Betrayal (6 page)

“Who,” Hayley added, “and why?”

“Are you going to do that all day?” Taylor asked.

“Maybe. I like precision and you know it.”

Even if they weren't going to tell their parents about the texter, the girls decided they should share the news about what happened to Olivia before it reached their parents, Valerie and Kevin, through Port Gamble's super-speedy grapevine.

Fifteen minutes before the first bell rang, the twins made the calls. Taylor called their mother, a psychiatric nurse, who was on the ferry headed toward her job at Puget Sound Hospital near Seattle. Because she worked such long hours, it was more like her second home. As the ship's engines roared, Valerie Ryan soothed Taylor the best that she could.

“Are you girls all right?” she asked. “You just saw Olivia last night. You must be so upset. I wish this ferry was coming home.”

“It's all right, Mom,” Taylor said. “There really isn't anything you can do.”

Hayley had their father on her phone.

“Did they arrest someone?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Hayley said. “I don't think so. Beth didn't say much.”

“How is Beth?” Kevin asked.

“I don't know. We haven't seen her yet today.”

Hayley told their father they'd check in later if they heard anything. He said he'd do the same. On her phone, Taylor made the same promise to her mother.

“Love you, Mom,” Taylor said.

“Love you, Dad,” Hayley said.

The girls put down their phones and started for the restroom. The noise of kids talking was closing in on them, leaving them feeling shaky. They needed a place where they could pull themselves together and regroup.

Taylor, who internalized anxiety and was all but certain she would have an ulcer one day, splashed water on her face. The towel dispenser was empty, and she wasn't about to stick her face in front of the hand drier.

“I can't believe a kid could kill Olivia like that. I didn't think she was here long enough to make enemies,” Taylor said, blotting the water with the sleeve of her purple fleece pullover, which was nearly like running a dry paint roller over her face—soft, but not absorbent.

Hayley swiped some concealer at the dark circles under her blue eyes. “I know,” she said.“And whoever did it is probably walking the halls right here, right now.”

“Maybe,” Taylor said. “Maybe not. If I killed someone I wouldn't show up for school twelve hours later. I mean, if I did something that terrible, I would run away or at least need some serious downtime to get my act together.”

“Agreed. You would.”

Taylor looked at her sister. Sometimes, as smart as Hayley was, she just didn't get the obvious.

“You work in the attendance office, Hayley,” she said, pushing the bathroom door open. “Find out who didn't make it in today.”

ONE OF THE REASONS HAYLEY RYAN liked working in the high school attendance office was that it appealed to her slight tendency toward OCD. Every day, she got to run through the list of students and check off who was there and who wasn't. The work was mundane but detailed, and Hayley found it extremely satisfying to keep her lists orderly and neat, much like the way organizing her french fries in perfect rows on the plastic tray at McDonald's made her feel. Taylor thought it was a weird, annoying habit. But then again, she had her own food preferences, being a vegetarian who ate chicken and all.

The other reason was that the job was like being in the middle of a reality show. The attendance office was next to the school nurse's office, which afforded the bonus of knowing who was sick, who had cramps, and who was trying to get out of giving a presentation in front of the class. Each morning brought just enough drama to keep the boring parts from being overly so. Kids who had missed the previous day were required to provide a written excuse signed by a parent, a guardian, or in rare cases in which the student had missed five days or more, a doctor.

It didn't take a forensic handwriting expert to figure out when notes were forged:

The “flew”? What did she do, sprout wings and fly?

When Hayley made the calls to check on kids who weren't in school, following the state law, sometimes she got the kid on the phone. When that happened, the call was predictable. The kid would say their mom was either in the shower, off getting meds at Rite Aid, or asleep. Hayley had been trained not to take no for an answer, but every once in a while she'd let one slide. You never knew when you might need the favor returned. “Attendance Chick,” as some boys called her, was decidedly better than “Attendance Bitch.”

