OF THE ROUGHLY SIX TIMES Todd visited Mr. McVeeter’s apartment, he never saw it during the day. At least when he was alive.
In the light of day, the carpet of McVeeter’s apartment was a glowing, vibrant red. The curtains were red, too, cherry red.
Blue was McVeeter’s school color; red was his home color. Including the couch, the dishes, and the mug that was still out and half full of coffee on the gold coffee table. Red dishes McVeeter liked to serve brownies on with extra big mugs for hot cocoa he made from scratch.
“Guy is CLEAN,” Greevy said, taking it all in. “Also this is a GAY apartment.”
“And?” Daniels entered from the bedroom. “McVeeter is gay AND?”
“Well, we knew he was gay,” Greevy scoffed, tipping over a frame on the bookshelf and looking at it. A picture of an old woman. “Makes sense his apartment is gay.”
“Stereotypes,” Daniels called back. “He’s gay so he’s clean?”
“Your house is spotless,” Greevy countered.
Daniels stared at McVeeter’s desk, at the collection of papers that were stacked up on either side of the ancient computer. McVeeter’s desk was the only untidy part of his house, with various bits of paper left collaged without any rhyme or reason. He had his own personal filing system, notebook pages labeled with sticky notes with categories written in tall bright pink letters because he was getting nearsighted in his old age, he told Todd.
Every time Todd saw the desk, he had a strong urge to shove the papers back from the edge with his arm.
With a gloved hand, Daniels picked up a stray brochure for a gay cruise Todd was pretty sure McVeeter never went on. A karaoke cruise. Placed it back on the pile.
He pushed aside a few other bits before he came across something familiar to Todd, a notebook from McVeeter’s desk. It was one of those cheap notebooks you get from CVS in packs of ten. A worn-out spiral ring notebook labeled MIDTERMS SS12 FALL.
“Midterm SS twelve.” Daniels flipped open the notebook. “He handwrites them. There’s a whole stack. Right on the desk.”
“Which means if Todd were here, he could have gotten the answers,” Greevy added.
“Or Todd could have gotten them from school,” Daniels added. “McVeeter probably does some of this stuff at his desk at school.”
“Hmm,” Greevy said, disappearing into McVeeter’s bathroom. “Maybe.”
The search was Greevy’s idea. She got the warrant. This was the lead, she’d said, she had a gut feeling now.
All the boys from Albright, all nineteen of the cheaters, eventually sang the same tune. Almost like they were just really good at following a lead or remembering lines to regurgitate on an exam.
After refusing to speak at school, Mark, with his parents on either side, his mother tapping her foot, sat in Greevy and Daniels’ office later in the evening and told them that Todd had offered to sell them the answers to all the midterm exams for the year, for a thousand dollars.
Todd thought Mark looked tired. He kept his head down, his hands in his lap.
“A thousand?” Greevy looked at Daniels.
“That’s a lot of cash.” Daniels looked at Mark.
“He makes money shoveling driveways,” Mark’s father added, before pressing his lips back together in a grim fold.
“Where did he get the answers from?” Greevy asked each of the boys.
None of the boys knew, except Trevor. Perfect Trevor. Trevor with his blue eyes and his flawless neck. The morning after Mark fessed up, so early Greevy was still on her first coffee, Trevor arrived in Greevy’s office with his back straight, like he was already sitting in the witness stand.
With his mother sitting next to him, in her white fur Todd thought made her look like a giant expensive bunny, Trevor spilled everything. The big confession.
“Todd told us,” he said, “he could get the answers from McVeeter. He said he had some sort of connection to him. I can’t remember what he said exactly. And maybe I didn’t believe him. But then he had the answers, and he told us all, he was, like, pay up.”
“Pay up.” It made Todd sound tough, which at one point he would have enjoyed.
Greevy wrote a tiny exclamation mark in her notebook.
Greevy got the search warrant an hour after Trevor left, and they were in McVeeter’s apartment by early afternoon. Standing in McVeeter’s living room, Daniels scratched his chin, as Greevy slid the notebook into a plastic bag. “The kids said they gave Todd money. A thousand bucks a pop, right? But we didn’t find any in Todd’s room. He’s got a savings account balance of like eight hundred dollars and no deposits for the last month.”
Birthday money Todd rarely spent.
