Kill You Last (10 page)

“And those would be the ones Janet was concerned about,” I said. The muscles in the sides of my head began to tighten and throb. Had Whit really figured out who the killer was? If it wasn’t my father, I should have felt elated, right? But if he’d knowingly wanted Janet to help in the scam, then wasn’t he indirectly responsible for what happened to those girls? I felt torn with mixed emotions. And there was one more question: “So why haven’t you written a story about it?”

Whit gazed at me with his steady green eyes. “I’m going to. But I’d feel a lot better if I knew what your dad knew and when he knew it. Because once this story gets out, everyone’s going to think that he hired her precisely because she has experience with scams. If that’s true, then the public has a right to know. But if it’s not true, I’d like to be able to say so.…”

“Because you don’t want him to be unjustly accused?” I asked.

Whit nodded, and I had to appreciate him for that, because any other journalist would probably have run the story immediately. It was a good scoop and would undoubtedly bring glory to whoever wrote about it first.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

“The answer could be somewhere in the studio,” I said.

“But the police have already been there twice. They must have seen all kinds of papers and records.”

Whit had been honest with me, and now I was going to be honest with him. “Yes, but both times, they were in the office … Janet’s office.”

He gave me an uncertain look.

“Dad has his own files. He keeps them in his photo studio. If the police haven’t found Janet’s fake résumé yet, then it might be there. It’s the only way I can think of to prove that Dad hired her without knowing about her criminal background.… How long are you willing to hold off on publishing this story?”

His forehead wrinkled. “It’s hard to wait, Shelby. I feel like at any moment someone else is going to figure out what’s going on.”

“Would you wait until tonight?” I asked.

He gazed back at me. “Only if you let me go with you.”

THAT EVENING I slipped on a light jacket. “Going out, Mom,” I called, then went out the door.

I’d just gotten to my car when I heard, “Shels?” Her silhouette was in the doorway. “Where are you going?”

“Just out.” I immediately regretted that I hadn’t been more specific. It sounded made up and feeble.

“Out where?”

“To Roman’s. I won’t stay late.”

Mom was quiet. I couldn’t see her expression. She closed the door.

Whit was waiting for me in the dark parking lot behind the studio, with two small flashlights. He gave me one. “You have the keys?” he asked.

I nodded, and we walked toward the back door. “Doesn’t it feel like we’re in a movie?” I whispered.

“All we’re doing is going into your dad’s studio.”

“At night with flashlights?”

I was just about to slide the key into the back-door lock when I noticed a flat piece of plastic stuck in the doorjamb. The kind of plastic that milk containers are made out of. Someone had put it there to keep the door from locking.

I stiffened and whispered to Whit: “Think someone’s in there?”

He reached past me and slowly pushed open the door. “Let me go first.”

I followed him inside, my nerves tingling and heart rattling. The building was quiet and dark, and we flicked on our flashlights. As we made our way slowly down the hall toward the photo studio, Whit whispered, “Usually, when someone puts something like that in a door, it means they’ve left and want to be able to get back in later. So let’s make sure we keep our ears open in case they come back.”

Still, he shone his flashlight into the kitchenette, the broom closet, even the bathroom, just to be sure. If anyone had been there, they’d gone.

We went into the photo studio, and I swung my flashlight at the cabinets lining the wall.

Thump!

The unexpected sound came from behind me. I spun around just as Whit collapsed to the floor … and a dark figure sprinted out of the studio.

“WHIT!” I KNELT beside him. He was sprawled on the floor, his eyes squeezed shut and a grimace of intense pain on his face. His hand went to the back of his head and he moaned. “Aw, jeez …”

He tried to look at his hand in the dark. I shone my flashlight on it. There was no blood. Next I aimed the flashlight through the doorway to see if the person who’d hit him was still there.

But he—or she—was gone. I turned back to Whit, who’d propped himself up on one elbow. “Are you okay?”

“I guess.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position, touched the back of his head again, and winced. “Ow! Man, that hurts. You sure I’m not bleeding?”

I looked at the back of his head. A bump was already starting to bulge. “Is it bad?”

“Worse than you’d imagine from watching TV.”

“Whoever it was must have been hiding behind the door.”

“Male or female?”

“I couldn’t tell. It happened too fast.”