Hayley sat down in her ergonomically molded chair in the cubicle in front of the vice principal's office. The blonde administrator with an unflappable smile waved a cheery hello to Hayley through the glass and went about her business trying to make everything at Kingston High run as if perfection were a possibility—which, given the daily megadoses of high school drama, it wasn't. Clearly, as indicated by her friendly smile, she hadn't heard about Olivia's murder yet. That was not surprising since the thorny tendrils of gossip tended to stay on Hayley's side of the glass partition.

Adults
, Hayley thought,
are always the last to know just about everything.

Hayley thumbed through the roster of who had been reported absent that morning. Most of the list made complete sense. Alana, the girl who almost never came to school on time, was late again. Her mom was a total freak and never took care of the younger kids, so Alana pulled mom duty at the ripe old age of seventeen because someone in that family had to. Also on the list were a couple of stoner kids who rarely made an appearance—and when they did, they were usually mentally absent anyway. A freshman boy named Cody who was fighting leukemia was out again. Hayley's already gray mood immediately darkened when she saw his name. Cody was a nice kid, and she had heard he was getting better.

She continued her way down the list while the girl she worked with, Tammi Mars, chatted with her college boyfriend like she did every day. Hayley was sure Tammi was checking up on him, because she initiated every call and kept the poor guy on the line for at least twenty minutes every morning.

Hayley's eyes scanned the paper slips that came from each first-period class.

Brianna Connors was a no-show. That made total sense, considering she was the one who had found Olivia's body.

Definitely an excused absence.

Drew Marcello was also gone. That fit. He was probably off somewhere consoling Brianna.

Hayley's boyfriend Colton James was marked absent, which she already knew about. He had a dental appointment scheduled that morning.

Beth Lee was out sick. That would have made sense even without a murder. She was probably at home trying to pull herself together after a night of pre-funking with some plum wine and beer at the party.

There were three others, none of whom Hayley recalled being at the party: Susan Finholm, who was getting a nose job
(deviated septum, such a liar!)
; Jacob Wexler, who was competing in the Science Olympiad Nationals in Spokane; and Meghan Aynesworth, whom Hayley had just seen heading toward the mall in her pale green VW bug.

After going through the list of that morning's absentees, Hayley started losing faith in her sister's theory. If the person who killed Olivia was a Kingston High student, then he or she wasn't stressing out too much and skipping class.

Chapter 6

FINANCIAL WORRIES WERE A NOOSE around her bony neck and Brianna's mom, Brandy Connors Baker, preferred a strand of pearls over a noose any day. A double strand, ideally black, would be her choice—that is, if she could still afford a choice. Judging by the state of things in her life right then, she couldn't. Brandy had pored over the paperwork that Gloria Piccolo had set out in front of her. It had been an early morning meeting on a gorgeous day in mid-October. The Seattle law office smelled of Starbucks and pastries. Brandy had waved them all away. None of that for her.

Gloria, Brandy's latest lawyer, had marked with bright yellow stickers cut in the shape of arrows all the spaces in which her client needed to sign.

“Sign here, here, and here . . . and over here,” the lawyer had said, pointing with a gold Cross pen.

Brandy looked past Gloria, through her expansive window as a familiar white and green Washington State ferry glided through Elliott Bay to Colman Dock. The sight was stunning from the high-rise—even better than the view from the condominium a few blocks away that Brandy could no longer afford.

“I see where to sign, Gloria,” Brandy had said, her voice holding a sharp edge.

Gloria ignored the tone of her client's remark. She hadn't worked with Brandy long, but the woman had come with a Ryder truck of personal baggage and was well known in Seattle legal circles as a client who made them earn every second of their billing. Calling Brandy “demanding” was the polite way of calling her impatient, aggressive, and completely unaware that anyone else existed. Because of her obvious and maddeningly overt sense of entitlement, Brandy's downfall had been met with more glee than tears.

“Great,” Gloria had said. “But still, as you know, I'm not advising you that this is a good move for you, Brandy.”

Brandy stopped the sweeping loops of her signature in midscrawl.

“I don't recall asking your advice a second time,” she said.

