NINETEEN
T hat night, Jay and I don’t watch a movie. Instead, we talk about all the things we learned today.
First, the Bright-Knowles Award. There is no website for the award, so it’s impossible to see who won the scholarship in years past.
Jay: I don’t know why Manal would think there’s anything fishy about the award. She can’t be jealous. She herself got a huge art award.
Aleeza: She said it doesn’t normally go to people who grew up where you did.
Jay: It’s a scholarship for people from Toronto. How can we find out who else got it?
Aleeza: Give me a second. I’m looking up the name of the award on LinkedIn. Maybe people put it on their resumes.
Jay: See? This is why you’re the research queen.
Bingo. I find four people who list the award on their résumé. I write the names out for Jay.
Aleeza: Andersen Taggart IV, Ashling Weston, Cassidy Preston, Braden Albright.
Jay: Does the guy’s resume really say IV?
Aleeza: Yep.
Jay: Those are the whitest names I’ve ever heard.
Aleeza: Do you think that’s what Manal meant when she said people not like us?
Jay: Maybe. But I’m half-white. A fact that my cousin reminds me of often.
It only takes about a minute of googling to know exactly what Manal meant. These people are wealthy. They all come from prominent Toronto families. They are not people raised in a Scarborough basement apartment by their single mother. I tell Jay.
Jay: If they’re wealthy, why did they need the scholarship?
Aleeza: That’s a great question. You said your mom’s boss sponsored you?
Jay: Yeah, she’s affiliated with the scholarship somehow.
Aleeza: What’s her name? Have you met her? What’s she like?
Jay: Helen Grant. I’ve met her many times. She’s awesome. Mom’s worked for her for years. She’s a lawyer.
I google Helen Grant. She’s actually a pretty influential lawyer who’s been practicing corporate law for decades. She sits on a bunch of boards and does a lot of mentoring for women in law. I remember Jay telling me they stayed in her cottage once. It’s clear Jay and Salma’s connection to this woman has given them a small amount of privilege normally reserved for old money.
But I can’t see how this is a motive for someone to hurt Jay or Salma. Some rich person was jealous that a half-Bangladeshi kid got the old-money scholarship they wanted?
Aleeza: How much was the scholarship anyway?
I realize this is a personal question, but at this point, hopefully we’re close enough to answer personal questions.
Jay: 20K a year. 80 total if I finish my four-year degree.
That’s probably a lot of money for Jay’s family. Hell, it would be a lot of money for my family. But it’s a drop in the bucket for these rich people. Despite what Manal thinks, I doubt this scholarship is our motive.
Aleeza: I really don’t think this is enough of a reason for some rich person to hurt you. This wouldn’t be much money for them. What about this trust from the lawyer’s office? Who do you think set it up?
Jay: Honestly, no idea at all. The only thing I can think of is
He doesn’t finish his sentence again. I wonder if this is how he talks in real life. With sentences trailing as his mind wanders.
Could the trust have been set up by his father? I’m not going to mention that to Jay, because he doesn’t want to talk about him, but it’s the only explanation I can think of.
Aleeza: Finish your thought, Jay.
Jay: I think my mother has been secretly stashing away money for me for a while. I don’t know where she gets it. She mentioned once that what’s mine and hers is only mine and hers. I think she’s worried my aunt and uncle would try to take the money from me or her.
Aleeza: Would they do that?
Jay: I doubt it. They’re a little strict but not bad people. But honestly, why would my own mother set up a trust for me? Can I think on this for a bit? I don’t want to talk about this stuff all night.
Aleeza: Jay, we’re days away. We need to figure this out.
Jay: Exactly. We’re days away. I don’t want to spend what could be my last few days dwelling on the messy bits of my life. Let’s talk about you, instead. What did you think of my neighborhood?
I sigh. Maybe he’s right. It feels like we’re still so far from figuring this out. Which means that I may not be able to save him, and we only have a few days left together.
I tell him more about my trip to Scarborough. About seeing his house, about the playground he played in, and about my impression of the beef shawarma at Shawarma Delight. He makes me describe the sandwich in detail, then tells me he’s determined to get one on the weekend. At that I laugh. Of course he’s getting one. He talks to Ausma about me in four days.
Eventually we talk more about his family, about my family, about how we grew up in such different places but how similar our mothers are.
But there’s one thing we don’t talk about—the future. Mine, his, or the possibility of having a future together. Because we know we don’t have one. We have the past and the present, but nothing else.
In the morning, after breakfast, Gracie calls that law office pretending to be Jay’s mother. She gets nowhere. Then she pretends to be Jay, and they say that even with ID, they would tell him nothing. With a little prodding, Gracie finds out that if it’s unclaimed, it will pass to the next beneficiary, but they won’t tell us who that beneficiary is, or how much money is in the trust.
