Final Exam (25 page)

None of that would be necessary. Just the thought of opening your head on a doorjamb made me weak in the knees. I was happy, though, that Adriana would still have a job the next day, despite the tough time she’d had coming up with Max’s proper alias. It was a family business, and she was in the family.

“I don’t think I need to follow up on that,” I said, pointing at his head.

“Fine. We run a very successful, financially viable business, Professor. We pay our taxes, pay our staff well, and keep things on the up-and-up. There is nothing going on at T&G that would concern you or that has anything to do with what happened to my fiancée.” He put his head in his hands. “If you think I had anything to do with what happened to Amanda, you’re crazy. I would never hurt her,” he said, his words muffled because his hands were over his face. “Ever.”

He was pretty forceful about his declaration of honesty when it came to his company and apparent love for his fiancée. I responded with a weak, “Okay.”

He picked his head back up and looked at me. The anguish on his face convinced me that he had nothing to do with what happened to Amanda. “Go back to the Bronx, Professor Bergeron. And if you have any questions in the future,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out two twenties, throwing them on the table, “please feel free to call me directly. I don’t enjoy being lied to.” He got up. “I hope you enjoy your dinner. My uncle Christos owns this place.”

I had one more thing I wanted to ask him and it didn’t concern nefarious activity at T&G or anywhere else. “Are you and Amanda going to get married?” I asked.

He smiled sadly. “I hope so.” He put his hands in his pockets, and all of a sudden, he looked more like a lovelorn kid than the slick criminal for which I had had him pegged. “Do
you
think we’re going to get married? Amanda said she talked to you about this . . .” He didn’t seem to know what to call the situation.

“Love triangle?” Max offered helpfully.

Again, the sad smile. “I guess. I’m hoping—”

Max interrupted him. “Fight for her. If you love her, fight for her.” I kept quiet and wondered if I should let her advise him. Having left her husband for the flimsiest of reasons, I wasn’t sure if she was the right person to offer her uninformed opinions on relationships. “You seem like a nice kid. You’ve got a good job. And you’re easy on the eyes. You can win her back.”

Brandon was staring at Max, a little glassy-eyed, apparently not knowing whether he should take her counsel to heart. In the space of a half hour, she had gone from being a lying accomplice in my wacky caper to Dear Abby. “Well, thanks,” he said. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

“Do it!” she said. “I’m telling you, you’re meant to be with that girl.” She had no way of knowing that but she was on a roll and there was no stopping her. “Finding true love these days isn’t easy so you need to be sure you make it work.” She returned to eating her meat loaf and it was clear that this portion of the night’s festivities were over.

Brandon beat a hasty exit. I leaned around the booth and watched him leave. When I was sure he was gone, I leaned back in and watched Max continue to fill her face with meat loaf and mashed potatoes.

“Those stitches almost made me lose my appetite,” she said, downing her half glass of house cabernet in one swig. “Wanna go?”

I looked at the two twenties on the table and decided that we would allow Brandon to pick up our dinners. Because if T&G was doing as well as Brandon claimed it was, he was in a better position to pay for dinner than I was. I got up. This night had been weirder than any I had ever experienced and I had a lot of crazy experiences on which to draw. “I’ll feel better once I’m back in my dorm room,” I said. “And I’m loath to admit that.”

Thirty-Four

We weren’t going right past her house but it was close enough so I dropped Max off in Tribeca. I pulled up in front her luxury condominium and turned the car off.

“I’d love to say that I had a great time, but I didn’t,” she said, putting her hand on the door handle.

“Sorry.”

“That was a really stupid idea.”

“I know.”

“And we accomplished nothing.”

“Okay,” I protested. “I get it. Bad idea. Goals not accomplished.”

She got out of the car and was ready to end our adventure when she changed her mind. She leaned back in. “Something’s off between us.”

I feigned ignorance, not wanting to get into a whole thing right before leaving her. “What do you mean?”

