Shades of Grey (35 page)

Luisa looked up, right into Dulcie’s eyes. ‘No way. I don’t think Tim was that sleazy. I liked him, you know. A lot.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But, well, I know guys like him. He was fun, really fun, to be with. And I think he always meant what he said, when he was saying it. I mean, I didn’t find love letters or anything from anyone
else
on the computer. But photos? Nuh-uh. A girl has got to look out for herself. We don’t live in some fairy tale, you know.’ With that, she drained her mug and pushed off the stool. ‘Well, gotta run!’

Dulcie, slightly stunned, watched as the young woman bounced toward the door. She turned to give Dulcie a jaunty wave, and Dulcie managed to raise her hand in return. As she did, she saw, up on a high shelf, a small round bowl.

‘Hey, is that a new fish?’

The barista was wiping down the counter. ‘No.’ She looked up. ‘That’s Nemo, we brought him back the other day.’

‘Wasn’t he getting freaked out by the crowd?’

She shook her henna-red head. ‘It was just one or two customers. Go figure, but the owner thought he’d try again. Something’s changed. Nemo doesn’t seem bothered anymore.’

Dulcie drained her glass and wondered. For all her apparent vulnerability, Luisa had a decent sense of self-protection – at least around men. Better than Dulcie had given her credit for. Looking like that, she probably had to. Whatever the reason, it seemed like maybe Luisa had done the right thing, coming clean to Bruce. Maybe it meant she wasn’t in any danger anymore. Maybe that’s why the Siamese fighting fish was now circling slowly, surveying the bar below. Unless, thought Dulcie with a chill that didn’t come from her iced drink, the fish’s relative composure meant something else. Luisa had gotten Bruce, and had gotten rid of Tim’s computer. Maybe Nemo’s new-found peace of mind was for Dulcie, letting her know that Luisa was no longer a threat.

What had Tim been into? The women, the computers, everything seemed to lead back to her sleazy room-mate, and he seemed capable of getting her into as much trouble dead as he could alive. And what had Luisa meant, when she had made that crack about ‘fairy tales’? Dulcie’s thoughts went back to her dinner with Luke – and to her own ambivalence about the law student. She had left the coffee-house and now found herself on Massachusetts Avenue, walking toward the university. Up ahead was the tree-lined street that housed the legal clinic. She could only hope Luke was working today. Dulcie needed answers.

‘Hey there!’ The smile that greeted her as she entered the tiny Colonial looked genuine, and Dulcie smiled back.

‘Hi, Luke. I wasn’t sure you’d be working today.’ She felt herself beaming back up at him. Maybe her ambivalence had simply been cold feet. ‘Do you have a minute?’

He held up the stack of papers he’d been carrying when she walked in. ‘Just about. Come into my office. I’ve just got to finish up one thing.’ She followed him into the tiny windowless room beneath the stairs. Papers were piled everywhere. ‘Printouts,’ said Luke, removing a file box from a chair. He sat in front of a terminal.

‘Thanks.’ Dulcie sat. ‘I forgot – you’ve been erasing all the computer files.’

‘Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.’ He was typing, distracted, and, for a moment, Dulcie bristled.

‘Hey, just because I’m an English major, don’t tell me—’

He cut in, looking up with both hands in the air. ‘Sorry! Sorry! Believe me, after everything Stacia did for us, I’ve been cured of any gender bias about programming. That girl is a whiz.’

‘So you’ve said.’ Dulcie examined Luke’s face. He had turned back toward his terminal, but she could see a slight flush – admiration, or something more. ‘She’s a business major, right?’

‘Yeah, if you can call it that over at Miss Chivers. More like data processing.’

‘That’s so funny.’ Dulcie sat back while Luke typed. Life was odd. Data entry was what Dulcie had been stuck doing at Priority. She hated it. Maybe she and Stacia would end up bonding – if they weren’t competing for Luke’s attention. Stacia had proved that she could be a good friend; look at all she was doing for Alana. Nor did the pretty brunette seem to be playing dumb for Luke, which was a point in her favor.

Except that she’d denied knowing much about computers to Dulcie. Was she being modest? But she knew that Dulcie was a doctoral candidate, a serious scholar. What was it Chris had said? ‘Everybody has secrets; it’s human nature.’ But why play dumb to Dulcie? Unless she had it wrong.

‘Luke, did Stacia ever try to deny how smart she was?’

Luke didn’t even look up. ‘Play the “just a girl” card? Nuh-uh. Not Stacia.’ Luke hit ‘return’ and spun his chair around. ‘But you can ask her yourself!’