The law office is located in one of those tall towers downtown. I google every combination of Choi, Patel, and Associates with Jayesh Hoque , Salma Hoque , and even Helen Grant , and come up with nothing.
“I don’t get it,” I say to Gracie in her room that evening. I’m sitting on her unmade bed, and she’s on her desk chair. “It says the trust is intended to offset education costs, so it’s probably about the same amount as the scholarship, right? Maybe $80,000 to $100,000. Not a huge amount for rich people.”
“But the next beneficiary might not be wealthy,” Gracie says. “I know Manal thinks this is a rich-people-going-after-regular-folks thing, but we have no reason to know that’s what’s happening. People have certainly killed for $100,000.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” A thought comes to me. “I do think the trust is the motive. Birdwatcher proves that.”
Gracie lifts one brow. “What? How?”
“Think about it,” I say. “Jay can only claim the trust if he’s enrolled in postsecondary education. The smear campaign against him in the Birdwatcher Tumblr and on Instagram—the bullying, the academic cheating accusations—that could all be to get him to either drop out or get kicked out of school. And then he wouldn’t be able to claim the trust.”
Gracie smiles, nodding. “Yeah, that totally makes sense. So someone from the trust-fund group, right?”
“Yeah, maybe one of them isn’t as rich as we thought they were.”
With no leads at all as to who opened the trust, or who the next beneficiary is, we have no idea how to proceed. We decide to go back to the Birdwatcher and hopefully figure out who that is. But we’re hitting a dead end there too.
“I need to ask Jay,” I say. “He has a late water polo match tonight, so I’ll have to talk to him tomorrow. He must know something that can help us get through all these dead ends.”
On Friday after my classes, I bring my dinner up to the room so Jay and I can talk while I eat.
Aleeza: We should have set up voice-to-text on ResConnect so we could feel like we’re having a real conversation.
Jay: Then you’d sound like a robot. I don’t mind texting. Hey, did you end up finding my mother’s yearbooks?
Aleeza: I looked online but couldn’t find any. Did your mother ever mention going to school with your father?
Jay: No.
Aleeza: I think you’re going to have to ask her about him.
There’s no answer for a while. This is the biggest loose end. We need to know more about Jay’s birth father. Finally, he responds.
Jay: Yeah, I think you’re right. But I’m not going to do this on the phone. I’ll ask her when I see her this weekend.
Tomorrow is Saturday, and he’s supposed to disappear on Sunday.
Aleeza: Maybe you should just go there now and stay until Monday after you’re supposed to disappear. In fact, you could just go into hiding for a few months until your birthday so no one hurts you before you can claim the money.
Jay: I can’t. I wouldn’t be able to talk to you.
Aleeza: But it could keep you out of danger!
Jay: We don’t know that. We still don’t even know if this trust is the reason I’m missing. I’m not going to hide for five months without even knowing if I’m actually in danger.
He’s right. The only way to prevent this is to find out if someone did something to him. And stop them. I look over at Tentacle Ted, willing him to help me find the right angle to solve this puzzle. I remember Manal’s comments about the kind of people who get away with everything.
Someone knocks on my door then. It’s Gracie, her eyes twinkling with excitement. “Aleeza! I figured out how Jay got downstairs that night!”
“What? How?”
“Come, lemme show you.” She motions me to come with her.
I quickly text Jay that I’ll be right back and leave the room with Gracie. She explains while we’re walking down the stairs. “I had a meeting with my psych professor today. Her office is on the second floor. While in there, I heard a noise next door, like someone running downstairs.”
“So?” I ask. She gets off the stairs on the second floor. I follow her as she walks down the hallway of professor offices.
“Her office isn’t anywhere near the stairs. The main stairs, that is. So, once all the profs had left for the day, I came here and snooped around. Look,” she says, pointing at a door that looks different from the others. There’s no name or window on it. And no lock. Gracie opens the door.
I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but inside is just a janitor’s closet. I see a mop and bucket, a broom, and some shelves full of cleaning supplies. But one thing that’s strange is that the room has wood paneling on the walls.
“The rooms on this level have more details from the original mansion. Look.” She goes to the left wall of the small room and slides open a wood panel.
“It’s a pocket door!” I’ve seen these in some old houses in Alderville.
“Yes, and hidden stairs.” She motions me to join her on the narrow wood staircase. I only hesitate a moment—I really don’t want to get in trouble for being here—but I want to figure out this mystery, so I follow her.
“Why are there stairs here?” I ask.
“They’re servant stairs. I guess the maids had to get to the second-floor bedrooms without anyone seeing them. And since the camera is on the main stairs between the first and second floor, it wouldn’t catch Jay that night if he came down from the third floor and went down these stairs.”
At the bottom of the stairs, there’s a door. When Gracie opens it, we’re in a little hall with three doors. The walls are covered with the cheap-looking white paint of the rest of the building.
“Where are we?”
