Author: Sara Shepard
Category: Young Adult
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/sara-shepard/page,19,37556-the_amateurs.html
‘Heath said Phinneas was a bartender,’ Aerin explained to the group.
‘So what was he up to?’ Brett asked, intrigued.
‘We don’t know,’ Aerin murmured.
Seneca started typing on the laptop. ‘I’m thinking he was back here, in New York, five years ago. Hiding Helena. I have MizMaizie on it.’
‘From the boards?’ Brett whistled. ‘She’s got access to all kinds of databases.’
‘Guys, wait a minute,’ Maddox blurted.
Seneca looked up, her brow furrowed. ‘What?’
Maddox took a breath. ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you about when I was mugged.’ His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘I remember someone looming over me, saying I needed to stop or I was going to be killed. Okay, it sounds farfetched … but what if it was related to the case? What if they meant stop digging?’
Madison went pale. ‘Wait, what?’
Brett stared at him. ‘Are you sure they said that?’
Maddox pulled at the collar of his tee. His phone started dinging again, but he ignored it. ‘It feels pretty real.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’ Aerin cried.
Maddox stared at his hands. ‘Because … it sounds nuts.’
Seneca twisted her mouth. ‘It still could have just been a mugger. They could have meant stop squirming or you’ll be killed. Or stop shouting.’
Aerin waved her arm. ‘I agree.’ Though there was an edge to her voice, like maybe she wasn’t so sure.
Brett looked at Maddox. What if Maddox was right, and someone was onto them? But the girls were already studying Seneca’s computer. ‘Huh,’ Seneca said as she pulled up Heath’s page on Facebook, leaning back in her chair and squinting at the screen. ‘Here’s the weekend of December 8, five years ago, when Helena took off. Heath put up a post that he was in Aspen … but there’s no picture.’
Brett leaned over the screen. ‘If we could get phone records from around that time, we could prove where he really was. My money’s here.’
Madison looked confused. ‘But where did Heath and Helena go? Not to his house in Dexby. Not to his Columbia dorm room, either – he dropped out first semester.’
‘Maybe they got an apartment somewhere in the city,’ Brett suggested. ‘Because they had to be in New York, remember? Loren delivered to them.’
Snap.
Brett stood up straighter, on alert. ‘What was that?’
The others frowned and cocked their heads. ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Madison said.
Another sound, like branches rustling, though it wasn’t a windy day. Now Maddox rose and peered out of the windows. ‘Someone’s outside.’
‘I’ll check it out,’ Brett said.
‘No, I will,’ Maddox said, jumping up.
‘We both will,’ Brett said, puffing up his chest.
They moved cautiously through the den toward the sliding glass door. Dusk had fallen, the sky a yellowish-purple. A tire swing way at the back of the property swayed hypnotically.
The air was crisp and held the lingering wooden odor of a bonfire. Birds chirped loudly, as if in warning. ‘Hello?’ Brett called out as they opened the door. Maddox’s phone dinged again, the sound muffled in his pocket.
The air was pointedly quiet, as though someone was trying very hard to stay still. He and Maddox exchanged a nod, then took one step off the patio. Brett walked left. Nothing in the side yard. A coiled water hose. The plastic cover on the grill.
Then he felt a sharp crack on the side of his head. It knocked him sideways, and blood filled his mouth. He dropped to his knees. Something hit him again, this time on the jaw, and he fell to his stomach. He tried to flip over, tried to see what had happened, but his hand twisted awkwardly, and he could feel his wrist crack.
‘Brett?’ he heard Maddox’s voice cry out from far away. His buddy appeared over him, but he was blurry. Brett tried to sit and wipe his eyes. His fingers touched something sticky. ‘Brett?’ Maddox was shouting at him now. ‘Brett, say something!’
Brett opened his mouth, but couldn’t speak. His head prickled like he was going to faint. He glanced around, trying to understand what had happened – and if it might happen again. A shadow moved across his field of vision, someone in black. His eyes focused. The figure lurked across the street behind a neighbor’s parked car. He raised his arm, trying to signal to Maddox, but the dizziness overtook him, and he slumped to the grass.