Whit touched the back of his head again. “You wouldn’t have any ice, would you?”

“Yes. Be right back.” I went down to the kitchenette and put some ice in a plastic bag. When I got back to the photo studio, Whit was aiming his flashlight at the cabinets. I gave him the bag, which he pressed gently against his head.

“Thanks,” he said. “Guess we better start looking.”

That caught me by surprise. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Believe me, it’s not the first time I’ve had my bell rung.”

“Football?”

“Low doorways. I’m always banging my head.” He slowly pushed himself up to his feet.

“Shouldn’t we do something about what just happened? I mean, call the police or something?”

“And say what? That we were breaking in and I got beaned by the person who’d broken in ahead of us?”

“We didn’t break in,” I said. “I have a key.”

“And when they ask what we were doing here in the middle of the night?” he asked, crossing to the first file cabinet.

I didn’t have an answer for that.

“Whoever it was is gone,” Whit said as he pulled open a cabinet and shone his flashlight inside. “All we’d be doing is drawing attention to ourselves. I’m supposed to be writing stories, not making myself the subject of them.”

The cabinet was filled with light reflectors, filters, and colored gels—but no files. We started to look in other cabinets, but they were also filled with photographic equipment.

“What made you think your dad kept files in here?” Whit asked.

“I’ve seen them,” I said, swinging the flashlight around the studio.

“Maybe he brought them in from the office,” Whit said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. My flashlight beam swept the walls and stopped on two large storage cabinets mounted high up. We found a ladder, and I climbed up and looked. At first it appeared that the cabinets were filled with backdrops and rolls of colored paper. I was about to give up when something told me to shove things out of the way and see what was behind them.

Bingo! In the back of the cabinets were cardboard boxes. When I opened one, I found files inside it. There were half a dozen boxes, and I started handing them down to Whit.

A few moments later we were sitting on the studio floor, reading files with our flashlights. Unlike the disorganized mess in the office, these files were orderly. The first three boxes were filled with purchase orders for head shots and makeup and other fees. There were hundreds of them, almost all for jobs in small cities in a radius of about a hundred miles from Soundview—Hartford, Springfield, Albany, Binghamton, Allentown, Wilmington, Trenton, and more. All of them girls who’d placed their dreams in my father’s hands.

It was disheartening. Not just because of the money Dad had taken from them, but the dreams he’d stolen and false hopes he’d perpetrated. And the dishonesty bordering on outright theft. Pulling up purchase order after purchase order, I couldn’t help wondering if the whole thing hadn’t been one big scam from start to finish.

My BlackBerry vibrated. It was Mom, probably calling to say there was school tomorrow and she wanted me home. I didn’t answer. Hardly a minute passed before a text arrived, this time from Roman:
WRU?

I texted back:
Cnt Tlk,
and continued looking at the files. Whit stood up. “Just gonna get some more ice,” he said, and left the studio.

I finished one box and started the next, expecting to find more purchase orders. But this one contained a few dozen head shots. Why, I wondered as I pulled up photo after photo, were these head shots here instead of in the files in Janet’s office with all the others? It seemed odd until I glanced at one, started to move to the next, then froze.

I went back and looked again.

Ashley Walsh…

“Oh my God,” I muttered.

“You find something?” Whit asked as he returned holding a new bag of ice to the back of his head.

“Uh, no, something else. I mean, nothing. Not important. Sorry.”

Whit scowled at me, but I started thumbing through the files again, pretending everything was fine. Meanwhile, my thoughts were churning. So it wasn’t just girls who lived a hundred miles away. They could live right here in town. Besides Ashley, how many more were from Soundview High?

My BlackBerry vibrated again. It was Mom, and I knew without answering that she wanted me home. I turned to Whit. “I have to go.”

“It’s okay.” He turned back to the files.

“You have to go, too.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“You can’t be here without me.”

A surprised blink. “You…don’t trust me?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here right now. I feel responsible.” I girded myself for the argument I expected from him about how important it would be to my father that we keep looking for information about Jane/Janet. So I was surprised when Whit said, “Okay.”

When we left, I made sure the back studio door was firmly locked. A chilly breeze swirled around the parking lot, and I hugged myself to stay warm. Whit and I faced each other in the dark.

“How’s your head?” I asked.

