“Mm-hm,” I say. I want to say so much to him, to tell him about Kara and the letter and the earrings. But instead I just ask, “Are we okay?” Quentin glances my way and the corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. He places his hand in the console between us, palm side up. I grasp it and squeeze, holding on for dear life.
—
When I call Rachel, she’s breathless with excitement.
“What did you find out?” she asks.
“Well, nothing,” I say. “I have no proof.”
“But you have a hunch?”
“Remember that rumor that was going around? About Beaumont hooking up with a student?” My stomach turns even saying the words out loud. I try not to picture them behind the theater.
Rachel goes silent like she’s trying to think, to recall the before. When she speaks she sounds frantic, like she’s desperate and exhausted. “Well, shit.” She pauses. “I’m actually on my way out to Long Island to give the letter to the lawyers. Can you meet me there? They need to hear how we got it.”
“I—”
“Look, it’s not breaking and entering if you had a key, okay?” Rachel doesn’t wait for me to respond. Instead, she rattles off an address and a time but my brain spins. It’s all happening sofast. Is it really possible Mr. Beaumont hurt Shaila? That hekilledher and blamed it on Graham?
But then I remember what he said to me in his office.
I know what goes on.
Within hours, I’m at some boxy, ugly corporate office building. It’s a nondescript gray compound just off Route 16 in Port Franklin, eleven miles from Gold Coast. Rachel meets me in the parking lot with huge, unblinking eyes. Her face is thin, too thin, like she’s lost a few pounds she couldn’t spare since I saw her last week.
I only have to talk to the lawyers for a few minutes. Pleasantries, really. They’re tall scrawny guys in expensive-looking suits and slick haircuts. They’ll test the handwriting. They’ll dig into Beaumont. Apparently, he’s had a few DUIs in the area so it won’t be hard to bring him in for questioning, they say.
I won’t even be named. No one will see me here. No one will know I was involved.
It’s only when I get home, curled up on the couch with my study guide, that I start to feel uneasy, like I planted a bomb and am now just waiting for it to go off. To witness the carnage.
My phone explodes and I drop my notes on the couch.
!!!, Rachel writes. Then she sends a link to a tweet from theGold Coast Gazette.
GOLD COAST PREP TEACHER BROUGHT IN FOR QUESTIONING RELATED TO LOCAL KILLING.WATCH NOW!
I tap the link and hold my breath as a video loads. When it does, the picture takes up my whole screen. The clip is dark and grainy. A house or an apartment building, maybe. No, that’s not it. It’s the Gold Coast Police Department illuminated only by the moon. No street lamps in sight. Just a short stretch of concrete. Some sand in the background. I can hear wavescrashing faintly in the distance. Then a chyron appears on the lower third of the screen.
A female newscaster in a pressed pantsuit walks into the frame and I pump the volume.
“What are you—” Mom yells, padding into the living room.
“Shh!”
Mom leans down and looks at my phone. “Oh my...” she mutters as she watches over my shoulder.
The reporter’s words are crisp and clipped through my phone’s speaker.
“The Gold Coast Police Department brought twenty-eight-year-old Logan Beaumont in for questioning tonight after receiving new information that Beaumont may have been involved in the murder of Shaila Arnold, a fifteen-year-old girl who was killed here in Gold Coast three years ago. Her classmate and boyfriend Graham Calloway was convicted of the crime soon after she was found dead. Calloway now proclaims innocence.”
Mr. Beaumont’s school photo flashes on the screen. His jaunty smile and tousled hair make him look young and hot, like a teacher who was on our side, a teacher whose studentswouldhave crushes on him. A teacher who might be capable of manipulation, of abusing his power.
Graham’s and Shaila’s class pictures appear, too. They match in their Gold Coast blazers. Side by side they look like siblings.
“The police have no comment at this time,” the reporter continues. “But we’re joined now by Neil Sorenson, an attorney who represents Graham Calloway. Mr. Sorenson, how does this affect your client?”
One of the lanky city slickers I met earlier now stands next to her. He’s dressed in the same suit, his tie still perfectly in place around his thin neck.
