In the Club (21 page)

“You’re a really good chemistry student, Jessica,” Madison said. “Can you answer me one question? What do you know about
abrin
?”

“Abrin!” Jessica blinked, stunned by the question. “Abrin is highly toxic. It’s a poison. If you ingest or even inhale enough of it, you die.”

“What else?”

Jessica shrugged. “It’s derived from a plant called jequirity. Sometimes it’s called crab’s eye, or rosary pea, or Indian licorice. The plant is pretty ugly. It looks kind of like a fern, but inside the leaves are small seeds—red seeds that have a black spot in the middle.”

“And the plant is poisonous?” Lex asked.

Jessica shook her head. “Not the plant. The seeds. You have to grind the seeds down to a powder. But the shells are hard. The plant is indigenous to tropical areas. Sometimes the seeds are used to make jewelry—like necklaces and bracelets. It’s not harmful unless the seed is ground down to a powder.”

“So someone would have to sprinkle some of that powder into a drink or food in order to kill someone.” Park scratched her head. “Or a victim would have to inhale the powder.”

“Right.”

“And what happens once a person ingests it?”

“Oh, a whole lot happens.” Jessica blew her nose again. “There’s no antidote for abrin poisoning. A person who ingests it would break out in a rash, have difficulty breathing, all sorts of things. But mainly, they’d just die. Abrin gets all caught up in the cells, and prevents them from absorbing protein.”

“So death would be pretty immediate,” Lex said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” Jessica answered. “It usually takes at least eight hours for a person who’s ingested abrin to feel its effects.”

“No way!” Madison blurted out. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. If a person’s ingested or inhaled a large amount, eight hours will probably do the job. But—why all these questions? Do you…does this have anything to do with Damien’s death?”

Lex looked at Park. Park looked at Madison.

Madison looked at Jessica. “Let’s just say that maybe it does. Is abrin hard to come by?”

Jessica shrugged. “Yes and no. If you’re vacationing on a tropical island and you buy one of those pretty necklaces or bracelets made from the jequirity plant, you could easily wear it under your clothes and pass through customs. And once you have a single seed, you can always grow more.”

Park held up Damien Kittle’s little black book. “Can I keep this, just for tonight? I promise I won’t lose it.”

“No!” Jessica cried. “You can’t! If someone sees it—”

“No one’s going to see it except us,” Lex cut in. “We promise.”

Jessica clutched the tote bag. “Does this mean you believe me? You know I didn’t kill Damien?”

“Sure,” Park said, sounding a little too offhanded.

“But you think Julian killed Damien, and not Concetta.”

Madison said, “It’s not important what we think right now. What’s important is that we find answers to the questions we have. Don’t forget, Jessica—Cleopatra belongs to us. We do have a right to know exactly what went on in that club.”

“Yeah,” Jessica answered, sniffling again. “I hear that.”

“Good.” Park smiled and held up the little black book. “So I can keep it for tonight?”

“On one condition,” Jessica said. “That you guys be with me when I explain my side of the story to the cops. Deal?”

“Deal.” Park nodded. “We’ll see you at graduation tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah.” Jessica started moving out of the seat, her hand on the door handle.

“I’m sorry if I sounded a little rough before,” Madison said. “I was just upset.”

Jessica looked down and nodded.

“Donnie?” Lex called out.

“I hear ya,” he called back.

The locks sprang up.

Jessica shoved the door open and climbed out onto the sidewalk without saying good-bye.

Pulling the door closed, Madison dropped the bright, apologetic look from her face. “So is Jessica going to run and call Julian now?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if she does,” Park said, flipping through the little black book. “But unless the cops find Julian’s clandestine laboratory where he’s growing a jequirity plant and engineering dynamite, they’ll have a hard time charging him with anything.”

“Maybe he has the laboratory in his house,” Lex suggested as the limo started moving. “I mean, would we have ever known what goes on in Concetta’s house if we hadn’t seen it ourselves today?”