“You were kind of mean to me the last time I saw you.” She pouted. “The only reason I came with you today was to try and fix things. Between us,” she added, in case I didn’t know what she was talking about.

We had journeyed back to the alternate universe that Max seemed to be inhabiting lately. My hands tightened around the steering wheel and I rested my head between them. “I don’t think we should do this right now,” I muttered to the dashboard.

She sighed. “We should do it soon.”

I nodded. “Okay. Just not right now. Not in my car while I’m parked in front of a fire hydrant.” We had a lot to talk about but my energy was flagging, and if history was any indication, that meant that I would end up crying uncontrollably, agreeing that I had been “kind of mean” to her, and asking for forgiveness. And I wasn’t going to let that happen. “Thanks for your help. Say hi to Fred.”

She made a sad face. “He’s kind of mad at you, too,” she said, putting her hand on her hip. She made a face to convey her approval at his anger. A few seconds later her expression changed and she was smiling. “Oh, by the way, how did you like your bedroom?”

“That’s another thing I really don’t want to talk about.”

“You didn’t like it?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

I looked out my window for a second, trying to figure out how to break it to her that I liked my bedroom the way it was before: dull, boring, bland, and beige. “Remember when I told you that you should do the opposite of whatever it is that you’re thinking?”

She let out a huge sigh. “Of course.”

“You should have done that before you had my bedroom painted.”

“Your room was dull. Boring. Bland.” She let out another sigh. “And beige. You’ve got to spice things up a bit.”

I banged my hands on the steering wheel. “No I don’t. I like things the way they are. I’m dull. I’m boring. I’m kind of beige. Why are you always trying to change me and everything about me? You’ve been doing that since we first became friends and I’ve put up with it.”

“You don’t have to be dull and boring, you know,” she said. “And you don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“You think that if people aren’t exactly like you and living life on the edge every single minute, their lives aren’t worth anything.” This was exactly why I didn’t want to have this conversation; the minute the words were out of my mouth, I could see her face crumble. Obviously I had gone too far. “I don’t want to live like that, Max. I don’t want a red bedroom. I just want to live my boring life.”

She was silent for a few minutes and I thought the conversation was over. Apparently, it wasn’t. “Well, if you want to live like that, then I guess I have to let you.”

I could feel my temperature rising. Her own life had been a mess and she had turned to me, Miss Bland and Boring. Now she wanted to spice things up for me. It wasn’t her place to do that and I told her so. “Close the door, Max.” She started talking again and I held my hand up. “Close. The. Door.” I repeated this slowly so that there wouldn’t be any doubt as to what I wanted to do or what my mood was.

She gave me one last sad look before slamming the door and hurrying across the street to her building. A uniformed doorman came out and held the door for her. Just like St. Thomas, I thought. Except that the only people who wore uniforms were . . .

. . . students who drove limousines.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I hadn’t needed to go to Newark. All I’d had to do was grab that slacker Michael Columbo and ask him what was going on at T&G. I remember having seen him in a uniform and knew that he was working to make extra money. I also remembered the little T&G embroidered on his shirt pocket. Why hadn’t it occurred to me earlier? Oh, right. The black mold in my bathroom in the dorm was eating away at my brain cells. And I hardly ever slept because of the lumpy mattress on the twin bed. As a result of the mold and the exhaustion, I could barely remember my own name.

When I saw that Max was safely inside the building, I maneuvered my way through the downtown traffic, light at this hour, and headed back toward St. Thomas, a ride that would take about twenty minutes if the West Side Highway wasn’t too backed up.

Fortunately, the traffic gods were on my side and I sailed up the highway, getting back to school in record time. I attempted to angle into my usual parking spot, noticing too late that an orange cone had been placed where my car would normally go, obviously the work of the security department. I ran over the cone, dragging it underneath the car and wedging it between the undercarriage and the blacktop. Hearing the cone drag along the ground, and smelling the burned rubber when I got out of the car only increased my agitation. I got into a crouch and assessed the damage. There wasn’t any smoke, and nothing seemed to be smoldering, so I made the executive decision to leave the cone there until the morning when I could properly deal with the situation. It was dark, cold, and starting to drizzle. My best friend had seriously offended my sensibilities, yet had turned the situation around to make it seem like it was my fault. My other best friend, a man of the cloth, was a stupid, lying, Roman-collar-wearing dumbbell. I had many problems. The orange cone would have to wait.

