Push and Shove: The Ghost Bird Series: #6 (The Academy) (44 page)

I waited for the light to change to cross the street, and walked as quickly as I dared to the coffee shop.

Inside, I blinked, adjusting to a dimmer light inside. Coffee, sugar and other aromas filled my nose. There was a short line of people lined up along the display case, waiting to order. In the middle of the line was Mr. Crowley.

I avoided eye contact, heading to the back of the line. My heart pounded as I stood, staring at the menu. When I was sure no one was paying attention, I reached into the cup of my bra, pulling out a twenty and quietly thanking Kota for being so smart.

The line moved slowly. Mr. Crowley, for once, didn’t say much of anything. When it was his turn in line, he ordered an iced coffee and a donut. He took his food order to one of the tables near the windows. I guess part of me had expected him to go back to his office.

When it was my turn in line, I tried to remember the name on the bottle that the boys gave me in the morning. “Mocha Frappuccino... and a coffee cake,” I said, pointing to the first thing that looked good in the display case.

The glare from the display case caught my eye as I waited. I had a reflected view of Mr. Crowley here. He had his head up, shoulders back. The hook nose stood out as an undeniable mark of who he was. He studied other people in the coffee shop, not stopping on anyone in particular. His eyes drifted to the door.

My heart flew into a panic. He was waiting for someone! It could be Mr. Hendricks again.

When my order arrived, no one had joined Mr. Crowley at his table yet. I wound around the line toward the far side of the room and found a table next to his where I could keep my back to his. I remained quiet, and kept myself small. If someone joined Mr. Crowley, like Mr. Hendricks, I’d have my back turned, but could still listen in.

I sipped at my coffee, nibbled at the coffee cake and pretended to stare out the window. My nerves were tight. I’d gone this far, could I turn back now? Mr. Hendricks could be here any second.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Crowley,” said a low male voice behind me.

I stiffened and took another sip of the coffee to give my body something to do. The voice wasn’t familiar to me. I shrunk, hoping I was hiding behind Mr. Crowley’s frame.

“You’re a little late,” Mr. Crowley said.

“Traffic is horrible at this time of day.”

Mr. Crowley gave a grunt. “I tell you what, I won’t miss the morning commute this time next year. It can take an hour to get downtown, even from Mount Pleasant. It’s ridiculous.”

My eyes widened. Mr. Hendricks had previously hinted to something along the lines of this being his last year. Was Mr. Crowley retiring or was something else going on?

“Right, right,” the other man said. His voice was dry, guttural. Like he’d been talking for hours and needed to rest it. “And how’s your wife?”

Mr. Crowley muttered something low enough that even I couldn’t hear.

“Ha ha,” the other man said. “I could have told you married life was never a picnic. It’s all a fantasy. The first year it’s all sugar and sex, after that, you’re lucky to get dinner on time.”

“I’d honestly rather not talk about it,” said Mr. Crowley. “What do you have for me?”

“Nothing much today, I’m afraid. Same routine. Just checking in.”

“We shouldn’t have to,” Mr. Crowley said. “If everything is already in place, we’re just waiting.”

“You’re right,” the other man said. “I guess you could say it’s more making sure no one slips up. We had a little bit of a scare when Mr. McCoy disappeared, but that appears to be more of a blessing. He was starting to get suspicious. He was paranoid about everyone, including us.”

I stared hard at my drink. Mr. McCoy wasn’t in on whatever the others were doing. So why was Mr. Hendricks interested in finding him?

Mr. Crowley’s next few words were mumbled, like he was talking while he was chewing his donut. “At any rate, my job’s the easy part. Sign papers. Approvals. It’s all routine.”

“Smart man. Do your work, and everything will be just fine.”

“It becomes more difficult if you pull a last minute stunt like you did today.”

“You call it a stunt,” said the other man, “I call it a quick dollar. And nobody knows.”

“We don’t need it. We have enough.”

“Just think of it as insurance, then. A couple more won’t hurt.”

Mr. Crowley grumbled something low.

“If you have something to say,” the other man said, “say it.”

