What’s taking them so freaking long? she wondered, when she saw that fifteen minutes had passed since she’d called Glenda. But a few moments later a campus police car pulled up outside. Ball was driving, with Glenda in the passenger seat. As soon as Phoebe let them into the house, she blurted out the basic details of what had happened.
Ball, zipped in his leather uniform jacket, scrunched up his mouth and strode into the kitchen, with Glenda and Phoebe trailing behind him. “Damn,” he said as he took in the scene. Glenda gasped. To Phoebe’s disgust, she saw that a small amount of blood had trickled from the mouth of the rat onto the floor.
“This is outrageous,” Glenda said.
“How’d they’d get into the house—do you know?” Ball asked.
“The rats?” Phoebe asked.
“No,” Ball said, barely tamping down his impatience. “The girls. Dr. Johns said you think the Sixes did this.”
Phoebe glanced at Glenda and then back at Ball. “Yes, I’m sure it was them,” Phoebe said. “I think they must have made a copy of my back-door key yesterday.” She explained about the apples, and that the locksmith appointment wasn’t until tomorrow.
“That’s the kind of information I should have been alerted to earlier,” Ball said, narrowing his eyes at her.
“I know. That’s why I stopped by your office this morning and left a message for you.”
From the way Ball’s upper lip lifted, Phoebe could tell he hadn’t appreciated her comment. She’d busted him in front of his boss.
“Let me take a look around,” Ball said, still securely in alpha male mode.
“But shouldn’t we call the police now?” Phoebe asked.
Ball and Glenda hurriedly exchanged a look.
“Let’s hold off on that for a second, okay?” Ball said. “Let me first see what we’ve got here.”
“There’s something else you should be aware of,” Phoebe told him. “I assume these must be rats from one of the labs on campus.”
“Of course—which means there’s been a break-in there,” Glenda said.
Ball whipped out his cell phone and commanded someone named Jake to hightail it up to the science center to investigate—and another cop named Buddy to head over to Phoebe’s, along with some large trash bags. When he hung up, he suggested that Glenda and Phoebe take a seat. He headed back to the kitchen.
“Fee, I’m so sorry I got you into this,” Glenda said.
“Well, at least we can be pretty sure now that the Sixes do exist,” Phoebe said. She brought Glenda up to speed on her conversation with Blair. “It also means they’re fairly organized. It took at least two people to pull this off, I’d say.”
“And they’re even nastier than we imagined,” Glenda said.
Off to her left, Phoebe could hear that Craig was now in her study. She hated the idea of him in there, possibly pawing her things. When he eventually emerged, he made a beeline for the front door, opening it with a handkerchief.
“Which door did you use when you came home tonight?” he asked Phoebe.
“The front.”
“You need to use a key to lock it when you exit, right?”
“Yes. I’m sure I locked it when I left, and it was locked when I got back. I also made certain the back door was locked when I left.”
Ball didn’t say anything, just moved around the periphery of the room, checking the windows. When he was done, he stood silently for a moment, his mouth twisted as he deliberated. Without asking, he headed upstairs, and they could hear the clomp of his feet above them. Five minutes later he was back downstairs, shaking his head.
“All the windows are locked, too,” Ball said. “And the back door. Which means they must have made a copy of your key. Because if they got in through an entry point that you’d accidentally left unlocked, they would have been forced to leave either a door or window unlocked when they took off.”
“So now do we call the police?” Phoebe asked.
Again Ball shot a look at Glenda, one that seemed to speak whole sentences. Phoebe glanced at Glenda. Her face was tense with worry, but Phoebe wasn’t sure what she’d just telegraphed to Craig.
“Ms. Hall, I know this may be awkward for you,” Ball said, “but I’m going to ask you a favor as a member of the school community. I’d like us all to keep a lid on this for the time being.”
“A lid on it?” Phoebe said. “Why?”
“I think it’s best that we handle this ourselves for now. I’ll investigate discreetly and try to determine who exactly broke in—and then we’ll go to the police. That way we don’t end up creating a big stink that the whole world knows about. And I mean that literally. We’ve got a damn New York City reporter on campus.”
Phoebe snapped her head toward Glenda, convinced her friend would nix the suggestion. But Glenda’s eyes were imploring.
“Please, Phoebe,” she said. “So much is at stake.”
“But—” Phoebe started to protest but caught herself. Ball was right—the whole thing could blow up in Glenda’s face.
“All right,” Phoebe said. She wasn’t crazy about the idea of covering things up, but she could understand Glenda’s point of view. Besides, if they alerted the cops to what had happened, Phoebe would be told to stop her own investigation.
And she had no intention of giving up. Because that was exactly what the Sixes expected her to do.
***
A GIRL WHO lived across the hall from her was the one who gave her the first clue to what was wrong. They were in the laundry room one night, folding clothes side by side as the wind howled outside, and the girl complained about a friend who’d been passed over for a role in the musical.
“It’s Fortuna,” the girl said. “They made sure the part went to who they wanted for it.”
“What’s Fortuna?” she had asked. The girl’s comment had begun to trigger an unease in her, but she wasn’t sure why.
“You don’t know?” the girl had said, wide-eyed. “They—they control everything here.”
Fortuna, she said, was made up of the rich, pretty girls. They guaranteed, the girl said, that their own members—or girls they approved of—won elections, starred in the plays, ran everything that mattered. The administration turned a blind eye because the parents of Fortuna members were the biggest donors to the school.
They were named, the girl said finally, for the goddess of fortune. Their symbol was fortune’s wheel. She suddenly remembered that one of the girls in her former study group always wore a charm bracelet with a single silver wheel.
“I don’t care,” she had said to the girl. “I’ll make my own fortune.”
“Don’t ever let them hear you say that,” the girl had told her. “Because they’ll make you pay for it.”
11
LEAVING A FEW lights burning in the living room, Phoebe mounted the stairs to the second floor.
It had taken Craig Ball and the younger cop Buddy, who looked to Phoebe like he still had his baby teeth, over an hour to clean up the horror-movie scene in her kitchen. While they worked, Glenda had tried to convince Phoebe to stay at her house, and though Phoebe had been briefly tempted, she’d said no. She couldn’t just start bunking down at Glenda’s every night.