“That”—Gracie points to the door on one side—“leads to the back common room, which I assume used to be the kitchen of this house. And that”—she points to the other door—“leads outside.”
“But I thought there were only the two doors out of the building?”
She nods. “Exactly. This is the back door. Don’t touch it; it’s alarmed.”
Huh. I have never used the back door, so I didn’t notice this mystery door next to it. I frown. “How did he get outside from here? The alarm would have gone off.”
She shrugs. “That part I don’t know. He could have gone out through the common room to the front door.”
“Yeah, but the front-door camera didn’t see him leave.”
She shrugs. “I’ve figured out how he got downstairs.”
She’s right. This is something. I exhale. “Thanks, Gracie. This does actually help.”
After we head back up to the third floor, she tells me she’s going for drinks with Aster. I give her a meaningful look.
“Don’t,” she says, shaking her head. “It means nothing. We’re friends, that’s it.”
I chuckle. “Sure. Just friends.”
“You go,” she says, pushing me to my room. “Go talk to your just a friend .”
I’m smiling as I head back into my room. I immediately tell Jay what Gracie found.
Jay: Cool! A hidden stairwell! This place really is a haunted mansion. You even have a ghost you talk to every night.
Aleeza: You’re not a ghost. We’ll solve this. I’m going to see if campus security will tell me anything about that back alarm. Maybe there is a way to disarm it.
Jay: It reminds me of Travis’s family cottage. We all went up there last year. His dad had all these secret passages built into it for fun.
Aleeza: What else did you do with Jack and his friends?
Jay: Regular stuff. Parties, clubs, hanging out.
Aleeza: Did you leave town with them a lot?
Jay: Just Travis’s cottage, that’s in Muskoka. Wild place. And we went on Jack’s boat a few times, but that’s in Toronto harbor. Not out of town.
Oh. Jay’s things were found washed up on Lake Ontario. Maybe he was on Jack’s boat.
Aleeza: Is that the boat Jack lives on?
Jay: Yep. It’s a sailboat. His family has several, but this one was his twentieth birthday present. Once we went on a midnight cruise—we didn’t even get back to the marina until 3:00 a.m. There were at least a dozen of us. It’s a big boat, but still, that’s a lot of people.
Aleeza: Which marina?
Jay: North Toronto Yacht Club. Stupidly named because it’s in the south end of the city. Bunch of others also had family boats there.
Aleeza: The marina is open until 3:00 a.m.?
When Jack was high, I remember him mentioning swamps and water lilies. Clearly water is important. I look up the yacht club on Google, and it’s about ten kilometers from Woodbine Beach, where Jay’s things were found.
Jay: No, but security took one look at Jack and just waved him in. He stays overnight there a lot. Jack took us out to see the most amazing view of the Toronto skyline at night.
Aleeza: Did anything strange happen to you there? Maybe you went on Jack’s boat again that night.
Jay: I guess it’s possible. Nothing strange happened last time. It was nice. I really got to know Jack that night ... he wasn’t drinking. He said he always stays sober while sailing.
Aleeza: What’s Jack’s sailboat called?
Jay: Wanderlust. I remember the name clearly because Jack and I talked about it that night. I told him all about the traveling I want to do, and he said the same. It’s why he named the boat that.
Shit. There it is.
Aleeza: That’s it.
Jay: What?
Aleeza: That night at Jack’s party ... he said “Wanderlust shouldn’t kill anyone. It’s a gift.” I thought he was talking about traveling ... but he was talking about his boat.
Jay: Holy shit. Maybe I’m going to be on his boat Sunday night.
Aleeza: The more I think about it, the more I think Jack knows a lot that he’s not saying. He’s probably the Birdwatcher. He was so cryptic at that party. Aster told me he used to have a secret Instagram where he aired dirty laundry about his wealthy peers.
Jay: Yep. He got into a lot of trouble for that. Did you know the old Birdwatcher Tumblr claimed I was the one who exposed Jack as being the person behind that secret Instagram? Of course, I didn’t do it. A few days ago, Birdwatcher Instagram repeated the accusation.
Aleeza: Wow. Why did the Birdwatcher think it was you?
Jay: No clue. I told Jack that it wasn’t me. I’ve never even seen his secret Instagram. He said he believed me. All the trouble slid off him, anyway. Rich people get away with everything.
Maybe with murder. If Jack thought Jay exposed his secret Instagram, that could be motive.
Aleeza: If Jack is behind the Birdwatcher Instagram, then him reposting that accusation a few days ago tells us that he hasn’t really forgiven you. This grudge has been festering for a year now. It’s ready to blow. Someone said he’s been drinking since Halloween, and he said after that. You disappeared a few days after Halloween. Maybe he was so traumatized by what he did that he’s been on a bender since then. I need to talk to him.
Jay: Be careful.
Aleeza: Yeah, I know. I will. Let’s hope Jack has some answers for me.