Hush, Hush #1 (16 page)

The hostess swept him an appraising once-over. “I’ll be right back with chips and salsa. Your waitress will be here shortly to take your orders.”

Vee plopped into the booth first. I slid in beside her, and Elliot took the seat across from me. Our eyes connected, and there was a fleck of something dark in his. Very likely resentment. Maybe even hostility. I wondered if he knew I’d seen the article.

“Purple is your color, Nora,” he said, nodding at my scarf as I loosened it from my neck and tied it around the handle of my handbag. “Brightens your eyes.”

Vee nudged my foot. She actually thought he meant it as a compliment.

“So,” I said to Elliot with an artificial smile, “why don’t you tell us about Kinghorn Prep?”

“Yeah,” Vee chimed in. “Are there secret societies there? Like in the movies?”

“What’s to tell?” Elliot said. “Great school. End of story.” He picked up his menu and scanned it. “Anyone interested in an appetizer? My treat.”

“If it’s so great, why did you transfer?” I met his eyes and held them.

Ever so slightly, I arched my eyebrows, challenging.

A muscle in Elliot’s jaw jumped just before he cracked a smile. “The girls. I heard they were a lot finer around these parts. The rumor proved 162

true.” He winked at me, and an ice-cold feeling shot from my head to my toes.

“Why didn’t Jules transfer too?” asked Vee. “We could have been the fabulous four, only with a lot more punch. The
phenomenal
four.”

“Jules’s parents are obsessed with his education. Intense doesn’t begin to cover it. I swear on my life, he’s going all the way to the top. The guy can’t be stopped. I mean, I confess, I do okay in school. Better than most. But nobody tops Jules. He’s an academic god.”

The dreamy look returned to Vee’s eyes. “I’ve never met his parents,”

she said. “Both times I’ve gone over, they’re either out of town or working.”

“They work a lot,” Elliot agreed, returning his eyes to the menu, making it hard for me to read anything in them.

“Where do they work?” I asked.

Elliot took a long drink of his water. It seemed to me like he was buying time while he devised an answer. “Diamonds. They spend a lot of time in Africa and Australia.”

“I didn’t know Australia was big in the diamond business,” I said.

“Yeah, neither did I,” said Vee.

In fact, I was pretty sure Australia had no diamonds. Period.

“Why are they living in Maine?” I asked. “Why not Africa?”

Elliot studied his menu more intensely. “What are you both having? I’m thinking the steak fajitas look good.”

163

“If Jules’s parents are in the diamond business, I bet they know a lot about choosing the perfect engagement ring,” Vee said. “I’ve always wanted an emerald-cut solitaire.”

I kicked Vee under the table. She jabbed me with her fork.

“
Oww!
” I said.

Our waitress paused at the end of the table long enough to ask,

“Anything to drink?”

Elliot looked over the top of his menu, first at me, then at Vee.

“Diet Coke,” Vee said.

“Water with lime wedges, please,” I said.

The waitress returned amazingly quickly with our drinks. Her return was my cue to leave the table and initiate step one of the Plan, and Vee reminded me with a second under-the-table prod from her fork.

“Vee,” I said through my teeth, “would you like to accompany me to the ladies’ room?” I suddenly didn’t want to go through with the Plan. I didn’t want to leave Vee alone with Elliot. What I did want was to drag her out, tell her about the murder investigation, then find some way to make both Elliot and Jules disappear from our lives.

“Why don’t you go alone?” said Vee. “I think that would be a better
plan
.” She jerked her head at the bar and mouthed
Go
, while making discreet shooing motions below the table.

“I was
planning
on going alone, but I’d really like you to join me.”

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“What is it with girls?” Elliot said, splitting a smile between us. “I swear, I’ve never known a girl who could go to the bathroom alone.” He leaned forward and grinned conspiratorially. “Let me in on the secret.

Seriously. I’ll pay you five bucks each.” He reached for his back pocket.

“Ten, if I can come along and see what the big deal is.”

Vee flashed a grin. “Pervert. Don’t forget these,” she told me, stuffing the 7-Eleven sacks into my arms.

Elliot’s eyebrows lifted.

“Trash,” Vee explained to him with a touch of snark. “Our garbage can is full. My mom asked if I could throw these away since I was going out.”