“Every risk we take is another chance we’ll get caught,” Mr. Crowley said. I sensed movement, like fiddling with his coffee. “Like meeting in public coffee shops.”

“What’s more normal than us having coffee? It’s practically a requirement. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just wanted to say hello and relieve you of a little anxiety.”

“No more tricks,” Mr. Crowley said. “No more last minute plans.”

“Right,” the other man said. A chair slid against the floor. Not Mr. Crowley’s. “From here on out, it’s just biding our time. That was the last deal.”

There were footsteps. The door to the coffee shop opened. I glanced out the window, but didn’t see anyone pass. Whoever it was went the opposite way of the library and the superintendent’s office.

Mr. Crowley continued to drink his coffee behind me. It was agony waiting for him. I wanted to get back to the library before anyone came to find me. Mr. Crowley mumbled to himself. Whatever it was, it was indecipherable.

It was another twenty minutes before he moved. When I sensed he’d opened the door to leave, I tucked my head away from the window, turning and staring across the coffee shop. Mr. Crowley walked past and was gone.

My heart was in my throat. I waited a few moments until I thought it was safe; I didn’t want to leave and bump into him on the street.

I’d found their third person. I hadn’t been able to check on who it was, but I was so close. I had something to bring to Mr. Blackbourne. Maybe he’d let me off the hook of being grounded.

I got up, collecting my half-eaten coffee cake, and tucked it back into the package it had come in. I picked up my cup, intending to take it with me.

I started to head for the door, but stopped at Mr. Crowley’s table. There was a napkin crumpled on top of the package for his donut, along with his coffee cup. The napkin drew my eye.

There were numbers on the napkin. The numbers looked familiar to me. A line of figures stretched out and then added up at the bottom for a total.

I glanced around, but no one was really paying attention, so I snapped up the napkin. I didn’t have a pocket, so I had to carry it with me.

I hurried down the street, heading back to the library. I may have more questions now, but at least I thought we were on the right track. This had to mean something.

––––––––

R
eturning to the library wasn’t a problem. But once I was inside, I got completely turned around. I knew it was up the stairs, but finding the same corner was difficult. I first tried to cut through the bookshelves but ended up in a different section. I had to go back to the staircase and follow the windows.

Before I got back to my spot, I stalled, noticing through the rows of bookshelves someone in a blue shirt and jeans standing by the table. From where I was standing, I could only see mid-chest to waist, and that wasn’t telling me much other than it was a male. I stopped, waiting.

The person remained standing by the cushioned armchair. He turned left. Turned right. He put his hands on his hips. Waited. Was it a librarian trying to figure out why there was a black box stuck on the window?

I stooped low to get an angle of his face and spotted blond hair in a clip.

“Luke?” I stepped around the bookshelf now, my heart much lighter.

Luke turned. His eyebrows shot up, his dark eyes widened. “Sang,” he said. “Where were you?”

“I followed Mr. Crowley.”

His lips parted and he paused, like this was an answer he wasn’t expecting. And then his eyes swept over me, from my shoulders to the hem at my thigh and back up again. Was this distracting him? He just realized I changed clothes?

After a moment, he blinked back to life. “What?”

“He left the office. I caught him sneaking out. He went to the coffee shop down the road.”

“You weren’t supposed to leave,” he said. He turned his head. “Is that coffee?”

I nodded, holding it out to him so he could look at it. He took it from me, sipping the last half. He licked his lips, which I took it as a sign he liked it. The ear bud still in my ear started making noise, and I realized I was hearing footsteps. Mr. Crowley started talking to his secretary. “I didn’t mean to leave, but I thought I was supposed to keep an eye on him.”

“We’re not ready to follow him.”

“He didn’t see me,” I said. “And he met up with...” I paused. There was a lot to explain and I didn’t know where to start except at the beginning, but I wasn’t sure I should talk about it here. I was paranoid anyone could listen in.

Luke’s face softened and he took another sip of the coffee. “The office is closing now. He should be heading home.”

I pointed to my ear, silently telling Luke to be quiet for a moment. I listened to the conversation between the secretary and Mr. Crowley. “It sounds like he’s giving her some last minute instructions. He said he’s leaving for the day.”