“I don’t buy it.” Park scanned a page of the black book. “Julian might be totally nuts, but I don’t think he’d risk blowing up his house and potentially killing his own family in the process. If he has a clandestine lab, it has to be somewhere else, somewhere out of the way.”

“What really gets me is the dynamite,” Lex said. “I mean, we know why the poison was used. But the dynamite?”

“Well,
duh.
” Madison rolled her eyes. “Because he wants to blow something up.”

“But what would he gain from blowing up the school?” Lex screamed. “I just don’t get it! And what I saw yesterday—did Julian buy drugs or chemicals at that construction site?” She banged the palm of her hand against her forehead.

“Look at this,” Park said, holding the little black book open. “The last entry in this book was made on Friday. Damien wrote down an address—one-nineteen East Ninety-first Street. I wonder what that means.”

“It’s probably one of his parents’ apartments,” Lex told her. “They have three here in the city.”

“Do they?”

Lex nodded. “One is right by the United Nations, some diplomat thing. The other two are here on the Upper East Side.”

Madison cleared her throat. “Did you all hear what Jessica said about the poison? Eight or nine hours for it to take effect. We deduced last night that Damien died shortly after midnight, which means he would have had to ingest the poison at around three o’clock Friday afternoon.”

Park and Lex looked up.

“Shit,” Park said. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“Three o’clock was around the time I saw Damien in the student lounge,” Madison continued. “Right before Lex and I met up to see Mother Margaret.”

“Where was Damien right before he came to the student lounge?” Park asked.

“The principal’s office.” Madison grabbed another tissue from the bar. “Remember? Mother Margaret said he’d gone in to make an appointment to speak with her. That’s how he overheard her telling Mary Grace that Lex and I were expected.”

“Funny thing,” Park said. “Friday afternoon, I ran into Julian as I was leaving the set of Jeremy’s movie.”

“In the West Village?”

Park nodded. “It was around four. He told me he’d taken the day off to go shopping.”

“Not the whole day,” Lex said. “I saw him at around one-thirty, having lunch in the student bistro.”

“So he lied,” Madison snapped. “Great. He lied
and
he killed Damien. A lovely afternoon we’re having.”

Lex shivered. “I totally need some moisturizer.” She dipped into the magic purse, fishing for her heavy-duty Bliss hand cream. A minute later she gasped. “Oh. My.
God.
”

“What is it?” Park looked at her.

Slowly, her lips parting in a grimace, Lex lifted her hand out of the purse. Clutched in her fingers was a wilted stem with a green, fernlike leaf. “Friday night,” she whispered. “The ugly flowers that weren’t supposed to be on the tables upstairs? Remember, you made me put them in my purse?”

With a flash of recognition, Madison took the stem from Lex’s hand. “Could it be?”

Park reached out and tore open one of the leaves. Three small seeds tumbled into her palm.

Red round seeds. Each with a little black spot in the middle.

It was the final piece of the puzzle. And it made Park break out in a sweat.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “That’s
it.
How could I have been so stupid?

“What is it?” Madison asked.

Park closed her eyes, then opened them and shook her head. “On Friday afternoon, when I saw Julian on West Houston Street, he was carrying a bag—I saw the hem of the dress he wore today in the club, but I
also
saw leaves. I thought it was just a bouquet of some sort. But it wasn’t. It was
these.
” She held out her hand. “He had a jequirity plant in his bag.
He had the poison.
”

19

Graduating to Terror

T
hey hatched a plan.

It wasn’t a big plan, or even a very detailed one. But through the long hours of the night, Madison, Park, and Lex put together a concise chronology of the crime. They worked diligently, quietly, professionally, as if they were drafting a business proposal or a large-scale term paper. Sleep, as Park pointed out, was useless. A generous amount of concealer would hide the dark circles rimming their eyes. So it was after dawn on Monday morning when they finally showered and changed into their best Triple Threat daywear pieces and readied themselves for the task at hand.