I stood up, Michael Columbo’s handsome face at eye level when I straightened out, scaring the dickens out of me. I grabbed my chest. “Oh, God!”

He looked as startled as I did and he was the one who approached me. I could see where he was headed: the black Lincoln Town Car that I had pulled in beside and hadn’t noticed. “Sorry.” He was in a T&G uniform: black jacket, black pants, a uniform hat in his hands.

I grabbed his arm. “C’mere. I want to talk to you.” I frogmarched him in through the side door of the dorm, him protesting the entire time that he had to go to work. I checked my watch; it was eleven o’clock. “Why are you going to work so late?” I asked.

“I have an airport run.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “They’re late.”

“Kinda late to be going out, don’t you think?” I didn’t mean to sound judgmental but seeing the look on his face, obviously that’s the way it came out.

He looked at me, his baby face out of sync with his muscular man body. “It’s my job,” he said. “I have to work. Otherwise, I can’t go here.”

I put my hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean—”

He looked down at his feet. “I know. I would rather be in bed right now but this job pays well.”

“Did you get the job through Wayne?” I asked.

He nodded.

“When did you start?”

“Right before spring break.” He twisted his hat between his hands. “I drive businessmen to the airport and they tip big.” His eyes got wide. “Really big. If I didn’t have this job, I wouldn’t be able to stay in school,” he reiterated. “My parents lost most of my college fund when the market tanked. I had to get a job.”

“Where do you drive them? Kennedy? LaGuardia?”

“Kennedy or Newark. Most of the people I drive are flying internationally. Mostly Mexico and Latin America.”

“Do you only do runs for Mexican and Latin American trips?”

He shrugged. “Mostly. Sometimes my fares go to Europe. But those guys going south of the border make up most of their clientele.”

“Those guys?”

“Yeah, the businessmen that I drive. That’s most of the business. At least that’s what Wayne told me.”

That was odd. Why did the business cater to men going back and forth to Mexico and Latin America? I wished I had had this information before I had sent Max/Martha/Margaret on a wild-goose chase to find out information in Newark.

“Do you do anything else?”

“Sometimes I drop packages off at T&G.”

“Packages?”

“Yeah. I’ll meet someone at the airport, they’ll give me a package, and I’ll drop it off at T&G.”

I looked at him, the whole thing sounding kind of fishy. “Package? What kind of packages?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, getting indignant. “I just go where I’m told.”

“And where is it that you’re told to go?” I asked, getting equally indignant.

“I usually meet someone somewhere, give them the package, and drive off. It takes about ten seconds and I get fifty bucks.”

I stared at him intently, trying to discern whether he was as dumb as he sounded, completely naïve, or a slick operator. When he looked at me, his eyes suddenly wide, I had my answer. He was a little dumb, a lot naïve, and had been used by someone at T&G.

His shaking voice conveyed his panic. “Oh, wait . . . ,” he said, grabbing his head. He crouched down, putting everything together and not liking the way the puzzle was beginning to look. “Oh, no . . . I didn’t think . . . you don’t think . . .”

I knelt next to him and put my arms around his shoulders.

“I needed the money,” he said again, his voice sounding small and like a boy’s rather than a man’s. I heard a hitch in his throat as he stifled a sob. “I really needed the money. I didn’t think.”

There was nothing for me to say as he worked the whole thing out in his mind. He dropped his hat on the floor. “Should I go to work?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. “Call in sick,” I recommended. “I’ll call the detectives working the case. They’ll want to talk to you.”

His face went white. “I can’t talk to them. They’ll arrest me.”

