“Yeah, unfortunately. We’re not fond of each other. So what? Does that make me the guy who sold drugs to his daughter?”
“Nobody’s suggesting that. Why are you so hostile, Mr. Siebert? I’m doing my job here. Do you have a problem with that?”
“My problem is that you have a problem with me doing my job. I’m paid to give aggressive legal representation to this school. What is that, a federal crime now? The ego on you people.”
Melanie held Siebert’s gaze, disliking him intensely, dying to confront him. But there was nothing to be gained by that.
“We’re done for now. But you’ll hear from me again,” Melanie said, picking up her briefcase and heading for the door.
“I can’t wait,” Siebert tossed after her.
Let him have the last word. If Ted Siebert had any involvement in the girls’ deaths, she’d make it her business to find out. His turn would come.
35
TED SIEBERT wasn’t the only reason Melanie had come to Holbrooke. She planned to pay a surprise visit to Dr. Harrison Hogan. She’d dug up some interesting stuff on the good doctor as well, and she was hoping he could explain it away. Hogan was her best source inside the school, and she hated to think he was keeping a dirty secret.
Melanie made her way to Hogan’s office and rapped on the frosted-glass window of his closed door.
“Yeah!” Hogan called.
She poked her head in. “Hi.”
“Oh, hey. What brings you here?” Hogan asked.
“I wanted to let you know, Ted Siebert found the girls’ files.”
He smiled good-naturedly. “Great. I’m glad they weren’t lost, especially since it probably would’ve been my fault.”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, come on in,” he said, leaning back and putting one Nike-clad foot on his messy desk. “What’s up? Any leads on where the girls got the drugs?”
“We’re working on it,” she said, taking a seat. No reason to enlighten Hogan about Brianna Meyers’s autopsy results and the drug-smuggling angle. Especially since she now suspected him of hanky-panky with one of the victims.
“Actually,” she said, “I’m here because I have a few questions for you about Whitney Seward.”
Did she detect a slight trace of alarm in his eyes, or was she imagining it? But Hogan didn’t move from his relaxed position, just ran fine hands thoughtfully through his shaggy hair.
“Sure,” he said casually.
“I was hoping you could tell me a bit more about your relationship with Whitney.”
“Okay. No problem. Nothing much to report, you know? I think I mentioned yesterday, I was her college adviser. I also taught her tenth-grade biology, and I would’ve had her in chemistry next semester. Oh, and I was helping her out with English, too, which she was failing, but that wasn’t entirely her fault. Mrs. Stein is an old battle-ax, and she couldn’t get past the fact that she loathed Whitney on a personal level. By the way, Melanie, I’m brewing up some green tea with echinacea. You want some? Good herbal remedy in this weather.” He gave her a concerned look, which she tried not to interpret as a diversionary tactic.
“No thanks. So, in your various roles, how much contact did you have with Whitney Seward?”
“Contact?”
“Phone calls, e-mails, visits, that sort of thing?”
“Can I ask, did Patricia say something to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just…don’t believe everything you hear.”
“Is there some bad feeling between you and Mrs. Andover, Doctor?”
“Call me Harrison.”
“It’s better for the investigation if we keep things on professional terms.”
“Oh.” He seemed somewhat taken aback. “Okay, if you’re more comfortable that way. Well, how to put this? Patricia favors some…uh, unorthodox methods of maintaining control of staff members she sees as threats. Unfortunately, I fall into the threat category. Not only am I popular with the student body, but I question Patricia’s authority too often for her taste. She hates that.”
“You’re suggesting Mrs. Andover would actually lie to the federal government about you?”
“Sounds crazy, right? But welcome to my world-that’s Holbrooke for you. I guarantee, if Patricia said something about me and Whitney, she did it for some Machiavellian reason of her own.”
“Mrs. Andover didn’t say a word. I happened to subpoena Whitney’s telephone and e-mail records. They show an awful lot of contact between the two of you.”
Hogan shook his head from side to side slowly, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You know, it’s really sad to me how things get misinterpreted in this day and age. That’s one of the worst by-products of the child-abuse scandals of the past decade, if you ask me. Because my friendship with Whitney Seward was totally aboveboard. The kid was messed up, and I tried to help. End of story.”
“So the nature of the interaction-”
“Look,” he interrupted, “I’m not saying Whitney never came on to me or even maybe sent me a suggestive e-mail now and then. But I’m trained in adolescent psychology. If a girl like Whitney behaves in an overtly sexual manner toward an older male authority figure, I see it for what it is. A normal developmental phase. I take it in stride, and I work with the student to overcome the transference issues, even transform the crush into something positive.”
“Such as?”
“Well, did you see Whitney’s grade in my biology class? The kid worked hard for me.” Hogan looked at her carefully as he said this.
“But if Whitney was sending you suggestive e-mails, that’s hardly ‘nothing to report,’ as you said a moment ago.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not to my mind.”
“Reality’s in the eye of the beholder. Maybe you should stop and ask yourself what assumptions you bring to the table.”
PATRICIA ANDOVER, it turned out, brought some pretty serious assumptions to the table.
“Harrison was sleeping with Whitney,” the headmistress declared flatly when Melanie confronted her on the subject.
“How do you know that?”
“Because! Whitney was sending him naked pictures of herself. I don’t suppose he mentioned that to you?”
“No. He said she’d sent him suggestive e-mails. He didn’t say anything specific about naked pictures.”
“Of course not.”
Melanie had to admit, Hogan’s nonchalance about the whole thing was suspicious. Had it been an act-or the calm of true innocence? Or was Patricia Andover lying about the pictures?
“Tell me more about these naked pictures. Have you actually seen them?” Melanie asked.
“With my own eyes. I make it my business to know what’s being done with school computers, for liability reasons, you see. These were absolutely pornographic. Whitney in…various poses. With her genitalia exposed.”
Melanie certainly believed that such pictures existed, since she’d seen similar ones on the blog. But that didn’t necessarily mean they’d been sent to Hogan.
“I’d like to get copies of the pictures and the covering e-mails, Mrs. Andover. This may have some connection to what happened with-”
“No. I’m very sorry, but that won’t be possible. I erased them all.” Patricia looked suddenly flushed, with a faint dew of perspiration on her forehead. Melanie had serious doubts as to whether she was telling the truth.
“You erased them? That seems very strange to me. Weren’t you planning to do anything about the fact that one of your teachers-at least as far as you believed-was having a sexual relationship with a student?”
“Oh, Jesus,” Patricia dropped her head into her hands and kneaded her eyebrows. The Yorkie lying on a satin dog bed in the corner perked its head up, then jumped into Patricia’s lap and began licking her face. “Yes, darling, Mommy’s upset,” Patricia said, stroking the dog, which settled into her lap.