The Private School Murders by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448185825
Publisher: Random House

45

I met C.P. a few days later outside Brilling Day on Eighty-Third Street, where Marla Henderson attended classes before she was shot dead only days earlier on the Bow Bridge. Brilling is in an old brownstone residence, forty feet wide, just as deep, and four stories high. There are only one hundred and twenty students in all four grades, and it seemed like half of them were lined up at the coffee cart outside the building. Not that I was surprised. The espresso smelled like heaven.

“I’ve already interviewed a few of them,” C.P. said, watching me eye the crowd.

“Without me?” I asked.

“I’ve always wanted to be a sidekick,” she said wryly.

She showed me her iPad, five pages of notes from her inquisition, all neatly organized with the students’ names, ages, class affiliations, and e-mail addresses.

My eyebrows shot up. “You’re hired.”

C.P. smiled and did that little head-bobble thing she always did when she got happy news, like an A in chem or the announcement of some Hollywood hipster’s unexpected pregnancy.

“Do you want a business card? Or a silver badge?” I teased.

Her whole face lit up. “Yes.”

We both laughed and shook on it. C.P. brought up a new file on her tablet.

“I downloaded a complete dossier on Marla, everything I could find. Girl was smart. She had a three-point-nine average until the beginning of the second term, and then all of a sudden …” C.P. whistled like a bomb plummeting to earth, complete with accompanying hand-slice.

I winced. “Crash and burn? Any idea why?”

“Check out her Facebook page,” C.P. said, opening the app. “Her father died of a heart attack at the beginning of the term.”

“So you think she was too depressed to study?” I asked, intrigued.

“And considering that Adele was depressed because her brother had bailed on her for school—”

“We have a connection,” I said, breathless. Finally.

C.P. grinned. “I love it when we complete each other’s sentences.”

I tried to smile back but found I couldn’t. A cold wind blasted my hair off my face and I huddled deeper into my denim-and-wool jacket. A few of the kids in line were starting to give us the once-over. At a school so small that everyone probably knew everyone else’s middle name, we were decidedly out of place.

“What? You think there’s a serial killer out there hunting rich girls with weird families?” C.P. started to joke, cutting herself short of laughing when she saw my stony face. “What’s the matter?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

“Nothing, I just—” I turned my back to one particularly intent lurker and lowered my voice. “If that’s what this guy is doing, I’m surprised he didn’t start with me.”

“God, Tandy, morbid much?” C.P. asked, giving me a little shove. “Don’t even say that.”

She shuddered in her designer boots just as a gray sedan pulled up right in front of us, its brakes squealing two inches from the curb. Sergeant Capricorn Caputo unfolded his skeletal frame from the passenger seat as his partner, Detective Ryan Hayes, hoisted his pudgy self out from behind the wheel.

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