Harper Madigan: Junior High Private Eye (6 page)

Oliver sighs. I get the feeling he’d been waiting a long time to tell me all that, like it had just been building and building inside him, and now that he’s said it, nothing’s changed. “Yeah,” he says. “I was the first one to get here after it happened. And it was pretty clear that Danigail finally made good on all her threats. She pushed Veronica off the stage.”

“You saw her?” I ask, swallowing down a bad taste in the back of my mouth.

“You don’t know her anymore, Harper. You don’t know what she’s—”

“Did you
see her
do it?!”

“I didn’t need to. This is who she is now. I’m sure of it.”

Austin chews his lip. “How sure?”

“I’d stake my career on it,” Oliver says, making a point to look me in the eyes, and his meaning isn’t lost on me. He’s never going to be a dancer on Broadway, because of me. I’ve lost him one career already, and he’s willing to bet all he’s got left that I’m wrong about Danigail.

I shake my head. “You didn’t see what happened. You
can’t
be sure.”

Oliver clucks his tongue. “My sister’s got you right where she wants you, doesn’t she? I thought you were all about justice, and here you are, falling for everything she says.”

I turn my back on him, inhaling slowly. Things between him and Danigail are worse than I thought. “Come on, Phelps. I’ve had enough of this
witness
. We’re out of here.”

“She’s making a fool out of you, Harper,” Oliver calls as Austin and I walk away. “You’re getting lured into her trap just like you were with Connor’s. You know that, right?”

But the only thing I know is that despite what Oliver thinks, Danigail is innocent, and I’m going to find proof. No matter what I have to do or who I have to cross to get it.

The first thing I notice after we finish with Oliver is that Danigail’s
gone
. Figures. Either she heard Oliver singing her praises to me just now, or she made herself scarce so she conveniently wouldn’t have to answer my questions. If that’s the case, then whatever she and Alexis are hiding is something worth finding out.

“Well?” Austin says, biting his lip like he already knows the answer.

“Well
what
?”

He sort of shrugs, palms out. “Where is she? Did you arrange for us to interview her at another time and place?”

“You know I didn’t.” He’s on the case for what, a day, and now he’s acting like he’s got a right to question me? Like he’s got any say in calling the shots. “We’ll catch her later.”

“Catch is the key word,” he mutters.

I whirl around, my missing trench coat
not
flying out behind me. “What was that, Phelps?”

He gestures back at Oliver with his notebook, and I hope Oliver’s not listening to this. “Her own
brother
thinks she’s guilty. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“It tells me he wants to think she did it, for whatever reason, but you heard him. He didn’t see what happened.”

“Veronica says she was pushed. We just heard Oliver’s statement. Both of them are sure it was Danigail—it couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“And yet neither of them actually
saw
anything.” I glare at him. This is what I have to go through for the sake of Dodge sleeping a little better at night, thinking having a
journalist
following me around all day is going to give him some kind of job security. If I was on my own, I wouldn’t have some know-it-all questioning my every move.

“And what does Danigail say happened?” He flips through his notes, like maybe he has it written down but just forgot.

I scratch behind my ear, racking my brain for something to tell him that won’t make me sound stupid. Because I haven’t asked her yet, and Austin’s going to think that means something it doesn’t. “She says she didn’t do it.”

“But what’s her take on
what happened
?”

I glance at the clock on the wall. The little hand’s just hitting the four and the big hand’s on the twelve. “Don’t you have the late bus to catch?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“It’s going to leave and you’re not going to be on it. You like walking home, Phelps? Because every time that clock ticks I think you must really like walking.” Not that I won’t have to walk home, but it beats answering his questions.

He squirms a little, trying to make a stand, but in the end he can’t resist checking the clock for himself. Panic makes one of his eyes twitch, and he holds out a moment more, faking like he’s going to risk it just to keep me on the spot. But then he cracks, turning and running for the door so fast his shoes squeak against the floor.

I don’t know what Danigail’s version is. Not yet. But her running off and hiding things isn’t doing her any favors—especially not when I’ve got reporter boy writing down every word of this investigation and handing it to Dodge on a silver platter. If she’s not careful, she’s going to sink herself before I even have a chance to save her. And then I’ll have failed both her
and
Oliver, and I don’t know if there’d be any coming back from that.

