Get Even (Don’t Get Mad)

EVERYONE WAS ON TIME TO KITTY’S UNCLE’S WAREHOUSE FOR Wednesday night’s DGM meeting. Well, everyone but Olivia.

This time, even Kitty couldn’t resist the urge to check her watch every few minutes. Nearly half past eight and still no Olivia. While tardiness ran in the girl’s blood, she’d never been this late to a meeting.

Margot paced the warehouse floor. “Where is she?”

“Maybe she got stuck in rehearsal,” Kitty offered, hoping a harmless but logical solution would counterbalance whatever wild fantasies were running through Margot’s brain.

“Or maybe,” Bree said, stretching her arms over her head, “Coach Creed got her.”

“What?” Margot squeaked, pausing midpace.

“Bree . . .” Kitty said through clenched teeth.

Bree ignored her. “Maybe he found out Olivia is involved with DGM. Maybe he’s interrogating her right now.” She stood up and in one fluid motion flipped the chair around and straddled it. “Maybe the ’Maine Men are massing their forces outside the warehouse as we speak, ready to burst through the doors like a Catholic school SWAT team and put us all on double secret probation.”

Kitty fought the urge to strangle Bree. “Cut it out, will you?”

Bree threw her hands in the air. “I’m kidding. Sheesh, you guys used to be able to take a joke.”

One rap followed by three sharp knocks at the door made Kitty jump in her seat. Finally.

“Sorry,” Olivia said, as she scurried across the warehouse. “Mr. Cunningham needed me to go through a scene one more time. I couldn’t get out of it.”

“See?” Kitty said with a sideways glance at Bree. “No big deal.”

Margot continued to pace, her face twisted in irritation. “Couldn’t you tell him you had study group?”

Bree snorted. “Yeah, like anyone would believe that.”

“Let’s get this meeting started,” Kitty said, trying to head off the potential catfight. “Olivia, you start. Anything to report?”

Olivia nodded as she unscrewed the lid of her metal water bottle and took a long sip. “Amber was with Ronny the day he was killed.”

“What?” Kitty, Margot, and Bree said in unison.

“And she asked Jezebel to lie about where she was that night.”

Bree laughed. “That’s just awesome.”

“Any idea why Amber saw Ronny that night?” Kitty asked.

Olivia shook her head. “I’m working on it.” Then she added, “And Bree was right about Rex and Ronny. They had some kind of history that made Rex nervous. He and Amber are trying to frame DGM for Ronny’s murder to make sure we’re put out of commission before they end up as the next target.”

“Motive and opportunity for both Ronny’s murder and framing DGM,” Margot said, gnawing at the nail of her right index finger.

“Case closed,” Bree said. “Amber and Rex killed Ronny.”

“Not so fast,” Kitty said. “There could be other suspects.”

She had to admit, the case against Amber and Ronny was strong, but she’d discovered her own set of incriminating coincidences that needed to be explored.

“Like who?” Bree asked.

Kitty opened her mouth to tell them about Coach Creed but Margot beat her to it.

“I found something interesting in Ronny’s computer files,” she said quickly. “An email from last year, to Ronny from a friend at Archway, mentioning Coach Creed.”

Olivia scrunched up her face. “How would Ronny know about Coach Creed? Didn’t he just transfer to DuMaine this year?”

Kitty leaped to her feet. “Coach Creed used to teach at Archway,” she said excitedly. “I heard him talking to Father Uberti about it.”

“No way,” Olivia said.

Bree’s combat boots clunked to the floor. “And his name, like Rex’s, was on the list in Ronny’s room.”

“According to Google,” Margot continued, “Coach Creed was fired from Archway, but I don’t have details yet. Still searching.”

“Damn.” Kitty kicked the leg of her chair lightly with the back of her sneaker. Another suspect with motives for both killing Ronny and framing DGM for the murder. Who knew so many people wanted Ronny dead? Apparently, there was a lot about Ronny they didn’t know.

“Any idea who Ronny was emailing?” she asked.

“Someone named Chris,” Margot said. “The email address was ‘cb,’ which I’m assuming are initials.”

Kitty caught her breath. The newspaper article, the photo of Bree from St. Alban’s. “Christopher Beeman!”

Bree stiffened. “What did you say?”

“Who?” Olivia asked.

She spun around, facing Bree. “He went to St. Alban’s. Didn’t you go there, Bree?”

“No!” Bree stumbled back. “I mean, yes. A lot of people did. Mika, Rex . . .” She ran her fingers through her bangs, plastering them back against her head. “Why are you asking me about Christopher?”