And the task was both simple and complex: to catch a killer without ruining the St. Cecilia’s Prep commencement ceremony.

At precisely 8:00 a.m., Madison, Park, and Lex walked out of their building and into their waiting limousine. There were no stray reporters milling around, and the weather was mild and sunny. Donnie had the air conditioner turned up high. Three cups of hot espresso were waiting for them on the bar.

As she stirred sugar into hers, Madison reached into her purse and pulled out her notes. “Okay,” she said, “let’s do a quick review before we take him down.”

Park sipped her espresso and then set it back down on the bar.

Lex downed hers in a single gulp. “Go.”

“On the afternoon of March twelfth, Julian Simmons is brought up to the principal’s office because steroids are found in his gym bag,” Madison began. “He refuses to name his dealer. Damien probably overheard that little fiasco in the locker room when it happened. Mother Margaret suspends Julian and writes out a report of that suspension.”

“And files it in her cabinets,” Park said.

“Right.” Madison checked off that point on her notepad. “A day or two later, Julian’s parents make a donation to the school and Julian’s suspension is lifted—”

“Total hush money,” Lex cut in.

“Total,” Madison replied. “Fast-forward to the next weekend, the weekend of March eighteenth. Julian breaks into the school and steals private documents from the cabinets in the office—obviously the suspension report Mother Margaret had filed, and some other important stuff that makes it look like he wasn’t only interested in the report detailing his steroid use. He leaves traces of dangerous chemicals on the floor, along with glitter on the file cabinet.”

“But we still don’t know exactly why he’s experimenting with dynamite,” Lex said brightly. “Although blowing up the school is a definite possibility.”

Park nodded. “Fast-forward to sometime in the last two weeks. Damien Kittle begins threatening to leave the Black Cry Affair. This causes total distress among the other members, who don’t want their secret role-playing lives exposed. Especially Julian, because a hip-hop star who moonlights as a cross-dresser is absolutely
not
making it to the Grammys.”

“Or even the MTV Music Awards,” Lex threw in.

“You don’t think MTV would love a cross-dressing hip-hop star?” Madison asked thoughtfully.

Lex thought about it for a moment. Then she shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right. He would’ve made it to the MTV Awards.”

“I agree,” Park said, then snapped back to business. “Okay—there is a span of tense days in the Black Cry Affair. Everyone’s worried that Damien’s going to push the button and talk about things. Tension, tension. And Julian begins thinking about how he can silence Damien.”

“Julian can’t just kill him in cold blood.” Lex picked up the conversation. “So he weighs his options and decides that poisoning Damien is the best way possible. And he has the means to do it—he’s an excellent chemistry student, and he’s probably been experimenting with the idea of abrin for a long time. He has a plant or two of jequirity in his clandestine lab that he probably brought back from one of his holidays in the Caribbean.”

“He figures the best place to have Damien die would be at the opening of Cleopatra,” Madison said. “Spinning lights, tons of people—and Julian’s there, so he has a lot of alibis.”

“Fast-forward to sometime on Thursday night,” Lex said. “Julian grinds the jequirity seeds into a powder. He knows that in order for Damien to die sometime Friday night, he has to feed Damien the poison on Friday afternoon.”

“Fast-forward to Friday afternoon.” Park reached for her cup of espresso again. “At around two o’clock, probably in the student bistro or maybe somewhere else in the school, Julian dumps the mixture into whatever Damien’s drinking. Then Julian cuts out of school and heads to the Village for some shopping. I run into him by chance—and I spot a dress
and
another jequirity plant in his bag.”

“A fatal error,” Lex whispered. “But looking at it from the point of view of criminal psychology, carrying that plant even though he’s just used the poison to commit murder gives him a sense of power and completion. It’s his way of silently telling the world that he’s hatched what he thinks is the perfect crime.”