I’m on my way out of the school, taking my time and mulling things over now that Austin’s not around asking me so many questions I can’t hear myself think, when I turn the corner between the auditorium and the locker rooms and spot Danigail and Alexis farther down the hall. Arguing. Danigail’s face is twisted in a scowl, and Alexis’ is red, her arms crossed defensively across her chest. They’re keeping their voices low, whispering heatedly, and even though I can’t make out what they’re saying, there’s no mistaking the fact that this isn’t a peaceful get-together.

Neither one of them has noticed me yet, too preoccupied with whatever they’re so angry about, and I take a step to the left, making myself scarce behind a row of lockers. I press my face against the cool metal and peer down the hall, glad that Austin had to scram, because he’d be blowing our cover right now, I’m sure of it.

I strain to listen to the conversation, catching the words “theater,” “play,” and “secret.” Alexis’ eyes widen, and she looks like she’s about to either punch Danigail or burst into tears. “I
thought
I could trust you,” she says, her voice a growl, just loud enough for me to hear. She turns away, moving to storm off down the hall.

Danigail catches her arm. “You
can
trust me. I’d never tell anyone. But I want to know the truth.”

“You want to know how this is my big break, right?” Alexis narrows her eyes into angry slits. “I have to get changed,” she says, tearing her arm away from Danigail and stomping towards the locker room.

“Fine!” Danigail screams, balling her hands into fists.

“Fine!” Alexis shouts back, not even looking over her shoulder.

Danigail whips around to leave, still seething, and that’s when I move from my hiding place. Our eyes lock for a second as she pieces together what just happened and what I might have heard.

“What was that about?” I ask. “Something you want to tell me?”

She bites her lip, glancing from me to the locker room. “It has nothing to do with the case.”

“Come on, DG. I’m sticking my neck out for you all over the place. I’m putting everything on the line for you, and what are you doing? Keeping secrets?”

“I told you, it’s not important. Did you talk to Oliver?”

“Yeah, and he thinks you’re guilty.”

“He’s mad at me.”

“Because he thinks you pushed her?”

She shakes her head. “Because I’ve become such an
exemplary
student. We don’t get along like we used to. Things have
changed
, Harper. They’re not like when you were around.” She doesn’t meet my eyes as she says that, turning instead towards the locker closest to her and running her finger up and down the slots, making a pinging noise as her nail scrapes against them. “Maybe he really does think I pushed her. I don’t know. I don’t
want
to know how he can think that.”

“You’re not helping your case. You send me to talk to someone who thinks you’re guilty, you meet with one of my prime suspects and keep secrets—”

“Suspects?” She raises an eyebrow.

“Alexis was Veronica’s understudy. That gives her motive. That makes me suspicious of her, and
that
makes her a suspect. Plus she’s hiding something, and I
know
you know what it is.”

She shakes her head, like she has no idea what I’m talking about. But even if Oliver says she’s changed, she hasn’t changed so much that I don’t know when she’s lying.

“You want me to clear your name? Or did I misunderstand that part? Because right now it seems like you
want
to go down for this. If you didn’t, you might be a little more cooperative. I know you didn’t do it, but I need to figure out who did, and if it was her—”

“It wasn’t, okay?”

But I don’t know Alexis like I know Danigail. And even if Danigail vouches for her, it’s not enough. Not when I know Alexis is hiding something. “You didn’t see who did it, did you?” She was the only one else there, the only one—besides whoever committed the crime—who could have seen what happened.

Danigail’s shaking her head. “I was bent down, painting one of the sets. I heard Veronica practicing her solo like she thought she was at the grand opera or something. Then I heard her scream bloody murder, and…” She pauses, trying to remember the details. “There might have been footsteps, running away from the stage, but I was focused on Veronica. It all happened so fast, and I jumped down in front of the stage to see if she was okay, and then when I looked up…” She shrugs. “Whoever it was, they were gone already.”

I nod. “Then I’m going to ask you the same question I’ve asked everyone who thinks you’re guilty.
If nobody saw who it was
, how do you know who did it? Or in this case, who
didn’t
?”