Elliot didn’t look like he believed her, and Vee didn’t look like she cared. I got up, my arms loaded with costume gear, and swallowed my burning frustration.

Weaving through the tables, I took the hall leading back to the restrooms. The hall was painted terra-cotta and was decorated with maracas, straw hats, and wooden dolls. It was hotter back here, and I wiped my forehead. The Plan now was to get this over with as quickly as possible. As soon as I was back at the table, I’d formulate an excuse about needing to leave, and haul Vee out. With or without her consent.

After peeking below the three stalls in the ladies’ room and confirming I was alone, I locked the main door and dumped the contents of the 7-Eleven sacks onto the counter. One platinum blond wig, one purple push-up bra, one black tube top, one sequined miniskirt, hot pink fishnet tights, and one pair of size eight and a half sharkskin stiletto heels.

I stuffed the bra, the tube top and the tights back inside the sacks. After sloughing off my jeans, I pulled on the miniskirt. I tucked my hair under the wig and applied the lipstick. I topped it off with a generous coat of 165

high-shine lip gloss.

“You can do this,” I told my reflection, snapping the cap back on the gloss and blotting my lips together. “You can pull a Marcie Millar.

Seduce men for secrets. How hard can it be?”

I kicked off my driving mocs, stuffed them into a sack along with my jeans, then pushed the sack under the counter, out of sight. “Besides,” I continued, “there’s nothing wrong with sacrificing a little pride for the sake of intelligence. If you want to approach this with a morbid outlook, you could even say if you
don’t
get answers, you could wind up dead.

Because like it or not, someone out there means you harm.”

I dangled the sharkskin heels in my line of vision. They weren’t the ugliest things I’d ever seen. In fact, they could be considered sexy.
Jaws
meets Coldwater, Maine. I strapped myself into them and practiced walking across the bathroom several times.

Two minutes later I eased myself on top of a bar stool at the bar.

The bartender eyed me. “Sixteen?” he guessed. “Seventeen?”

He looked about ten years older than me and had receding brown hair that he wore shaved close. A silver hoop hung from his right earlobe.

White T-shirt and Levi’s. Not bad looking … not great, either.

“I’m not an underage drinker,” I called loudly above the music and surrounding conversation. “I’m waiting for a friend. I’ve got a great view of the doors here.” I retrieved the list of questions from my handbag and covertly positioned the paper under a glass salt shaker.

“What’s that?” the bartender asked, wiping his hands on a towel and nodding at the list.

166

I slid the list farther under the salt shaker. “Nothing,” I said, all innocence.

He raised an eyebrow.

I decided to be loose with the truth. “It’s a … shopping list. I have to pick up some groceries for my mom on the way home.”
What happened
to flirting?
I asked myself.
What happened to Marcie Millar?

He gave me a scrutinizing look that I decided wasn’t all negative. “After working this job for five years, I’m pretty good at spotting liars.”

“I’m not a liar,” I said. “Maybe I was lying a moment ago, but it was just one lie. One little lie doesn’t make a liar.”

“You look like a reporter,” he said.

“I work for my high school’s eZine.” I wanted to shake myself.

Reporters didn’t instill trust in people. People were generally suspicious of reporters. “But I’m not working tonight,” I amended quickly. “Strictly pleasure tonight. No business. No underlying agendas. None whatsoever.”

After a count of silence I decided the best move was to plow ahead. I cleared my throat and said, “Is the Borderline a popular place of employment for high school students?”

“We get a lot of those, yeah. Hostesses and busboys and the like.”

“Really?” I said, feigning surprise. “Maybe I know some of them. Try me.”

The bartender angled his eyes toward the ceiling and scratched the stubble on his chin. His blank stare wasn’t inspiring my confidence. Not 167

to mention that I didn’t have a lot of time. Elliot could be slipping lethal drugs into Vee’s Diet Coke.

“How about Patch Cipriano?” I asked. “Does he work here?”

“Patch? Yeah. He works here. A couple nights, and weekends.”

“Was he working Sunday night?” I tried not to sound too curious. But I needed to know if it was possible for Patch to have been at the pier. He said he had a party on the coast, but maybe his plans had changed. If someone verified that he was at work Sunday evening, I could rule out his involvement in the attack on Vee.