“No they won’t,” I assured him, helping him stand up. “I’ll tell them what we talked about and that you didn’t know what was going on.” I gave him a quick hug. “Don’t worry.” Something occurred to me while I was looking at him. “You didn’t put one of those packages in Wayne’s room right before spring break, did you?”

I thought I was going to have to revive him when the reality of what he had done hit him. “Yes,” he croaked.

“Who gave you the package and told you to put it in Wayne’s room?”

“Mr. Grigoriadis. He said I would be doing him a big favor.” He grabbed his head again. “I used my master key because I thought I was doing the right thing. Mr. G. told me that Wayne needed what was in the package.” He closed his eyes. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“It’ll be okay,” I reassured him. “Did Mr. Grigoriadis give you all of your jobs?”

He nodded.

“Did you talk to anyone else at T&G about your schedule?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Oh, God, I am in such big trouble. How could I be so stupid?” He started talking to himself, as if I weren’t there. “I wondered why the money was good but I didn’t think about it. I should have known better.”

I gave him another hug but could tell that he was in for a sleepless night, particularly if the cops decided to question him tonight rather than in the morning. I watched him walk down the hall toward the stairs, his shoulders slumped, still muttering to himself about how he should have known that what he was doing wasn’t on the up-and-up.

He was a good kid and he had been taken advantage of by Amanda’s father. I thought of the two times Costas had dropped by and wondered why he had come to see Wayne. Hadn’t he known that planting the drugs in Wayne’s room—for whatever reason—would either scare him off or get him in trouble with the school? Or had he stopped by to find out if Wayne was truly in the weeds, away from school and, more importantly, Amanda? I decided that I would work this all out with Crawford, who was my first phone call when I got back to my room. But, first, I had to do my job, which was to find out if all was well in Siena Hall.

Bart Johannsen and his lacrosse stick were on duty as usual, but the dorm was quiet as it normally was at this hour. Bart was dead asleep, his head on the desk, one hand still holding the lacrosse stick upright. Neat trick. My limbs usually go slack when I fall asleep but I don’t have a possession as valuable as the mighty lacrosse stick. I ignored him for the time being, choosing instead to make sure the front door was locked before I called it a night. I went to the outer door and saw that someone had wedged a piece of wood under the bottom of the door, keeping it slightly ajar and making sure that anyone who entered wouldn’t have to ring the bell and wake up our fair prince sitting desk. I pulled the wood out, disgusted by the laziness of the staff, and walked back to the desk, knocking the wood lightly on Bart’s head.

“Hello?” I kept tapping until he woke up.

He finally jolted awake, the lacrosse stick clattering to the floor. He bent down and picked it up, the safety of the stick being his main concern. “What?” he asked, a little annoyed that he had been awakened.

I held out the piece of wood. “Did you know that someone propped open the door?” I asked. I dropped it on the desk for effect.

He rubbed his eyes. “No.”

“Well, you would have if you had stayed awake.”

He twirled the lacrosse stick. “Hey, get off my back. It’s late. I’m exhausted.”

“Something tells me you wouldn’t have trouble staying awake if you were on your way to a party,” I said. Gee—when had I turned into Sister Mary? I heard my voice and how I was talking to him and immediately toned it down. “Why don’t you take off?” I asked. “You do look a little tired.”

He looked at me like I was going to turn back into Mr. Hyde, but when he saw the concern on my face and my smile, he started collecting his books and his lacrosse gear.

“Thanks,” he said before heading up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

I flipped through the logbook to see if there were any wayward visitors whom I needed to see off when eleven hit. No Mary Catherine, which made sense because Michael was working. None of our other usual suspects—girls or guys dating someone in the building. But there was one interesting entry: Costas Grigoriadis. He had signed in at nine-thirty and hadn’t signed out. Had he come in and wanted to take Amanda to dinner, he wouldn’t have needed to sign in, he would have just waited in the lobby until she had come down. So, that meant he was somewhere in the building. Was he in her room? I called Amanda’s room and got her roommate, Shari.