He touched the back of his skull and winced. “Pretty tender. But it’ll be okay. A couple of Tylenols, and I should be able to sleep.”

I glanced at the back door. “I thought you were going to argue about having to leave.”

“I was tempted, but I understand where you’re coming from. It’s your dad’s place, and you don’t want strangers going through his things.”

I felt a scowl cross my face. Whit saw it and asked, “What?”

“It’s funny. I mean, I hardly know you, but you don’t feel like a stranger.”

He tilted his head curiously, but in the dark, it was difficult to read his expression. Even more puzzling to me was why I felt that way.

Suddenly, a pair of headlights swung into the parking lot.

Whit and I were illuminated.

And blinded.

Our only escape route blocked.

THE CAR’S DOR swung open, and someone got out. Still blinded by the headlights, I couldn’t see who it was. My heart thudded hard in my chest.

“Hey.” The voice was friendly and unexpectedly familiar.

“Romy?” I shielded my eyes against the glare and felt lightheaded with relief. “Turn off the lights. You’re blinding us.”

“Oh, sorry.” She reached into the car and cut the headlights.

It took a moment to readjust to the dark. “What are you doing here?”

“Your mother called,” Roman said. “You told her you were going to my house, so I didn’t know what to say, and then she pretty much knew anyway that you weren’t there.”

There was something odd about the way she was speaking and how she kept glancing at Whit.

“So…you decided to come look for me?” I asked.

“First I texted you, but you texted back you couldn’t talk, and

then I got worried that maybe you were in some kind of trouble.”

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

“Just a lucky guess. Like, where else would you be?” Roman said.

I found that hard to believe. Meanwhile, she kept glancing at Whit, so I introduced them.

“I’ve read your stories in the
Snoop,
” Roman said. “They’re really good.”

Whit thanked her, and she turned to me again. “So what’s going on? What’re you doing here?”

I didn’t know how to answer. Besides, I’d just realized something. There was one sure way she could have known Whit and I were here—if she’d been here first. Had she been the one who’d slid the plastic into the doorjamb, hit Whit over the head, and run out? What better way to divert suspicion than to return and act like she didn’t know what was going on?

Or had she been looking for something in the office and now come back to see if we’d found it?

Or was I just being completely over-the-top paranoid? After all, she was my best friend.

Roman was still waiting for an answer when Whit spoke up. “I asked her to bring me here. After writing all these stories about her dad, I really wanted to see the place.”

“Uh-huh.” From the way Roman nodded, I knew she didn’t believe that. But maybe it didn’t matter.

“I better get going before my mom sends the police to find me,” I said.

I got into my car feeling wound up and tense about Roman being there and about going home and facing Mom, who would demand to know why I’d lied to her and where I’d really been. I’d barely gotten out of the studio parking lot before my BlackBerry rang. It was Roman, calling from her car.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“How did you know we were there?” I asked back.

“I asked my question first,” she said.

At that point I didn’t care who’d asked first. I was feeling seriously stressed and suspicious. Roman was my best friend. If I couldn’t trust her, then who could I trust? “I’m serious. How did you know?”

“I told you, it was a lucky guess, pure and simple. Where else would you have been?”

“I can think of a hundred places.”

“Well, I don’t have your imagination. So what’s the story?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I thought we were best friends,” she said.

“And you’ve never kept a secret from me?”

“What’s that got to do…,” she began to ask, then realized.

“Oh, so
that’s
the deal? I must have kept secrets from you, so it’s okay for you to keep this secret from me?”

I didn’t answer.

“Since when don’t we trust each other?” she asked.

Was she right? Was I being crazy paranoid? She couldn’t possibly have anything to do with those missing girls, could she? And yet, I still didn’t understand how she could have known that Whit and I were at the studio just now. Could it really have been as simple as a lucky guess?

“I’m almost home,” I lied. “I have to go in and face Mom. We’ll talk about this later.”

A few moments later I pulled into the driveway but didn’t get out right away. I was scared. I wished I could tell Mom the truth, but Whit had made me swear that I’d keep the Janet thing a secret.

I couldn’t sit in the car forever, putting off the inevitable, so I took a deep breath and got out. As I walked to the front door, I expected that Mom would be waiting in the living room.

What I didn’t expect was for Dad to be waiting there, too.