The Old Wheel, page 20
part #2 of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Series
I poked the migas some more. I thought about what Rivera had said, the horror in Dad’s voice, the questions that he refused to accept the answers to. My voice was lower when I asked, “What else did he tell you?”
“Nothing, really. You know, that you found that boy. About the shooting. He’s worried it’s going to be like September, but it’s not, is it?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t say anything else?”
“No. Why? What happened?”
I hesitated. Then I told her a little: Dawson drugging me, passing out, Holmes’s disappearance and the police’s suspicion that he might have killed Dawson.
She didn’t ask why Holmes would have done that, and I didn’t know what to make of it. All she said was, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just, you know, a worse hangover than usual. What about you? I tried to find you.”
Ariana frowned. “It was…weird. I mean, most of the night was fun. Emma and Glo are nice, and we had a good time dancing.” A tiny giggle escaped her. “They wanted to know all about you.”
I knew better than to ask. That’s why I said, “What did they want to know?”
She giggled again. “Oh, you know. Girl stuff.”
Since I had zero idea what that meant, my brain supplied all sorts of horrifying possibilities.
“Of course, I made them talk too. They’re both totally in love with the same boy, even though neither of them will say it. You can tell from how they look at him. To be fair, he’s super cute.”
“Rowe?”
“You know him?”
“He’s not that cute.”
Ariana’s laugh sounded shocked, and then a huge grin exploded on her face.
“He’s not,” I said. “It’s the beard, that’s all.” If anything, her grin got bigger, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to say, “Did they say anything about a guy named Aston Young?”
“Emma’s ex?”
“So, they did talk about him.”
“He sounds like a piece of shit. He’s been spreading all these stories about her, about stuff they did together, but it’s bullshit. Emma said they never had sex together. She got super upset about it, actually. She said he’s making the whole thing up.”
Which was what I’d say, of course, if Paxton decided to repeat certain choice phrasings from the texts I’d sent Ariana. What I said aloud was, “Because he’s gay.”
Ariana made a noncommittal noise. “Maybe, but she didn’t say that.”
“Trust me, he’s definitely gay.”
“Oh, I know. He’s very pretty.”
“He’s not that pretty,” I said before I could help myself.
This time, Ariana’s laugh sounded much more knowing. “Anyway, that was most of the night. Dancing. Drinking. Trying to talk over the music. These stupid boys kept coming up to us, and we kept having to get rid of them. We definitely had too much to drink. So, you know, migas.”
I did know. Migas were a miracle cure for hangovers—for me, anyway, and apparently for Ariana as well. Scrambled eggs, tortilla chips, salsa, avocado, beans, carnitas. You could have it without all that extra stuff, just the eggs and chips and salsa, but then, you could also choose to drive a Geo. I forced myself to take a bite instead of pushing the food around on my plate.
“But it was weird?” I asked.
“Yeah. Glo and I were, you know, drinking. But Emma was getting stupid drunk. I don’t know how she was still on her feet after a couple of hours. Then, they got in a big fight. I couldn’t hear what they were saying because the music was so loud, but they were mad. Emma pushed Glo.” She stopped and shook her head as though she still couldn’t believe it. “And then she grabbed my arm and said, ‘Ariana will go with me, then.’ And she pulled me after her.”
“Where’d she take you?”
“I don’t know. That place—you know how it is. But we walked for a while, and after the first few minutes, we didn’t see anyone else. I started to get a little freaked out. I mean, not as freaked out as I should have been, because of the shots, but still a little freaked. It’s cold down there, and it’s quiet, but there are all these noises.” She stopped again, and I looked down and realized my migas were gone and my stomach was gurgling contentedly. “Finally,” Ariana said, “we got to this hallway, and she told me to wait.”
“For what?”
“For her. She said she’d be right back.”
The clatter of flatware, of plates skidding on laminate tabletops, of voices mixing Spanish and English—it all swelled to fill the void.