Danigail swallows and stares at her feet. She picks at a string hanging from the hem of her sweatshirt. There’s a moment where I think she’s going to argue with me, but then she doesn’t, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “I guess I
don’t
.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Are all our clients this uncooperative?” Austin asks the next morning before school. He’s talking about Danigail.

“
My
clients.” I grit my teeth in annoyance and focus on the task at hand. We’re tailing Connor Mills, trying to blend in and keeping at a distance so he doesn’t see us. Right now he’s down the hall, leaning against his locker, chumming it up with some of his friends. Right now he could be anybody, all innocent-like. “And no,” I add, answering Austin’s question, “not
all
of them.” Just the non-paying ones who also have the most to lose.

“Because it seems to me that we wouldn’t be back looking for this lost pencil if our
real
case hadn’t hit a dead end. And because of our own client, no less.” He tries to give me this real knowing look, like we’re good pals who understand each other, but it just comes off as phony. Probably because we’re not, we don’t, and
it is
.

My fingers clench against my palms. If there was ever a time I needed to do some serious cucumber channeling, it’s now, because it’s really hard to keep your cool when all you feel is rage. “Let’s get something straight, Phelps. This? This
is
our real case. Maybe it’s not newsworthy to you, but Eugene’s whole life is turned upside down because of this. That makes it important, even if it doesn’t make the paper.”

“It’s a pencil. Danigail Bates is going to get kicked out of school and be on the cover of the paper if you don’t solve her case. This doesn’t compare.”

There are so many things wrong with what he just said, I don’t even know where to start. “Oh, so when we’re talking about solving it, suddenly you drop the ’we?’” I shake my head, hoping he catches how disappointed I am in him. Not that my expectations were all that high. Or, you know, existent. “And Eugene’s going to be in deep waters if he keeps failing his tests because of this. Whether it’s really a lucky pencil or not, it’s affecting him. It’s throwing him off his game.
And
, last but not least,
what do you mean
Danigail’s going to be on the cover of the paper? You’re taking care of that, Phelps. Don’t even think of telling me otherwise.”

He glances down at his shoes, suddenly real interested in the pattern in the floor tiles. “I’m working on it,” he says.

“Working on it?” I don’t like the sound of that, not one bit. “Phelps. We had a deal. ’Working on it’ isn’t exactly keeping up your end. So, when I ask what do you mean, Danigail’s going to be on the cover of the paper, understand that there’s a right answer and a wrong answer. I think you can guess which is which, and I think you know what to—”

A flash of movement up ahead steals my attention. I cut myself off in mid spiel, catching a glimpse of Connor Mills taking a green pencil out of his bag. That’s all I can tell about it from here, but I’d bet everything I own that it’s got shiny four leaf clovers all over it.

“Come on.” I don’t look behind me to see if Austin’s following—I just hightail it over to Connor Mills, who’s scribbling on the back of a scrap of paper with Eugene’s lucky
stolen
pencil. I shove through the crowd, then past Connor’s friends. There are muffled “oof” sounds in my wake, and someone says, “Hey! Watch it!” But I ignore all of it, set only on my goal of getting face to face with the monster himself.

“Get out of here, Madigan,” Connor says, giving me the barest of glances as he continues to scribble on the paper. It looks like there’s some kind of advertisement printed on the other side, but his hand blocks whatever it says. “I don’t have time for your games.”

There’s a dark edge to his voice, one he usually reserves for when no one else can hear him. He must be desperate to get rid of me, but it’s too late—I’ve already spotted the pencil. And if I was mad at Austin, now my blood boils with rage at Connor. Games. He thinks this is a
game
. Like putting Oliver in a wheelchair was just a roll of the die for him, just a whim he had one night that doesn’t amount to anything. Maybe it doesn’t when you’re one of the untouchables, someone who can get away with practically murder and no one bats an eye. No one but me, that is.

“You’re a liar and a
thief
. And those are your better qualities.”

“Who’s this jerk?” one of Connor’s posse asks, taking a menacing step towards me. As if Connor of all people needs his protection.

