The Palm Beach Murders by James Patterson (best novels in english .txt) 📗

“Please, you’re not welcome here.”

“Clearly,” Jana says. Then, to the girls: “This isn’t over. You’ll be seeing me again very soon.”

“No,” Hannah says, with the certainty of an umpire calling a strike, “we won’t.”

Jana doesn’t reply. Instead she allows the guard to guide her by the arm back around the dormitory building. Once they’re out of eyesight and earshot, Jana and the guard relax.

“They definitely know something,” Jana says. “I could see it on their faces.”

The guard, who is actually Otto Hazard dressed in a stolen uniform, shakes his head and smiles. “You think everybody knows something. You’re suspicious of the whole damn world.”

“That’s because almost everyone is guilty of something,” Jana says.

“Oh yeah? What am I guilty of?”

“Calling me ma’am.”

“To these kids, we all look ancient.”

“Maybe you do. My lifestyle choices ensure that I will always look younger than the age that can be ascertained from my birth certificate.”

“Yeah, and that’s why mine is forged,” Otto says, as he leads her back past the entrance of Brewster. “Anyway, what makes you so certain the Clee girls are hiding something?”

“I floated all possibilities by them, one by one, to see which would strike a nerve. They were good actresses when it came to Paige’s possible death. They were shaken a bit when I told them about the huge reward offered for information about their friend, explaining that it would drive out the truth soon enough. But the mention of the possibility of a conspiracy—one that would point a finger directly at them? Well, that pushed the Clee girls right over the edge. So much so that they called you.”

“Speaking of, I need to dump this uniform somewhere.”

“Not yet,” Jana says, stopping in her tracks and forcing Otto to stop, too. “I want to push one more button.”

“What’s that?”

“You stole a pair of keys along with that uniform, right?”

Chapter 8

JANA (THE ACTOR)

Oh, the look on their faces, my dear Matthew.

I’m not sure what shocked them more—the fact that I was sitting in their dorm room, their precious inner sanctum, or that a campus security guard was lounging on Hannah’s bed, feet up, lazily thumbing through a copy of Vogue.

“You…” Hannah shouts, as if she’s about to have a seizure, “you can’t be in here!”

Poor Brooke, meanwhile, has turned as pale as nonfat milk. She stands behind her sister, hoping that her sibling’s sheer rage will act as a force field.

“I know what you both did,” I tell them calmly, “and I want you to know that you’re not going to get away with it.”

This is a lie, of course—I don’t know their role in this conspiracy quite yet. But perhaps pushing this final button will reveal something.

It’s just like improv. If you sense an opening, you take it and see where it leads.

But like any decent actor, I know when to stop pushing and make my exit. I’m sensing Hannah is headed toward a total meltdown and will do something rash once she gets there. I nod at Otto, who grumbles a bit about climbing back out of bed—I think he would have kept reading there all afternoon if I’d let him.

This time, Hannah knows better than to summon another security guard…because they might be in on it, too! The cell phone in her hand—which she ordinarily uses to overcome any small impediment to her otherwise perfect life—can’t help her now. Daddy’s too far away, and there was a security guard lying in her bed!

“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” I whisper as we pass by.

Suddenly, this trip to snowy Concord isn’t so unpleasant after all.

Chapter 9

THEO (THE TRADER)

I can smell Paolo’s room even before I pick the lock and slip inside. Damn, this kid uses a lot of cologne. It’s so thick in the air, I practically have to wave my hand around so I can see.

For a guy in hiding, he’s already made a mess of this squalid little dump. Skinny jeans and shiny shirts and oversized grooming products and sticky beer bottles and, weirdly, random pieces from board games are scattered all over the place. Guess he likes to lure his underage prey back to his place for drinking and a few rounds of Sorry! (And, boy, will they be.)

With all of this chaos, I have my work cut out for me. I only have a few minutes before Paolo returns, and the sting will be over if he catches me in here.

There are two items on my must-find list.

I trailed Paolo (and our money) back from the beach bar to this room. I knew he didn’t need time to “think things over.” No, Paolo wanted to take the good faith money and book passage off this island immediately. Rio would be my guess.

But he wouldn’t book a flight online (too easily traced). He’d need to book something in person. And if he’s doing that, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to bring the $25,000 in cash with him. He’d stash it somewhere in this dump for safekeeping.

So I’m standing here now thinking: I’m a playboy lifeguard about to go on the run. Where do I hide my windfall?

Now, I knew a lot of guys back at Harvard who did some small-time dealing from their dorm rooms. They needed places to hide their product and their cash. As a work-study/scholarship kid who occasionally found himself a little short, I got to know those dealers and their hiding places very well. (Hey, I only stole from criminals. It didn’t make me a criminal; it made me friggin’ Robin Hood.)

The usual places—inside an envelope taped to the back of the toilet, inside an aspirin bottle, taped to the bottom of a dresser drawer—wouldn’t work with twenty-five large. Paolo needed to hide those thick stacks somewhere clever in a hurry.

The fridge—no. Freezer—no. Drawers—no. Luggage—no. Beneath a pile of clothes that reek of cheap cologne—no.

Come on, where, where, Paolo?

The best hiding places are often in plain sight. And when I step over a dented and scuffed board game box, I realize that