“And countless killers in history have done the same thing.” Park downed the last drops of espresso. “It’s a classic form of narcissism. A way to stroke your own ego. And now that he’s actually done it, he’s probably going to make some more of the poison to kill off a few other people in the near future.”

Madison checked off several more points on her notepad. “At around three o’clock, I see Damien in the student lounge. He walks me upstairs, where I meet Lex and Coco.”

“Fast-forward to Friday night,” Park said. “Julian gets to Cleopatra early and quickly gets rid of the flowers Madison ordered, and drops a few jequirity stems into vases on the tables. He figures that when the cops come and do a sweep of the place, they’ll find the plants and eventually connect them to the autopsy’s findings—death by poisoning. But as far as the police are concerned,
anyone
could be a suspect, any one of hundreds of guests. It would be almost impossible for them to track Julian to the plants. Except, of course, for the fact that I’ve spotted him with one.”

“Fast-forward a little more,” Madison said. “To around twelve-fifteen Friday night.”

“Julian’s dancing somewhere on the fourth level of Cleopatra,” Park said. “He knows Damien and Concetta are in the cage together, and he wants to keep an eye on Damien. He wants to see him collapse. And he
does
see Damien collapse, and Concetta run down the stairs, limping, one of her feet bare.”

“And then Julian climbs the stairs, steps into the cage, and sees the stiletto,” Lex said gravely. “And it comes to him in a flash—a brilliant little surge of criminal inspiration. He figures that if he hits Damien in the head, the crime will look simple. An open-and-shut case. Blunt impact trauma. He won’t even have to worry about the poison being exposed. Damien’s already dead on the floor of the cage, and it only takes Julian a few seconds to pick up the stiletto and deliver a steroid-powered blow.
Wham.
And blood starts pooling everywhere.”

Madison nodded, staring down at her notes. “And then Julian runs back down the stairs in the nick of time. Maybe ten seconds later, Jessica happens to look up. She sees Damien lying on the floor of the cage and runs in, and strands of her hair, unfortunately, are left at the crime scene.”

“It was a really smart move on Julian’s part,” Park said. “I mean, when you think about it. Delivering that blow to Damien’s head with Concetta’s stiletto turned his whole crime into something else. He probably figured the cause of death would be obvious, and it was—initially. Everyone points a finger at Concetta.”

“But then at some point in the middle of all this, Julian would have had to jump into the DJ booth and knock the two DJs out and pop in the Requiem, which he’d planned on doing anyway,” Madison reminded them. “It certainly wasn’t on the original play list. Anyway, I guess he’ll tell us once we confront him. They always do.”

“Which, by the way, we’re going to do very casually.” Park pointed at Madison and Lex. “Commencement is going on, the prime minister is at the school, and the school doesn’t need any more bad publicity. So we’re just going to find Julian, take him out into the hall, try to get him to surrender peacefully. There’ll be cops everywhere, so we really don’t have to worry.”

Lex shot a glance at Madison. “What if he doesn’t surrender peacefully? I mean, what if he goes ballistic and starts to attack us? How do we keep our cool? How do we not create any more scenes?”

“If he starts attacking us,” Park said simply, “we just start screaming. Screw the damn plan.” She sighed and stared out the window. She blinked several times. “Donnie? Am I seeing things, or are you going the wrong way?”

“Major detour,” he called back from the front seat. “A bunch of streets are closed. I had to go to First and drive all the way back up. Now we’ll start heading south again. Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Park leaned back in the seat, but she didn’t close her eyes. She was exhausted and on edge. She kept her gaze trained on the street, on the rows of buildings and restaurants and stores.

Horns blared everywhere as the traffic came to a halt.

“Oh, man,” Lex said, irritated. “It’s freakin’ gridlock! We’re going to be so late.”

Madison sighed. “It’ll move soon.”

Park continued scanning the street. She wasn’t thinking about anything in particular when her eyes stopped on one of the building addresses.