“He was a student at Archway,” Kitty began. “I—” She stopped midsentence. Should she tell the girls about the anonymous envelopes? Part of her wanted to be completely open and tell them. Maybe together they could figure out who had sent them and why.

But something Margot had said the other day in the computer lab stuck with her. The most logical explanation is that one of us killed him. Kitty had tried to fight against it, but even with Rex, Amber, and Coach Creed emerging as prime suspects, Margot’s logic was sound. Until she knew more about the envelopes—who sent them and why—perhaps it was better to keep them to herself.

“What?” Olivia prompted, clearly exasperated. “What were you going to say?”

“I did some research on Archway,” she lied, “and I came across an article on a student who went AWOL last year. Turns out, he’s from around here. He went to St. Alban’s.” Kitty glanced at Bree, who sat unmoving in her chair, eyes locked on the floor. “His name is Christopher Beeman.”

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Margot said.

“So that means we’re off the hook, right?” Olivia said, inching forward on her stool. “If Coach Creed, Rex and Amber, or this Beeman guy killed Ronny, then it wasn’t one of us.”

Margot shrugged. “It’s possible, but we still have some major snags.”

“Such as?” Bree asked.

Margot stared at her coldly. “Such as the DGM cards.”

“No one broke into my house,” she said. “So whoever killed Ronny made their own.”

“Unless John Baggott took one.” Margot’s innocent smile was at odds with the sarcastic lilt to her voice.

“Why do you keep bringing John into this?” Bree asked. “He didn’t have a motive to kill Ronny.”

Margot raised her chin. “Are you sure about that?”

“John didn’t even know Ronny,” Bree said. “Let alone kill him.”

Bree’s anger flared when Margot brought up John. It seemed over the top, considering he was the most likely person to have access to the DGM cards. Why did Bree so adamantly refuse to consider that he could be a suspect? “Did he tell you he didn’t know Ronny?”

Bree pursed her lips. “Well, no, but—”

“They had a fight,” Olivia blurted out.

“How would you know?” Bree snapped.

Olivia smiled sweetly. “You’ve been avoiding each other in drama, and he’s been eating lunch with Shane White all week.”

More secrets. What else was Bree hiding?

“There are plenty of real suspects,” Bree said slowly. “Coach Creed, Rex and Amber.” She paused and swallowed. “Christopher Beeman.”

“And Theo Baranski,” Kitty added.

Margot raised her eyebrows. “Theo?”

“He told me that Ronny was trying to bully some information out of him. And that he wasn’t sorry Ronny was dead.”

“He had an alibi, though,” Olivia said. “Didn’t he?”

Margot chewed on another fingernail. “Records from the security system at the Baranski home showed that he didn’t leave the house that night.” She shook her head. “But that’s easy to get around, if you know how.”

“But if Theo killed Ronny,” Olivia began, clearly confused, “why would he confess?”

Margot shrugged. “If he knew he had an airtight alibi, why not?”

Silence descended over the warehouse. Instead of struggling to find one credible suspect, they’d managed to find a half dozen or so. How were they going to figure out who killed Ronny before the police closed in on DGM?

“We should tell the police,” Olivia said. “About all of it.”

“How?” Bree asked. “Just waltz into the station and say, ‘Hi! We’re DGM! We’re not the killers, but maybe you should check out these upstanding members of society who might be!’ Yeah, that’ll go down well.”

Olivia glared at her. “Why not? I get the feeling someone’s already been telling the police more than they need to know.”

Margot wrapped her arms tightly around her body as if suddenly uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation. “What are you implying?”

“The cops knew about my date with Ronny.”

Bree shook her head. “So what? Weren’t there like a half-dozen patrons there plus the barista? Any of them could have pointed the finger at you.”

“Or it could have been one of you,” Olivia said.

“No one in this room would narc,” Kitty said solemnly. “We swore an oath.”

“Princess has a point,” Bree said. “All of us had the opportunity to save ourselves. Go to the cops, turn ourselves in, and point the finger at the rest.”

The skin on the back of Kitty’s neck prickled. Was Bree threatening them?

Olivia narrowed her eyes. “All of us, or just you?”

Bree rocketed to her feet. “I’m putting all the options on the table. Isn’t that what this meeting was for? Margot’s got Ronny’s hard drive. Olivia and Kitty were seen with Ronny the day he died. And I was in the room where he was murdered. There’s evidence against every one of us. How long before someone chooses to save their own neck?” Bree scooped her surplus bag off the table and bolted for the door. “Sleep on that, kids.”

Kitty realized, as the door clanged shut behind Bree, that she’d left without saying the pledge.

The square was now a triangle.