‘Brett!’ Maddox yelled in his ear. ‘Brett, buddy, don’t fall asleep!’ But Brett couldn’t fight it anymore. He shut his eyes, his head throbbing so badly it felt like someone had driven a spike through his brain. He felt himself sinking, then, down, down, down, into a pit of darkness. The last sound he heard was the insistent dinging of Maddox’s phone.
CHAPTER 28
Seneca sat in a red plastic chair in a tiny, curtained-off cubby at the Dexby Memorial Hospital emergency room. In the bed, Brett lay with his eyes closed tight, though his lips kept twitching. An IV tube ran into his arm, and there was a blackish-purple bruise at his jaw and a lot of dried blood in his hair. Every time she looked at it, she felt a little ill. The coroner had tried to clean up her mom before Seneca saw her, but there had been a lot of dried blood on her, too.
The door creaked open. Aerin and Maddox walked in with cans of soda from the vending machine. ‘How’s he doing?’ Aerin whispered, handing Seneca a root beer.
Seneca shrugged. ‘He hasn’t moved since you left. But the doctor came back and said he didn’t have a concussion. They don’t need to run any more tests. He’ll be okay.’
After the boys had gone to check outside, hair had risen on the back of Seneca’s neck. What if Maddox was right? What if that voice she’d heard outside her hotel-room door was real? What if it hadn’t just been a mugger in New York? Was someone after them? She figured she was being silly, but she’d gone out to check on them anyway. When she’d seen Brett lying in the yard, unresponsive, and Maddox leaning over him, she first thought she was hallucinating. This couldn’t be real. Someone couldn’t actually be after them. And then she’d felt responsible. She should have taken Maddox more seriously.
There was a croaking sound from the bed. Seneca turned and watched as Brett’s eyes scrunched closed, then opened. He focused on the figures above him, and his dry lips parted. The first person he looked at was Aerin. He tried to smile.
‘Welcome back,’ Madison gushed, squeezing his hands.
‘Just lie there, bro,’ Maddox added. ‘You’re in the hospital.’
Brett twisted uncomfortably. ‘Someone hit me.’
Everyone exchanged a glance. They’d pretty much deduced that. ‘Did you get a look at who it was?’ Seneca asked.
Brett stared at the IV running into his arm. ‘Not really.’
Aerin pulled open the curtain and peeked into the busy ER. ‘We need to call the cops.’
‘We can’t.’ Seneca yanked the curtain closed again. ‘They’ll want to know why someone might have done this to Brett. We’ll have to tell them what we’ve been up to.’
‘Someone attacked him! We’re supposed to just let that go?’
Maddox shifted uncomfortably. ‘Aerin, what we found out about Kevin, the writing on the crane, even talking to Loren – not reporting it to the police might be seen as withholding evidence. We could be in major trouble. Someone threatening us could be a good thing if you think about it. It means we’re close – maybe even right. Someone’s pissed.’
‘I don’t want anyone else getting their ass kicked!’ Aerin cried.
Seneca chewed on her necklace. She agreed that the cops would have too many questions.
She turned back to Brett. ‘We have to stick to our story. When we brought you here, we told the doctor you and Maddox had been practicing Ultimate Fighter moves and things got rowdy. If a cop does happen to ask questions, you can’t say anything more than that.’
Brett winced. ‘Can we at least say I kicked Maddox’s ass, too? I don’t want them to
think that this skinny guy put me in the hospital.’
‘Dude, I could totally take you,’ Maddox said, laughing.
‘Can we skip the macho act?’ Seneca interjected. She leaned closer to Brett. ‘So you don’t remember anything about who hit you? No description?’
‘All I remember is that they were in black. I saw them across the street. I tried to signal to you, Maddox, but you were concentrating on me.’
Maddox raised his eyebrows. ‘The mugger in the city wore black, too. And was your attacker sort of medium height? Had a high voice? My mugger was – maybe it was the same person.’
‘What, like, a woman?’ Brett looked horrified. ‘Hell no. A woman didn’t hit me.’
‘Actually, I got a female vibe at the Restful Inn, too,’ Seneca said. She plopped back down in the plastic chair, feeling exhausted. ‘It’s got to be Heath Ingram, though. We visited him yesterday. Asked questions about Helena. Maybe he was just disguising his voice …?’
Aerin tossed her can of Sprite in the small trash can by the curtain. ‘I just wish we had proof. And motive. Why would Heath whisk Helena to New York and then kill her?’