“Ignore him,” Connor says. “He’s
leaving
. Aren’t you, Madigan?”

“You stole Eugene’s pencil.” My hands are clenched into fists at my sides and my toes dig into the soles of my shoes.

Austin clears his throat. “We’re going to have to confiscate that.”

Connor looks up from his writing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t steal nothing—”

“It’s in your hand right now!”

He frowns at the pencil in his hand, like he hadn’t realized it was there. “This? I picked it up somewhere. Maybe I borrowed it and forgot to give it back.”

I’m shaking my head. There’s no way Eugene would have lent it to anyone—especially not Connor Mills. “You ’picked it up somewhere’ all right. It’s called stealing.”

“It’s not stealing if you don’t mean it,” he mutters, rolling his eyes at his friends while he ignores me and concentrates on his work. “So if you didn’t
mean
to hurt someone so bad they end up in a wheelchair, then it doesn’t count as ruining their life?!”

“
Again
,” Connor says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But this time I can tell he
does
know. He knows exactly what I’m talking about, and his voice burns and he glares at me like he wishes a look could make me disappear. And when he shrugs, rolling his eyes at his friends like I’m crazy and none of this matters, that’s when I snap.

My hand darts out and yanks the pencil away from him, like I’m possessed. I’m breathing hard and my mind is racing and I’m so mad that my vision blurs a little. It’s not fair that people like Connor exist and that they think they can get away with hurting everyone else. And it’s especially not fair that they
do
get away with it. Most of the time.

“Hey!” Connor reaches out and takes a swipe at the pencil, but I step back out of his reach. “I’m using that!”

“Not anymore.” All I can think about is how Connor can’t win this time. Just once, even if it’s a small victory, I have to get the upper hand on him. And that’s why, believing even for the briefest of moments that this end justifies any means, I take one end of Eugene’s lucky pencil in each hand and snap it in half.

Austin gasps. The sound of the wood cracking and breaking echoes through my head as it dawns on me what I’ve just done.

Connor’s nostrils flare in rage. And then a smile twists across his mouth as he realizes. “I should be mad, but I guess it wasn’t mine anyway, right? This how you treat people now, Madigan? Destroying somebody else’s property? You should be ashamed.”

Everyone around us laughs—everyone except Austin, of course. I’m still too much in shock over what I’ve done. I just stare at the broken green halves, the shiny four leaf clovers cracked in two.

The bell rings and the hallway empties out, loud with the clomping footsteps of everyone hurrying to homeroom.

Austin takes a pair of tweezers out of his backpack and bends down to the floor, a couple people tripping on him and nearly stomping on his hand. When he stands back up, he’s holding a scrap of paper with the tweezers. I’m assuming it’s the same one Connor was writing on. The advertisement printed on the back looks like it’s for some political campaign, but it’s only a scrap, and the name of whoever’s running for office is missing. It’s probably a piece of junk mail, and Austin’s treating it like it belongs in the Smithsonian.

“Evidence,” Austin says, slipping it into a plastic Ziploc bag and sealing it shut. He’s got the kind that slide closed. “We can match the graphite from the pencil with the graphite on this paper.”

Right. “This is Bright Oaks Junior High, Phelps. What do you think, that we have a high tech crime lab next to the photography room or something?” Besides, I don’t exactly have anything on Connor with this, even if we could prove he used the pencil to write some notes. There’s no proof he stole it, and
I’m
the one who broke it in half. It doesn’t take a detective to figure out which was the worse crime. I let my need for revenge outweigh the needs of a client, and look how much damage it did. How am I going to face Eugene?

I stuff the pencil halves in my pocket. “Rule number one,” I tell Austin. “The first step to solving a case is keeping your cool.”

“Is that why you’re not solving anything?”

I have to take a deep breath to keep from strangling him and breaking my own rule all over again. “Aren’t you late for homeroom?”

He smiles and holds up a hall pass. “I’m meeting Dodge to give him my first report.”

“Of course you are.”

“But I’m sure it’s okay if I’m a few minutes behind schedule. Anything you want me to tell him while I’m there?”

“Yeah—tell him you want to transfer. Preferably as soon as possible.”