Higher Learning Read online

  Higher Learning

  A Charlie Davies Mystery

  Higher Learning

  Copyright © 2016 Clare Kauter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A note to the reader (that’s you!)

  Also by Clare Kauter

  About Clare Kauter

  What now?

  ‘Deadhead’ Preview

  This book is dedicated to Lin-Manuel Miranda. If you don’t know why, then you should probably just google him.

  You’re welcome.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was a trap and I’d walked right into it.

  Winter had hit Gerongate and the scenery was suitably depressing. All the trees had lost their leaves and the spindly, naked branches twisted upwards, clawing at the still-dark sky. The sun wasn’t due to rise for fifteen minutes and yet thanks to my job I was not only both awake and outside, but also jogging. Not to mention freezing. My friend Joanna had helped me pick my active wear back in summer when it had seemed like a great idea to buy red short-shorts and a crop top to exercise in. She wanted me to seduce my boss, Adam, and so she’d insisted that I buy sexy exercise clothes. It was an OK idea in theory; after all, Adam was a salivation-inducing level of hot – curly black hair, brown eyes, brown skin, possibly put himself through university by working as a model and/or stripper and/or high class escort. Unfortunately he was also an incurable arsehole.

  I was jogging into work with said arsehole this morning, who had not spoken to me the entire time. Don’t get me wrong, he and I were friends. Just, you know, friends who weren’t particularly nice to each other. Especially since he tried to fire me and then accused me of only making out with a certain cop to get information from him.

  “I’ve got a job for you,” Adam said as we jogged along.

  I’d been at this exercise thing for a decent amount of time now, but talking while jogging still didn’t come particularly easily to me. “You mean an actual investigation job?” I wheezed.

  Although I was employed by Baxter & Co., a security and investigations company, and had sometimes filled in for other (more capable) employees in the hands-on side of the business, technically I was the receptionist. However, after the last investigation I’d been involved in – helping find a kidnapped child – Harry Baxter, Adam’s father and company CEO, had decided I should become more involved with the investigation side of things. Adam had been unimpressed to say the least, but under sufferance had agreed to tutor me so I could obtain my PI licence. I’d done my test a couple of weeks ago and passed with flying colours. I was now a fully qualified PI, which sounded really cool but I suspected would mean I remained at the reception desk unless a boring case came up and no one else wanted it. Then I’d spend my time sitting in my car outside dodgy hotels photographing cheating spouses. Still, when Adam told me he had a case for me, I couldn’t help but be excited.

  Until he told me what it was.

  “There’s a lot of meth in town at the moment.”

  “Whoa, put on the brakes,” I said. “That’s kind of jumping in the deep end, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I gave him a look of disbelief. “You sent Tim undercover with meth dealers and he came out with his intestines on the outside.” That was a slight exaggeration, but only slight – Tim had been beaten so severely that he was still basically confined to a desk. He was healing, but slowly. The thing about Tim is that he was a self-defence instructor and one of the fittest guys I knew, not to mention one of the best at his job, and yet when he went after the ice dealers he barely made it out alive. That really didn’t seem like a fun first job for me to tackle.

  “Relax,” said Adam. “I’m not sending you after a major crime family or anything. I doubt you’re ever going to be up to that kind of job.”

  “Rude.”

  He shrugged.

  “So what are you asking me to do?”

  “Well,” said Adam, slowing his pace as we drew nearer to the Baxter & Co. offices where the company gym was located, “did you hear about that girl from Gerongate High who overdosed a couple of months back?”

  “Yeah, I did. It’s sad.”

  “You don’t have to pretend you care in front of me, Charlie. I know you’re incapable of empathy.”

  I rolled my eyes. According to Adam, I was incurably self-centred. I disagreed, since if I were truly that self-centred I didn’t think I’d spend so much time thinking about him. Of course, I couldn’t tell him that.

  “Fine,” I said. “What does it have to do with me?”

  We were at the door to the gym by this time. Adam swiped his card to unlock the door and as he pushed it open he looked at me, saying nothing.

  My heart rate immediately sped up. Even faster than it already was, which put me in heart attack territory.

  “What does it have to do with me?” I repeated, my voice now a little higher-pitched than normal. Adam filled out the sign-in sheets at the front desk and picked up the clipboard used to record my progress, not answering my question. He walked across to the punching bags and gestured at them.

  “Give me a right-right jab and then a left hook.”

  “Adam –”

  “Trust me, you’ll want to be punching those bags when I tell you.”

  That did not bode well. According to my school counsellor I’d had anger-management issues back in the day, and even now punching things sometimes made me feel better. Adam knew this, and his statement suggested that my fears around what this job might entail were about to be confirmed.

