Mind Games Read online

  “Yes, I am aware of the penalties for impeding a police investigation. I’m just trying to tell you that there are three too many pearls on the floor for the piece that was stolen, which means the thief broke one of her own pieces of jewelry while trying to leave.” He pointed one finger at the ceiling and said, “A piece she was wearing.”

  With his finger still up in the air, he smiled widely at me. He was so impressed with his own cleverness, my Lock, and I surprised myself by returning his smile. Only he would count pearls.

  He looked horrified in the next moment and ended the call so quickly I could barely suppress my laughter. I lost it completely after seeing the sad puppy look he wore when he lifted his head.

  “Aw, what happened?” I asked.

  “They asked for my name.” He came over to sit with me on the bed, completely defeated. I sat up and patted his back. “They want me to come in for questioning.”

  I failed again to check my laughter, and Lock frowned. “It’s not funny. He said no one could know that unless they were there.”

  I pressed my lips together, which didn’t help at all. “Of course he did.”

  “You’re still laughing.”

  “It’s still funny.”

  Lock waved me off and held his head high. “Doesn’t matter. At least now they know it’s a woman.”

  “Or a young teen sleuth calling in false tips to make it seem like a woman did it.” My eyes went wide and I pointed at him accusingly. “Maybe it was you! Why aren’t you wearing your pearls today?”

  Lock wanted to laugh so much. I could see it despite his attempt at a glare, which was a giant failure. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

  I winked and he lunged at me in revenge. I deflected as much as I could, but somehow in his quest to keep me from bashing his head repeatedly with my pillow, he was able to grab both my wrists and push them behind my back. We looked up at the same time, bringing our faces close. The laughter stopped when our eyes met, leaving us both breathless. I felt his soft huffing breaths on my lips, which made me hyperaware when his gaze dropped down to stare at them.

  I turned my head and bit at my bottom lip, which was tingling in an anticipation that only made me feel that much more guilty.  After a moment Lock freed my hands and whispered, “Sorry,” as we awkwardly disentangled ourselves.

  Had he been someone else—if we were a different couple—I wondered if he would have asked me why I kept acting like that, or how long it would take me to forgive him, or if I ever would. He might have pointed out that he’d only done what he needed to do to save my life, and I would have called him a liar, reminding him that involving the police was a calculated decision as was every choice he’d made.

  Were we a normal couple, all these missed moments might have ended with arguments or excuses. Or maybe we’d have ended things entirely by now. But we were Lock and Mori, so he gave an apology that he didn’t mean, and I changed the subject, despite the ache in my chest. “You found an address,” I said. I walked over to the mirror to straighten my hair and clothes and tried my best to avoid looking at him in the reflection.

  “Yes. For a clinic in the West End. Two of the letters in your collage came from an advertisement on the back of the cover page, where the mailing label was pasted.”

  “You took the letter apart? Does this mean you’re on the case?”

  Sherlock still sounded distracted when he said, “We are on the case.”

  “And I suppose that means we’re going to the clinic.”

  “Of course. And if you’re lucky, I’ll tell you all about my new case at school.” Lock didn’t wait for my response. He was already out in the hall when he said, “It’s a missing mobile phone, which seems dull, of course. But the only suspect claims to be in love with the victim. . . .”

  Lock said something about the suspect’s father working for a mobile company, and then he was too far down the stairs for me to hear. I was left to stare at my own reflection in the mirror. I brought my fingers up to my lips as my forced grin faded and tried not to think about how much I still wanted him to kiss me.

  • • •

  “So, as you see, there’s too much data to figure out what really happened,” Sherlock said. We were sitting on the bus, heading to the clinic, but his mind was definitely wrapped up in this phone riddle.

  “Or not enough,” I offered.

  Lock ignored me and started poking at his tablet with a little more force than was called for. A boy two years younger than us was being accused of stealing a mobile from a girl in his class—a girl he’d been in love with since grade school, according to the boy. He could barely utter full sentences when she was in his immediate vicinity. Stealing from her wasn’t likely. More to the point, his father did indeed work for a mobile company, which made his stealing an outdated phone, of all things, completely unbelievable. He should have been at the very bottom of any suspect list.

  Still, when the classroom was searched, the phone was found in the boy’s book bag. Lock had been wrestling with the puzzle when he’d been distracted by the pearls. “But I wanted to know what you thought. The boy’s pretty desperate.”

  “Why? He just returned her phone, right?”

  “They’re threatening to expel him.”

  “That seems a bit extreme.”

  “I thought so too, but he’s more worried that the girl will hate him and that he won’t be able to see her anymore if his parents make him transfer schools.”

  Neither of us spoke for a few seconds, and then Lock muttered, “Too many possibilities.”

  It was the exact opposite of my case, the one we were supposed to be focusing on that day. But he wouldn’t be able to, not as long as this problem was in front of him, so I decided to help.

  “Who benefits?”

  Lock looked insulted at the question. “Do you not think I’ve already tried to ferret out a motive?”

  “And there’s none?”

  “The girl is well liked but not popular enough to have enemies.”