I shifted forward in my seat. “And?”
Ariana shook her head. “I feel crazy saying this. I mean, Emma is so sweet, and last night, she and Glo went out of their way to make sure I had a good time.”
The silence lasted longer this time.
“Ariana, what happened?”
“She was arguing with someone. And then—and then someone shouted. It sounded like they got hurt.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A guy. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I think it was a guy.”
“Ok.”
“And Emma came back, and—and she was freaking out. Not like a panic attack, but—I don’t know how else to describe it. She was talking nonstop to herself, and none of it made any sense, and she couldn’t stop moving. It was like watching someone have a breakdown. And—” Ariana stopped and ducked her head. “And she didn’t have her gloves.”
“Huh?”
“Those gloves, the cute gloves she was wearing? She didn’t have them, and her hands were all messed up—knuckles split and bloody, cuts and scratches.” Ariana laid her fork down and touched her eyes.
“Hey,” I said. I shifted around to the seat next to her and put my arm around her. “Hey, hey, it’s ok.”
“It’s not ok. She was so messed up, Jack. And I didn’t know what to do, so we went back to the party to find Glo, only Glo was gone, and then everything went insane because people found out that boy had been killed—I mean, I still don’t know how we got out of there. Followed the crowd, that’s all. I kept thinking if I fell, if I got lost—” She cut off with a choked noise and touched her eyes again.
I crushed her against me. She didn’t fall apart crying (unlike me, exhibit: earlier that morning), but she sniffled for a few minutes and then wiped her eyes with the napkin. When she’d finished, she patted my leg, and I eased up.
“Here,” she said with a wet laugh and pushed her plate of (seriously inferior) migas toward me. “I can’t.”
“Do you think Emma killed Dawson?” I asked.
“If you don’t eat them, they’re going to go to waste. I can’t eat anything.”
“Ariana.”
She held the napkin under one eye and stayed like that for half a minute, shaking her head. Then she said, “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Did she say anything about Dawson?”
Ariana shook her head. But she said, “I don’t know. They talked about how his parents were poor now. They lost all their money, I guess? Nobody seemed to know how.”
That explained some of it, I thought. Nobody had been blackmailing Dawson; he’d been broke because his parents were broke, which was why he’d tried to buy from me on credit, why he’d hit everyone up for money, why he’d sold his clothes and his shoes and his PS5.
“Did you see this?” She unlocked her phone and tapped it a few times, and then a video began to play. It was of Aston bottoming, his face red, only inches from the camera, his eyes unfocused as he moaned and rocked under each thrust. She stopped the video and shook her head. “The links showed up this morning. They’re all over; if you know anyone at Walker, you’ve seen those videos. Emma said—she said how would he like it. How would he like it if someone had videos of him?”
I tried to think. Someone had released the videos, which didn’t make any sense. Why not continue the blackmail? Unless you hated Aston so much that it wasn’t about the money.
“Did she say anything about where she was going, or why she wanted you to go with her, or—”
“She didn’t want to go alone. She was scared; she wouldn’t have gone if she’d been by herself. And I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“The voice, the one you heard shouting, like maybe they got hurt—”
“Jack, I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
She didn’t shout, but her voice was louder. Across the room, the waitress gave me a death look from under that mile-high hair. So much for feeling sorry for me.
“Ok,” I said quietly. “I understand. But the police need to know—”
“Know what? Nothing happened.”
“They need to know something happened, even if we don’t know what it was.”
“Fine. You can tell them.”
“No—”
“Nothing happened, Jack. It was weird, that’s all. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I thought about asking again. I figured the waitress might decide to intervene personally at that point, so I didn’t. I was still thinking about what to do when I caught myself plowing through the rest of her migas and, distantly, realizing I felt much, much better. Almost human, in fact.
“Do you want to come to my family Christmas party?”