“Maybe he had a deal with McVeeter,” Greevy mused. “Maybe he gave the money to McVeeter.”
“If he gave him cash, it’s not here.” Daniels paused. “Wait … you think they were working together? Because of what this Trevor kid said?”
“I don’t know.” Greevy looked around McVeeter’s apartment. “Nineteen thousand dollars. Maybe. Teacher’s salary—”
Daniels cut in. “But you also think Todd STOLE the answers from McVeeter.”
“Look.” Greevy touched the cigarette pack in her pocket with her free hand. “I fuckin’ hate those snot-nosed kids at Albright, right? I thought they were little twerps and they were. They paid some nerdy kid they wouldn’t talk to otherwise for answers to a midterm. They fessed up to being twerps and cheats. I got out of them what I expected. It fits.”
“And?” Daniels folded his arms.
“And everyone’s told us Todd had some sort of thing happening with McVeeter. McVeeter confirmed they had dinner together, which wasn’t something he was doing with any other student. And they spent time together at school. McVeeter set up this tutoring thing and put Todd in charge of it.”
“And?” Daniels didn’t seem convinced.
Greevy clearly noticed.
“AND now we know Todd SOLD kids answers to a midterm he HAD TO have gotten from McVeeter. This Trevor kid says Todd got them from McVeeter. And, result, a bunch of kids have the answers to the exam. McVeeter must have SEEN that they were cheating when he marked the midterms BUT he said NOTHING. So there’s a piece there, right? There’s something he’s not saying. Right? Which is a pattern with this guy. Here we have something that could fuck with his job, and he says nothing? Kid dies. McVeeter says nothing. Why does someone clam up? When they know that telling the truth connects them to something bigger and more fucked up.”
Watching the living was starting to feel like watching a TV show Todd couldn’t turn off.
“Or he’s a gay man, and he knows what you’re thinking,” Daniels said, looking at McVeeter’s desk.
“What am I thinking?” Greevy’s voice was suddenly steel.
Todd could picture what Greevy was thinking. What he assumed Mark was thinking when Mark told him about everyone knowing that he and McVeeter “had dinner,” which made it sound like a date.
Todd and McVeeter.
Of course to even protest made the image all the more potent.
Todd and McVeeter, sitting in a tree.
Daniels frowned. “You’re thinking he had some sort of inappropriate—”
“It’s already inappropriate!” Greevy hollered. “What was he doing hanging out with this kid outside of school?”
“Helping him? Because people at school were shit to this kid?” Daniels threw his hands in the air. “Look, he didn’t tell us right away, but so far he’s told us everything he did. ONE dinner. Working with him at school. None of that is—”
There was a knock at the door, and an officer stepped in. “’Scuse me,” she said.
“What is it?” Greevy turned.
“There’s a woman who says she saw the boy, here.”
“She what…?” Greevy’s eyes went wide. “In this building? When?”
The woman lived on the second floor. The old lady with the silvery hair that McVeeter called a grand dame. She had three small dogs, all with what looked to Todd like bloody weeping tear ducts. She wore a brown fur coat that had little bits missing out the back, big black sunglasses, and big ancient-looking headphones, so Todd always assumed she was in her own world. A world that sounded like Sinatra and smelled like little white dog.
She walked her dogs, late at night. When Todd spotted her, it was on his second visit to McVeeter’s apartment. He’d stuck his foot in the elevator to hold the door open for the last little dog that was about to get splatted by the closing elevator doors. The doors slammed against the sides of his foot and sprung backward as the little dog yelped. The old lady turned and tipped the headphones off her ears and looked at him with what turned out to be an equally weepy looking eye.
And she said, “Thank you, young man.”
Now the old woman was in the lobby, holding her crusty-eyed dog and talking to Greevy and Daniels.
“What a nice boy,” she said to Greevy, ignoring the wimpering pooches at her feet. “A little thin. Needed a haircut.”
“December,” Daniels said, pulling out his notebook. “Do you remember what date?”
“Just that it was before the holidays,” the woman smiled. “December something or other. Whatever night it was, it was cold as a witch’s tit.”
Daniels tapped his finger on his notepad. “Can I get your number, ma’am?”
The woman sniffed, took his pen, and wrote down her number in barely there strokes.
Greevy held the door open, letting the cold into the front hallway.
