Friday, early afternoon
AFTER NATE WOKE UP AND SAW THE MESSAGE FROM OLIVIA ON HIS CELL, it took him less than fifteen minutes to shower, throw on clothes, and meet her at the Acropolis.
When he turned the corner, there she was, waiting out front, smoking; he wondered if there’d ever come a day when the sight of her wouldn’t make his heart catch and his body weak.
“You like this place?” she said dubiously, killing the butt with the toe of a scuffed cowboy boot. They settled into his usual booth and waited for coffee. She slid off the Sergeant Pepper’s bandleader jacket she was wearing, and her serious, honey-colored eyes fastened on him. “Nate, I keep playing over in my head what I saw that morning I found Tut. The whole time everybody’s going on about the cameras and that photo. But what if that has nothing to do with the murder?”
“How do you mean?” Nate willed himself to focus on her words and not her tits.
“The entryway isn’t the only way in and out of the Annex. There is a front door. We never think about it because nobody ever uses it. But that morning, the EMS guys came for Tut’s body through the Annex front door. I watched Marshall punch in the code on an alarm panel so the stretcher could get through. He couldn’t remember the code at first. He had to go back up to his office to get it.”
“So you’re saying that’s how the killer could have sneaked out of school?”
“Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s Marshall.” She told him about running into Arm and Hammer near the Garden. “What they said made no sense then. But maybe that’s how Marshall got drugs.”
The fucking headmaster buying drugs from Arm and Hammer! “But why would he want to kill Tut?”
Olivia just shook her head. She was playing with a blue packet of Equal.
“What was it your brother heard Tut say? ‘You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’?”
“Something like that.”
“So if it’s Marshall, maybe he did something that Tut found out about…He was there, the night Tut died, Marshall I mean,” Nate said. “I saw him locking his office right before I went in to see Tut. But I never saw him actually leave. Maybe he went and hid out in the boardroom or some place.” His mind lasered in on the missing glass in Tut’s office. Marshall was someone Tut would have offered a drink to…. “Mr. Marshall buying raver drugs from Arm and Hammer!” Nate shook his head. It was almost harder to picture that than believing Marshall was a murderer. “But if he did spike Tut’s drink, he must’ve hung around ’til Tut was dead and then made sure nobody was outside on the street before sneaking out.”
Olivia nodded. “And meanwhile I was like having a heart attack over my brother on the stupid camera.”
“You’re brilliant.”
Olivia shrugged dismissively. “None of this hit me ’til this morning.”
“Why haven’t the cops thought of it?” Nate said, suddenly ravenous from the smell of breakfast grease wafting all around him.
“Maybe they have. How would we know?”
He motioned for the waiter and ordered a short stack and fried eggs with sausage; Olivia wanted an English muffin and more coffee. When their food arrived and he was about to plow into the eggs, Nate considered something else. “The sonofabitch planted the roofies on me, has to be.” He balanced a forkful of egg and pancake, running a possible sequence of events in his head. “Marshall calls the main school number asking for himself; someone comes into the gym and gets him; he goes to the front desk and, in front of the security guy, takes the call, acting like he’s talking to someone. Then when he comes back, he finds my backpack and slips in a bag with a couple of joints and roofies, saying the stuff was in there already.”
“Yeah, that works, I guess…and right away everyone starts thinking, ‘Ooh, party drugs! Just like what killed Tut!’…What’s he got against you?”
Nate shook his head as he shoveled another loaded fork of food into his mouth. “You should’ve heard him going on to my mom, how he was sure I was innocent. Maybe Ms. Hollins somehow knew what he was up to, too.”
Olivia took another bite of English muffin; even the way she chewed got him hot, her lips closed, a speck of butter streaked in the corner, the muscles in her jaws moving slowly back and forth.
“Let’s go to the cops now.” He folded the last pancake around the one remaining sausage and shmeared it with syrup.
Olivia made a face. “What? That’s supposed to be like a wrap sandwich?”