“Right,” Luke said. “We can’t leave this here. So we’ll follow together.” He leaned over the table, plucking the device from the window. He put it in his pocket. I pulled the ear bud from my ear, relieved to not be hearing voices. Luke took my hand and he led me out of the library.

“So am I not grounded anymore?” I asked when we were on the street. “Is this a reprieve?”

Luke laughed. “No, you’re still grounded.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Luke motioned to around the corner where there was a parking meter and a black truck next to it. “Right now, we get to follow Mr. Crowley home just to make sure he doesn’t take detours, and I’ve got to make one more stop for the night. We’ve got babysitting duty.”

“I thought if you were grounded, you couldn’t do Academy work.”

“You can’t do the dangerous stuff,” he said. “You’ve been on surveillance. That’s the worst. Completely boring.”

“It started out boring,” I said. “But I got a lot of information. We need to talk to Mr. Blackbourne.”

“You’ll talk to him tonight. I think you’re going to his house.”

My jaw fell open. He stepped ahead of me, opening the truck door. I remained still, questioning him with my eyes to see if he was serious.

He caught my look and laughed. “Or Dr. Green’s. I don’t know yet. I am going to get a call tonight. Don’t look that way. When they ground us, we normally have to just stay home. Your house isn’t really a safe spot right now, and well... we’re sort of in hot water as it is since we were to blame for a lot of it. You have to stay with them.” He motioned to the passenger seat. “Get in. Tell me what happened with Mr. Crowley.”

Even inside the truck, we were waiting for a half hour before Luke spotted Mr. Crowley pulling out of the office parking lot. Luke followed a few car lengths behind. We hit rush hour traffic on the way to Mount Pleasant. I was able to tell Luke just about everything from when Mr. Blackbourne had me skip school, up to the part where Mr. Crowley met the third person they were working with.

“Huh,” Luke said as he drove. His hands twisted against the steering wheel. “Well, we knew there was an odd money trail. Some of their paperwork doesn’t make sense. I wonder who the third guy is.”

“Is this something the police would be interested in?” I asked. I’d been wondering about this for a while. They seemed to be investigating something that felt like it should have been handled by the police.

“Maybe,” he said. “The problem is that if there’s a lot of money involved, and from what you’re telling me, this sounds like the case, it means they’ve figured out how to launder the money clean from the school system in a way that no one will notice. It might be some offshore account, or system of dumping the money into different organizations that could take a lot of time and manpower to track down, if at all. And if there’s an investigation, it may take longer, and the school would be out of that money for a very long time.”

My lips parted. I sensed there was something more to the Academy being in the school before, but he rattled off this information way too easily, like he’d known for a while. “You knew about this? This is why you guys are at the school? It’s not just for security?”

He smirked. “You pretty much know it all now anyway. I guess there’s no harm in you knowing about what’s going on. It’s your school they’re messing with. But right now, we don’t have evidence and we don’t know where they’re pulling the money from, or where it’s going. And we’re missing the identity of the third person you were talking about. My guess is a whole lot of money got moved into at least three people’s Swiss accounts somewhere. But I’m not allowed to go on guesses.”

“How could that happen?” I asked. “Aren’t there teams of people involved when it comes to money for a school? I thought there was a whole school board to monitor this type of thing. Are you saying the whole school system could be in on this?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “If the superintendent is involved, it probably means a lot of things are getting by without anyone noticing. Like our contact who told us something was going on. Paperwork and data can be falsified pretty easily. A lot of people working at the school board may not know anything about it. That’s also something we have to consider. When people start shouting scandal, innocent people who had nothing to do with it could lose their jobs and their reputations. It’ll draw a lot of negative attention to the schools, too. Money would get frozen, and Ashley Waters is already a poor school. Freezing those accounts could make things worse. That second school they were talking about building might never happen.”

I sat back, staring out the window at Mr. Crowley’s car a few lengths ahead of us. It was hard to imagine how three people could set back an entire school district. “You guys came in at a good time. It seems like we’ve got until the end of the year before they’re planning to disappear.”