They went to the kitchen. It had a small breakfast nook that contained a round table with four place settings and glasses of OJ. There was a basket with muffins, to which Pearl added the bagels. Melanie and Nicki were at the stove scrambling eggs and cooking bacon. The food was ready, and they fixed four plates. Melanie muted the TV, and they moved to the nook with their plates of food. Nicki sat sandwiched between her parents and dug in. She still had sleep in her eyes and wore no makeup. It was a far cry from the creature he’d watched the night before.
“I know why these men are stalking you,” he said, looking at the teenager as he spoke. “But before I tell you, I need to ask you a question.”
Nicki put down her fork. She could feel her parents’ stares, and it made her uncomfortable. She wiped the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin.
“Okay,” she said.
“Before you moved to the United States with your parents, you went on a school-sponsored trip to Paris. You did something bad there, didn’t you?”
Ashamed, Nicki stared at her plate and did not reply. Melanie leaned toward her daughter and said, “Nicki, answer the question.”
“Who told you about Paris?” Nicki asked.
“I figured it out on my own. I’m a private investigator, Nicki. If there’s a secret out there, I’m going to uncover it. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened.”
“I screwed up,” the teenager said under her breath.
“I know you did. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”
She took a deep breath. “We got there on a Friday night and checked into the hotel. It was late, so the teachers who were chaperoning us decided to eat in the hotel’s restaurant. We ordered our food, and one of the chaperones ordered wine so we could have a toast. I think the waiter liked me, because he kept refilling my glass when it was empty.”
“Did you get drunk?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’d never had alcohol before, and I got a little woozy. Some of the other kids were messed up too.” She fidgeted uncomfortably in her chair. “We went back to our rooms and got ready for bed. It was after midnight, and I was really sleepy. Just as I was climbing under the covers there was a knock on my door. It was a girl named Mandy Schumacher. We’re in the same grade, and she was my friend. Mandy said she was having a party in her room, did I want to come? I didn’t see the harm, so I put my clothes back on and followed Mandy down the hall to her room. There were a bunch of other kids from my school there, and they were getting drunk.”
Nicki picked up her OJ and took a swallow. Her story made sense. Nicki had gotten drunk and acted out in rebellion against her parents and shot the videos.
“How did Mandy get the liquor?” he said. “Did a chaperone give it to her?”
“The chaperones didn’t know about the party. Mandy got the booze from the minibar in her room. The hotel was supposed to empty all the little bottles of booze out of our minibars, but Mandy’s room got missed. There was vodka and rum and some stuff that I’d never heard of before. The kids were mixing the booze with Coke to hide the taste, and they were all getting really smashed.”
“Did you get smashed?”
Nicki nodded and stared at her plate. Lancaster sensed that they’d reached the truly bad part of the story. He pressed her. “What happened then, Nicki?”
“What does this have to do with these men stalking me?”
“Everything. Now tell us.”
The kitchen had grown uncomfortably quiet.
“I passed out and got my stomach pumped,” the teenager said.
“What?” her mother shrieked.
“You never told us,” her father said, equally aghast.
Nicki lifted her gaze. She avoided her parents’ stares, preferring to look at Lancaster instead. “I don’t remember much of what happened. Mandy said that I threw up and then my eyes rolled up in my head and I passed out and hit the floor. I banged my head on the side of a chair, and everyone thought that I’d hurt myself.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Luckily, I didn’t break anything,” she said. “Mandy went and got the chaperones. One of them called the front desk, and an ambulance came and took me to a hospital. When I came to, there was a rubber tube stuck down my throat and a nurse was pumping my stomach. It was really gross. I stayed in the hospital for a day, and then I was released. I was really weak, and I stayed in my hotel room for the rest of the trip.”
And made the videos, he thought. He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward and looked her in the eyes. “How many days were you in your hotel room?”
“Four.”
“What did you do during those four days?”
“I slept a lot and read a Stephen King book on my iPad. We also watched a lot of TV.”
“We? Was there someone with you?”
“The chaperones alternated staying with me. I was pretty weak. I guess they were also making sure that I didn’t get drunk again.”
“Did you?” Melanie asked.
Nicki turned to face her mother. “No, Mom. I learned my lesson. I haven’t had anything to drink since that trip, and I’m not sure I ever will.”
“Good choice,” Melanie said.
“So one of the chaperones stayed with you while you recuperated,” he said, wanting to get the conversation back on track. “Were they with you all the time?”
Nicki faced him. “Yes. I was pretty weak. They had room service bring up my meals. It got pretty boring.”
“Did they sleep in the room with you as well?”
Nicki nodded. “Yeah. The room had a couch, and the chaperones slept on it.”
“Every night?”
“Uh-huh. I still don’t understand what this has to do with these men stalking me.”
She had to be lying. The videos had been made outside of Dubai when Nicki was by herself and not under her parents’ watchful eye. The presence of a twenty-four-hour chaperone would have made that impossible. Was this another carefully constructed lie designed to hide a bigger truth? It sure felt that way.
“I’m sorry, Nicki, but this isn’t adding up,” he said. “If you got drunk and went to the hospital, your parents would have known. It was the chaperones’ responsibility to report the incident when they got home, and the school would have notified your parents. They would have also received a bill from the hospital.”
“The school didn’t know,” Nicki said.
“Why not?”
“Because the chaperones didn’t tell them.”
“And why is that?”
“Because we agreed not to.”
“We? Who exactly is we?”
“Everybody who was on the trip. The other kids were afraid the chaperones would get fired because they served us wine the first night at dinner. But that wouldn’t have been fair. The chaperones didn’t make us drink the wine or the booze out of the minibar. We did that. We made a bad decision, and it was our fault.”
“So nobody in your group talked about it.”
Nicki nodded.
“Did you agree with this, or were you talked into it?” Melanie asked.
“It was actually my idea,” Nicki said. “You and Daddy always said that I have to be responsible for my actions, and not blame other people when things go wrong. I wasn’t going to blame the chaperones for my screwup, so I convinced everyone on the trip to keep quiet.”
“How did the chaperones feel about that?” Melanie asked.
“They thanked me.”
“What about the hospital bill?” Lancaster asked. “How did you hide that?”
“That came after I got home,” Nicki said. “I grabbed it out of the mail, and paid it with a money order.”
The story was a lie. There could be no other explanation. Because if it wasn’t a lie, then his theory about how the videos had gotten made flew out the window.