had been the initial impetus that had sent him to Isis Island, in the hopes of getting some footage of the Society’s retreat. Unfortunately, he had never had the chance to capture a single frame. While he had gotten an insider’s view, all he had were his own memories. And now, after having been kidnapped and becoming a member, the Society had the original memory cards of his footage. In addition to messengering them to the Society’s town house the day after the retreat, he had signed an affidavit that he no longer had any duplicate copies in his possession.
What he didn’t tell them was that a week ago, he had contacted Eliot Walker, the older of the two Walker cousins who were on the lobster boat he had taken out to Isis Island. As a favor to Patch, Eliot had set up a safe-deposit box for him at the Coastal Bank of Maine. The key had arrived in the mail today. In the safe-deposit box were several memory sticks containing all the raw footage, plus the rough cuts that Patch had put together.
Patch knew he wouldn’t be able to use any of it now, but at least he had it as leverage if he ever needed it. He figured he hadn’t technically broken the affidavit, as the material wasn’t in his possession.
Now, this afternoon, as he headed to the loft that housed Simone’s production company, he hoped he might be able to revive the project, even without the Society footage—to make the show more about Chadwick and less about the Society. He had tried to get back in touch with Simone, but she wasn’t returning his calls.
When he showed up at the building in the West Thirties, though, his key card no longer worked. He waited for a few minutes and then was able to gain entry as some members of a production crew left for the day.
Patch went up to the third floor and looked for Eyes Wide Open Productions. There was no sign on the door anymore, and the office was unlocked. Patch walked in to discover that it was as if the company had disappeared. All the editing decks had been removed; the same went for the file cabinets, the bulletin boards, the posters on the walls. All that was left was what the space had come with: empty cubicles, phones with dead lines, and the detritus of moving.
Patch called Simone on her cell. Perhaps they had recently moved, and she had been preoccupied.
He felt the lightbulb on one of the office lamps. Confirming his suspicions, it was still warm.
Simone picked up after a few rings. “Patch,” she said. “You’re probably wondering what’s going on.”
“Um, yeah, that would be one of my questions.”
She sighed. “I had to move my editing suite uptown. I was given an opportunity—it was something I couldn’t turn down.”
“What kind of opportunity?”
“I’m not really supposed to talk about it. I guess it’s okay to mention it to you. I got a grant from this group that gives out awards to filmmakers, sort of like the Guggenheim or the MacArthur grants. The Bradford Trust Association?”
Patch groaned. Even though the Bradford Trust Association was the parent corporation for the Society, everyone thought it was a philanthropic group that was improving the world by writing checks.
“Anyway, they gave me a hundred thousand dollars to work on my documentary, a pet project I’ve been doing.”
“What are their terms?”
“I had to sign a confidentiality agreement about where I was getting the money. And, well . . .”
“And what?”
“I had to commit to working in film for the next two years. It’s really exciting—they think this new project of mine could make it to Sundance next year. They don’t want me distracted by my television projects.”
“Where does that leave us with
Chadwick Prep
?”
“I’m sorry, Patch. We’re going to have to drop the project. Our option runs out on it in June. After that, you’ll be free to pursue other venues. But to be honest, I just don’t know if I see it going anywhere. I mean, until you get some more footage of that secret group—”
“Simone! Don’t you see? That secret group
is
the Bradford Trust Association! They shut down the project by giving you that money.”
She laughed. “Um, right, Patch. And let me guess: they killed the Kennedys, too?”
“Simone, you’ve got to believe me. You really don’t want to get involved with these people. Is there any way you can get out of it?”
“The papers are already signed. I thought you would be happy for me. I’m sorry about your show, Patch. I really am. But it just wasn’t the right time for me. These things happen. It took me years before I got my first TV project on the air.”
“Simone, I have a limited amount of time in which I can do this! I’m graduating from high school next year. It’s not like I’m going to be able to go back to Chadwick and film stuff after I’m gone. If the option expires in six months, then I’ll have wasted my whole junior year.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Maybe we can work something out, let you out of your contract early. You might have to give back some of the option money.”
“How much of it?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to talk to my agents about it. Maybe half?”
Five thousand dollars. He had already spent most of the money on equipment and personal expenses. He had put twenty-five hundred into a CD at the bank, at Genie’s insistence, and he had about a thousand dollars left. The rest he had invested in a new AVID machine at home and a new computer monitor. And some new shoes and his new DJ equipment. Now he realized that it had been stupid of him to spend so freely. But he had thought
Chadwick Prep
was a done deal. He definitely didn’t have five grand to buy back the rights early. And he wasn’t about to ask Nick for the money. He was too proud for that.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, bluffing.
“So tell me one thing,” she said. “Whatever happened on that island? I’m dying to know.”
Patch paused. Should he tell her? What good would it do? She couldn’t produce his TV show. And he certainly didn’t want her knowing that now he was a member of the Society himself.
“Nothing,” he said. “The ferry schedule was off, and I never even made it.”