“Well,that’sa first!” Mrs. Sullivan interrupted them as she came huffing out toward the front desk, looking irritated. Of course, the default expression on her Scandinavian-featured, long-suffering, ruddy-cheeked pioneer-woman face was supreme annoyance—she accessorized it with her relentless Margaret Thatcher–inspired wardrobe and the fading blond hair that she wore twisted up into a bun. “The father refused to speak to you,” she told Peter indignantly.
And okay.Thatwas worth getting irritated about. Unless Shay’d misunderstood. “Fiona’s father,” she clarified, and Mrs. S looked hard at her.
“Can I help you, Mrs. DeSoto?”
“It’s Shayla Whitman,” Shay corrected her for the seven millionth time, reminding her, “The boys have their father’s name, which I don’t share.”
“Shayla’s helping me find Maddie,” Peter said, whereupon Mrs. S gave Shay a different kind of look. A knowing look—like the help she was providing was the naked, orgasmic kind.
Shayla swiftly brought the woman’s attention back to the problem at hand. “Fiona’s father actuallyrefused…?”
“Flatly,” Mrs. S said. “He barely let me speak. No, he would not talk to anyone. As far as he was concerned, Fiona was done here, and that was that. So I told him you knew Fiona’s last name, of course. Fiona Fiera, and that I couldn’t stop you from calling him—Charles Fiera of Sacramento—if you looked him up.” She exhaled her disdain. “Some people! I think he thought you were Susan what’s-her-name’s—the aunt’s—downstairs neighbor. Calling about additional damages from the fire.”
“What exactly happened?” Shayla asked. “This fire. Was anyone hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” Mrs. S said. “A cat. Who lived downstairs. But not badly. She needed oxygen from one of the firefighters. The photo of that’s gone viral.” She smiled and her face transformed so completely that her pale blue eyes even sparkled. “Soadorable.”
“Oh, my God, I think I saw that on Instagram,” Shay said. “But I can’t remember exactly when, was it…?”
“Friday,” Mrs. Sullivan reported as the cat lover retreated and the warrior woman’s battle mask slipped back into place. “Fiona was pulled out of class by the police.”
“Because they thought she’d set it…?” Shay glanced at Peter, who was quite possibly grinding his teeth into nubs at that news, no doubt from imagining that his daughter’s best friend was, indeed, an arsonist.
“The aunt seemed to think so on Friday,” Mrs. S reported. “There was quite a bit of screaming and accusations. Right in this office.”
“That must’ve been awful,” Shay said. “Was Maddie there?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Maybe lurking out in the hall?”
“Well, I don’t know that for sure,” the woman admitted, moving to the computer and accessing its keyboard. “But I’ll check her schedule. It was in the middle of third period and…No, she was in English with Ms. Reinberg. That’s on the other end of the building, so it’s very unlikely, even if she left to go to the bathroom, that she would’ve come all the way down here.”
“But it’s not impossible,” Peter pointed out.
“Frank’s in Maddie’s English class,” Shayla told him. “I can check to see if he remembers if she left the room on Friday.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“Actually,” Shay said, “it may have been more traumatic for Maddie if she didn’t know what happened—if her friend just vanished. If Fiona just stopped answering her phone, and didn’t respond to Facebook messages.”
Shayla didn’t know the details of Lisa’s accident, but it didn’t take much to imagine the news of her death reaching Maddie in a similar way, with initial silence, and a growing sense of dread.
Peter met her gaze, his blue eyes sharp. She knew that he was thinking, too, about all of those seemingly coded Facebook messages from Maddie to Fiona, the final one in all caps.
Where are you? Are you dead, too?Harry said, hitting the subtext on the head.
“Fiona’s aunt,” Peter said, turning back to Mrs. Sullivan. “She’s local—or at least she was, before the fire. Do you still have—”
Mrs. S was already tapping on the computer keyboard, and she interrupted before he could ask. “She was cut from the same unpleasant cloth as the father. I mean, yes. I have her work and various home phone numbers right here—” she pointed at the screen “—but I wouldn’t be shocked if, when I called her, she also refused to talk to you.” She looked from Peter to Shayla, widening her eyes substantially. “Oh! But if you’ll excuse me for just a few minutes, I realize I forgot to start the pot of coffee in the back room. I must do that immediately.” And with that, she turned abruptly on her sensible heels and disappeared through the door to the back, this time closing it firmly behind her.
Shay looked at Peter. “Was that the invitation to break the rules that I thought it was?”
“Yeah.” Peter nodded.
She smiled. “Go, Mrs. S!”
But the little half-door built into the room-long counter was securely locked—and it was designed so that students couldn’t simply reach over from this side and unlock it.
