Chapter 21
The next morning, Vero told Javi she had her annual gynecological appointment.
It proved to be as effective a repellent as the promise of an eyebrow wax, and Javi hadn’t batted an eye when we assured him we had Officer Oates’s permission to leave the house.
Cam and Arnold had waited a few minutes after we left before departing on their own errand in the Eggplant.
They met us in the parking lot of a shopping center, and we drove the rest of the way to the sorority house in my van.
The giant purple hooptie was too conspicuous, even on a college campus, but a minivan would blend in easily in the staff-and-visitor lot.
I parked directly behind the sorority house, choosing a space beside a dumpster to better conceal us from view.
Cam stood beside the van, fidgeting in a pair of Ramón’s grease-stained coveralls as Vero zipped them around him.
Vero had dug them out of her cousin’s closet that morning before we’d left for campus.
After turning them inside out to hide the TOWING & SALVAGE patch on the front, she’d torn out all the instruction-and-care tags and told Cam to put the coveralls on.
I kept an eye on the windows above us, making sure no one was watching as Vero dragged a beanie onto Cam’s head.
“Here,” she said, handing him a pair of mirrored sunglasses.
“If anyone asks, you work for maintenance, and you came to check on a stuck window in the house director’s office.
Happens all the time in these old buildings, especially in the spring.
No one will think too hard about it.” She fastened one of her cousin’s utility belts around Cam’s waist. It sagged on his narrow hips, and she removed everything but a few screwdrivers to keep it from sliding to his ankles.
She passed him a plastic tool bucket and stood back to admire her handiwork.
“Not bad,” she said, hiking up his belt. “As long as no one looks too closely, you should be able to get into her office without anyone getting suspicious.”
“Where’s Zoey?” he asked, working a finger inside the neck of the coveralls.
“When Celeste’s meeting starts, Zoey will meet you at that door.
” Vero pointed to a fire door at the rear of the building marked STAFF & RESIDENTS ONLY.
“She’ll take you through the kitchen and down the hall to Celeste’s office.
Celeste will be in her meeting when you pass the library, so be sure to keep moving.
Once you’re inside her office, you’ll have to work fast. Zoey will keep an eye out for Celeste, but I don’t know how much time you’ll have. ”
Cam took a deep, fortifying breath as Vero and I put on our own sets of coveralls and tied back our hair. “Got it. Do I smell okay?”
“’Scuse me?” Vero looked at Cam like he’d spoken in tongues.
“I tried some fancy body wash stuff I found in your cousin’s bathroom.”
“You smell very nice,” I said, throwing Vero a look before she could crush whatever hopes had motivated Cam to wash his only shirt that morning.
“Thanks, Mrs. D.” He tucked Arnold into his tool bucket and patted the dog on his head. Arnold sat up, his front legs propped on the lip, his ears perked and tail wagging at the promise of an adventure.
“Are you sure you don’t want Arnold to stay with us?” I asked.
“And leave my wingman behind? No way. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a chick magnet,” Cam said proudly. “Besides, if we do get caught, he’s a great distraction. I mean, look at that face, Mrs. D. No one’s going to give me a second look while this guy’s around.”
“Not one word,” I said to Vero before she could sling the obvious comeback.
“There she is,” Vero said as Zoey poked her head out the back door.
Her wide eyes made a quick pass over the parking lot. She waved urgently at Cam, checking over her shoulder as she held the kitchen door open for him and reached for Arnold’s bucket. “Don’t worry. Arnold will be safe with me. I won’t let him out of my sight. Come on. We should hurry.”
“Vero and I will be right outside the office window if you run into any problems,” I told them.
Cam nodded and followed Zoey inside.
I handed Vero a shovel from the back of the van and took one for myself.
“Are you sure no one will recognize you?” I asked her as we tugged on our beanies.
“Grounds maintenance crews are out here all the time in the spring,” she said.
“Everyone who lives on Frat Row is used to seeing people working outside the buildings. They probably won’t even look at us.
” She kept her eyes cast toward the ground as we carried our shovels around the side of the building.
Her transmitter belt strained against the inside of her coveralls, the weight of it making her gait uneven as she trudged across the lawn.
Vero paused beneath one of the windows. She leaned her shovel against the brick facade and stood on her toes to peep inside. I kept watch, standing beside her to obscure any view of her from the road, but the students playing flag football and sunbathing on the lawns seemed too busy to notice us.
The window above us slid open. Cam peeked out. “I’m in,” he said, pretending to adjust the lock with his screwdriver as he stole glances over his shoulder toward the office door.
“Where’s Zoey?” I asked.
“She’s keeping watch in the hall. She said to tell you she left a window cracked in the library this morning. You should be able to hear when Celeste’s meeting is wrapping up. You can give me a heads-up when she’s on her way back.”
“Good idea.”
“I know, right? Zoey’s really smart, and Arnold likes her, too. You think I should ask her—”
“Just do what you came to do and get out of there!” Vero whispered.
I carried my shovel to the next window, a few yards down, while Vero stayed beside Celeste’s office. Just as Zoey said, the window was cracked a few inches, and raised voices carried from inside. I pretended to tidy the mulch as I cocked my head to hear them better.
“I understand you’re upset, Mr. Willingham. I’m sure the loss of your son’s tuition money has been difficult for you—”
“Difficult doesn’t begin to describe it! We wrote Emory that check from his college savings account, fully expecting he would use it to pay for his spring tuition. If we had known he would cash it to spend it on poker games organized by your sorority house—”
“I’ll remind you, Mr. Willingham, those games were not approved by the Department of Fraternity & Sorority Life or the university.
Nor was I aware of them. We’ve been over this before.
The girls involved have been punished, and sanctions have been imposed on the chapter.