  “Harry wants you to go undercover as a school girl and find out who the dealer is.”

  My jaw dropped. “No!” I protested.

  “Right jab, right jab, left hook,” said Adam. “You might as well put your anger to use.”

  I turned back to the boxing bag and performed the designated moves. “Why?” I asked, punctuating the question with my left hook.

  “I tried to talk you out of getting your licence,” he said with a shrug. “I was trying to do you a favour.”

  It clicked. Harry had wanted me to look into this case from the beginning. The PI licence had been a trap and I’d walked right into it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, punching – hard – with each new word.

  “I was sworn to secrecy,” he said. “You should have trusted me.”

  Mistrust was a common theme in my relationship with Adam. Largely because he did things like this.

  I ignored him. “But – but – I can’t believe Harry would do that to me!”

  He just shrugged.

  “Why me?”

  “You’re our youngest employee,” said Adam. “And
you’re so immature that you should have no trouble fitting in with a bunch of high schoolers.”

  My friendship with Adam was built mostly on a foundation of both of us having horrible personality traits. Our conversations tended to involve us basically just insulting each other. The benefit of all this practice at being arseholes to each other was that when we ganged up on someone it took us roughly 0.0003 seconds to make them cry.

  “So you’re going to send me back to high school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “It won’t work.”

  “Switch arms,” said Adam before continuing with the conversation. “Why not?”

  “There’ll still be people there who recognise me. I only left two years ago.”

  “You were an undistinguished student,” said Adam.

  “Sometimes you’re so charming.”

  “Your hair was died black and straightened every day. You’ve lost weight since you left. No one will recognise you.”

  “Have you been stalking my Facebook photos?”

  Adam smirked. “Are you embarrassed that I know you went through an emo phase?”

  I ignored him. “The principal might still recognise me,” I said, trying to bring the argument back on track. “Also the school counsellor.”

  My anger management problems had landed me in both of their offices more times than I could count.

  “The counsellor has changed and we’re working in collaboration with the principal,” he replied. “All the teachers who knew you then will be told not to reveal your identity. None of the kids you’re going to be hanging around with will have any memory of you. It’s a big school.”

  “I’ve been told I leave an impression.”

  Adam smiled. “You’re going undercover, Charlie, no matter what you say. No one will recognise you if you play nice.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You can’t send me undercover,” I said to Adam in a last-ditch attempt to make him rethink the situation. “Who’s going to look after reception?”

  We were in Adam’s BMW on our way to Gerongate High. I had finished my harrowing workout – Adam made them harder every week, mostly so he could laugh at me – and then showered and eaten breakfast, all the while listing out the many reasons why I wasn’t an appropriate choice for this job. Adam had simply eaten his fruit salad (super fancy – it had chia seeds and mint and lime juice on it) and shrugged as I complained.

  Now we were on our way to a meeting with Principal Skinner (no relation). She had apparently convinced the Department of Education to fork out funding for a full-scale investigation into the meth problem at the high school – something about the potential for the parents to sue if nothing was done to resolve the issue. She had been the principal while I was there too, and while she had found me endlessly frustrating due to my, well, sudden violent outbursts, I think she’d secretly kind of liked me.

  “We managed OK without a receptionist before we hired you,” said Adam.

  “Yeah, but –”

  “And it’s not like you spend that much time at your desk anyway.”

  I frowned. OK, he had a point there. I had been known to leave my desk at times, but only ever for a good cause – such as following leads that everyone else seemed to be overlooking. “But –”

  “Harry hired someone to help in reception, anyway.”

  I looked at Adam in disbelief. “You mean I’ve been replaced?”

  “Of course not,” he replied. “You’re not good enough to become a full-time investigator. We just have a temporary receptionist while you’re at school.”

  I shuddered. “Please don’t say at school. I can’t handle it.”

  He shrugged. “You’re going to have to deal with it. And you need to be a model student – homework done every night.”

  “There’s no chance of you helping with that, is there?”

  I knew he’d refuse, but I had to ask just in case. Adam was by far the smartest person I knew. We’re talking medicine degree and law degree kind of smart. He was the sort of guy I imagined other kids had fought over sitting next to during exams. Truly, his only flaw was his personality. Well, that and his love of superheroes. (And Star Wars, as I’d recently found out. He’d made me watch all of them with him, which may have been the longest day of my life. Not just in order of release, either – he had his own special nerd-approved ‘best order’ to watch them in. Four, five, one, two, three, six and then the new ones, if you’re curious.)

  “No, Charlie. You have to do your own homework,” said Adam. “It’s character building. And, frankly, I’m concerned about your lack of general knowledge. It might do you some good.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t getting out of this.