  “Every girl has an enemy, and it’s almost always another girl.”

  “I thought men were the enemy,” he said as a tease.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Well, who exactly do you think teaches little girls to see other little girls as the enemy, when in fact it’s all just a lie to make sure we never consolidate our talents and rise to power?”

  I watched Lock’s expression brighten and I changed the subject before he said something annoying, like how lovely I looked when I ranted about the patriarchy. “In the absence of a motive, have you considered it was an accident?”

  “Someone accidentally stole the pho— Oh, you mean that our boy was accidentally framed. That it was put in the wrong bag. Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “And?”

  “Three others have his same bag on that level of the school building, none of whom I can say with any certainty were in the classroom that day.”

  “What if someone picked it up thinking it was his own and was too embarrassed to return it?”

  “And slipped it into our boy’s bag, knowing he’d return it to the girl he liked? The SIM card was removed and the content on the phone was wiped clean, which is an odd step if it was all a mistake.”

  “Someone wanted to destroy something on the phone, then. For sure.”

  “Agreed, but here we are at too many possibilities. The girl claims there were hundreds of pictures and videos on the thing. She’d upgraded the memory as much as was possible and kept having to delete stuff to make it work right.”

  “Too many possibilities,” I said, falling back into my thoughts.

  Lock did as well, for a time, then he asked, “Do you ever wonder what you’ll do in future?”

  I paused to stare out the window. “Before or after the feminine revolution?”

  “After university.”

  “Doctorate in maths and most likely an academic career. Why?”

  “Not sure I’ll go to university. Not for a degree progra
m anyway. Maybe just to take classes that sound interesting.”

  It was a surprisingly impractical and whimsical plan for someone as clever as Sherlock, but I didn’t respond. There was a time when I’d had a clear plan for my life. I’d rattled it off so easily to Lock—my future academic career. Just then, however, none of it seemed real. I couldn’t believe I’d ever actually be at university, taking classes and following a degree path like everyone else. I couldn’t really see past the summer and into our final year at school. I couldn’t even predict what would happen tomorrow. All I could think to do was focus on my sworn promise to Freddie—survive this mess and be there to help. It suddenly felt like the most pathetic of goals, even more pathetic than Lock’s trolling university classes on his whims. At least he’d be doing what he wanted.

  “This work,” he said. “I think I’ll keep doing this.”

  “Why not become a proper police detective, then? Or a criminologist.”

  He shook his head. “Too limiting. Besides, one Holmes working for the government is enough.” He paused and fought off a frown. “My mother says that a lot.”

  I perhaps should have asked how his mother was doing, but I was sure he’d bring it up on his own if he wanted to talk about her.

  “Well then, not-police-detective, show me how you discovered this address we’re traveling toward.”

  As it turned out, Sherlock was only half certain that the address he’d discovered in my threatening letter was the UltraCare Clinic in West End. There were two letters that still had a piece of the label attached, one showing “Ult” and “17A” of the address label and the other showing “dish Sq.” Lock decided this could only be 17A Cavendish Square, the main-floor office in an old white-brick building of medical offices. It wasn’t until we reached the place that I realized we also had no idea what we were even looking for there. That didn’t seem to stem Lock’s excitement, however. His eyes were alight, as if he were about to climb to the top of the building and jump off it.

  The interior of the office was a stark modern contrast to the outside. The front desk was clear acrylic with a slab of polished wood on top. It stood in front of the only bright purple accent wall in a sea of black-and-white scrolling wallpaper. But there was no one seated behind the desk, so I pulled Sherlock to sit with me on the purple chairs that lined every other wall in the entry area.

  “Shouldn’t we wait by the desk?” he asked, glancing around to take in every detail of the place, I was sure.

  “To ask what, exactly? Have any of their magazines gone missing and who do they think stole them?”

  He picked up one of the magazines laid out on a side table between our chairs and the next grouping of seats. “I have a theory,” he said. He slid a finger under the address label on the front and popped it off into his hand.

  “Are they all that easy?” I asked, picking up my own magazine. But this one’s label didn’t budge, and when I tried to force it, the page started to tear.

  “No, but I believe the letters with the address label on the back came from this magazine.” He opened the front page, and I instantly recognized three of the letters along the bottom. “The labels for this magazine all come off that easily.”

  “So your theory is that the person who sent the threat is willing to go through the time and effort to cut out letters to make the message, but is too lazy to remove the label that might point us to him or her?”

  “Definitely a her.”

  I shook my head.

  “And no. My theory is that she left the label on purpose.”

  “Why?” I challenged.

  “That’s the question we’re here to answer.” Sherlock glanced around the room again. There were two older men sitting in the chairs closest to the front desk, and a woman with a sleeping toddler on her lap sitting in the chair farthest away. “What exactly did she want us to see here?”

  The front door to the clinic opened just then, and a woman entered. I recognized her almost instantly as one of the regulars from the park. She was a graying blond-haired woman wearing at least seven bags, which had always made her appear to be a globular being from afar. She had four satchels that crisscrossed her body like she was the world’s most ambitious courier, and three others draped around her front and back. And, because evidently she had more to carry, she held a large plastic sack in each hand, so that she was forced to push into the room awkwardly and disentangle the sack handles from her wrist before she could write her name on the clinic sign-in sheet.

