KITTY STARED AT ED, DUMBFOUNDED. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, Christopher Beeman is dead?”
Olivia shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
Ed knew they wouldn’t believe him. “You think I’d make up something like that?” He pulled a folder from his backpack and handed it to them. “Check it.”
With Olivia perched by her arm, Kitty perused the official copy of Christopher Beeman’s death certificate, and Ed watched as a harsh realization dawned on them—for the last few weeks they’d been chasing a ghost.
“How did we not know this?” Kitty asked.
“Like everything else about the mysterious Mr. Beeman,” Ed said, “the internet was totally purged. Someone wanted to erase him.”
Olivia glanced at him sidelong. “Then how did you find out?”
Ed straightened his shoulders, offended. “I’m a professional.”
“What does that mean?” Olivia asked.
Ed shrugged. “It means I bribed the janitor at Archway to tell me what he knew about Christopher Beeman.”
“Death by strangulation, ruled a suicide.” Kitty studied the death certificate as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was reading. “This happened last year around the same time that article about Christopher going AWOL was published in the local paper.”
“How did it . . .” Olivia swallowed, her face pale. “I mean, how was the body . . .”
“He hung himself from the overhead pipes in the boiler room below the gym at Archway,” Ed said matter-of-factly. He tried not to imagine how miserable Christopher’s death must have been—cold, dark, and alone.
Olivia gasped and rushed over to one of the computers. “Oh my God! We have to unsend that email.”
“Email?” Ed asked.
Kitty ran her fingers through her hair. “We sent an anonymous email to Sergeant Callahan with all our evidence against Christopher Beeman.”
Ed whistled low. “Yeah, they’re going to delete that in about ten seconds.”
“I don’t understand,” Olivia said. She took the death report from Kitty’s hand and looked through it again. “All the clues, the missing yearbook photos, the deaths—everything pointed to Christopher Beeman.”
“Someone wanted you to believe you were dealing with Christopher,” Ed said simply. “Pretty epic snow job, if you ask me.”
“What are we going to do?” Olivia asked.
“Stay calm,” Kitty said, sounding anything but. “The killer doesn’t know we found out about this.”
Olivia bit her lip. “Okay . . .”
“So while he lays low, thinking this is all over, we go back and look at our suspects again,” Kitty explained.
“Yeah,” Ed snorted. “Beat that dead horse.”
Kitty narrowed her eyes. “You have a better idea?”
“Actually, yes.” Ed threaded his fingers together and rested them on his knee. “Aren’t you guys missing the most obvious suspects of all?”
Olivia tilted her pretty head. “I don’t get it.”
Ed smiled at her. “I know.”
“Spit it out, Ed,” Kitty snapped.
These girls had no imagination. “Did you ever think that maybe your DGM exploits are coming back to haunt you?”
“You think one of our DGM targets is behind this,” Kitty said, catching on. Better late than never.
“They do kinda have a reason to hate you,” Ed said. “Like a lot.”
“But why would one of them kill Ronny?” Kitty asked. “Or Coach Creed?”
“At least Christopher had a reason,” Olivia said.
Ed snapped his fingers in front of Olivia’s face. “Wake up! Unless he’s a vengeful spirit hunting down his tormentors, he didn’t kill anyone.”
Olivia’s brow clouded. “I guess.”
You guess? “But what if someone was trying to frame you by going after other DGM targets?” Ed leaned back. “Creed and the Ronster were the most recent.”
Kitty sighed. “It’s worth looking into.” She pointed at the nearest computer. “Ed, I need your Google-fu.”
Ed swung around and poised his fingers over the keyboard. “Ready.”
“Let’s start with DGM’s first target,” Kitty said. “Wendy Marshall.”
Ed got a hit right away. “Senior at St. Francis High School. Updated her Twitter feed this morning.”
“That’s practically down the street,” Olivia said.
Kitty pulled a sheet of paper from the printer and scribbled down Wendy’s name. “Now look for Christina Huang.”
Again, Ed got a result within seconds. “Looks like her parents shipped her back east to Choate.”
“Still alive?” Olivia asked.
Ed shrugged. “If you can call Choate Rosemary Hall alive.”
“Okay,” Kitty said. “But she lives, like, four thousand miles away. Probably not our killer.”
“Try Xavier Hathaway,” Olivia suggested.