Daniels was already on the phone.
“He was a nice boy,” the lady repeated, as she stepped out the door.
“He was HERE.” Greevy slammed her fist into her open palm. “I’m calling forensics. We need to expand the warrant.”
The day after Greevy and Daniels searched his apartment, another resident of McVeeter’s building, who apparently spotted the officers by the elevators, remembered seeing Todd in the elevator the night he died.
This woman was in her twenties and lived on the floor below McVeeter. Todd didn’t remember this woman. As she talked to Greevy and Daniels, Todd studied her features. She was tall and had lots of red curly hair she wore squished into a giant knitted hat. She said she passed Todd entering the building. She said Todd seemed preoccupied.
“Maybe not preoccupied.” The woman chewed on her cheek. “Upset.”
“Crying?” Daniels asked.
“Nah. Nervous,” the woman said. “Like he was headed into an exam or something? I’m sorry, I figured someone else had already said something so I didn’t call in. Also, I hate cops.”
The woman scowled at Greevy, who smiled.
Maybe Greevy was smiling because this woman was sure the night she saw Todd was January 20. She was sure because it was the day before her birthday.
It took a few days to get prints back from the lab, but it was a jackpot for Greevy. They found a few partials in the living room and a thumbprint right on the doorjamb.
A big fat print, the tech said, delivering the news to the office in person. The skinny kid with the big fat print.
Looking at the report, Greevy beamed. The biggest smile Todd had ever seen her make. It was the first time he noticed how blinding white her teeth were, which was strange given how much she smoked.
Some things, Todd’s ghost noted, just don’t add up.
That night, after work, Greevy dragged Daniels to a bar called The Fox and The Badger to have a drink. It was a sticky-looking bar full of police detectives drinking beers in thick chairs with red vinyl seats. Greevy had a beer; Daniels had a whiskey. At first they drank in silence. Greevy spun a pack of cigarettes on the table.
“It’s enough, right?” She spun the pack again before reaching for her beer.
“Maybe,” Daniels muttered into his glass.
Greevy threw her arm out, nearly clocking a guy who was walking past her. “Daniels! Todd’s fingerprints are all over the place. In the bathroom!” Greevy slammed her palm on the table. “He was there the night he died. You said McVeeter was on the up and up, and he wasn’t! McVeeter LIED!”
“Yeah, I got it.” Daniels checked his phone. His boyfriend. Texting with a grocery list.
Todd noted it was mostly wine.
After the bar, Daniels took a cab home to HIS gay apartment, which unlike McVeeter’s gay apartment, was all gray curtains and carpet. His boyfriend was making pie in his underwear and a pink T-shirt with a panda on it.
“All pie, no pants!” his boyfriend cheered when Daniels walked in, doing a little dance.
Daniels’s boyfriend was silly, Todd thought. Tacky, more like the kind of person who has brightly colored curtains and carpet. He made Daniels smile.
Daniels walked into the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around his boyfriend and hugged him for a long time. His boyfriend was shorter so his head hit Daniels’s chest, and Daniels’s arms were long so they circled his boyfriend completely.
“What’s wrong,” the boyfriend murmured into Daniels’s shirt. “Horrible day? Horrible world?”
“Something like that,” Daniels said.
And Daniels kissed his boyfriend in the kitchen with weird dance music playing in the background.
Watching that kiss, Todd’s ghost felt like something falling apart along very fine fissure lines, which is impossible for a ghost, which are matterless and, most of the time, without feeling.
Maybe if a ghost gets one regret, other than the overall regret of being dead, Todd’s was that he died without ever kissing anyone he loved.
Of course, this didn’t mean Todd hadn’t ever kissed anyone (two boys, one with tongue and one without, and a girl named Marigold who sort of really just kissed HIM one summer at camp). It also didn’t mean Todd had never LOVED anyone.
He died loving his mother and his father (in a weird, complicated way a person loves a person they don’t really know). He loved his aunts. He loved his grandmother on his mother’s side but not his father’s.
And, as maybe only one other person in the whole world knew, he died in love.
That was the real secret, kept so close to the chest it pinched his ribs, a secret he kept on ice until he was ice.
Maybe there was a certain kind of ghost that dies that way. With love a whirr—fluttering like a trapped monarch in your chest as your heart beats its last accompanying beats.