  Just as she’d finished adjusting her bags so that she could squeeze into one of the chairs, the door from the clinic back rooms opened into reception. I immediately sank lower on the chair, so that Lock’s body could hide me a little.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  I pretended to scratch the place between my temple and forehead so I could shield my face with my hand and pointed toward the desk where an impatient, fidgety woman stood—our local Sally Alexander, warrior for justice, or at least her approximation of the ideal. She looked somehow smaller without her picket signs and bright red lipstick. “She’s not exactly a fan of mine.”

  Lock sat up straighter in his chair. “Well, this just got interesting.”

  “For you. I think for me it’s time to leave.” The very last thing I wanted to do was get into some kind of public confrontation with the woman.

  “Not so fast,” Lock said. “I’m almost sure there’s more to see.”

  He was right, not that either of us could have predicted what happened next. The door from the clinic rooms opened again, and this time the woman who came through was perhaps the last person I expected to see—Mrs. Patel, Lily’s mother.  At first I didn’t recognize her, wearing lavender scrubs with her hair pulled up in a tight bun. I’d only ever seen her the once, at Mr. Patel’s funeral. But something about her expression caught my eye, and then everything clicked into place. She looked weary, like someone who had already hiked to the top of a mountain that day. It was the same look she’d worn at her husband’s memorial.

  “Thought I’d never get out of here,” Sally said.

  “I’m so sorry for the wait, Mrs. Greeves. The doctor had a few difficult patients this morning that threw his schedule off.” Mrs. Patel attempted a placating smile, but I was pretty sure there was no smile that would have placated our Sally, or whatever her name really was.

  “If you’re sorry, don’t let it happen again. Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I don’t have places to go.”

  “Yes, of course,” Mrs. Patel said. “Completely our fault.”

  Lock nudged me as the two of them started in on paperwork at the front desk. “Do these two know each other?” he asked, motioning between Mrs. Greeves and the woman from the park.

  “How would I know?”

  “Watch this.” He gestured toward Mrs. Greeves, who asked a question about something on the paperwork and then, when Mrs. Patel’s head was down, Greeves reached behind her back to make an okay sign with her fingers. As if on cue, the woman from the park slid a magazine off the table next to her, rolled it up, and slid it into a satchel at her hip. Lock and I exchanged a glance and then went back to watching them with renewed interest.

  By the time Mrs. Greeves left, the woman from the park had managed to hide away a second magazine into one of the bags tied at her wrist and a third down the front of her shirt.

  Lock kept a lookout until Mrs. Patel disappeared into the back of the clinic once more, and then he grabbed the hand I’d been using to hide and pulled me toward the front door. The woman from the park must have concluded her business as well, because she beelined for the door right as we did, and might have beat us through if she hadn’t paused to look behind her, right at me, as it turned out.

  “I know you,” she said, blocking our retreat.

  I offered up a half smile and a nod, hoping either she’d move or Lock would push past, but neither happened. Lock just looked from the woman to me and asked, “You say you know her? From where?
”

  “Does it really matter?” I asked, in what I had meant to be a whisper but that came out sounding like an exasperated growl.

  “Vivianne,” the woman said. Then her expression darkened and she said, “Ninianne.”

  I turned to Lock, hoping he’d finally help to get us out of there, but he only stared at the woman as if he were studying her. I said, “You must have me confused with—”

  “Nimue,” she hissed.

  And I was almost sure she was about to lunge at me when Mrs. Patel’s warm voice called out, “Lady Constance! I saved up some more magazines for you. Just like I promised.” We all turned toward the reception desk, where Mrs. Patel held out a thick stack of worn magazines. “Here you are!”

  There was a bit of an awkward pause, where we all just stared at the magazines, but then Constance lunged toward the desk instead of at me, giving me ample time to drag Sherlock through the door and out onto the street. He guided me down an alley between the clinic and the next building, and then we watched as the Lady Constance ambled past, muttering to herself.

  When she was a safe distance from us, I said, “Those were King Arthur references. Is she our artist then?”

  “No. Her hands tremor. I doubt she could keep it at bay long enough to do that kind of detailed work.”

  I frowned, at first angry with myself for failing to notice such an obvious clue, but then at Lock, who whispered, “Nimue,” with bright eyes.

  I attempted to refocus him away from his amusement. “The artist, Sherlock.”

  “Yes, well, it’s possible she was the one who told the story to our artist, yes? The drawing showed a woman in ornate costume, whispering something into a man’s ear. Perhaps he’s the artist, and she was the whispering witness. Though she apparently told an embellished version.”

  “So we’ve learned nothing.”

  “Not nothing!” Lock protested. “We know where the magazines come from, and who has access to them. We know the witness and that she’s seen our artist. We have found our key . . . or sword, as it were.” Lock pressed his lips together to stifle his laugh, but it didn’t work. He was laughing unchecked before we’d even reached the bus stop. He started to speak again once we got there, but I held up a hand.