“That douche who used to stick my head in a toilet and flush it freshman year?” Ed asked.
Olivia nodded. “They didn’t call him the Swirlie King for nothing.”
Xavier didn’t have a Facebook page, so it took Ed longer to find a reference. The result, however, was unexpectedly gratifying. “Looks like he works for the Hayward Department of Sanitation.” He looked up, smiling broadly. “That is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
“And he might be a killer,” Kitty added. She clearly didn’t appreciate the irony of Xavier’s craptastic job.
“Coach Creed and Ronny are dead, so that leaves three more,” Olivia said, counting them off on her fingers. “The Gertler twins, Melissa Barndorfer, and Tammi Barnes.”
Ed cocked an eyebrow. “That’s four.”
“Just look them up!” Kitty cried.
“Fine.” Ed quickly sought online references to DGM targets three through six. “The Gertlers work at a surf shop in Mountain View, and according to Melissa’s Facebook page, she’s in Prague with some Eurotrash boyfriend.”
“And Tammi?” Olivia asked.
“Working on it.” Ed typed furiously, cycling through all of his stalkery internet go-tos. One by one, they all came up blank. He slumped back in his chair. “I can’t find any current info on her.”
“Nothing?” Kitty asked.
“That’s what I said.”
“Okay.” Kitty glanced at her watch. “We’ll look into it later.” She held up her list of suspects. “Wendy, Xavier, Maxwell and Maven Gertler, and Tammi Barnes. Plus person or persons unknown, connected to Christopher Beeman. All of them are possible suspects.”
Olivia threw her arms wide in despair. “We’re never going to figure this out. Bree’s going to rot in jail. She’ll shave off all her hair, take over a prison gang, and start calling herself Bitchslap.”
Ed smirked. “That sounds like a great porno.”
“Look,” Kitty said, grabbing Olivia by the shoulders. “We can’t panic and we can’t give up. We have to keep fighting for Margot and Bree.”
“How?”
“We start with this list. Initiate contact, see what we can learn,” Kitty said.
Olivia sniffled. “Okay.”
“And don’t forget Amber and Rex,” Kitty added. “We still don’t know what they were doing in Ronny’s room the night he died.”
Olivia nodded, her lips pressed together as if she was trying to steel herself against an unpleasant task. “I’ll try.”
“And I,” Ed the Head said with a flourish of his arm, “will look into Christopher’s family and friends.” He wasn’t going to trust either of them with that task.
Kitty looked at him suspiciously. “We don’t need your help, Ed.”
This time, his laugh was completely genuine. “You need it now more than ever.”
Olivia placed her hand on Kitty’s arm. “Maybe we should let him? Margot . . .” Olivia paused, her lip quivering. “Margot trusts Ed. And she doesn’t trust anyone.”
“Fine.” Kitty pulled him to his feet. “But there’s something you have to do first.”
“Blood pact?” he asked, feigning excitement. “Initiation ritual? Do I get a DGM pin or a secret decoder ring?”
Kitty took a deep breath, then she thrust her hand forward.
“I, Kitty Wei, do solemnly swear, no secrets—ever—shall leave this square.”
He watched intently as Olivia grasped Kitty’s wrist.
“I, Olivia Hayes, do solemnly swear, no secrets—ever—shall leave this square.”
Together, they turned to him. “I dig, I dig,” he said. “Secret oath. I’m in.”
He grabbed Olivia’s wrist and then moved his arm closer to Kitty so she could link to him.
“I, Ed the Head—”
“You don’t have a last name?” Kitty asked.
Ed sighed. “Fine.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “I, Edward Headley, do solemnly swear—”
Olivia giggled. “Headley? Are you serious?”
“Do you want me to finish or not?” Ed asked.
“Sorry,” Olivia smirked.
“I, Edward Headley, do solemnly swear, no secrets—ever—shall leave this square. Er, triangle. Whatever.”
“Good enough.”
“Yay.” Ed cheered with fake enthusiasm. “Now shouldn’t we get out of here before those ’Maine Men goons defile this corridor with their V-D crap?”
Kitty didn’t answer, but her eyes hardened as she looked at him. “We’ll meet at the warehouse tonight to debrief, understood?”
Olivia nodded, while Ed just winked.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Now, let’s get our hands dirty.”