I was so caught up in my thoughts about why Emma might have murdered Dawson, or, if she hadn’t killed him, what she might have been doing, that it took me a beat too long to answer. “Uh, yeah. I mean, maybe? Do you want me to?”
Ariana let out a noise that was part annoyance and part amusement. “It’s only my family. It’s not a big party, you know. I mean, it’s a lot of people because my family is big, but it’s not like we invite everyone from church or our neighbors or anything.”
My phone buzzed. The message from Dad said, I’m sorry I lost my temper. When you get home, I’d like to talk.
When I looked up, Ariana was watching me. I put my phone away.
“Well?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
She smiled.
“If you want me to,” I said.
“Jack.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” And then, as though she couldn’t help herself, she added, “Joslyn told me I was rushing things.”
I sat a little smaller in my seat. I unscrewed the Pepsi’s cap and screwed it back on. “What do you want to do?”
“I said never mind.”
“I think your mom and dad might not be super impressed if you bring home a guy who’s a part-time custodian and, like, drives his dad’s truck and stuff.”
“I’m in high school. They don’t expect me to bring home a dentist.”
“What if Joslyn says something about the party? What if she starts talking about how I, you know, get stuff for the kids at Walker?”
“You’re worried my parents—who, by the way, are worthless, and you know that, and that’s why I’m moving out as soon as I turn eighteen—are going to be upset that my boyfriend deals weed?”
I didn’t particularly like the weed-dealer label, since it made me sound like I had scraggly facial hair (which, let’s be fair, it was still coming in) and like I was a useless stoner (which, let’s be fair, last night had pretty solidly proved). What did I want to be called? Reverse blackmailer? Although reverse wasn’t quite right—
“Are you serious right now? I’m trying to have a conversation with you, and you’re not even paying attention.”
“Sorry,” I said automatically, “whatever Dawson gave me—”
But I stopped because a zigzag path lit up in my brain. Last night, Paxton had said two things I didn’t understand. At the time, still coming out of whatever I’d been drugged with (not to mention the rum and the weed), I hadn’t been able to focus on them. Now, though, I heard them again, and I still didn’t understand. Paxton had said something about a game. About Holmes having found the external hard drive, and now it was time for the next part of the game. That suggested we’d been right in part—Paxton’s appearance, and the subsequent blackmail against Aston, weren’t a coincidence. But it also didn’t make sense. Holmes hadn’t found anything; I would have known if he had. In fact, one reason he’d been so pissy last night was because he hadn’t found Paxton—or anything else that might help us wrap up Aston’s blackmail.
The other thing Paxton had said, the thing that felt like a puzzle piece falling into place, was that Holmes (and, by extension, I) had been focusing on the wrong thing. I didn’t know what that meant, but together, I thought I had a few ideas.
First, someone else now had the blackmail videos—the external hard drive Paxton had mentioned. Paxton didn’t have them. Holmes didn’t have them. Therefore, somebody else did. (Jack Moreno, everyone. Boy genius.)
Second, someone had killed Dawson, and I was pretty sure it had happened while Paxton and Holmes and I had been playing patty-cakes. The most likely possibility was that Dawson had been part of the blackmail operation. He’d needed money, if what Ariana had told me was right, and he knew Aston would pay—had paid, already, when he’d been blackmailed earlier that year. He’d had access to Aston. With a little help from Paxton, it wouldn’t have been hard to hide a few cameras, record a few fucks, and go from there. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that Dawson had decided to branch out on his own, stolen the hard drive from Paxton, and tried to collect from someone. Aston, most likely. In the process, he’d gotten his head bashed in.
But if someone had killed Dawson because of the blackmail, why release the videos? Maybe Dawson had some sort of backup plan—a contingency. If he didn’t call a friend, the videos got posted. Something like that. The problem with that was, well, it was way too smart for someone like Dawson—who had been the kind of criminal genius to blackmail his own sexual partner and then meet someone in person for payment. Hell, the only reason he’d thought of telling us that he was being blackmailed too was because we’d given him the idea by asking. For a moment, it all seemed so…repetitive. Unbelievably so. We’d done this all before—the blackmail, incompetence, the stupid meet-ups—and now it was happening again.