“Sunday?” More scratching. “The nights blur together. Try the hostesses.

One of them will remember. They all giggle and go a little screwy when he’s around.” He smiled as if I might somehow sympathize with them.

I said, “You wouldn’t happen to have access to his job application?”

Including his home address.

“That would be a
no
.”

“Just out of curiosity,” I said, “do you know if it’s possible to get hired here if you have a felony on your record?”

“A felony?” He gave a bark of laughter. “You kidding me?”

“Okay, maybe not a felony, but how about a misdemeanor?”

He spread his palms on the counter and leaned close. “No.” His tone had shifted from humoring to insulted.

“That’s good. That’s really good to know.” I repositioned myself on the bar stool, and felt the skin on my thighs peel away from the vinyl. I was 168

sweating. If rule number one of flirting was no lists, I was fairly certain rule number two was no sweating.

I consulted my list.

“Do you know if Patch has ever had any restraining orders? Does he have a history of stalking?” I suspected the bartender was getting a bad vibe from me, and I decided to throw all my questions out in a last-ditch effort before he sent me away from the bar—or worse, had me evicted from the restaurant for harassment and suspicious behavior. “Does he have a girlfriend?” I blurted.

“Go ask him,” he said.

I blinked. “He’s not working tonight.”

At the bartender’s grin, my stomach seemed to unravel.

“He’s not working tonight … is he?” I asked, my voice inching up an octave. “He’s supposed to have Tuesdays off!”

“Usually, yeah. But he’s covering for Benji. Benji went to the hospital.

Ruptured appendix.”

“You mean Patch is
here
? Right
now
?” I glanced over my shoulder, brushing the wig to cover my profile while I scanned the dining area for him.

“He walked back to the kitchen a couple minutes ago.”

I was already disengaging myself from the bar stool. “I think I left my car running. But it was great talking to you!” I hurried as quickly as I could to the restrooms.

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Inside the ladies’ room I locked the door behind me, drew a few breaths with my back pressed to the door, then went to the sink and splashed cold water on my face. Patch was going to find out I’d spied on him. My memorable performance guaranteed that. On the surface, this was a bad thing because it was, well, humiliating. But when I thought about it, I had to face the fact that Patch was very secretive. Secretive people didn’t like their lives pried into. How would he react when he learned I was holding him under a magnifying glass?

And now I wondered why I’d come here at all, since deep inside, I didn’t believe Patch was the guy behind the ski mask. Maybe he had dark, disturbing secrets, but running around in a ski mask wasn’t one of them.

I turned off the tap, and when I looked up, Patch’s face was reflected in the mirror. I shrieked and swung around.

He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t look particularly amused.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped.

“I work here.”

“I mean
here
. Can’t you read? The sign on the door—”

“I’m starting to think you’re following me. Every time I turn around, there you are.”

“I wanted to take Vee out,” I explained. “She’s been in the hospital.” I sounded defensive. I was certain that only made me look more guilty. “I never dreamed I’d run into you. It’s supposed to be your night off. And what are you talking about? Every time
I
turn around, there
you
are.”

Patch’s eyes were sharp, intimidating, extracting. They calculated my 170

every word, my every movement.

“Want to explain the tacky hair?” he said.

I yanked off the wig and tossed it on the counter. “Want to explain where you’ve been? You missed the last two days of school.”

I was almost certain Patch wouldn’t reveal his whereabouts, but he said,

“Playing paintball. What were you doing at the bar?”

“Talking with the bartender. Is that a crime?” Balancing one hand against the counter, I raised my foot to unbuckle a sharkskin heel. I bent over slightly, and as I did, the interrogation list fluttered out of my neckline and onto the floor.

I went down on my knees for it, but Patch was faster. He held it over his head while I jumped for it.

“Give it back!” I said.

“ ‘Does Patch have a restraining order against him?’“ he read. “ ‘Is Patch a felon?’”

“Give—me—that!” I hissed furiously.

Patch gave a soft laugh, and I knew he’d seen the next question. “ ‘Does Patch have a girlfriend?’ “

Patch put the paper in his back pocket. I was sorely tempted to go after it, despite its location.