It was more than obvious to all of them that Rod was notgoing to turn down a chance to spend one-on-one time with Sadie.
He nodded, trying and failing to do it grudgingly. “Okay.” No one was fooled.
“I’ll stay and help, too,” Hobbit chimed in, clearly just to be a dick—which Rodney completely had coming.
“Great,” Sadie said, telling Rod, “Hobbit’s really good at this.”
“Yeah,” Rod said a tad weakly. “Thanks. Great.”
“Good,” Jules said. “How about Topher or Joey?” He looked around from Belle to Tom to Sadie to Shelly and even Meg, getting headshakes and shrugs before landing back on Hobbit.
“Topher’s family has money, but he lost access when he moved out,” Hobbit reminded Jules.
“Right,” Jules said. When Topher’s parents had kicked his brother Liam out of the house for being gay, Topher had gone with him in solidarity.
“It’s not him,” Hobbit insisted. “Or Joey either. But I get that you want to check every box, so I’ll bring up Mexico at the FU Club on Wednesday. FYI, I’ll ask you, too, so it’s not too weird. More weird. I’m gonna look weird whatever I do.”
Jules smiled at his friend. “You are a little weird, so I’m pretty sure you’ll make it work.”
“Thanks,” Hobbit said. “I think?”
“Can anyone get hands on a video camera?” Jules asked. His mom had one, but it was both ancient and one of her most prized possessions. There was no way he could take it out of the house and risk dropping and breaking it. His mother cherished their old family videotapes, made before his father died. Technology was changing so quickly that if something happened to that old camera, she’d have no way to play back those precious tapes.
“Not that I could borrow without risk of death,” Hobbit said.
“Kinda the same here,” Shelly said as Sadie nodded.
“I could rejoin the school AV club,” Tom offered. “See what they have in their supply closet.”
“I’ll be the plan B if that fails,” Belle volunteered. “I’ll be grounded until the end of time if I take my parents’ camera—but only if they find out. I’m willing to risk it—because us having a video camera available is a really good idea.” She looked at Jules. “So what’s the plan? How do we catch this motherfucker?”
“Rodney’s our secret weapon,” Jules told her, told all of them—including Rodney, who still looked as if his prime directive was to find and obliterate everyone on their suspect list, starting with the Ottersfield trio. “We’re going to do it again—what we did last weekend. At the next party, we’re going to bait Suspect X into drugging an allegedly vulnerable girl—and this time we’ll get him. He knows we’re onto him—but he doesn’t know thatRodneyknows, and that Rod’s working with us to catch him. So between now and the next party, we all have to stay away from Rod when we’re at school.” He looked from Sadie to Rod. “All of us. And Rod, you’ll need to use some of those Cowardly Lion acting chops to make it look like you actively have it in for us.”
“That won’t be hard to do,” Hobbit said under his breath.
“And you also can’t say or do anything—at all—to our prime suspects. No getting in their faces for any reason, because if you do,” Jules continued, “they’ll know, and this won’t work, and we won’t catch them. Do you understand?”
Rod nodded.
Jules kept going. “We’ll be relying on you to go to that party, to stay sober—eat and drink nothing—don’t make the same mistake I did—and keep our bait safe.”
Rodney nodded again, the expression on his face now dead serious.
“I love this,” Belle said, “but I really don’t think it can be me. As bait. I’d love to do it, I really would, but?—”
“No, I agree,” Jules said. “It can’t be you. That’s just too obvious.” He turned to Sadie, but she was already a step ahead of him.
“I’m not sure how it can be me, either,” Sadie said, “although, sure, if you want me to try, I’m up for it.” She looked at Rod. “I mean, as long as you’ll be there.”
And there it was. Rod was locked in. There was no way now that he was going to screw this up.
“So, okay,” Jules said. “This is gonna involve a lot of set-up, and some acting skill from all of us to make Suspect X think he can target Sadie without getting caught. But first, we need to find out when the next party is.”
Rod made a disparaging noise. “That’s easy. Friday. At Carter’s.”
Jules laughed. “Is there seriously a party hereeveryweekend?”
“Just about,” Belle said. “It’s a relatively new development, though. Carter Dorbert’s mom got a job out in Utah but she let him stay to finish out his senior year.”