As if on cue, the door swung open and Stacia walked in. Wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a tank-top with a rock band’s logo, her silky hair tied back in a neat ponytail, she looked more casual than Dulcie had ever seen her, if you didn’t count what looked like a diamond hanging from a thin chain around her neck. Even in this get-up, she was still drop-dead gorgeous, the jeweled pendant setting off her dark tan. ‘Here’s the July twenty-third batch.’ She looked around for a place to put the latest bunch of files. Dulcie jumped up to take them.

‘Hey!’ Stacia’s smile lit up her face and Dulcie made herself smile back.

‘Dulcie just dropped by. Can you give us a few minutes?’ Luke reached to take the papers. ‘Documentation,’ he explained, placing the pile on top of a waist-high stack. ‘We’re going to need it.’

Documentation? ‘No, actually, please stay.’ An idea was forming in Dulcie’s head. She needed to talk it out – to uncover a truth. ‘Stacia?’ Dulcie motioned to the chair she’d just vacated. The slim brunette folded herself into it. ‘Luke?’ He sat, too.

Standing in front of them, Dulcie began to feel ridiculous. Was she in one of her own novels? Nobody here was faking the pedigree of a story. Nobody here had any reason to counterfeit paperwork. This was crazy. But nobody had any reason to conceal a true identity, either. Not here, not with her. She thought of the files she and Luke had found, what looked like computer coding. Had those been bits of emails, love notes between Luisa and Tim? Or had Dulcie been so caught up in her books, in her own fears and worries about her friendships, that she had missed the obvious?
Trust yourself
. The echo of Mr Grey sounded in her ear.
Trust what you hear in the voice.
What if he hadn’t been talking only about literature, but about life?

‘Stacia, you’ve been telling me you don’t know much about computers.’ The brunette waved one hand in the air, a dismissal of a trivial point. ‘But Luke says you’re a whiz, and always eager to help out – especially in clearing out files.’

She was warming to her topic. ‘And, now, I was wondering. A lot of women will pretend they don’t know something. They’ll play “poor little me”, but you’ve done the opposite of that. You don’t seem to want me to know how much you know. But you’ve already made yourself invaluable to Luke.’ Maybe this
was
jealousy speaking. Dulcie heard it in her own voice. Luke and Stacia did, too. Stacia sat up straighter, the hint of a smile playing on her face. Luke leaned toward the slim brunette, protectively, and Dulcie felt them uniting against her. She was being silly. She was outclassed.
Trust yourself.

‘Stacia, help me understand something here. I’m a bookworm, I know that. But you’re no slouch intellectually, and we both know that beauty and brains are a potent combination.’ Dulcie looked at the golden pair, so perfectly matched. ‘It’s gotten you in here, where you can alter the records.’ Luke opened his mouth to protest. Dulcie raised her hand for quiet. ‘And I think it got you in with Tim, too. Especially when he was short of funds. Were you, also? I think you weren’t just Alana’s friend, helping out. I think you were also a savvy business major. And, maybe, Tim’s business partner, too. But why?’

Stacia opened her mouth to protest, but Dulcie kept on talking. The facts were coming together, the dates, the evidence. ‘You’ve been involved with Tim and Alana from the beginning; you’ve been their best buddy – the friend who’s always there, the one with computer expertise. And now you’re running around like mad, trying to cover up. That’s why you’ve stayed close to everyone.’ She thought about Demetria, about the book’s warning: ‘spells most potent for their proximity’.

Stacia stood up and rolled her eyes, and even as she made a face Dulcie realized how much prettier the other woman was; how much slimmer and better dressed. But Dulcie had the thread of an idea, and she wasn’t letting go. ‘Wait just one minute, Stacia.’ Dulcie stepped between the taller woman and the door. ‘It all makes sense! That’s why you kept pestering Luke about Tim’s laptop.’ Luisa had seen the computer, and Luisa had no illusions about Tim – no reason to lie. ‘There were no photos of Alana on it. There were no photos of anyone. You wanted to erase something
you
’d put on that computer. The forensic techs were getting close to the source of the bug. Tim never had the brains to install a computer virus. But you do. And he needed money – he always needed money! Once he was into the Harvard system, he could charge anything he wanted. Change grades for people. Check out class placement. Get people off probation. As a B-school student, he had complete access, so why—?’ Suddenly, she realized the truth. Stacia had turned her back and was making a point of looking at the bookshelves, but Dulcie no longer cared. ‘Tim was on academic probation himself. That’s why the tutoring and the worry. Did they threaten to cut off his computer access? Were they monitoring his usage? Is that why he needed to get on my laptop?’ She paused. The problem with logic is that once it started rolling, it gained its own momentum.