‘Maybe she was cheating on him?’ Maddox suggested.
‘If only she’d told someone about Heath,’ Seneca mumbled. ‘A blog, or a diary.’ She wracked her brain, trying to remember any inkling from Facebook, any hint that Heath and Helena were really together, but she couldn’t come up with anything.
‘The cops searched all of that stuff,’ Aerin said. ‘There was nothing.’
A thoughtful look crossed Brett’s face, and he propped himself up on the pillows. ‘Aerin, didn’t Helena say something about secrets to you the day she took off?’
Aerin furrowed her brow. ‘No …’
‘You sure? You told Seneca you snooped in her room, and there was something else strange that she said to you.’
Aerin’s gaze shifted. ‘Oh. I said that I missed her, and she said that we’d talk more but things just might have to be under wraps. Is that what you mean?’
Brett pointed at her. ‘Yes.’
Seneca wrinkled her nose. ‘Aerin told the police that. It’s nothing new.’
Brett laced his hands behind his head. ‘Maybe she was trying to tell you something, especially if she was planning her escape. Maybe she was discreetly referring to a place you both loved to get wraps, as in sandwiches?’
Aerin blinked. ‘Huh?’
‘Did anyone you know wear a head scarf?’ Brett asked. ‘Or like … could it be referring to wrapping paper?’
Seneca snorted. ‘Brett, you are so weird.’
‘Ooh!’ Madison squeaked. ‘Under Wraps is an app. Could that be something?’
Seneca whipped around. ‘It is?’
Madison nodded. ‘It’s sort of like Truth in Truth or Dare – you post your secrets on it, and people rate them.’
‘I’ve never heard of an app called Under Wraps,’ Seneca said, dubious.
‘It didn’t take off. It had a stupid name, and there were a lot of other apps out there like it that had a better interface.’ Madison raised her eyebrows. ‘There was another feature where people whispered secrets privately. Couples used it to sext and post dirty things they were going to do to each other after school. Parents wouldn’t know where to find the messages.’
Aerin’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my God. There was another part to what she said. It’ll have to be under wraps … like on our phones. She might have been giving me a clue!’
Fireworks were going off in Seneca’s brain. ‘So Under Wraps is a way for couples to talk to each other? Privately, untraceably, without using texts their parents would see?’
Madison nodded. ‘That’s what I just said.’
Seneca looked at Aerin excitedly. ‘We need Helena’s phone.’
Twenty minutes later, Seneca and Aerin returned to the hospital from Aerin’s house with Helena’s iPhone in hand. Though Seneca had told the others she’d wait before looking through it, she couldn’t help but scroll through Helena’s call list in the car. There were tons of calls to Heath. Texts, too. But maybe that made sense – they were friends. Also, the texts were all friendly and mundane, most of them recounting play-by-plays of The Walking Dead episodes. On a lark, she looked up the contact for Katie, Helena’s old friend, the one she fell out with. There was only one text from her, six months before Helena vanished: Thanks for nothing. Helena hadn’t replied. What did it mean? Then again, maybe it wasn’t worth pursuing – Katie had already been cleared.
She looked at Aerin. ‘Do you remember seeing Heath’s name in Helena’s file on the police server?’
‘Sure, but it just said he was in Colorado. The interview was really short – the cops didn’t question him about anything else.’ Aerin sniffed. ‘Maybe that’s because the Ingrams helped fund the police station’s luxury renovation that same year.’
Back in the ER, Brett looked a lot stronger and was sitting up against his pillows playing Candy Crush on his phone. After a few minutes of going through Helena’s old device, Maddox groaned. ‘Under Wraps isn’t loaded on here.’
‘Are you sure?’ Seneca asked, disappointed.
‘I’ve looked everywhere. I checked in folders hidden inside folders, under different app names …’
‘You can hide apps on phones?’ Aerin’s voice swooped. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Damn it,’ Madison whispered under her breath. ‘That seemed so promising.’
Then Seneca’s phone beeped. ‘It’s MizMaizie.’ She looked at the email. ‘I found no records of Heath Ingram in New York or Connecticut for the dates in question,’ she read.
Brett hitched higher in the hospital bed. ‘Really?’