But what really troubled me was the third thing. The third thing was that something else was going on. This game, maybe, the one Paxton had mentioned. Or maybe something else. Something we hadn’t been paying attention to. Because we’d been distracted. No, that wasn’t quite right. Because, I was starting to suspect, we’d allowed ourselves to be distracted.
And, worst of all, Holmes was missing.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said to Ariana. “I’ve got to get back to campus.”
Chapter 18
St. Holmes
Instead of the cottage, I asked Ariana to drop me off in front of Walker Hall.
She said goodbye and smiled. I said goodbye and smiled. When I leaned in for a kiss, she bent to check her phone, and, like a good boyfriend, I pretended not to notice. I got out of the car, and she drove off so fast the Geo sounded like a string-trimmer. Like a good boyfriend, I pretended not to notice that too.
Or maybe like a not-so-good boyfriend.
I headed to Baker House, and the first thing I noticed was that campus was empty. Saturdays were a free day, and although it was winter, you’d usually see at least a few Walker kids out and about—going to the athletic center, or the dining hall, or the library, or a study session, or to chill in someone else’s residence hall for a few hours.
Not today. Today, the campus looked abandoned. The redbrick, pseudo-Victorian buildings huddled under shawls of ice, and the walks were gritty and water-dark where Dad had salted them this morning. The only signs of life were the plumes of vapor rising into a cut-glass sky.
Lockdown, I thought. Which would make my job more difficult.
At Baker House, I went in through the basement. I grabbed a mop and bucket from the utility room and carried them up the central flight of stairs. Life hack: people don’t actually see custodians. It’s the next best thing to being invisible. Not that it mattered; the building was unnaturally quiet, and I didn’t see anyone on my way. Apparently, Headmaster Cluff had been serious about this lockdown.
My first stop was 221. I used my spare key to open the door, let myself in, and stared.
Holmes’s room had been destroyed. I’d seen something like this before—the mattress pulled off the bed and slashed, the side of the desk staved in, the closet emptied and the contents mounded on the floor. The last time someone had done this to Holmes’s room, it had been his father’s work—Blackfriar had been looking for Sarah Watson’s laptop. But it couldn’t be Blackfriar again. He’d found the laptop, and he’d done something—corrupted the data, maybe? (Jack Moreno, everyone, hacker wunderkind)—to ensure Holmes couldn’t access it. As far as I knew, there was nothing else Blackfriar wanted, aside from his lifelong efforts to break his son down and mold him into a high-functioning sociopath. Traditional family values, and all that.
So, who had done this? And what were they looking for?
It was obvious that Holmes wasn’t here, so I turned to open the door, but then something caught my eye. A piece of paper on the top of the desk. At first, it looked like one more of the papers that had been scattered around the room, but when I looked more closely, it was clear that someone had left the paper on purpose—there was enough of a suggestion of space around it, as though someone had cleared a spot, to make sure this wouldn’t be overlooked.
A single line of words crossed the page in small, blocky handwriting.
Where is it?
It meant nothing to me, but goose bumps spread across my chest anyway. Whoever had written it, their rage came through in the handwriting—at the question mark, the pen had left a jagged tear in the paper.
Where was what?
And the more important question was: if Holmes had something important, something valuable, why hadn’t he told me?
There were a million answers—it was something I didn’t need to know about, or it was something from before he had met me, or it was something he wanted to protect me from (which would have been an annoyingly Holmes thing to do). At a rational level, I knew that Holmes was entitled to his privacy, and that it meant more to him than perhaps anything else—probably because most of it had been stripped from him as a child. Paxton had been right, even if he’d been cruel, when he’d said Holmes loved secrets. Holmes had told me once, when we were first getting to know each other, that every Holmes had their obsession.