‘Stacia, did you steal my laptop?’ Her voice had gone quiet, she knew. Both Luke and Stacia were so still, Dulcie thought they were holding their breath.

Stacia spun around and broke the silence with a snort. ‘That’s ridiculous! Steal your laptop? And besides, you got it back. I heard.’

‘Not yet.’ There was something else here, something Dulcie had to tease out.

‘Oh?’ Stacia grew quiet again, her perfect mouth set in an odd frown, and in the silence an awful thought began to grow. Stacia – her laptop – Stacia was a summer student, working at the clinic. She’d have a card for stack access.

‘If you thought I had it back, if you’d thought I’d gotten my files back from Suze, all my files . . . Were you the one in Widener yesterday?’

‘What?’ Luke stood up, his voice raised in protest. ‘Dulcie, I really think—’

‘No, Luke.’ She held up her hand for silence. ‘Someone was stalking me yesterday. Someone sliced open my bag. I thought – the cops thought – someone was going for my wallet. But what if it was Stacia, and she was looking for my laptop? That would explain why she tried to corner me. Erasing the files wasn’t enough. She must have figured that out. She needed to destroy my laptop before the Harvard cops confiscated it.’ The next thought hit her like a thunderbolt. ‘She already had Tim’s. She snatched it when she pushed Luisa down the Widener steps!’

Stacia let out a wordless squeal of protest and tried to push past Dulcie. But to do so, she had to walk by Luke, too, in the tiny, cramped office, and he reached out to her, gently touching her arm to stop her.

‘This is ridiculous.’ He turned on Dulcie, his eyes blazing. ‘You think everything is supposed to play out like in one of your books, all high drama.’

‘Luke!’ Maybe it was seeing him reach out to Stacia, reach out to defend the woman who might have attacked her. Maybe, just for a moment, she thought, He’s right . . . I don’t live in the real world. Whatever it was, that cry had been torn from her – a little wail, heartbroken. I’ve lived too much in my own head, she thought, for, well, for ever.

‘I didn’t mean—’ With his other hand, he reached out to Dulcie. For a moment, that was all she wanted.

‘You Worthington men!’ Luke and Dulcie both turned, the moment broken. Stacia was inches from them both, but she was staring at Luke. ‘You’re all so
feckless.
’

‘You mean “fickle”.’ And with that Dulcie got a hold of herself. Yes, she was a bookworm, and, yes, she spent a good part of her time in the library. But she loved those books not because they were full of adventure and romance –
not only
, a feline voice whispered in her ear – but because they were true to the human condition, revealing character as only art can. ‘Feckless means worthless, and I don’t think you mean that.’

Stacia collapsed back in the chair. Dulcie knelt at her feet, the better to peer up into her perfectly made-up face.

‘Stacia? Was I right about the computer virus? Were you helping Tim? Was he paying you?’

‘It wasn’t about the
money
.’ Tears were streaming down Stacia’s tanned cheeks, but her voice was flat and angry. ‘It was never about the money. I don’t care about money, I never cared.
Tim
cared. He had to have his guitars, his nights out, his nice things.’

‘You cared for him.’ Dulcie looked closely at Stacia’s dark lashes, the mascara flecked with gold. Everybody does have secrets, she realized. Maybe Stacia was driven by love. That mascara – hadn’t her novels taught her anything about our essential nature? About secrets? ‘You were sleeping with him.’

‘I loved him! And he—’ She gulped, the make-up on her face beginning to smear. ‘He never loved Alana. She was just a blonde. Another
pretty thing
. I was his helpmate, his partner.’

‘But the ring?’ Dulcie leaned close. The anger was going out of Stacia’s voice, the crying getting louder.

‘I found it.’ Dulcie nodded, she remembered the afternoon when the two friends had come over. But Stacia was still talking. ‘I found it one day right after – after we had made love. I thought maybe it was for me. And Tim laughed.’ Stacia put her hands up over her face. Dulcie didn’t need to hear any more. She’d been right in the first place, that Tim had been done in by a woman scorned. She’d just had the wrong woman.

‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ The dark head nodded. ‘And you took the ring, until you realized that it implicated you. Then you brought it back and pretended to find it again?’