Gloria had tried to smile, but it wasn't easy. “I'm just doing my duty, Brandy.”

“Who pays your fees?” Brandy asked, pretending to think. “I believe that's
me
. I hired you for your services. This is how it works. I ask you for something, you do it, and then I pay you.”

Gloria could have said something about the fact that Brandy hadn't paid her for anything for three months, but she thought better of it. She'd leave that to the law firm's collection department. Brandy Baker was experiencing hard times like a lot of people since the housing bubble burst and the disastrous economy followed.

The documents were stacked in neat and perfect order. Her will, insurance policies—both personal and homeowner's—were pushed across the mahogany table that served as Gloria's desk. Brandy's financial portfolio had been hit hard. She didn't need an accountant or a lawyer to figure out that part.

Brandy got up and grabbed her coat from the silver hook next to the heavy glass door. “How long until all this is settled?” she asked.

Gloria looked at her watch. “Should be in the system this afternoon.”

Brandy nodded. “That's fine. No real rush. It just feels really good to move things along.”

Her phone vibrated, indicating a text message.

She looked down. An annoyed look swept over her face and she started texting.

“What is it?” Gloria asked. “Is everything all right?”

Brandy shook her head. Her eyes were no longer full of condescending ire. She just looked hassled.

“My daughter, Brianna,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “I'm supposed to go shopping with her for a Halloween costume. Teenagers can be so needy. If you were a mother, you'd understand that.”

Brandy pushed open the door with a whoosh and disappeared down the hallway toward the bank of stainless-steel elevators, where she would check her hair and makeup. No matter if her ship was sinking, Brandy cared about appearances.

She always did.

A part-time clerk named Ted came into Gloria's office.

“Jeesh,” he said, setting the day's mail down, “that woman's a real piece of work.”

Gloria took off her glasses and flipped through the stack of mail he'd delivered. “Look, Ted, I know you're only twenty-four and from Idaho, but that's no excuse. That's not the way we talk about our clients in this office.”

“Sorry,” Ted said, his face reddening as he backed out of her office. “Just
saying
. . .”

Gloria put her glasses back on and returned to the files arranged in front of her. Ted was right. She'd thought the same thing, of course. Everyone in the office did. Brandy Connors Baker was nothing if not a piece of work.

Chapter 7

BETH LEE PUT DOWN HER PHONE after texting most of the day away with Hay-Tay, her singleton name for the Ryan twins. Fittingly, Halloween night had, indeed, been a nightmare. She was definitely too sick to go to school, and it wasn't because of the alcohol. Or puking at the party. It wasn't from the monster fight that she'd had with Olivia or Brianna after the hostess with the killer party had stolen Olivia right out from under her nose. It wasn't any one of those things but surely the combination of all of them that had kept the sixteen-year-old home. The sum of each item had conspired to make her feel sicker and sadder than she had in a very long time. Above all of it was Olivia's murder. Olivia Grant was dead. Beth was sick, devastated, and sad. Beth never, ever wanted the world to see that side of her. She was Tough Beth. Unpredictable Beth. Retrendy (a word she'd tried—and failed—to coin to describe a mash-up of retro and trendy) Beth.

She was the girl who didn't ever want anyone to see the hurt behind her lovely almond eyes. Luckily, Hayley and Taylor knew that about her and always, no matter what, just let her be. That's exactly why when Hay-Tay texted and asked to come over after school and Taylor's swimteam practice, Beth had answered:

She sat on her bed in her small room in the Lees's daffodil-yellow house number 25 and faced the drawing that she'd completed the day before—the day before the whirlpool that was her life sucked her down into the darkness. Again. Beth had always been a doodler, but over the summer as she agonized over the parallel parking mishap of her Driver's Ed training (she knocked the cones over and somehow managed to run over a chipmunk at the same time), she took up drawing. Sketching turned into a full-on hobby. At first, it was a series of drawings of chipmunks pleading for their lives, which then morphed into scenes from Port Gamble, and finally, into images that depicted a kind of other-worldly sensibility that she called Gotharamic.