  Adam pulled into the school’s car park and we got out of the car. He followed me through the front gate and into the office where we had to sign in. I was having major flashbacks now that I was here and my desire to not do this job was growing stronger by the second.

  I turned to Adam. “Please, Adam, I can’t –”

  “Ah, Mr Baxter. You’re here.”

  Principal Skinner, dressed in a boring grey pantsuit, bobbed brown hair perfectly straightened and not a strand out of place, was standing at the other end of the office. She gestured for us to follow her down the corridor. It wasn’t until we walked into her little office and Adam and I sat opposite her that she seemed to recognise me.

  “Charlie?” she said. “You work for Baxter & Co.? I knew it was a former student, but I didn’t know...”

  Frankly I was slightly insulted by her tone. “Usually I work as a bouncer,” I said. “Throwing people out of nightclubs and stuff.”

  She smiled, though it seemed pained. “That does sound more like it suits your skillset.”

  Adam turned to me. He simply looked at me, but behind his eyes I could see a threat that if I didn’t play along I’d be fired before the day was done. I fake laughed.

  “Just kidding,” I said. “I don’t even remember the last time I punched someone.”

  That was a lie. It was May 27 and the bastard deserved it.

  “Well, that’s... good,” said Principal Skinner, frowning slightly before her forehead smoothed out and she changed the subject. “OK, well, I think we need to get to business. The teachers who were here two years ago – when you were here, Charlie – have been told that an ex-student will be coming back undercover and that they are to keep it under wraps. We’re assuming that none of them is responsible since this new dealer has only been operating this year, as far as we can tell.”

  “Yeah, it was mostly weed when I was here,” I said. Adam and Skinner both turned and looked at me.

  “Thank you for that insight, Charlie,” said Adam, clearly willing me not to say any more.

  “I’m not so worried about marijuana,” said Skinner. “I’m not so naïve as to think none of my students dabble with it on weekends, and frankly I don’t think it’s that much worse than alcohol. Ice is an entirely different matter.”

  I nodded. I knew very little about drugs, since Breaking Bad was too scary for me to watch, but I tried to look like I knew what she was talking about. Ice bad. Weed OK.

  “How did you first find out that there was meth coming into the school?” Adam asked.

  “We found a small bag crushed into the cement in the main quadrangle in February,” said Skinner. “We assume it fell out of someone’s pocket, but obviously we have no idea whose.”

  “And that was when you contacted the police?” Adam said.

  Skinner nodded. “Yes. They’ve been looking into it for months now, but unlike last time we had this problem, they haven’t had any luck. That was why I insisted that we bring in your company.”

  Adam frowned. “You’ve had trouble with drugs here before?”

  “Yes,” said Skinner, nodding. “Ice is cheaper than marijuana these days, and there are a number of dealers who were targeting students at parties last year. However, the students turned them in and
they were arrested. We didn’t have any further problems until Gabby...”

  She trailed off, lost in thought.

  Adam spoke. “The plan is to send in Charlie to get close to Gabby’s friends. We’re hoping they might know who her supplier was.”

  Skinner nodded sombrely. “Yes, that seems like a good plan.” She turned to me. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to get close to them?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just... making friends was never your strong point.”

  That would have been offensive if it weren’t completely true. I’d always had friends at school, but making new ones hadn’t really been my area. Since starting work at Baxter & Co., though, I had a pretty good record of befriending people. Mostly because they liked to laugh at my many and varied failures, but hey, at least they liked something about me. Of course, since starting this job I’d also nearly been murdered on multiple occasions so I guess it all balances out.

  “I’m a new person,” I lied. “I promise.”

  Yes, I’m aware that I made and broke the promise in a single instant, but it was for a good cause. I was at least 75% sure I was capable of doing this job, even if I didn’t want to. At all. On second thoughts, why was I bothering to defend myself? I didn’t want to go undercover at this school at all, and if Skinner decided she didn’t trust me...

  “But if you don’t want me to do it, I completely understand,” I said, not looking at Adam because I knew he’d be shooting daggers at me for this. “I know I was a terrible student, and I still don’t have my anger management skills down pat. Honestly, I’m probably a bit of a risk. Maybe it would be better if –”

  “OK, Charlie,” said Principal Skinner, cutting me off. “You’ve made your point. I was being ridiculous. I apologise. You’re not just a kid anymore. Clearly you’ve grown up and done very well for yourself, and if the top security company in the country thinks you’re the person for the job, then they’re probably right.”

  “But –”

  “Excellent,” said Adam, cutting me off. I could feel the heat of his glare radiating onto the side of my head, so I decided not to turn and face him just in case I got permanent eye damage from it. Not that my vision was that crash hot to begin with. “I assure you, Helen, Charlie is good at her job.”