As you already know, the money has not been recovered, and it will be up to the courts to determine what, if any, financial restitution is due to your son and who will be responsible. ”
“We all know who is responsible,” Mr. Willingham snapped. “It was that Ramirez girl. My attorney told me she’s a scholarship case. It’s obvious she saw a chance to make some quick cash off an impressionable young pledge, and she took advantage of it.”
I felt my hands tighten into fists at his baseless assumption.
“Veronica was here on a four-year merit scholarship,” Celeste said, her voice sharpening. “That award had nothing to do with her ability to pay for her education.”
“Just because she’s smart doesn’t change the fact that she’s broke. I’ve seen where that girl lives. Her mother’s a single parent who works in a hospital billing office, for Chrissake. And now her daughter’s run off with other people’s hard-earned tuition.”
Racist much?
“Ms. Ramirez is awaiting trial,” Celeste reminded him. “And she is entitled to due process under the law.”
“And I’m entitled to my money! But you and I both know the only way I’m going to get it back is through a check from this chapter. The longer I have to wait, the less likely I am to recover it. That girl’s probably spent every last dime of it already.”
What a self-righteous jerk!
“There is nothing more the university or I can do for you, Mr. Willingham.”
“My son was an eighteen-year-old freshman when he lost that money. It’s not right.”
“Your son was—and is—an adult,” Celeste said pointedly, “and he and his friends made a conscious choice to participate in illegal activities with full knowledge of the consquences. According to the report you filed with the police, your son attended no less than six poker nights over the course of a semester, and he did so while fully aware of the risks. He could have come forward at any point and reported everything to me or the Office of Student Conduct. He chose not to do so until his tuition was past due and he had no other recourse but to inform you. While I am sympathetic to your loss, your son has some responsibility to shoulder in this as well. The money he chose to gamble is not my problem, nor is it the problem of this chapter. Like it or not, the cash that was taken from this house is a matter for the court. The legal system will decide if any of it is owed to you. Until then, there is nothing I can do. I will ask you not to contact me with any more meeting requests or restitution demands, or I will be forced to reach out to our lawyers and request that they intervene.”
I wasn’t sure how Vero felt about her house mom, or what role Celeste had played in the investigation into Vero and the money, but I couldn’t deny her poise and control of what must have been a very difficult situation to navigate.
House Mom felt like an appropriate title.
You can love, support, and nurture your kids, but that doesn’t mean they won’t make a few mistakes.
Sometimes those mistakes have serious consequences.
And sometimes parents make mistakes in judgment, too.
I wondered if she ever worried that she had misjudged Vero in all this.
If that’s why she was taking care to safeguard Vero’s rights.
Or if it was just her inner–mama bear coming out—the impulse to lash out in defense of your child regardless of what they might have done.
Or the instinct to fend off someone you considered a threat to them.
Mr. Willingham wanted his money back. And he wasn’t having any luck getting it in the privileged manner he was probably accustomed to.
He’d obviously done his homework about Vero’s home and her family.
It wasn’t such a big leap to think that he might have known she’d fled to her cousin’s apartment in Virginia.
Or that he might have sent her letters designed to intimidate her into coming back.
Would it be that much of a reach to think that he might have snuck into her room and overheard a conversation that led him to Theo’s house?
I tucked away that suspicion. For now.
If the security logs didn’t yield any helpful information, I would do some digging into the Willinghams. In my experience, people with that much hate in their hearts usually had plenty of their own sins to hide.
Mr. Willingham’s chair screeched as he stood. “If that’s your position, we’ll show ourselves out. But don’t be surprised if you hear from my lawyer as well. Your sorority will answer for this. Come on, Emory.”
I scurried back to Vero. “She’s coming!” I whispered.
Vero dropped her shovel. She grabbed the window ledge and arched up onto her toes. “Cam, Zoey! Time’s up!”
Their shocked faces appeared in the window above us. Arnold peeped out of his bucket. “I’m not done!” Cam whispered frantically. “You didn’t give me enough time to copy the drive!”
“We’ll have to figure out another way to get the logs,” I said. “Get out of there, now!”
Cam ducked back into the office. A moment later, he reappeared holding something that looked like a circuit board stuck to a packet of Pop-Tarts. He tossed it through the open window. “Hold this.”
I scrambled to catch the hard drive against my coveralls.
“We can’t take that with us!” I hissed up at him.
“Don’t freak out. She won’t even notice it’s gone.
” He handed me Arnold’s bucket. Then he folded his lean frame and put a leg out the window.
He waved a quick goodbye to Zoey and put his fist to his ear, the universal symbol for call me.
He jumped down from the ledge and landed on the ground beside me.
“How is Celeste not going to notice when her computer doesn’t turn on?” I pointed out.
He dusted his hands on the front of his coveralls.
“She won’t suspect a thing. I closed the PC and plugged everything back into it just like I found it.
If she turns on her computer, the fan will come on, some lights will blink at her, she’ll get some error message she won’t understand.
She’ll assume her computer is broken. Then Zoey will offer to call a professional to come and repair it.
The brilliant professional she’s going to call is going to be me,” he said, jabbing his thumb at his chest.
“You little sneak!” Vero shoved him down the hill toward the parking lot. “You didn’t run out of time! You took that hard drive on purpose, just so you’d have an excuse to give Zoey your number, so she’d have a reason to call you and you’d have a reason to come back!”
“I know, right!” His smile was almost giddy. He reached for the hard drive, and she smacked him over the head with it.
“Ow! What the hell was that for? I got you what you needed. There’s no reason to get violent.” He rubbed his head as we stripped off our coveralls and tossed our shovels into the minivan.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “The sooner we get that hard drive home, the sooner we can find the security logs and bring it back.”