There was more. ‘There are hits for a Heath Ingram matching your age and description living in Colorado five years ago. He applied for a Colorado state driver’s license on January 1 of that year. There’s a marriage license, too.’ She stopped. ‘Wait, what?’
Aerin blinked hard. ‘Heath married Helena?’
‘No. He married someone named Caitlynn Drexler.’ Seneca showed them the picture attached. It was a dark-haired girl with wide gray eyes and a bland smile. Her hair was fixed in tiny braids. She also had a large daisy painted on her cheek – Seneca didn’t think it was a tattoo.
‘MizMaizie ran a report on her, too. Apparently, she’s a recruiting member of the Church of the Spirit Animal.’ Seneca looked up. ‘Isn’t that a cult that hippies join, and they take all your money? I saw a 60 Minutes report on it a while ago.’
Aerin rounded her eyes. ‘Do you think Heath was part of that?’
‘That would be a good reason for making up a story about snowboarding and the Ritz,’ Seneca murmured. ‘When Heath came back to Dexby, did he immediately move in back home?’
Aerin snapped her fingers. ‘Maybe he had to. Maybe this chick stole all his cash for the cult.’
‘Think they’re still married?’ Seneca scrolled through the report. ‘I don’t see an annulment …’
‘So Heath didn’t kill Helena?’ Brett said slowly.
‘I don’t know,’ Seneca answered. ‘Maybe not.’
Bzzt.
Seneca’s spine straightened. She thought it was her phone, maybe another message from MizMaizie. But it was Maddox’s bed that was vibrating. Her breath caught.
It was Helena’s phone. A call was coming in.
Everyone stared at it as though it was possessed. Aerin grabbed it, her hands shaking. ‘It’s from a blocked number,’ she whispered.
The phone buzzed again. No one moved. Finally, Brett sat up in bed and snatched it. ‘Hello?’ he said weakly into the mouthpiece.
Silence. A wrinkle formed on Brett’s brow. He blinked once, twice, and then said, ‘Yes. Yes. Okay. Thanks, man.’ He hung up the phone. ‘That was Loren.’
‘Drug dealer Loren?’ Seneca squeaked.
Brett nodded distractedly. ‘He remembered the address for Helena. It just came to him, he said, out of nowhere, and he
still had this number.’ His voice was amazed and trance-like. ‘She got deliveries at the building where John Lennon was shot. On West Seventy-second and the park.’
Maddox’s eyes darted back and forth. ‘That’s the Dakota.’
Aerin drew back, her brow furrowed. ‘I don’t know anyone who lives there …’
‘Loren remembered something else, too,’ Brett added. ‘The name on the account wasn’t Helena’s. It was Ingram.’
Seneca clapped her hands. ‘So it was Heath!’
Maddox sank back on the pillow. ‘How could Heath be in Colorado and New York?’
‘Maybe he went after he killed Helena,’ Seneca suggested.
‘Or maybe he was going back and forth,’ Brett said.
‘No.’
Seneca turned. Aerin was standing slack-jawed by the door. ‘It’s not Heath.’
‘But, Aerin, it has to be,’ Seneca pressed.
Aerin shook her head slowly. She looked like she was going to be sick. ‘There’s another Ingram, one who definitely had access to a place in New York. Skip Ingram. Harris Ingram – H.I.’ She clapped a trembling hand over her mouth. ‘I think Helena was with Heath’s dad.’
CHAPTER 29
That asshole, Aerin thought numbly as she sat in the backseat of a New York City taxi. It was Sunday morning, and she and the others were speeding down Central Park West toward the Dakota building. They needed to get into Mr. Ingram’s apartment, find some kind of solid proof.
That selfish, disgusting, fucking asshole. The words drilled constantly in her brain like a heartbeat. Mr. Ingram – she couldn’t think of him as Harris, and definitely not as Skip – was totally the guy. He fit their profile. He’d done it.
He was scandalously older. Debonair. Cultured – a huge art collector. Aerin didn’t remember him collecting Asian art per se, but that was because he collected everything – he and Aerin’s dad used to go to auctions all the time, the way other dads attended sporting events. Her dad would come back with ugly abstract paintings and wooden tribal statues, all of which he hauled off to his hideous apartment downtown. Presumably Mr. Ingram had done the same.