119 East Ninety-first Street.

She sat up. Why did the address ring a bell? She stared at the building, half hoping the limo would move. But it didn’t. The cacophony of traffic continued.

And then it hit her.

Damien’s little black book.

Her lips parting, she plunged an arm into her purse and pulled out the little black book. That was it. She had seen the address—119 East Ninety-first Street—last night while flipping through the book. In fact, the address had been Damien’s last entry. She flipped to the page and found it.

There. Right there.

“Donnie, pull over,” Park said.

“Why?” Madison asked.

Park held up the little black book. She pointed to the squat, ugly building directly beyond the windows of the limo. “That’s the address Damien wrote down. The one Lex thought was one of his parents’ apartments.”

“
That
ugly thing?” Lex leaned over and stared out the window. “That’s impossible. English royalty wouldn’t live in a dump like that.”

“It
is
unattractive,” Madison said. “But that’s probably because it’s a rent-controlled building.”

Four stories high, the front steps and siding all riddled with cracks, the apartment building looked as though it hadn’t undergone maintenance in a hundred years.

Donnie pulled the limo into a wide spot directly in front of a fire hydrant.

Park popped open the door.

“Wait.” Madison grabbed her arm. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got a hunch,” Park said. “This may explain everything. Both of you, come on.”

Lex sighed, annoyed. “Donnie, if we’re not back in ten minutes, please come and get us.”

“Okay.”

They dashed up the front steps of the building. The entrance was locked. Park looked at the apartment listings; there were five in all, and only one of the slots, apartment 2B, was missing a surname. She jammed her fingers against all the bells.

“What are you
doing
?” Madison asked.

Park turned to face her. “Let’s just hope someone’s expecting company so that we can get inside. I have a feeling—”

The door buzzed.

“Oh!” Park threw herself against it and stepped into the dingy hallway.

“Ewww, it stinks in here,” Lex said.

“And practically none of the lights work.” Madison was looking at the mold-infested ceiling. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that there isn’t a doorman.”

The hallway led directly to a staircase on the left; on the right was an apartment door with a welcome mat in front. Remembering the empty name slot, Park raced up the stairs to the second floor. Apartment 2B was just off the landing. She paused when she got to the door.

“Oh God,” Lex said nervously. “I think I figured it out too.”

“Well, it would be nice if someone explained it to me.” Madison slammed her purse against the staircase railing.

Park held her breath and banged on the door. She put her finger to her lips, instructing Madison and Lex to stay quiet.

A minute passed in silence.

Park laced her fingers around the knob; it didn’t budge. She gestured her head at Lex. “Open the magic purse. I need a screwdriver. And something heavy.”

“I don’t know if I have that,” Lex said. She started shuffling through the purse, handing Madison her makeup bag, her sunglasses case, her two emergency silk scarves, and a handful of pens. “Okay. Here’s something heavy.”

Park smiled as Lex handed her a big steel paperweight with the Hamilton Holdings, Inc., insignia emblazoned on the front. The damn thing had to weigh four pounds, and it was solid.

“My
God,
” Madison gasped. “You have more shit in that purse than a sewer! First thing tonight, you’re going to clean it out. You’re going to totally mess up your back.”

Lex was still straining to sift her way down to the bottom of the purse. When she did, she yanked out her hand and revealed a small pair of pliers.

Park stepped back and leveled the paperweight in her right hand. Then she slammed it against the little circular space directly above the knob.

The door shook.

She repeated the process several more times until a chunk of the old wood came splintering off.

“Breaking and entering twice in one weekend is
not
smart,” Madison snapped. “We’re going to get busted.”

Park ignored those words. A sheen of sweat had developed along her neck and she was almost out of breath. She jammed the paperweight against the space of the doorknob one last time, then jumped back when it gave way.

She stood with her arms outstretched in a defensive position. But in this case, she was defending Madison and Lex from a potential blast. None came. Everything was silent around them.

Handing the paperweight back to Lex, she nudged the door open with her toe.