“No, your dad would definitely TCB,” she said.
“Yeah, if you mean Take Care of Brittany, or whatever slut he’s banging lately.”
“You’re a sick, sick girl, Julia.”
“Just calling it like I see it. I learned a long time ago who my parents really were. Maybe it’s time you did the same.”
It was an uncharacteristically serious tone for Julia. It seemed as though lately all of their interactions were short, ironic quips. It was as if Julia had become such a strong personality that she could never be sincere. As if a moment of earnest compassion would literally melt the cool off of her.
Ramona had found herself wishing they were talking in person. She wanted to tell her that it wasn’t only her parents who hadn’t seemed right lately. She felt like something had been blocking the two of them. She missed her best friend. She wanted them to be the way they used to be, when nothing was secret and they really, truly knew each other, better than they knew themselves. She wanted to know why Julia wouldn’t come with her out to the Hamptons the next morning, insisting on staying in the city alone.
Instead, all Ramona had said was, “See you Monday?”
“Yep. Eleven o’clock at AJ’s. Maybe in the meantime George and Adrienne will get that extra boost they need in the boudoir. Oooh, George.”
“I hate you so much right now.”
Ramona had no idea those would be the last words she spoke to her best friend.
As she took another sip of her coffee drink, she finally spotted her mother rushing out the front door of their building. According to the clock on Ramona’s phone, her mom was running a few minutes late to her Pilates session.
Once her mother was out of sight, Ramona made her way across Fifth Avenue. She had rejected Julia’s advice on Friday, but it wasn’t too late to heed it now.
Inside her mother’s study, she jiggled the mouse on the computer. A password was required.
She thought about walking away. Her mother would never violate her trust this way.
She asked herself what Julia would do, then rested her fingertips on the keyboard to type.
R-A-M-O-N-A
Enter.
She was in.
Chapter Twenty-One
How can you drink this? It tastes like burnt motor oil.” Rogan scrutinized the name of the coffee shop printed on the side of the cup in his hand. “Coffee Monster? More like monstrous coffee.”
In the hour since Rogan had joined her in the car at Seventy-fourth and Madison, another three news vans had arrived outside the school. Ellie was on her second helping of java from the coffee shop across the street. “It’s right here. It’s caffeine. Whatever. Hey, there’s our guy.”
In the sideview mirror of their parked Crown Vic, Kenneth Wallace looked pretty much the same as he had in the photograph Rogan had found online, posing for a team shot at a run-for-cancer-research 5K. Same dark-blond tousled hair, thin face, slightly crooked nose as if from a break. Ellie could certainly understand why this guy was the campus dreamboat.
She started to open the car door as Wallace turned to walk in their direction, but Rogan reached across her and held the door shut. “Hold up.”
They watched as reporters swarmed the physics teacher. Even through the closed window, she could hear their questions. “Are you a parent? Do you teach at Casden? Did you know Julia Whitmire? We’ve heard that the school is refusing to make a statement, even to parents. Why are students being told not to speak with us? What is Casden trying to hide?”
The teacher held up his palms to block his face. His brisk walk turned into a jog, and the reporters finally gave up once he hit Madison Avenue.
“Now we go,” Rogan said. They hopped out of the car and caught up with him just as he crossed Madison at a diagonal, ducking into a café around the corner on Seventy-third.
Once he’d placed his order—something called a Panini Americano—they identified themselves. She saw him eyeing the door and wondered if he was considering bolting.
“I guess I don’t need to worry about being seen. The rest of the teachers were too afraid of the reporters outside to leave campus for lunch, and our headmistress is infamous for bringing in her own portion-controlled meals.”
“And you?” Ellie asked.
“A guy’s got to eat. I told the vultures I had nothing to say, and now, voilà—” The man behind the counter handed him a white bag and a paper cup. “I can eat this sandwich and pretend I’m in Paris. Plus the coffee’s a hell of a lot better than that crap.”
Rogan gave his Monster Coffee cup another look of disapproval before tossing it in the trash. “You mind eating here?” he asked. “We’d like a few words with you. Probably better to do it away from the vultures.”
Ellie ordered two coffees from the counter before scoping out a small corner table.
“We’ve been surprised at the school’s reluctance to cooperate,” Ellie said. “On the one hand, we’ve got Julia’s parents so eager for answers they’ve announced a cash reward. Meanwhile, Julia’s own school has—well, it sounds like you know.”
“Our headmistress, Margaret Carter—have you met her yet?”
Ellie nodded.
“She rounded all the teachers up this morning to break the news about Julia. She expressed the appropriate amount of sadness, etcetera, but the message was clear. She’d be the point person for all communications, even with students—and it was pretty obvious she was going to remain as tight-lipped as possible.”
“And yet,” Rogan said, “you leave the building for lunch. You’re sitting here with us.”
He finished swallowing a huge bite of his sandwich before speaking. “I graduated first in my class in college with a degree in physics. Then I got a master’s at UC Berkeley. I’m about two years away from finishing my Ph.D. thesis. I wanted to be an astronaut.”
“Past tense?” Ellie asked.
“Turns out you may as well want to be a rock star. And until I get a Ph.D., there’s no tenure-track jobs to be had. Then you’ve got the private sector, where it’s pretty much impossible to do interesting work without somehow being part of the military-industrial complex.” He smiled. “I know, I should have been born earlier. I’m, like, the youngest hippie in America. And so, at least for now, I’m Mr. Wallace, mild-mannered physics teacher to the future leaders of the Free World. But I’ll tell you what: there’s no way I let some bureaucrat like Margaret Carter dictate what I can and cannot say when one of my students is dead.”
An antiauthoritarian free-spirit might be just the type to cross boundaries with an underage student. Ellie decided to let the topic rip. “We’ve been told you and Julia had a particularly close student-teacher relationship.”
He smiled and looked up at the ceiling. “Ah, classic. These kids are totally predictable. Let me guess: the always-provocative Marcus Graze?”
Her silence resolved any doubt.
“That would be the same Mr. Graze who just got a D for refusing to show any of his work on most of his assignments this semester. Pretty sure he’s cribbed some answers here and there from his peers.”
“So you don’t mind telling us where you were Sunday night?” she asked.
“Depending on the time, either with my wife’s family in Boston, or next to my wife on a plane headed back to New York. You can check with her if you’d like. Her family, too. The airlines, whatever you need.”
She nodded.
“Don’t get me wrong. God knows, Julia tried. So have others, but trust me, I’m quite unavailable.” Wallace pulled out a wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open to a photograph of a knock-out gorgeous brunette and a tiny baby. “This amazing woman is my wife. In addition to being breathtakingly beautiful, she’s a wonderful mother and a brilliant physician to boot. I’ve been off the market since I met her my freshman year in college. When these girls at the school start sniffing around, I wonder if it’s because I put out this air of complete unattainability. It’s like they all want the designer handbag that’s back-ordered for five months. It’s probably for the best that the attention seems to fall to me, because, honestly? I know some pretty decent guys who might not have been able to resist. Julia was—precocious. And more persistent than most. Pretty aggressive for such a young girl. She may have even told Marcus Graze something happened with me, just to have a story to tell.”